“Thanks a lot,” Katherine muttered, but she stepped forward into the crowd.
Jonah took a deep breath and followed her.
The sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade sections of Harris Middle School were laid out like spokes, each grade kept separate from the others. Jonah knew it should be a straight shot to the center of the school—the library, gym, and cafeteria—and then an easy turnoff to the seventh-grade wing. But the eighth graders who stood between him and his turnoff were huge.
Right, they don’t eat sixth graders for lunch—they eat seventh graders, Jonah thought.
He took a tentative step forward—and two boys who must have been nearly six feet tall stepped out of his way.
Huh?
He heard a whisper behind him: “. . . must have been in a fight . . . don’t mess with him . . .”
They think I look all tough and scary? Jonah marveled. Because of the grass stains and the dirt and my torn sleeve?
Or was it that he carried himself differently after helping Mileva Einstein save time, after thinking for himself and giving Mileva the Elucidator?
He stood up straighter.
Oh, yeah, nobody should mess with me, he thought.
The crowd really did seem to part before him. He made it down the eighth-grade corridor and into the seventh-grade wing in record time.
And then he heard a voice behind him.
“Jonah? Jonah Skidmore? Just the student I’ve been looking for.”
It was Mr. Stanley. The teacher whose class Jonah had vanished from.
FORTY-FIVE
Jonah whirled around.
If Mr. Stanley asks where I disappeared to the last two minutes of class, I’ll say . . . I’ll say . . .
Jonah couldn’t think what he could say. Why hadn’t he and Katherine and Angela figured this out on the drive from Chip’s house?
“Yes, Mr. Stanley?” Jonah said. Maybe he could stall for time just by acting super polite.
Close up, Mr. Stanley’s skin looked even grayer and more sickly. Scarier. But Jonah had just gotten back from hanging out with a vomiting Mileva and a deathly ill toddler Lieserl—and, for that matter, a stomach-flu-ridden Chip—so he didn’t recoil the way he normally would have.
“Young Jonah,” Mr. Stanley said. “You rushed out from class so quickly you forgot your books. You must have been truly eager to get to lunch, eh?”
Jonah realized that Mr. Stanley was holding out Jonah’s science book and his science folder. Of course. When Jonah and Katherine had dashed out of Mr. Stanley’s class after time stopped, they hadn’t even thought about carrying Jonah’s books with them.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Stanley,” Jonah said, taking the book and folder from him. “I guess I was thinking so hard about those forces of nature you were talking about that I forgot everything else.”
It was such a suck-up thing to say; Jonah was sure Mr. Stanley would bust him for it. For perhaps the first time ever, Jonah looked closely at the man. He was trying to tell if Mr. Stanley saw through Jonah’s act, if Mr. Stanley had noticed that Jonah had been in his seat at 11:43 and then had completely vanished a split second later.
Mr. Stanley mostly looked . . . pleased.
“Well,” he said, practically puffing out his chest. “I’m always delighted to hear that my students are thinking about the knowledge I impart upon them.”
Could it really be this easy? Could Jonah just flatter him a little bit more, and that would solve everything?
“And those forces of nature are fascinating,” Mr. Stanley continued.
“I like that thing Einstein talked about, with the bowling ball on the trampoline,” Jonah offered.
“Einstein always was so good at the word pictures,” Mr. Stanley said, and now there was an oddly wistful tone in his voice.
Mr. Stanley kept talking about Einstein’s theories about gravity. Kids walking by kept shooting Jonah glances that all but spoke: Dude, how did you get stuck listening to that old man outside of class? Isn’t listening to him in class torture enough? Anthony Brezzia and Hayden Smiley actually walked past with their hands cupped over their ears. Sneha Baskaranathan, one of the nicest girls in seventh grade, stopped behind Mr. Stanley’s back and made a motion with her hands as though she were spooning food up to her mouth—obviously trying to remind Jonah, Just tell Mr. Stanley you have to go to lunch. That’s how you get away!
But Jonah just stood there and listened. Because he’d seen something in Mr. Stanley’s eyes as soon as he’d mentioned Einstein.
What if Mr. Stanley was once a young man . . . well, I guess he had to have been young, at some point, Jonah thought. But what if, back then, he dreamed of being the next Einstein? What if he thought his own ideas were going to impress the whole world so much that people would hang on to his every word . . . ? Isn’t it sad that now he only talks to kids who don’t want to hear anything he has to say?
Jonah wasn’t sure how long he stood there listening to Mr. Stanley talk about bowling balls and marbles and trampolines and planets and moons and stars. But it was long enough that Jonah was certain that Mr. Stanley wasn’t going to lead into, So how did you vanish from my class like that? What happened? Mr. Stanley had probably bent down to pick up his dropped marker at the end of class and then the bell had rung and everyone had rushed out of the room. So Jonah had gotten away with it. Even if any of the other kids had noticed Jonah missing, Jonah could just laugh it off. And Katherine was crafty about stuff like this—she’d have no problem explaining away her disappearance. So they’d gotten away with everything. Time was going on, just the way it was supposed to, and—
Jonah realized that Mr. Stanley had stopped talking about gravity and bowling balls and was digging for something in his pocket.
“Oh, here,” Mr. Stanley said. “You know you weren’t supposed to have this out during class. Technically I should keep it and turn it in to the office and make you fill out paperwork to get it back. But I know you weren’t actually using it in class, so—here. Here’s your cell phone.”
He held out something small and black and sleek.
“That’s—,” Jonah began, all ready to add not my cell phone. Now that he and Mr. Stanley were so buddy-buddy, maybe he would explain, I don’t really even have a cell phone, since I have to share mine with my little sister, and she always has it, not me. Should he tell Mr. Stanley that this was probably CC Vorlov’s phone?
No, I put CC’s back on her desk when I couldn’t get it to work—and there’s no way she would have left it behind, Jonah thought.
Then Jonah realized what the cell phone really was.
“That’s . . . really nice of you,” he finished weakly, taking the phone-shaped object from Mr. Stanley’s hand. “I promise you, I wasn’t using it in class.”
“I didn’t think so,” Mr. Stanley said. “Because it was sitting on your chair, exactly as if it’d just fallen out of your pocket. Between you and me, I don’t see any reason to punish students when they haven’t actually done anything wrong.” He clapped Jonah on the back. “Have a nice lunch, young man.”
But Jonah didn’t dash down the hallway to lunch. He ducked behind the nearest row of lockers and began poking and prodding at the “cell phone” to try to turn it on.
The screen glowed to life, holding a string of words:
Dear Jonah,
It is time to return the Elucidator to you. Thank you so much. I did actually figure out a way to use it. I—
Jonah felt a hand slam down on his shoulder. He jumped, and practically dropped the Elucidator.
Then he saw who had grabbed him: It was JB.
“Why don’t we go see for ourselves exactly what Mileva did with that Elucidator?” JB asked.
FORTY-SIX
“Can’t I have lunch first?” Jonah asked weakly.
“No,” JB said.
Then, before Jonah had a chance to say another word, they were zooming through time.
They landed in a time hollow—was it the same one
as before? Jonah had no way of knowing. He barely had a moment to look around before they had company: Hadley arrived with Emily, and Angela arrived with Katherine.
“Kind of like one big happy reunion, huh?” Jonah tried to joke. “Doesn’t it seem like we just saw each other ten minutes ago? Oh, yeah—we pretty much did.”
“JB, I wasn’t done!” Katherine complained. “I’d just convinced Casey that she needed to get her eyes checked, if she didn’t see me standing there in the library at the end of fifth period, and I’d confirmed that Toby was looking away at the exact moment that time stopped and started again and I seemed to disappear. And Oshka and Haley and Ocean weren’t staring at me suspiciously or anything, but I still needed to make sure . . .”
Katherine was making Jonah’s head hurt.
“I thought we should all watch this together,” JB said through gritted teeth. “Immediately.”
Jonah’s heart sank. But then Emily leaned forward and whispered, “I think you did the right thing,” and he felt a little bit better.
Somehow chairs appeared for them, and they all settled in facing a blank wall. JB slipped the Elucidator out of Jonah’s grasp and typed in a command, and suddenly it was as if they could all look through the wall, straight into another room in another time.
It appeared to be a hospital room. An old-fashioned one, without any digital monitors glowing in the darkness.
“Just after midnight, April 18, 1955,” Hadley said, peering into his own Elucidator for verification. “The night Albert Einstein dies.”
Jonah shivered. Nothing had even happened yet, and already he was terrified.
“Albert had family and friends with him all day leading up to this,” JB said quietly. “But he has just a nurse watching over him now—er, no, she’s slipped out to use the restroom. Albert’s alone.”
There was just enough light in the hospital room that Jonah could make out Albert’s head on the pillow of the bed. The tufts of gray hair rose and fell as Albert thrashed his head back and forth.
“Is he in pain?” Angela asked. “Or just having a bad dream?”
Before anyone could answer, a figure suddenly appeared, bending over Albert.
“Is that Mileva?” Emily asked, squinting at the scene on the wall. “But I thought, when we watched their lives play out before—didn’t she die years before him?”
“Yes,” JB said grimly, and Jonah slid down lower in his seat.
It was a jolt to see this version of Mileva. Jonah felt as though it’d only been a matter of minutes since he’d said good-bye to her as a lively, determined twenty-seven-year-old. But now she was ancient and stooped, her face lined, her hair as grizzled and gray as Albert’s.
“Albert?” she whispered, gently touching his shoulder.
Albert startled awake, and then he gasped.
“Ghost,” he moaned. “Mileva’s ghost come to haunt me . . .”
The old-lady Mileva laughed, as if this amused her immensely.
“Oh, Albert, here you are the most famous scientist in the world, but you think of ghosts before you think of the scientific explanation,” she said. “I’ll give you a hint—your work provided the first steps toward it being possible for me to be here talking to you nearly seven years after you got the news of my death. Think about it.”
Albert drew in a ragged, pained breath. Let it out. Then took another one.
“Time . . . travel,” he said as he exhaled. “You . . . figured out . . . time travel just so . . . you could tell me on my deathbed . . . what a thoroughly lousy husband I was.”
Mileva looked as if she might laugh again, but this time she just shook her head.
“No, Albert,” she said. Her face grew serious as she stared into her ex-husband’s eyes. “I am not far from death myself. Back in my own time, I am due to have a stroke in a few days—a stroke that will lead to my demise. But before my life ends, I needed to tell you: I forgive you. I forgive you for being such a lousy husband. And a lousy ex-husband. I forgive you everything.”
“Well!” Jonah burst out. “Isn’t this a good thing Mileva is doing? Using the Elucidator for forgiveness? Giving Albert a chance to apologize before he dies?”
JB clenched his jaw.
“She didn’t come all this way just to offer forgiveness,” he muttered. “She’s not leaving yet, is she?” Something horrifying seemed to strike him. He pressed his hands against his face in utter dismay. “Oh, no—what if she has a stroke right there in Albert’s hospital room? How is anyone ever going to find an explanation for how Albert’s ex-wife, who died in 1948, could suddenly die all over again in 1955? On an entirely different continent?”
“Wait—you don’t know if that happens or not?” Katherine asked. “You didn’t watch this already without us?”
“No,” JB said tensely.
“He thought he might need you, if things have to be fixed right away . . . ,” Hadley explained, frowning behind his beard.
Jonah winced and looked back at Albert and Mileva.
Albert was still gasping, and Mileva was starting to look worried.
“Please, Johnnie, you’re not supposed to die for another hour or so,” Mileva said. “I was so careful about the timing of this. I thought you would welcome my forgiveness, not . . . go apoplectic.”
Albert was grimacing.
“Do . . . welcome forgiveness,” he murmured in an agonized voice. “It’s just . . . the pain . . .”
“Of course,” Mileva said. “I should have thought. Here. This will help.”
She reached into her dress pocket for something—a miniature syringe, maybe? Jonah thought he saw the glint of a needle as she lowered her hand toward Albert’s arm.
“No more morphine,” Albert said, trying to fend her off with a shaking hand. “Morphine makes me . . . stupid. Want last moments . . . lucid.”
Mileva barely hesitated.
“Oh, this isn’t morphine,” she said. “I don’t want you to be stupid for this conversation either. I so wanted another conversation with the brilliant Johnnie I fell in love with all those years ago.”
“He’s gone . . . dying . . . Now I’m just a foolish old man that the youngsters in the field make fun of,” Albert murmured. “My search for a unified field theory . . . just tilting at windmills, they say . . .”
Mileva brushed her hand against Albert’s arm.
The change in Albert was instantaneous. He sat up straight.
“What was that?” he asked, his voice normal again, no longer weighed down by pain.
“Oh, never mind the technicalities,” Mileva said. “You never did have much patience with chemistry. I can just tell you that it’s a painkiller I picked up for you in the future . . .”
“The future!” JB exploded. “How many extra time periods did she visit? And bringing back medicines . . . that’s illegal! Why didn’t we detect this?”
Hadley was already hunched over his Elucidator.
“I’m not finding evidence of that,” he said, frantically scanning screenfuls of information. “She must have hidden her footprints really, really well.”
“Or maybe she’s not telling the truth?” Emily suggested in a thin, reedy voice. “Maybe she’s counting on a placebo effect—fooling him into thinking he feels better?”
As far as Jonah could tell, Albert seemed to have undergone a full recovery. He was craning his neck, flexing his arm muscles—and reaching out for Mileva as if he planned to hug her.
Mileva took a step back.
“Albert, no,” she said. “I just want to talk. To tell you the secrets I had to hide from you for almost fifty years. And . . . to reveal the answers you’ve been trying to find for the past few decades.”
JB’s hand slammed into the side of his chair.
“That’s it!” he cried. “She’s going to ruin everything!”
“Calm down,” Hadley said. “Don’t you think she had a reason for waiting until an hour before his death to talk to him?”
JB glowe
red at Hadley, but didn’t do anything else.
On the screen Albert leaned forward eagerly.
“My unified field theory? It is possible—it can work?”
Mileva tilted her head and regarded him very seriously.
“We’re not newlyweds anymore,” she said. “I no longer worship the ground you walk on. I’m going to tell you what’s important to me first. That way, even if we run out of time, you’ll hear what I want you to know.”
“But—,” Albert began. Then he caught himself and shrugged grudgingly. “That’s fair,” he admitted. “After all, you’re the one who traveled through time to get to me.”
Mileva nodded and sat down on the edge of the bed. She smoothed the expanse of hospital blanket that lay between her and Albert.
“First of all,” she said. “Our Lieserl didn’t die in 1903.”
Albert gaped at her. Then he began blinking frantically—blinking back tears.
“What?” he cried. “Our Lieserl—still alive? But how—and why didn’t you tell me?” He started desperately gazing all around the room. “Is she here with you? Can I finally meet her? What would she be now—fifty-three? You kept this a secret from me for more than fifty years?”
He looked positively injured at the thought of all those years of deception.
“I had to,” Mileva said softly. “And—she’s not fifty-three yet.”
Jonah heard Katherine let out a nervous giggle beside him, but she quickly fell silent.
Mileva began telling Albert the whole story of what had happened with Lieserl. When she got to the part about her and Jonah copying over Albert’s tracer papers and convincing him that that was his current work, he wrinkled his brow in confusion.
“But—why didn’t you tell everything?” he asked. “Why didn’t you tell the whole world? You could have claimed credit for discovering time travel! You could have claimed credit for my discoveries. Why didn’t you?”
“Albert, our children,” Mileva murmured. “It would have endangered our children.”
Albert only stared at her. She reached out and took his hand.
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