Caught

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  No, Jonah decided. Not while she’s cooperating and acting like she wants to help.

  While Jonah watched, Mileva’s jaw dropped in what could only be stunned amazement. Beside her, Emily’s face was suddenly just as transformed, providing practically a mirror image of the awe on her mother’s face.

  Behind Jonah, Katherine gasped.

  “What?” Jonah said.

  Nobody answered.

  Emily and Mileva were staring just past Jonah and JB, toward a completely empty section of the room.

  Jonah turned his head, following their gaze.

  That part of the room wasn’t empty anymore.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  In the corner beside JB, another man sat in a matching high-tech chair.

  “Is that . . . someone else you know?” Mileva asked faintly.

  Jonah recovered from his astonishment enough to stammer out, “Y-yes. It’s Hadley Correo, another time traveler who works with JB. A friend of ours.”

  “And he’s frozen in place too?” Mileva asked.

  “Looks that way,” Jonah said.

  He managed to gather his wits enough to walk over to Hadley and poke at his shoulder, swipe at his curly beard. Just as with JB, Hadley’s body seemed to take in the movement while remaining completely still.

  “But he wasn’t there,” Katherine said, sounding perplexed. “Right? It wasn’t that we just didn’t notice him before. Was it?”

  “No,” Emily said. “I saw him appear. Out of nothingness.”

  Jonah thought of something.

  “You didn’t tell the Elucidator, ‘Make everyone in this room visible,’ did you?” he asked Mileva. “It wasn’t that he was there but invisible, until right at that moment?”

  “Of course not,” Mileva said. “You would have heard me.”

  “Then what changed?” Jonah asked. “Just, Mileva took the Elucidator out of her pocket, and boom, Hadley appeared?”

  The others gave baffled shrugs and vague nods.

  “Did you see or hear anything else?” Emily asked.

  “No,” Jonah said.

  But something else did happen, he thought. I decided not to tackle Mileva and grab the Elucidator from her hand.

  Did that matter? Were all three things connected? Were thoughts enough to help change time?

  Er—not time, exactly, because time doesn’t exist in a time hollow, and everything is stopped anyway . . .

  Jonah’s brain was twisting around in knots. It really creeped him out that he couldn’t see any clear cause and effect. How was he supposed to decide what to do next, when he didn’t know what had caused the events he’d already seen?

  “Really,” Katherine said in her huffiest voice, the way she always talked when she was scared but trying not to show it. “What good does it do to have Hadley here, anyway? He’s just as frozen as JB! He can’t tell us what’s going on! He can’t help us at all! This just gives us someone else to worry about!”

  Jonah was still staring at Hadley, trying to get over the strangeness of seeing him appear out of nothingness and the strangeness of seeing him frozen—and the strangeness of not knowing why any of it had happened. Hadley was usually a fairly jolly person, so even though his face was frozen into a serious expression, there was still just the hint of a twinkle in his eye. Seeing that helped Jonah calm down a little, think a little more clearly.

  “Oh!” he said, jolted by what he hadn’t noticed before. “He’s not just another person to worry about. Hadley has an Elucidator! I bet you anything that’s what this is. Maybe it can show us an explanation for all this!”

  He leaned forward and pulled out a thin piece of plastic that Hadley had been clutching in his right hand. It was like futuristic cell phone technology taken to its extreme: a tiny screen that still seemed capable of displaying vast worlds, and a keyboard that appeared only when Jonah thought, How would you communicate on this thing?

  Maybe it appeared because Jonah thought that.

  Ooo-kay, Jonah thought. More creepiness. Hey, Elucidator, if you can read my mind, how about taking a hint and not freaking me out so much?

  Was it just Jonah’s imagination, or did the Elucidator instantly start looking a lot more like an iPhone?

  “Voice commands,” Katherine said in a shaking voice. “Tell us. Why are JB and Hadley frozen? Why did Hadley appear out of nowhere like that? How can time be stopped in a time hollow, anyhow? What are we supposed to do now?”

  “Hey, Katherine,” Jonah complained. “How about just asking one question at a time? You’re going to confuse it. Or—us.”

  But the Elucidator date screen was already displaying answers:

  EXTREME DANGER OF CATASTROPHIC TIME

  DISTURBANCES. AND UNCERTAINTY—

  The screen—and the entire Elucidator—suddenly vanished.

  A second later the Elucidator was back in Jonah’s hand.

  INSTABILITY → UNPREDICTABILITY

  appeared on the screen now.

  Somebody screamed. Jonah couldn’t tell if it was Katherine or Mileva or Emily—or maybe even himself.

  The Elucidator vanished again, reappeared, vanished, reappeared . . .

  “Mileva!” Jonah cried. “Is your Elucidator acting normal?”

  Which was a joke. Because what had ever been normal about an Elucidator?

  Mileva didn’t answer. She just stared thoughtfully at the Elucidator flickering in and out of existence in Jonah’s hand. Was the room starting to flicker around him too? Jonah could see Mileva holding the other Elucidator, the one she’d grabbed from him way back in Switzerland, way back in 1903. It looked so solid and real and unchanging. Jonah dropped the disappearing/reappearing Elucidator from his own hand and rushed toward Mileva’s.

  He couldn’t have said if he intended to grab the other Elucidator back from her now, or if he just wanted to huddle close to something that didn’t just appear and disappear at random. He didn’t really think at all.

  Then he saw Mileva’s eyes widen in fear.

  “No!” she screamed.

  Jonah realized that Katherine was also running toward Mileva.

  Mileva lifted her hand like an angry traffic cop. No—like someone pointing a remote control. She had the Elucidator clutched in her hand, aimed at Jonah and Katherine and even Emily, right by her side.

  “Stop them!” Mileva shrieked. “Stop them all right now!”

  Jonah had both feet off the ground, his right leg stretched forward, his left leg extended behind him. He was running as fast as he could. He knew how that worked, knew he’d need to push off again as soon as his right foot hit the ground.

  But it didn’t hit the ground. His left leg didn’t cycle forward, ready for his left foot to push off next. His elbows didn’t pump back and forth.

  Run! his brain commanded. Keep going!

  But his body refused to obey. In fact, it refused to do anything except stay exactly where it had been the instant Mileva yelled “Stop!” His right leg stayed stretched forward; his left leg stayed extended back; his entire body stayed suspended in midair.

  He couldn’t move his eyes, either, but he had a broad view. He could see Katherine on his left, Emily crouched on the floor beside Mileva.

  Both girls were just like Jonah: completely frozen.

  THIRTY-NINE

  I can still see, Jonah told himself. I can still hear. I can still think.

  None of that was much comfort, but it helped a little. It kept him from total despair.

  Did Mileva know that we’d freeze like this? He wondered. Did she do it on purpose? To take control, to keep the Elucidator for herself?

  Or . . .

  He remembered what had happened the last time the four of them had clumped together, how they’d fallen out of time. Like a bowling ball falling through the trampoline.

  What if Mileva was only trying to prevent that?

  Jonah watched Mileva.

  For a moment it seemed as though she were frozen, too. Then she dropped the Elu
cidator and put her hands up to her mouth. Tears pooled in her eyes. She reached out and touched Emily’s face, and the first tears spilled over the edges of Mileva’s eyelids.

  “Not dead,” Mileva said. “She is not dead. I swear it.”

  Her voice sounded creaky, as if it had been a long time since she’d used it. Maybe a long time had already passed—Jonah had no way of knowing.

  “I have to figure out how to fix this,” Mileva said. “For Lieserl. For Albert.” She touched her stomach. “For my baby . . .”

  She picked up the Elucidator again. Then she gingerly stood up and edged toward JB. She walked like someone who feared that the floor might drop out from under her feet at any moment.

  “I have to make myself understand,” she said, and it seemed as if she was talking to Jonah and Katherine and Emily. “It’s like the Hippocratic oath in medicine—first, do no harm. I can’t be sure that I won’t make things worse if I don’t understand.” She seemed to be looking particularly at Jonah now. “I have to do this.”

  She picked up the papers from JB’s lap—the math papers Albert had originally brought to Mileva in Novi Sad to help her “cheer up”; the papers Jonah had feared would ruin time if Mileva saw them.

  Mileva edged back across the empty floor to sit beside Emily again. Her eyes flicked across the pages.

  “Oh, Albert, how can you be so careless with your math?” she murmured, shaking her head. She looked up. “And how can there not be a single pen or pencil in this room?”

  The Elucidator glowed in her hand.

  “Oh, there’s a way to write on the Elucidator?” Mileva asked. “Why would anybody choose to do that instead of using pencil and paper?” She sighed. “I suppose I should be grateful that I don’t have to use my own blood as ink.”

  For a long time there was no sound in the room except Mileva turning pages and tapping against what must have become a keyboard on the Elucidator. Then she exclaimed, “Oh! Oh, my! That’s how time travel works?”

  Jonah realized she hadn’t learned just what Albert had figured out. She’d tapped into much deeper information on the Elucidator. She probably knew more than Jonah did about time travel now. Maybe even as much as JB or Hadley did.

  And what’s she going to do with that information? Jonah wondered.

  She sat back against the nearest wall and stared off into space. Time passed. Or—maybe it didn’t. It was impossible to tell, because nothing changed.

  Finally Mileva shook her head.

  “I have to see what was supposed to happen,” she said, and once again it seemed that she was talking to Jonah. “I have to know.”

  She hit something on the Elucidator, and the wall seemed to turn into a movie screen. Jonah had seen this kind of thing happen before, but Mileva hadn’t. She gasped and practically fell to the floor.

  “Courage,” she whispered. She clutched Emily’s arm. “I will be brave for you.”

  On the wall, Jonah saw Albert Einstein, looking as real as if he’d just walked into the room, fresh from 1903. He sat at a table Jonah recognized: the one from the Einsteins’ apartment in Bern. The door behind him opened, and there stood another version of Mileva. She looked even more sick and ragged and distraught than she’d seemed on the train trip to Novi Sad. Albert just sat there looking at her for a moment; then he stood up and wrapped his arms around his wife.

  “I missed you,” he said.

  Mileva began crying into his shoulder.

  “My little witch,” Albert said, almost hopefully. “My urchin.”

  The pet names came out sounding all wrong. Mileva cried harder.

  “Look,” Albert said, speaking over Mileva’s head. “Perhaps it would be best if we never spoke Lieserl’s name again. Pretended even to each other that she never existed. Just focused on . . . on the new baby.” He put his hand over Mileva’s stomach. “On the future. Not the past that’s dead and gone.”

  The real Mileva—the one sitting on the floor of the time hollow—gasped and hit something on the Elucidator in her hand. The Mileva and Albert on the wall froze in place, stopped in time. The real Mileva studied the image.

  And studied it.

  And studied it.

  “He doesn’t know what else to do,” she murmured to herself. “He’s trying his best. He thinks this is for the best.”

  She kept staring at her husband’s image.

  “No,” she said, after a long while. “He just wants everything to be easy for him. The only hard thing he ever wanted to think about was physics.”

  With surprising speed, she sprang up and rushed toward the wall. She began slapping her hand against her husband’s image.

  “You were so selfish, Albert!” she screamed at the wall. “You didn’t want to give me any choice in the matter!”

  Jonah had been still for so long it took him a moment to realize that he, himself, might be entitled to form an opinion about Albert. He studied the man’s face even as Mileva battered it.

  Albert looks . . . uncomfortable, Jonah thought. Awkward. Uncertain. Afraid. And . . . sad. Albert’s sad too. He just doesn’t know what to do about it.

  Finally Mileva stopped slapping her husband’s image on the wall. She slumped down to the floor.

  “No,” she whispered. “Those other papers. I have to look at them, too.”

  She hit something on the Elucidator and the images on the wall began moving forward again. Mileva seemed to have figured out how to zoom the viewpoint in and out, and she began studying the papers strewn across the Einsteins’ apartment table.

  “Okay,” she murmured. “Yes . . .”

  Jonah noticed that the images of Albert and Mileva projected on the wall were changing. Mileva’s stomach shoved out farther and farther in her old-fashioned dresses. Albert’s hair and moustache grew longer and messier. Mileva trimmed them. They grew back.

  Maybe at a certain point Jonah stopped paying such close attention, because it was the minute-by-minute of daily life that passed by on the wall. Mileva fixed sausages, Albert ate them, Mileva walked to the store, Albert walked home from work . . .

  And then suddenly things were different: The projected image of Mileva on the wall held a tiny, wizened baby.

  “Hanserl,” she crooned in his ear. “Our little Hans Albert. You’re going to grow up so big and strong—and smart! So smart!”

  The real Mileva sitting by Emily was sobbing again, but these might have been tears of joy. She rubbed her hand against her stomach.

  “A little boy! Hans Albert!” she cried out. She paused. “Will you ever have a chance to live for real?”

  Maybe the tears weren’t tears of joy.

  Albert’s and Mileva’s lives kept unspooling on the wall, before Mileva’s eyes, before Jonah’s eyes. Hans Albert was a useful addition to their family, because as he grew up, Jonah could see how much time was passing, how far ahead Mileva was watching after 1903. Little Hans Albert could sit up, he could crawl, he could walk . . . He was one, then two, then three . . .

  Albert played the violin and talked boisterously with friends. He wrote letters bragging about the great scientific papers he was about to publish. He played with Hans Albert, then forgot about the little boy in the middle of their games and began writing down formulas instead . . .

  The Mileva who showed up projected on the wall still checked Albert’s math, when he wasn’t showing it to someone else, but mostly she was cooking and cleaning and boiling Hans Albert’s diapers on the stove. She seemed to be fading away before Jonah’s eyes. When she and Albert went to parties, he laughed and talked and told bawdy stories. More and more, Mileva sat silently in the corner.

  “Don’t,” the Mileva who sat on the floor of the time hollow pleaded with her own self. “Join in. What’s wrong with you? Everyone there is your friend!”

  But the future Mileva just looked more and more hollow-eyed, more and more angry, more and more pained.

  Another Einstein child arrived, a second little boy they named Eduard but
seemed to mostly call Tete. A parade of important-looking men began showing up to talk to Albert. They offered jobs at one university then another. Prague, Zurich, Berlin . . . Albert stood behind podiums and spoke, and whole auditoriums full of very serious-looking scientists listened intently.

  Albert kissed a woman who wasn’t Mileva.

  Oh, no! Jonah thought. Did I miss something? Did those two get divorced while I wasn’t looking?

  No—that kiss also seemed to be a surprise to the real Mileva watching her future life.

  “Albert Einstein!” she hissed. “How could you! With her?”

  She had tears in her eyes once more.

  Is that Mileva’s future life? Jonah wondered. Or just a possible future? Is there anything anyone can change—if any of us ever get out of this time hollow?

  Maybe Jonah was distracted pondering these questions, because huge gobs of time seemed to be passing on the wall before him. Little Hans Albert and baby Tete grew up. Albert and Mileva both turned gray and a little wild-haired—the change in appearance making Albert more and more recognizable. This was the man Jonah had seen pictures of all his life, the lovable genius who jokingly stuck out his tongue for photographers, who helped little kids with their math, who made forgetting to wear socks the sign of a brain that just had better things to think about.

  Albert was honored in a ticker-tape parade. He won a Nobel Prize. He traveled the world.

  He and Mileva fought about getting divorced. About their children.

  Mileva collapsed and had to be hospitalized. She found out her brother was missing in action in World War I in Russia. She saw first her sister, then Tete, have mental breakdowns and get sent to asylums—sometimes in horrifying places. Still, Mileva visited each of them faithfully. She taught piano lessons and math, rented out apartments, scraped together money to seek better treatment for her troubled son.

  Some of the time Jonah felt as if he were watching a movie in history class, only in 3-D color rather than in black and white. Armies marched across Europe. People carted wheelbarrow-loads of money just to buy bread. Nazis threatened Albert because he was Jewish. Albert moved to America. He wrote a letter to the president of the United States about nuclear weapons, about how to win World War II.