“Jonah?” Mom said. Her voice was softer now, sounding farther away. Jonah blinked hard, trying to make her face come back into focus. She disappeared for a moment, then reappeared. Oh. It wasn’t because she’d fallen into some time-travel mess herself. It was because she’d gone to the kitchen and brought back a big glass of orange juice for him, along with a slice of toast. He gulped them both down and instantly felt better.
Note to self, he thought. Mom might actually be right about the whole “everybody needs a good breakfast” thing.
“Jonah, are you getting sick?” Mom asked. She brushed her fingers against his forehead. “You don’t seem to have a fever, but you were so pale a minute ago . . . and you’re still clammy. Do you need to stay home from school?”
Jonah glanced up at Katherine, as if trying to ask her telepathically, Is this our solution? Mom already thinks I’m sick—do you want to pretend you’re coming down with something too? And then we can work on figuring out why Charles Lindbergh, who died forty years ago, was in our living room this morning?
But if Jonah and Katherine did stay home “sick,” then Mom would absolutely decide she needed to work from home. And what could they do with Mom hovering over them, constantly feeling their foreheads and listening for sneezes and coughs?
And how quickly would she figure out that both of them were lying?
Jonah had survived deadly dangers in four different centuries—five, actually, if he counted his own. He’d made split-second decisions that had saved other people from assassins and a speeding wildfire and a firing squad and the potential destruction of time itself. But he really didn’t think he could carry off lying to his mom to get to skip school. Even for a good reason.
“I’m okay, Mom,” Jonah said. “I guess I was just hungry.”
Katherine glared at him. Mom glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece and sighed.
“One piece of toast is not going to hold you until lunch, Jonah. And Katherine, you haven’t even had anything yet,” she said. “Forget the bus—I’ll see if Dad can drop you off at school on his way to work.” She started toward the stairs, then stopped. “No, wait, he’s got that early conference call. . . .” She sighed again. “I’ll call the office and tell them I’m going to be late.”
She started toward the kitchen and, Jonah guessed, the kitchen phone. But even as she walked, she was beckoning them and calling out, “Come on—start eating!”
Neither Jonah nor Katherine budged.
“I could have handled lying for both of us,” Katherine hissed at him. It was uncanny how totally she knew what he’d been thinking.
What she’d said was also true: Katherine was a much better liar than he was.
“Sorry,” Jonah mumbled.
“Now we’re going to have to waste a whole day at school before we can do anything,” Katherine complained. “I think you’re just scared to find out anything else about Charles Lindbergh. In case you’re, you know, his son.”
At least she said this part with a little more sympathy. Jonah flushed, annoyed that Katherine knew him so well—and thought he was such a coward. Why hadn’t Jonah seen Charles Lindbergh in the presence of one of his time-traveling friends who thought Jonah was some big hero? Gavin Danes, for example, the kid who had come out of that basement in 1918 with even more bullet wounds than Jonah—Gavin and Jonah had recuperated together in the same hospital room, and Gavin thought Jonah could do anything.
Only it had actually been Katherine who’d saved Gavin from dying.
Distantly Jonah could hear Mom on the phone in the kitchen, telling someone, “It’s been one of those mornings.” Even more distantly, Jonah could hear Dad’s shower running upstairs. These were ordinary sounds from what should have been an ordinary day, but nothing felt ordinary anymore. He could feel all sorts of possible futures spreading out in front of him—all of them strange and terrifying.
And what was he supposed to do about any of it?
“If—” Katherine began, and instantly stopped. She stared past Jonah, toward the lamp.
Jonah turned in the chair and stared up . . . and up . . . and up.
Charles Lindbergh was back, standing in the exact same spot he’d been in before.
Katherine’s right. He is tall, Jonah thought.
He scrambled out of the chair so Charles Lindbergh wouldn’t tower over him quite so much. Now, looking at the man up close and straight on, Jonah realized that Lindbergh was wearing different clothes—some kind of old-fashioned flight suit, maybe, with a brown leather jacket stretched across his broad shoulders and a pair of goggles dangling around his neck.
Did he look older or younger than he had the last time? Was that something Jonah should pay attention to? Jonah couldn’t tell, because Lindbergh seemed so totally in the grip of timesickness. He was blinking furiously, the same way Jonah always did when he arrived in a new time period, when he was desperate to have his vision and other senses back as quickly as possible.
“I did it!” Lindbergh murmured.
Does he mean, “I made it back here again”? Jonah wondered. Why is that a bigger deal than getting here in the first place? Why does he even want to be here? Why did he disappear a moment ago?
Jonah thought maybe these weren’t the best questions to start with. But before he could say anything, he heard Mom yelling from the kitchen, her phone call evidently finished, “Jonah? Katherine? Get in here! Now!”
This was torture. If Jonah and Katherine left now, they wouldn’t see what happened next with Charles Lindbergh or get a chance to ask him anything. But if they didn’t leave, Mom was bound to come after them—and she’d see Lindbergh too.
Jonah inched one step closer to the kitchen, then indecisively inched back. Katherine didn’t move at all.
Lindbergh cocked his head toward Mom’s voice and blinked again.
“Are you Jonah and Katherine Skidmore?” he asked, pulling a small notepad and pencil from inside his jacket.
“What’s it to you?” Katherine asked, as bold as ever.
Lindbergh made a small mark on the notepad.
“Confirmation of that item on my checklist,” Lindbergh muttered. He turned toward Jonah. “I apologize in advance for any distress this is going to cause you.”
Jonah took another step back.
And then Lindbergh reached out and grabbed Katherine by the shoulders.
“What are you doing?” Jonah asked. “Let go of my sister!”
He stepped forward again, waving his arms wildly, trying to pull Katherine back and shove Lindbergh away. But Lindbergh had too tight a grip.
“Jonah! Be careful!” Katherine cried, even as she tried to get away. “He’s probably just using me to get to you!”
Lindbergh looked scornfully down at her and held on tighter.
“Such simplistic thinking,” he said. “And wrong.”
Lindbergh lifted Katherine, jerking her completely away from Jonah. She kept struggling, pushing away from him. But it was useless.
A split second later both Lindbergh and Katherine vanished.
FOUR
Jonah stepped into the space that Lindbergh and Katherine had occupied only a moment before. He started swinging his arms again, as if convinced that even if he couldn’t see Lindbergh and Katherine, he still might be able to grab them.
They’re just invisible, he told himself. Even Katherine and I managed to make that function work on the Elucidators we used. Well, most of the time. Maybe that’s all this Lindbergh guy did too—he just pressed some button on an Elucidator in his pocket, and he turned them both invisible. . . .
“Katherine?” Jonah called. “Say something. Make some noise. Please!”
No one answered. No matter how violently Jonah waved his arms around, his fingers didn’t brush anything except the lamp, the chair, the candlesticks on the mantel. Things Jonah could see.
Lindbergh and Katherine were gone.
Jonah kept swinging his arms, but it was a despairing gesture now. The sid
e of his hand connected with one of Mom’s brass candlesticks, and it crashed down to the hearth below. The candle snapped in half; the brass clanged against the hearthstones like a gong ringing out someone’s doom.
Katherine’s? Jonah agonized. And mine, when Mom sees I dented her candlestick . . . and lost her daughter?
The clanging sounded loud enough to echo through the whole house. Strangely, Mom wasn’t rushing back into the living room crying out, What just happened? What is going on in there?
She’d also stopped yelling about how Jonah and Katherine needed to get into the kitchen right now to eat breakfast.
This was very, very odd.
Did that Lindbergh guy zap away Mom and Dad, too, even without touching them? Jonah wondered. Have I lost my entire family?
Jonah didn’t think his legs could hold him up as he thought about this awful possibility. But they didn’t just hold him up—they also carried him toward the kitchen without him even having to consciously think about it.
“Mom?” he called. “Dad?”
His voice creaked and cracked and came out an octave higher than it should have. How could even his own voice betray him at a time like this?
He got to the breakfast nook area of the kitchen, where Mom had laid out sunflower place mats and perfectly spaced silverware and cereal boxes and cartons of juice and milk. The cell phone Mom had taken from Katherine was lying on the table too, as if that was supposed to be a reward for coming to breakfast. Jonah picked up the phone and slipped it into his pocket, but kept going.
“Mom?” he called again. This time his voice sank to a bass register, but he might as well have been a terrified baby wailing, Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!
No one was sitting in any of the kitchen chairs, not at the table and not at the desk across the room, either. No one was standing over the stove or near the refrigerator or beside the kitchen counters.
Jonah whirled around the corner and farther into the kitchen anyhow. He started waving his arms again—even though that hadn’t worked in the living room, maybe it would work here. This time he hit his hand on a granite countertop. He doubled over in pain, leaning across the top of the island in the center of the kitchen. Just before he squeezed his eyes shut from the pain, he caught a glimpse of blond hair on the other side of the island, below the level of the counter.
His eyes popped back open.
“Katherine?” he cried.
It made no sense for Katherine to have disappeared from the living room in Charles Lindbergh’s arms a few moments ago only to reappear here and now, crouched beside the kitchen island. But Jonah was willing to believe that that had actually happened, if it meant that Katherine was back.
If it meant he hadn’t lost his entire family.
Jonah spun around the corner of the island, simultaneously crouching lower and lower himself. If Katherine had just gotten back from traveling through time while Jonah was experiencing a couple moments of panic, there was no telling what she’d suffered through; there was no telling how long she thought she’d been gone or how many lies they’d have to tell Mom and Dad to get them to believe that nothing had happened at all.
“Let me help,” Jonah said, reaching out to her.
The blond hair moved. Jonah noticed that Katherine had evidently lost her ponytail rubber band during whatever trip she’d just returned from: her hair was hanging down loose now, spread across her shoulders and hiding her face. Really, the hair was all Jonah could see. But Katherine was painstakingly starting to tilt her head back to look up toward Jonah. The hair was sliding out of the way.
“Don’t worry about the timesickness,” Jonah said, patting Katherine’s arm. “Take it slow. I’m watching out for you. You’re not in any danger.”
He hoped that that was true.
Katherine lifted her hand to brush the hair out of her face. Her mouth appeared. Her nose. Her eyes.
Jonah started blinking frantically, trying to make the girl crouched in front of him look like she was supposed to—to make her look like the sister he’d seen vanish only moments ago. But something was off. It was like this was some almost-Katherine, some slightly changed version that seemed familiar but not quite right.
“Katherine?” he said doubtfully, bending closer.
The girl squinted at him.
“I’m Linda Katherine,” she said, as if correcting him. Then she moaned. “Ooohh. I feel so . . . weird. Everything’s so strange.”
Jonah rocked back on his heels. His feet slipped out from under him, and his tailbone slammed against the hard tile floor. He barely noticed. All he could do was stare at the girl. He knew who she was now. Not Katherine—she’d never been Katherine. This was the same person who’d been standing in the kitchen a few moments ago, when Charles Lindbergh had disappeared from the living room with Katherine clutched in his arms.
This was Jonah’s mom.
Only somehow she’d turned back into a kid again.
FIVE
“What just happened?” kid Mom groaned. “Why do I feel like . . . like . . .”
Jonah put his hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t worry about it,” he told her. “You’re just . . . sick. Yeah, that’s it. You have a very high fever, so you’re imagining things.”
He was proud of himself for coming up with that explanation so quickly. But kid Mom narrowed her eyes at him.
“Don’t you lie to me, Jonah Skidmore,” she said, and even though she still looked like Katherine—and about Katherine’s age—at least now she sounded more like herself. Or like she was trying to sound like herself. She winced. “I remember now. I have a thirteen-year-old son named Jonah and an eleven-year-old daughter named Katherine. I was getting them ready for school. Why do I feel like I should be going to school myself right now? And like . . . like maybe I should only be in seventh grade?”
Seventh grade like me? Jonah thought. Not sixth, like Katherine?
He wasn’t sure what that meant. He didn’t know what to say, anyway, so he didn’t answer.
Kid Mom flashed him a look that seemed to be a mix of Katherine’s my brother is so annoying expression and normal, adult Mom’s Jonah, I’m disappointed in you stern gaze. She gave a little snort that sounded exactly like Katherine when Katherine was about to say something like, Well, if you can’t handle this, I’ll take care of it myself! Then she started to stand up.
Her clothes fell down. Her silky red sweater slipped down on her shoulder, and she had to hold on to the waistband of her black pants to keep them from sliding into a heap on the floor.
“What?” she exclaimed. “These are my tight pants!”
Jonah realized she was still wearing the same clothes she’d had on ten minutes ago when she was regular, normal, adult Mom. Now that she was roughly the same size as Katherine—give or take a few inches and pounds—the clothes seemed clownishly huge.
“Um, maybe you should go upstairs and change?” Jonah suggested. “Maybe you could borrow something from Katherine’s closet?”
Kid Mom shot him another annoyed look.
“Just where is Katherine, exactly?” she asked suspiciously.
Jonah was saved from having to answer that because suddenly there was a burst of laughter out in the hall.
Another kid raced into the kitchen—a boy with wild, untamable-looking hair and crooked teeth and what appeared to be the beginnings of a monstrous zit on his nose. He was wearing jeans and an Ohio State T-shirt that Jonah was pretty sure had been hanging in his own closet earlier this morning.
“I am having the best dream ever!” the boy exclaimed, practically bouncing up and down. He dashed over to Jonah and threw his arm around Jonah’s shoulder. “Hey, old buddy, old pal. I don’t know how long this is going to last, but it’s like I’m your age again. Thirteen! Whoo-hoo! What do you say we go out in the yard and throw the old pigskin around?”
Jonah was too stunned to speak.
“What’s wrong—you scared I’ll beat you, now that I don’t have to worry
about creaky knees?” the boy asked. “Or would you rather play soccer? You pick the sport—I’ll take you on! Chal-lenge!”
The boy began dancing around in what Jonah guessed were supposed to be amazing soccer moves.
“Are you . . . ?” kid Mom started to ask, her tone a mix of astonishment and horror.
The boy stopped dancing and leaned in conspiratorially toward Jonah.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” he said. “I’m married! I’m thirteen years old, and I’m married. Isn’t that crazy?” He started giggling and pointed to Mom. “And I’m married to her. Don’t you think she’s hot?”
Oh, no, Jonah thought, his worst suspicions confirmed. No, no, no, no, no.
This was the kid version of Dad.
SIX
“. . . Michael?” kid Mom finished.
Kid Dad flashed her a cheesy, slightly panicked grin and leaned back toward Jonah.
“Can you help me out here, buddy?” Dad whispered. “Can you make sure she doesn’t see I’ve got this humongo zit on my humongo nose? Maybe you should stand in front of me. . . .”
He pushed Jonah over to the right, so Jonah blocked Mom’s view of Dad’s face.
“I’m not blind,” Mom said sarcastically. “I already saw it. And I’m not deaf. I heard everything you said. Could you stop acting like such a fool?”
Dad cowered behind Jonah.
What am I supposed to do now? Jonah wondered. Arrange marriage counseling for my thirteen-year-old parents?
How could he keep them out of trouble while he figured out how to rescue Katherine?
Then he had another problem: The kitchen phone started ringing.
“Michael!” kid Mom called out. “Did you already have that conference call? Before we, uh . . . before whatever happened to us happened?”
Kid Dad was practically trembling behind Jonah.
“I’m supposed to call in on my cell phone at seven fifteen,” Dad said. His voice squeaked. “I’m supposed to talk to China. I can’t talk to China like this! What am I going to do?”
Dad’s voice sounded even more unreliable and squawky than Jonah’s ever had. Jonah glanced at the clock on the wall. It was twenty after seven.
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