“Did you totally freak out when you first saw your parents looking like teenagers?” Angela asked. “I know when I was thirteen . . . I mean, when I was thirteen the first time around . . . I would have had a spaz-fit.”
“They were more freaked out than I was,” Jonah said. “I’ve already seen so many strange things with time travel, and I was already so worried about Katherine . . .”
Angela reached over and patted him on the back, which was exactly what she would have done as a grown-up.
“We’ll find her,” she said. “You’ll see. Katherine will be fine. And anyhow, you know nothing bad could be happening to her right now, since time isn’t moving outside the time hollow. We’ll find out where she is, and then we’ll go rescue her, and for her it won’t be like any time passed at all.”
But what if she’s in a time hollow somewhere too? Jonah wondered. What if it feels to her like she’s enduring hundreds of years of torture?
He decided not to share that thought with Angela. He gulped and made himself ask a different question.
“Am I related to Charles Lindbergh?” he asked. “Is that my original identity in time—Charles Lindbergh’s son?”
Somehow it was easier to ask Angela this than it would have been to ask JB.
Kid Angela’s eyes widened.
“Gosh, Jonah, I don’t know,” she said. “JB and Hadley and the other time agents—there’s a lot they won’t tell me. They say they have to keep me as ‘untainted’ by time travel as possible. It’s really annoying.”
“Katherine thought I kind of looked like Charles Lindbergh,” Jonah mumbled.
Angela began studying Jonah’s face, looking at him straight on, then from the left, then from the right.
“I don’t know,” she said. “You do have that chin-dimple thing like him, and your hair’s light like his, but . . . I don’t know.”
Jonah resisted the urge to put his hands over his face and hide. It occurred to him that he could just walk back over to JB and ask him.
Jonah didn’t do that.
Katherine, he told himself. Just think about Katherine.
“You recognized Lindbergh’s picture—what else do you know about him?” Jonah asked. “Can you think of any reason he’d want to kidnap Katherine? Or what deal he would be trying to ‘seal’ with Gary and Hodge by taking her to them?”
Angela frowned.
“Jonah, you know, things get messed up with time travel,” she said. “What Lindbergh wants might be totally different from in original history, if Gary and Hodge got to him somehow.”
“But he came out of history! He was in my living room! He stole my sister!” Jonah shouted at her. He was surprised at how little control he had over his voice.
On the other side of the cave JB glanced up, then quickly looked back at the blur of monitors around him.
Yeah, ignore me and just keep working, Jonah thought bitterly, even though he knew he was being ridiculous. He wanted JB to keep working. That was the only way to find out anything about Katherine, the only way to have any prayer of rescuing her.
Angela tilted her head sympathetically.
“Here. Pull up a seat,” she said, sliding back into the car. She sat behind the steering wheel and pointed to the passenger-side front seat for Jonah. “I’ll tell you everything I know about Charles Lindbergh.”
Jonah walked to the other side of the car and sat down.
“Lindbergh was a pilot,” he prompted.
“Yep,” Angela said. “And when I was—well, about thirteen, the first time around—I really wanted to be a pilot. I read up on all the famous pilots. Bessie Coleman was my favorite, but—”
“Who?” Jonah asked.
Angela gave him the same kind of disappointed glance Jonah’s mom had given him when he hadn’t known who Charles Lindbergh was.
“The first African-American female pilot,” Angela said. “Okay, I know she’s not well-known now, but she was something! When she couldn’t get anyone to give her flying lessons in the United States because she was a black woman, she went to Paris. And that was in 1921!”
“Um, okay, I’m sure she was great,” Jonah said. “But she’s not the one who stole my sister this morning.”
“Oh, right,” Angela said sheepishly. “About Charles Lindbergh . . . In like 1926 or 1927, something like that, he flew across the Atlantic Ocean. New York to Paris. He did it all by himself, and it took him something like thirty-three hours—he stayed awake the whole time. He was the first one to fly that route. People had tried it before, but they always died.”
Jonah knew he was supposed to be impressed. But he just couldn’t care, when Katherine was missing.
“Do you know about Lindbergh’s son?” Angela asked. “It was like, I don’t know, five or six years after Lindbergh’s famous flight. His son was kidnapped.”
“I know, I know,” Jonah said glumly. “By Gary and Hodge. Just like all the other missing children from history.”
Angela wrinkled up her nose as if she was trying hard to remember something.
“It’s funny,” she said. “My memory of this is so fuzzy. And . . . it seems to be getting fuzzier the more I think about it. But Lindbergh’s baby was kidnapped in real, original time too. Even before Gary and Hodge got involved. The kidnapper was executed, but—did they ever find the baby’s body? Or did they find a body that they thought was the Lindbergh baby, but . . .”
Her voice trailed off.
“It was a baby boy, right?” Jonah asked. “Not a baby girl, where Charles Lindbergh might think that if he kidnapped Katherine . . .”
He was working on a theory: What if Gary and Hodge had told Charles Lindbergh that Katherine was really his child? What if that was the reason Lindbergh had snatched her?
It didn’t make sense. And anyhow Angela was shaking her head.
“The Lindbergh baby who got kidnapped was definitely a boy,” she said. “No doubt about it.”
Jonah slumped in his seat. He knew he should be thinking of other questions to ask about Charles Lindbergh, but none of it seemed to matter.
“I hadn’t thought about all those historic pilots in years,” kid Angela said. “Did I ever tell you—I started working at the airport in the first place because I thought that was how I’d eventually get to be a pilot? I was too poor to pay for flying lessons, and I didn’t want to go into the military to learn. I used to idolize Charles Lindbergh. Well, before I found out some of the bad things about him.”
“You mean, like the fact that he went more than forty years into the future to kidnap Katherine?” Jonah muttered.
Before Angela had a chance to answer, JB let out a whoop from across the room.
“It’s up!” he screamed. “I got the monitors to work! Come see!”
Jonah hurled himself out of the car and raced toward the wall full of monitors. He had a head start, but Angela passed him after three steps.
Even as he approached the wall, Jonah could tell that JB had set the monitors to cycle through the same moment in time in several different locations. On one screen there was Chip, standing in the foyer of his house, right by the front door. And then, a second later, he vanished.
On the next screen there was a dark-haired girl—hey, isn’t that Ming Reynolds? Jonah thought.
She was another missing child from history, but Jonah hadn’t seen her since the last time he’d been in this cave. On the screen Ming was sitting at a table dropping blueberries into a bowl of yogurt.
And then a moment later, Ming vanished, just like Chip. The table and the bowl and the yogurt and blueberries were still there, but not Ming.
All across the monitors, kids were vanishing.
There was Brendan . . . and now he was gone.
Emily . . . gone.
Antonio . . . gone.
Gavin . . . gone.
Daniella . . . gone.
Andrea . . . gone.
Andrea! Jonah felt like screaming. Andrea!
In front of him, several yards back from
the wall full of monitors, Angela stopped short.
“Who’s left?” she asked, her voice breaking with anguish. “Of all the missing children from history . . . how many didn’t disappear today?”
JB turned around.
“Just one,” he said, his eyes burning. “Only Jonah.”
TWELVE
Jonah fell down. Angela instantly dived on top of him.
“Don’t you disappear now too!” she screeched. “We won’t let you! JB—help!”
Jonah lifted his head from the rock floor pressed against his cheek. Forget being a pilot or physicist or airport worker—what Angela really had a talent for was football. He didn’t know any other thirteen-year-old who was this good at tackling people.
“I just tripped,” he muttered. “I just . . .”
He didn’t want to admit that his knees had crumpled beneath him at the thought of being the last missing child left, the only one stolen from history who hadn’t been stolen once again from the twenty-first century.
Andrea, he thought. Andrea, Chip, Alex, Brendan, Antonio, Dalton, Emily, Gavin, Daniella. And Ming, and . . .
He and the other missing kids were from different places and different centuries, and in the beginning the only connection they’d had was that Gary and Hodge had kidnapped all of them and put them on the same airplane. And then abandoned all of them when they were being chased by time agents.
But that was a lot to have in common. It was almost like they were his family now too. Today Jonah hadn’t just lost his sister and the adult versions of his parents—he’d also lost all the kids who were most like him.
“Why?” Jonah asked. “Where did they all go? Who took them?”
JB shrugged helplessly. Jonah shoved Angela aside and stood back up.
“I don’t see Charles Lindbergh in any of those scenes,” Jonah said, peering at one screen after another. JB had apparently set them on a loop, so the disappearances kept replaying. It made things that much worse, to watch thirty-five kids vanish again and again and again. “Why did he show up in our living room to grab Katherine, but everyone else just vanished?”
“Because Katherine’s not a missing kid from history?” Angela said. But she didn’t sound sure even of that.
“I am, though,” Jonah said, his voice shaking. “Why didn’t I disappear along with everyone else?”
“Maybe because Charles Lindbergh was already there in your house kidnapping Katherine at about the same time?” JB suggested. “Like, his presence jammed the frequencies somehow?”
Losing my sister protected me? Jonah thought.
It wasn’t a bargain he would have made, if he’d had the choice. Maybe three months ago, when Katherine was annoying him constantly, but . . .
No, not even then, Jonah thought.
“Wait a minute,” Angela said. She was still sitting on the ground, but squinting up at the wall full of screens. “Was Katherine kidnapped at the exact same time that everyone else vanished?”
“These are low-tech monitors,” JB said apologetically. “I can’t get exact timing without hooking them to an Elucidator that actually works.”
“Can you show us Katherine being taken away?” Jonah asked.
“Sure,” JB said.
He typed something into the keyboard on the wall, and one of the monitors shut down in the midst of its endless loop of missing children vanishing over and over again. Instead Jonah watched himself and Katherine gaping at the tall man who’d suddenly appeared in their living room; he saw Lindbergh checking items off his list; he saw Lindbergh grab Katherine and vanish.
Jonah gulped.
“Replay it,” he told JB, because he’d forgotten to watch for the one detail he’d wanted to see.
“Are you sure?” Angela said. “You kind of look like you might faint or something.”
“I’m sure!” Jonah insisted.
This time Jonah kept looking back and forth between Lindbergh and the clock on the mantelpiece behind the man. He gritted his teeth and watched until the exact moment that Lindbergh and Katherine disappeared.
“There!” Jonah said. “Lindbergh and Katherine disappeared a few minutes before seven. It’s right there on the clock behind them.”
“Do your parents keep that clock set to atomic-clock precision?” kid JB asked. “Can you be sure that that’s the exact right time?”
“Oh—no,” Jonah admitted.
How was he supposed to remember things like atomic-clock precision when his head was spinning and his knees were weak and he kept thinking, How can I save Katherine? How can I make my parents normal again? Why was I the only missing kid left behind?
He wasn’t letting his brain think, Am I the son of that man I’ve watched kidnap my sister three times now?
“Can’t we at least look and see if Chip’s mom turned into a thirteen-year-old before or after Chip vanished?” Angela suggested.
“Oh, good idea,” JB said. “Let me see.”
He began fiddling with the keyboard on the wall again. Jonah fixed his attention on the monitor showing Chip there and gone, there and gone, there and gone . . . The screen just kept showing the same scene again and again and again. Chip’s mom was nowhere in sight.
“Sorry,” JB said, stepping back from the keyboard. “She was standing too far away. Without an Elucidator, I can’t . . .”
“Do anything,” Jonah finished for him. He kicked the rock wall.
“But you can see every single one of the missing kids,” Angela said, sounding confused. “Why does that still work?”
JB squirmed uncomfortably in place, shifting from foot to foot.
“These monitors were preset to . . . um . . . er . . . ,” he began.
“Spy on us, right?” Jonah said bitterly. “Was it all set up by Gary and Hodge when they were using this cave, or was that a change you time agents put in place?”
“Gary and Hodge started it,” JB said defensively.
Jonah couldn’t understand why he felt so upset. He’d known all along that time travelers—both his friends and his enemies—were able to watch his actions practically whenever they wanted.
Seeing these monitors just made it real.
“So why can’t we still see where all these kids went next?” Angela asked. “The monitors are connected to watching every moment of their lives, right?”
“Only in this portion of the twenty-first century,” JB said apologetically. “These monitors can’t follow them if their time paths are interrupted.”
On one of his early time-travel trips, Jonah had gotten a sort of vaccine that enabled him to understand and speak other languages in other time periods. He wished he’d also gotten some sort of mind implant that would allow him to translate the garbled terminology time travelers used.
“You mean this proves that they were all taken out of the twenty-first century,” Jonah said, trying to figure out the translation on his own. “They didn’t just turn invisible; they weren’t just zapped to some other place—they were taken to another time. And Katherine was too.”
JB started to nod; then he stopped himself and tilted his head thoughtfully.
“Well, we don’t actually know for sure about Katherine,” he said. “The monitor only shows Katherine vanishing because she was standing next to you at the time—it’s gauged to your actions, not hers. If we wanted to, we could actually continue showing what you did after Katherine disappeared.”
“That’s okay,” Jonah said quickly. He didn’t want JB and Angela to see how desperately he’d waved his arms around, searching for Katherine; how despairingly he’d run into the kitchen calling for his parents.
“I guess there’s no way to watch Charles Lindbergh right before or right after this moment either,” Angela said. “I wish we could just see him talking to Gary and Hodge before showing up at the Skidmores’ house . . .”
“Oh,” kid JB said, jerking his body oddly, as if he’d just thought of something that surprised him. “We can actually watch Lindbergh fro
m these monitors. Some of his earlier life, anyway.”
Angela looked as puzzled as Jonah felt.
“Why him and not Katherine?” she asked.
JB squinted hard. He seemed to be struggling to remember something, maybe something that he would have expected to know easily.
“Um . . . because he’s connected to one of the missing kids from history?” kid JB said, and it was strange how doubtful his voice sounded.
Angela turned her head toward Jonah as if she was waiting for him to speak next. Jonah didn’t say anything. Angela sighed.
“Is it Jonah?” she asked. “Is Jonah related to Charles Lindbergh?”
Jonah gulped in a deep breath and held it. He could barely force himself to look at JB to see if he would nod his head yes or shake his head no.
JB did neither of those things. He scrunched up his face even harder, like a kid in school who’d encountered a virtually impossible question on a test.
“I—I don’t know,” he said, sounding stunned.
“You are such a liar!” Jonah exploded. He balled up his fists and took a step closer to JB. “I asked you about my original identity days ago—well, before we went back to 1918. I asked you again when I was healing from the bullet wounds. You sure acted like you knew then! Like you knew but you weren’t going to tell me!”
“I did know then!” JB insisted, cowering before Jonah. “But—it’s gone now. I’ve forgotten!”
THIRTEEN
Jonah took a step back. He didn’t want to believe JB. He would have preferred to keep looming over the smaller boy—maybe even punch him a time or two—until JB screamed, All right! All right! I was lying! I’ll tell you everything! You’re really . . .
But Jonah did believe JB. The boy looked so baffled, so anguished—he had to be telling the truth.
“You’re forgetting things too?” Angela said softly.
“Nothing else as important as this,” JB assured her. “But it’s like there’s a war going on inside my head. I keep wanting to think in German.”
“German?” Jonah repeated incredulously.
Then he understood. A long time ago—in a different century, a different life—JB had been somebody else. During all the unraveling of identities with the missing children, JB had discovered that he himself had once had a different identity in a different time as well: He’d been the troubled second son of Albert and Mileva Einstein. To save him from the ravages of a mental illness that wasn’t curable in the twentieth century, Mileva Einstein had secretly sent him on to the future.
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