Sabotaged

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Oh, Jonah thought. That must be what Robert Oppenheimer did.

  “I’m not comparing the morality of it,” Second said. “I’m just saying—this is that monumental. Its repercussions will reverberate forever.”

  Katherine glared at him.

  “You’re crazy,” she said. “And conceited.”

  “Now, now,” Second said. “Do you like the way time was supposed to go?”

  Jonah opened his mouth. Then he shut it. He noticed that Katherine didn’t say anything either.

  “In original time, Virginia Dare and her grandfather were never to be reunited,” Second said, a tinge of sadness entering his voice for the first time. “It was what we call a near miss. Time is rubbed so thin at the site of a near miss. . . . Virginia Dare was standing here and her grandfather was just a few yards away, and they would never know it. They were destined to go to their graves without ever knowing the fate of the other. And, believe me, their graves were coming for both of them, very soon. Wouldn’t you call that a mistake on time’s part? Didn’t it need to be corrected?”

  The question hung in the air. Jonah saw doubt flutter over his sister’s face.

  “You’re manipulating us again,” Jonah accused Second. “You’ve been manipulating us all along!”

  Second raised an eyebrow.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “Though perhaps not as much as you think.”

  “You lied to Andrea to get her to change the Elucidator!” Katherine said.

  “True,” Second said. “That was necessary, though I do regret the pain it caused her.”

  “You wanted us to lose the Elucidator!” Jonah charged.

  “Of course,” Second agreed.

  “Didn’t you know we’d be scared?” Jonah asked.

  “I had every reason to believe you’d be okay,” Second said.

  “Then . . . somehow . . . you arranged it so Walks with Pride and One Who Survives Much weren’t there to save John White,” Katherine said.

  Second shrugged.

  “I just delayed Brendan and Antonio’s return to their proper time by a few days,” he said. “Just as I changed Andrea’s return to time only slightly—placing her on Roanoke Island instead of Croatoan.”

  “You did that so we would rescue John White, right?” Jonah said. “And so Andrea would get attached to him?”

  “Bingo!” Second said, his grin back.

  “What if we hadn’t saved him?” Katherine challenged. “What if he’d drowned?”

  “Well, I did have to bribe Dare with some dog treats, to get him to bark at the right time,” Second admitted. “That was a little dicey. But once you were there on the beach, watching, there was virtually no chance that you wouldn’t try to help.”

  “Andrea could have drowned!” Jonah said. “I could have drowned!”

  “Nope,” Second said, shaking his head. “Not even statistically possible. You were both too strong and determined for that.”

  Jonah frowned. Something was still nagging at him.

  “How’d you know we’d have Dare with us anyhow?” he asked. “That’s not even something JB planned for. He just sent Dare with us because his projectionist said . . .”

  Jonah stopped, because Second was pulling some sort of timepiece out of his pocket.

  “Hmm,” he said. “I really had projected that you would figure out this part by now. You’re eleven seconds off. Perhaps a small clue is in order. As you might have guessed, Second Chance isn’t the name my parents gave me at birth. I adopted that appellation only very recently, to go along with my quest to change history. You might actually have heard of me previously, by another name—Sam, perhaps? Sam Chase?”

  Sam, Jonah thought. Sam Chase. Back home, Jonah knew two Sams and a Samuel at school, and a Sammy on his soccer team. But all that seemed so far away, so long ago—or long ahead. Even the most recent time he’d heard the name Sam seemed distant. It had been JB speaking, JB saying, Sam is the most brilliant projectionist I’ve ever worked with. . . .

  Jonah’s jaw dropped. He felt his eyes bugging out.

  “You’re JB’s projectionist?” he gasped.

  Second clicked his thumb against the object in his hand—maybe it was a stopwatch.

  “Wow,” he said. “Thirty-six seconds off. I’m really slipping. Or, the two of you are.”

  “It’s true, then?” Katherine asked. “You work for JB?”

  “JB signs my paychecks,” Second said, his cocky grin back.

  “Then . . . then he knew what was happening to us along?” Jonah asked. He was having trouble believing this. “He knew from the beginning that Andrea was going to change the Elucidator, that we were going to lose all contact, that we were going to rescue John White, that . . . that this was what we were moving toward?” Without looking, he gestured toward the other kids and Andrea’s grandfather, still back at the canoe.

  “Let’s just say that JB can be a bit hands-off as a boss,” Second said. “All about the big picture, not so concerned about the tiny details along the way. Looks at the forest, not the individual trees. Leaves it to me to understand the trees.”

  Jonah didn’t have a clue what any of that meant. He couldn’t stop thinking about how certain he’d been, back in the hut on Roanoke Island, that JB had lost them completely. Hadn’t JB assured them, back at the beginning when he was shaking their hands, that they were all on the same team? That there wouldn’t be any secrets on this trip?

  No, Jonah realized. That wasn’t what JB said. He said no one would keep any secrets “unnecessarily.”

  Jonah felt betrayed. He wanted to scream out, like Andrea’s grandfather in the midst of one of his nightmares, “Treachery! Betrayal! Deceit!”

  “But . . . but . . . the big picture here is that Andrea changed history,” Katherine said. “JB’s big picture isn’t about changing history. He just wants to put kids back where they belong so history will go the way it’s supposed to.”

  “You think JB is still the same time purist he was when you first met him?” Second asked. “Do you think, if he’d stayed like that, he would have let you rescue Chip and Alex from the fifteenth century?” Second smirked. “Don’t you know how people’s hearts go soft around orphans and dogs?”

  He pointed toward Andrea and Dare, but Jonah just kept staring at Second.

  “JB would never have let you give Andrea steroids in her food,” Jonah said.

  “There weren’t any steroids in her food pellet. It was just food,” Second said.

  “But the way she paddled,” Jonah argued, “when she was trying to catch up with the tracer canoe—”

  “She was just determined. Very, very stubborn and full of resolve,” Second said. “Like you were full of resolve when the food pellets showed up—you were so determined that you were going to spite me by not eating them, that you forgot to think about being hungry. And that carried you through until you could eat the fish.”

  Jonah winced. Second was exactly right—that was how Jonah had felt.

  “I will admit that I tampered a bit with the food pellet I knew Andrea would give to John White,” Second said. “It had a sedative in it, to make sure that he didn’t wake up too soon. And, although the medicine in the pellet helped him heal, it made him look like he was getting worse.”

  Jonah’s jaw dropped.

  “Why would you do that? Andrea was so worried about her grandfather!” he protested.

  “And so convinced that she had to keep him with his tracer,” Second said. He smirked again. “Ultimately, it was for her own good.”

  Jonah scowled at him.

  “What about the paint jars you left in that hut?” Katherine said. “What was that all about?”

  “Well . . . John White can use the paint, because some of his was damaged by the seawater,” Second said. “But, mostly, the way those showed up made Jonah so mad at me that he was determined to get off Roanoke Island, no matter what, even if he had to carve a canoe himself.” Second chuckled, not very kindly. “T
eenage boys really are very easy to manipulate.”

  This made Jonah even angrier. If it hadn’t been for the paint jars, he would have thought more about whether or not it really mattered to keep John White with his tracer. He would have thought more about the big picture, himself.

  Second probably predicted that I’d be mad now, Jonah seethed.

  He forced himself to at least try to appear calm.

  “There’s still something weird about all this,” Katherine muttered.

  “Yeah. . . . What about the way Antonio came back in time?” Jonah said. “When he . . . fell on me. I bet that wasn’t something JB knew about, or approved, or wanted to happen. That was wrong, wasn’t it?”

  “Not wrong, exactly,” Second said. For the first time, his gaze seemed shifty; he wouldn’t look Jonah in the eye. “It was a bit unconventional . . . just a little risky. . . . Okay, that kind of re-entry had never been tried before. It’s called a time smack. And it was the only way to stretch time just enough for the shift, to loosen the connection between Brendan and Antonio and their tracers . . .”

  I don’t trust their tracers, Katherine had said, only the night before. She’d been right. They weren’t trustworthy. But it really wasn’t their fault.

  “So I caused one little time smack, along with the time shift. Why does that give you the right to put me on trial?” Second asked. “This is all good! John White gets to meet his granddaughter! It’s a happy ending!”

  “Is it an ending or—just the beginning?” Katherine asked.

  “Oh, very good!” Second was beaming again. “You are so right. There are so many possibilities, even from this one little change . . . With his granddaughter at his side, John White has a reason to live now. To heal. And he’ll keep drawing pictures. In just seven years, English settlers are going to try again, at Jamestown. What if John White’s new drawings get to Jamestown and then back to England? What if that changes how everyone in England views the Americas? What if John White and Virginia Dare go and help out at Jamestown, bridging the gap between the English and the natives much better than a bunch of trigger-happy, starving soldiers? What if there’s finally some respect between the two sides?”

  Jonah glanced toward Andrea and the others once again. He gasped.

  “And what if your wonderful time shift ruins everything?” he asked.

  He pointed.

  Andrea was still bent over her grandfather, her hand gently touching his face. Brendan and Antonio still hovered nearby, staring solemnly at the reunited pair. This wasn’t so odd. The four of them might have been so awed by the moment that they wanted to stay in the same position, without moving, for a long time. But it wasn’t just them staying so still. Dare’s body arced above the canoe, frozen mid-leap. A bird flying overhead was suspended in mid-air, its wings outstretched but unmoving. Even the waves beyond the canoe had stopped lapping against the sand, the crests and valleys of water locked in place, unchanging. It was impossible, but true: Except for the little cluster of Jonah, Katherine, and Second, the entire world had stopped.

  “Oh, that,” Second said. “It’s temporary. See?”

  He rubbed the surface of the thing Jonah had thought was a stopwatch. Once again Jonah heard the pounding of the surf against the sand. The bird soared out of sight. Dare landed on the sand at Andrea’s side and brushed his head against her leg. The dog looked up at her as if he expected to be petted.

  Brendan, Antonio, and John White laughed.

  “Our canine friend admires you,” John White said.

  Jonah turned his attention back to Second.

  “That’s an Elucidator you’re holding, isn’t it?” Jonah asked, gesturing toward the watchlike object. “You can stop time with an Elucidator?”

  “Not really,” Second said. “That’s just how it looks to the uneducated eye. In reality, I pulled the three of us out of time. It’s like—you’ve gone into time hollows with JB, haven’t you? And the time cave? This is the same kind of thing, except easier. Not so much travel and wear and tear. We just hide in between the nanoseconds.”

  Jonah was only half-listening. He was keeping his eye—educated or not—on the Elucidator. After a moment, Second slipped it back into his pocket without pressing it again. He shrugged.

  “We might as well watch what happens next,” he said.

  In the canoe, John White was shaking his head at Andrea.

  “I have been confused these many days,” he said. “I have dreamed of you, my child, dreamed of your voice. . . .”

  Andrea did not say, You mean, because I’ve been talking to you for two days, but you’ve been too out of it to really listen? Or to open your eyes and see me? Instead, she flipped her braids over her shoulder and said, “I’ve dreamed of you, too, Grandfather. My mother used to tell me stories of you. She promised you would do everything you could to come back.”

  “I did,” her grandfather murmured. “I have.”

  “Amazing,” Second whispered beside Jonah. “Even with the time shift, time can still adjust itself. The human mind can adjust itself. John White will never again wonder why he sort of remembers hearing Andrea before—he’ll always think that was just a dream. Because time would never have allowed him to see and hear her for real, to recognize her without her tracer. . . .”

  “I thought he was unconscious and couldn’t see or hear her because you put a sedative in his food,” Jonah said. “And because of his head injury.”

  “You don’t think time could have caused his head injury?” Second asked.

  “Time’s not a person,” Jonah objected. “Time can’t make someone hurt his head.”

  “Can’t it?” Second asked.

  “But—” Jonah began.

  “Shh,” Katherine interrupted. “Argue later. I’m trying to hear.”

  In the canoe, John White was clearing his throat, peering down awkwardly at his hands, then back up at Andrea.

  “I fear to ask,” he began. “Your mother, my Eleanor. And Ananias, your father. Are they . . .”

  Andrea was already shaking her head.

  “Their spirits took flight,” she said. “Five summers ago, when the sickness came. . . .”

  John White had tears glistening in his eyes, but he spoke gently.

  “And you, child. Who takes care of you?”

  “The Croatoan tribe is kind, those few who are left,” Andrea said. “They count me as one of their own. We have moved in with distant relatives. . . .”

  “Kind?” Antonio interrupted. “They sent you, a girl, alone, to an evil island? You call that kind?”

  Andrea frowned.

  “That is not their fault,” Andrea said. “The sickness has come back, and many are weak again. I chose this myself, as a way to make peace with the evil spirits. I thought if I could bury the dead, bury the animal bones, it would show that the Croatoans are worthy people . . . worthy to live on, not die, not all die out. . . .”

  Her voice was thick with grief.

  The fresh grave, Jonah thought with a jolt. That’s the explanation! It was Andrea—or, Virginia Dare, rather—she was burying all the skeletons of the dead Croatoans from some plague from years ago. Maybe she put them all in one grave, or maybe there were other fresh graves I didn’t see. . . .

  Katherine turned her head to whisper in Jonah’s ear.

  “Doesn’t it seem like they’ve forgotten we’re even here?” she asked. She waved her arms and raised her voice. “Hey, Andrea! Remember us?”

  Second immediately clamped his hand over Katherine’s mouth.

  “Shh! Stop interfering!” he hissed, which Jonah thought was a little funny, given what Second had done.

  A flicker of irritation appeared on Andrea’s face, but she didn’t turn her head. Brendan and Antonio didn’t look up either. John White, however, squinted toward the woods.

  “Do my eyes and ears betray me?” he muttered. “Or do I see more figments from my dreams, come terrifyingly to life?” He blinked—maybe his vision wasn’t the
clearest. He looked back at Andrea. “Perhaps I was mistaken—are you but a figment too? Do I dream and think I am awake?”

  “I’m real,” Andrea insisted. “You’re not dreaming. But lie back, Grandfather, and rest.”

  Obediently, he slid back down in the canoe. It seemed barely a second before Jonah could hear the old man snoring.

  A moment later, Andrea came stomping toward Jonah and Katherine and Second.

  “Don’t ruin it!” she ordered Katherine. “When my grandfather sees or hears something he doesn’t understand, he gets confused. He has to fall asleep again. And you and Jonah don’t fit for him. You—”

  “What, you’re saying we don’t belong here?” Katherine asked indignantly. “After all we’ve done for you? The help we’ve given you?”

  Impatience played over Andrea’s face.

  “That’s not it,” she said. “I’m grateful. I appreciate everything you’ve done. But can’t you feel how fragile this is? One wrong move, and time could snatch me back. I’ll be running toward the woods”—she pointed into the trees, and for an instant, Jonah thought he could see the other ghostly tracer again—”and my grandfather will be floating away. Out of reach.”

  “Really?” Second said, as if Andrea had just provided him with an amazing detail. “You still feel the pull of the original tracer?”

  “Less and less with each moment that passes,” Andrea said. “But still . . .”

  Second frowned.

  “But I was so sure,” he muttered.

  Jonah decided it was time to take control of the conversation.

  “Don’t worry, Andrea,” Jonah said. “Remember, this is all just temporary. We’re going to fix time—well, whatever that means now—and then we’re all going back to the twenty-first century and have our normal lives.”

  Normal was sounding especially good to Jonah right now. Even the most boring moments of his ordinary twenty-first-century life seemed achingly precious. The time he’d spent brushing his teeth. Opening the refrigerator to look for a snack. Flipping through the TV channels with the remote control. Waiting for the computer to fire up. Sitting through Social Studies class at school and feeling like none of it really mattered—it was all history and dead and gone and past. . . .