Caught

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “Give me that,” Mileva said, snatching the letter from Katherine’s grasp and yanking it from its envelope. She scanned it silently.

  “I’m sorry,” Katherine whispered.

  But the letter that had sent Mileva’s tracer into hysterics out in the woods didn’t seem to faze Mileva in the least now.

  She looked up with a shrug, her eyes completely dry.

  “Albert is better with numbers than words,” she said. “Sometimes when he’s in a hurry, writing a letter, he doesn’t say what he really means. But I know. He’s coming here, isn’t he? Doesn’t that mean more than mere words?” She gazed toward Emily. “You’ll see. When you meet him, when you meet your father . . . when the three of us are finally together . . .”

  Emily was shaking her head.

  “I don’t think it’s supposed to happen like that,” she said softly. She glanced toward Jonah and Katherine. “Right?”

  “This is out of your control,” Jonah told Mileva. He pointed at Emily. “She can just run away if she wants to, you know?”

  “If you try to force her and Albert together, that’s what will happen,” Katherine agreed.

  Jonah felt a burst of inspiration.

  “In fact,” he said, “she’ll run away if you don’t call Albert right now and tell him not to come to Novi Sad. Tell him to go back to Bern. You have to do that.”

  Mileva gaped at him.

  “And how am I supposed to ‘call’ my husband when he’s on a train hundreds of miles away?” she asked.

  Emily and Katherine were both frowning and shaking their heads at Jonah.

  Oh, yeah, Jonah thought. No cell phones. There’s no way to stop Albert.

  It was dizzying to think about that—the fact that Albert Einstein, in transit, was completely unreachable, completely out of touch. Jonah’s parents had talked about how, before cell phones, the whole world was like that. But time travel kept reinforcing how terrifying that must have been on a daily basis.

  “Never mind,” Jonah mumbled.

  “I could still run away,” Emily said quietly, glancing uncertainly at Mileva. “I don’t want to—I don’t want to treat you like you’re my enemy. I want us to figure out how to work things out together. But . . .”

  “But what you want—you just can’t have that,” Katherine said. “You can’t tell your husband everything you know about your daughter. You can’t let him meet his daughter who’s eleven years older than she should be now—you just can’t. It’s impossible.”

  “Really,” Mileva said flatly. She gritted her teeth. “Did you know that when I was younger, people told me a girl would never be allowed to study physics? Did you know that people said someone like me—a girl who limped, who was too old, who’d spent her whole life studying—would never be anything but an old maid? And, certainly, someone like Albert would never marry me?” She clenched her fists angrily. “I don’t like it when people tell me something is impossible!”

  “But some things really can’t happen,” Jonah said. “Or—they shouldn’t, because there are too many dangerous consequences.”

  Katherine sank down into one of the chairs near the bed.

  “We’ve got hours and hours before Albert gets to Novi Sad,” she said. “We’ve got all the time in the world to figure out how to handle this. There are three of us and only one of Mileva—we’ve got the upper hand.”

  “That’s what you think,” Mileva said.

  She shoved one of her clenched fists down into the pocket of her dress. Dimly, Jonah realized that that was probably where she’d tucked the Elucidator.

  What if she’s so mad at us she decides to destroy it? he wondered.

  “Hey, hey, don’t—,” Jonah began, lunging toward Mileva.

  But Mileva wasn’t lifting the Elucidator in order to smash it against the floor. She wasn’t throwing it against the wall. She was speaking into it.

  “Skip us forward in time!” she commanded the Elucidator. “Skip us forward to the moment when Albert opens that door!”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Jonah hadn’t even thought about that as a possibility. Never in a million years would he have thought of Mileva trying to use the Elucidator in quite that way, to outsmart them.

  She’ll see, he thought. She’ll find out for herself that the Elucidator is more complicated than that, that you always have to be careful about what you tell it . . .

  But even as his brain was hiccupping out that thought, his body jerked out of his control. He had a brief sense of weightlessness, of hovering in midair.

  No—of falling.

  I jumped, he told himself. I was lunging to grab the Elucidator from Mileva’s hand.

  That didn’t explain why he seemed to take too long to land. That didn’t explain why the dim, lamp-lit room was suddenly bright and airy and open, with sunlight streaming in through every window. That didn’t explain why Mileva’s sobbing tracer, sprawled across the bed, had completely vanished.

  And that didn’t explain why, a split second later, Jonah heard the doorknob rattle, the door itself creaking open.

  “Hide!” he called out to Katherine and Emily, even as he himself hit the floor and rolled. He tried to scramble under the blankets hanging down from the bed.

  “Albert!” Mileva cried delightedly. She leaped down from the bed and raced for the door.

  Jonah couldn’t help turning around to look. It was too late to get out of the way, anyhow. He might as well see what was going on.

  Albert Einstein stood in the doorway looking rumpled and travel-weary. He squinted confusedly at Mileva.

  Because the Elucidator sped him forward through time too and he’s disoriented? Jonah wondered. No—because he expected to find his wife sobbing over their dead daughter, not beaming like all her dearest wishes have just come true.

  “Mileva?” Albert asked hesitantly. He was looking only at his wife. He hadn’t broadened his gaze to notice Jonah or Katherine or Emily. He was too focused.

  He smiled uncertainly.

  “I—I brought you some math problems to check,” he said. “To cheer you up.”

  He held out a sheaf of papers.

  Mileva laughed. She took the papers but didn’t even look at them, throwing her arms around her husband instead.

  “Thank you, but there’s no need for that,” she said. She kissed him. “I have something even better to show you. Someone.”

  She stepped to the side and took his hand, as if she planned to lead him straight to Emily.

  “You finally get to meet our Lieserl,” she said, tugging on his hand.

  “I—,” Albert began.

  Jonah couldn’t have said which he noticed first: the way Albert’s voice just ended, the single syllable, “I,” not even fully formed, or the bafflement and worry that flooded over Mileva’s face.

  She stopped moving forward, stopped pulling Albert toward Emily. Mileva hesitated, then turned and looked back at her husband, who had stopped halfway in and halfway out of a particularly bright sunbeam. He was close enough to Jonah that Jonah could see the way Albert’s forward motion had displaced the dust motes dancing in the sunlight. But the dust motes weren’t dancing anymore. They weren’t moving at all. They hung suspended in midair, completely still, just as Albert stood completely still, one foot jutted out, one arm stretched toward Mileva. It wasn’t natural to stop in such an unbalanced pose. Under normal circumstances Jonah didn’t think anyone would be able to hold that stance for more than an instant.

  But Albert held it, proving that these weren’t normal circumstances. Albert stood unnaturally frozen, and the dust motes stood unnaturally frozen, and—Jonah felt certain—all of time stood frozen along with them.

  Mileva began to scream.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  “What happened?” she shrieked. “What’s wrong with him? What happened to my husband?”

  “Calm down,” Jonah said. “Nothing’s wrong with him. Something’s wrong with time.”

  Like that was suppo
sed to be a comforting thought? No, no, don’t worry. Your husband’s fine. It’s just time itself that’s ruined. No big deal.

  “Why isn’t Mileva frozen too?” Katherine asked. She was still sitting in the chair on the other side of the bed. She’d evidently had no time to move at all. “Back home when time stopped, only time travelers could . . . oh.”

  Jonah figured things out at the same time as his sister: The reason Mileva wasn’t frozen was that she was a time traveler now too. She’d become one when the Elucidator skipped all of them ahead to the moment when Albert arrived.

  “Could someone please explain what’s going on?” Emily asked in a small voice.

  She was perched on the edge of the bed, on the side away from the door. Like Katherine, she clearly hadn’t had enough time to hide. She was sitting so still that Jonah almost could have believed that Emily was as frozen as Albert.

  Jonah looked back and forth between the two of them: Emily on the bed and Albert, frozen mid-turn, moving toward her.

  “Hold on just a minute,” Jonah said. “Emily, stay right where you are.”

  He got up and went over to stand behind Albert. By standing on his tiptoes, Jonah could look over Albert’s shoulder and see the room exactly as Albert had seen it a moment earlier.

  Emily was still out of his line of vision. But Jonah turned his head just a fraction to the left, a hair’s breadth difference of positioning. And then he could see her profile—a profile that looked oddly like Albert’s own.

  “Time stopped to keep Albert from seeing his daughter,” Jonah announced, stepping back around the man.

  Mileva’s screams turned into a gasp.

  “No,” she moaned. “So—now even time is conspiring against me? Time itself won’t let me have my husband and my daughter together?”

  “I don’t think it’s anything personal,” Katherine said. “It’s just that—Emily wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for time travel, and she certainly shouldn’t be thirteen years old right now. And since some of Einstein’s theories are connected to time travel, maybe it’s too much of a paradox for him to see his theories proved before he’s even thought of them.”

  Or has time changed so much that now he’s never going to come up with the theories he’s supposed to have? Jonah wondered. What if that’s the real reason time stopped? What if there’s no way to fix it?

  Jonah didn’t like scaring himself like that.

  “Let’s test things out,” Jonah said, managing to keep his voice steady in spite of himself. “Mileva, get back into the position you were in a minute ago, when you were pulling Albert toward your daughter. Emily, when I give you the signal, could you scoot over about, I don’t know—four or five inches?”

  Mileva squinted at him suspiciously for a moment, but then she got back into place. Jonah stepped around behind Albert a second time. And then he motioned to Emily.

  Emily leaned slowly to the side, away from Albert. At the same time, Albert leaned forward ever so slightly, his head turning toward Emily. The dust motes in the sunlight danced away from Albert. It was as if Emily’s motion caused all the other movements.

  And then everything stopped again, Albert’s face turned just to the point where the next instant would have brought Emily into view.

  Mileva yanked harder than ever on Albert’s arm.

  “No!” she screamed. “No! It can’t be!”

  She put her hands on Albert’s face and seemed to be trying to turn his head. Maybe it felt like trying to move stone; maybe she was afraid of hurting him. After only a moment she changed strategies. She ran toward the bed and grabbed Emily by the arm, pulling her straight toward Albert. Mileva clutched the back of Emily’s head and pressed the girl’s face close to Albert’s. They were nose to nose, eye to eye. If time started up again, Albert would have to be completely blind not to see his daughter before him.

  If time ever starts up again . . . , Jonah thought. If Mileva hasn’t just made that impossible . . .

  He grabbed Mileva by the shoulders and jerked her away. She was still holding on to Emily, so Emily jerked back, too.

  “Stop it!” Jonah yelled at Mileva. “That’s just making things worse!”

  “Look at her!” Mileva yelled at Albert, even as she struggled to break away from Jonah. “Look at us! Look at your family!”

  “Mileva,” Katherine said softly. “I really don’t think he can.”

  Mileva froze momentarily, and then all the fight seemed to go out of her. She sank to the floor as if she’d suddenly lost the ability to stand. She buried her face in her arms.

  “I’m going to have to choose,” she wailed, her voice only slightly muffled. “I can’t have both of you!”

  Emily crouched beside Mileva. She stroked the woman’s hair, gently smoothing down the locks that had slipped down from her topknot.

  “You’ve always known you would have to make that choice,” Emily said softly. “Ever since I was born.”

  Mileva turned her head and blinked up at her daughter through tear-thickened lashes.

  “You know now,” Mileva said.

  Emily nodded.

  “I think so,” she said. “I think I figured it out.”

  Jonah stamped his foot.

  “Would someone please tell me what’s going on?” he asked. He’d thought time travel and stopped time and time-travel paradoxes were hard enough to keep track of. But this was incomprehensible. What were Emily and Mileva talking about? They were each staring straight into the other’s eyes, and nodding sympathetically. Mileva was still crying, but she kind of looked relieved, too. And Emily was smiling at her through tears of her own and murmuring, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  “Emily?” Katherine asked, and Jonah was kind of glad to see that his sister was acting as baffled as he felt.

  Both Emily and Mileva ignored Jonah and Katherine.

  “I thought, when Albert and I got married, then we could have you live with us,” Mileva whispered to Emily. “I still hoped . . .”

  “Ooooh,” Katherine said. “Now I get it.”

  “What?” Jonah demanded.

  “Jonah, we should have figured this out ourselves,” Katherine said, her usual confidence back. “We saw Albert and Mileva’s marriage certificate back in Bern, remember? From January 1903, right? And this is—what? September 1903? So Albert and Mileva haven’t even been married a full year, but Lieserl was nineteen months old, so—she was born before her parents were married.”

  Katherine had a “Ta-da! Aren’t I brilliant?” tone in her voice, but Mileva grimaced over every word.

  “So what?” Jonah asked, feeling a little bit as if he needed to defend Mileva.

  He remembered lots of awkward conversations with Mom and Dad back home, where they’d say, “When you’re grown-up, you should wait until you’re married to have kids”—but then follow it with, “Not that there’s anything wrong with the kids whose parents aren’t married.”

  Because of me, Jonah thought. Because they figure my birth parents probably weren’t married, and that’s why they gave me up for adoption. They didn’t want to make me feel bad.

  No wonder he’d had such a mental block about what Mileva was so ashamed of. He didn’t like thinking about things like that.

  “I didn’t think people in 1903 had children very often who were—what’s it called? ‘Out of wedlock’?” Katherine said, in a way that she probably meant to sound like she was being sensitive. Or at least sophisticated.

  Mileva flinched.

  “Albert and I were going to lead such bohemian lives,” she said sadly. She was staring up at the ceiling now, avoiding everyone’s gaze. “We didn’t want to be like everyone else, didn’t want to follow the rules that everyone followed. And, anyhow, we couldn’t afford to get married. And . . . Albert’s family didn’t approve of me. They didn’t think I was good enough for him.”

  “But you’re married now,” Emily said softly.

  “Albert’s father gave us his blessing right
before he died,” Mileva said. She was still staring at the ceiling. “And I thought that would solve everything, but . . . Albert had such trouble finding a job! He’s so much smarter than everyone else that people resent him. And . . . he really wasn’t very good at job hunting. Then he got the job at the patent office, but it’s a civil-service job, and the Swiss can be so prim and proper sometimes . . .” She turned her head and looked straight at Emily. “We can’t have him lose that job. Do you understand? We’d have nothing!”

  “What?” Katherine said, leaning in toward Emily and Mileva. “You mean that even though you’re married now, Albert would be fired if his boss found out you had a baby before your wedding? That’s crazy! That’s, like, a violation of your rights!”

  “Katherine,” Jonah said. “I don’t think people had those kinds of rights in 1903.”

  Mileva shrugged hopelessly.

  “Albert is certain we can never tell anyone in Bern about Lieserl,” she said. “Not without horrible consequences. But I always thought—he’s so smart, Albert is, and he’s going to publish brilliant papers, I just know it. And then universities will be begging him to work for them, and he can get a job in a place where nobody cares about Lieserl’s birth date or our wedding date—or anything. So we were just leaving Lieserl here in Novi Sad for a little while, until things changed, until, until . . .”

  “Until time stopped,” Jonah said, and now it was Katherine glaring at him, as if he were the most insensitive clod on the planet.

  “So I just have to stay out of Albert’s sight?” Emily asked. “That’s all we have to do to get time to start up again?”

  “Are you in his sight lines now?” Katherine asked doubtfully. She stood up and walked toward Albert. “Or is something else messed up now too, that will have to be fixed?”

  As she approached Albert, Katherine lifted her arm to the level of his eyes, as if trying to gauge the angle of his vision. She tilted her arm down, sliding it toward Emily.

  “He would just be able to see the top of your head, I think,” Katherine said. She crouched down beside Emily and Mileva. “Slide down a little more and we’ll see—oh, wait a minute, Mileva should get back into position first—”