Revealed (6 page)

Or maybe everyone with asthma back then just died?

Jonah didn't bother watching to make sure that Angela understood what he was talking about. He pulled JB, still wheezing, through the back door of the house and then into the downstairs bathroom. He turned the shower on, full strength.

“Maybe if you just try to relax?” Jonah said. “And lean your head in?”

The steam began to rise, fogging up the mirror and the shower door.

“K-Katherine,” JB stammered.

“Don't worry about her right now,” Jonah said. “Don't think about anything but breathing.”

Because I'm worrying enough for both of us
, Jonah thought.
I'm trying to save your life and keep Mom and Dad safe too—and meanwhile no one's going after Katherine; none of us know what to do. . . .

Someone knocked at the bathroom door. Jonah opened it just a crack, trying not to let the steam out.

He was glad to see Angela pressing her face close. If it had been kid Dad, Jonah would have had no idea what to tell him.

But Angela's face was taut with distress.

“We can't get Chip,” she said.

“Why not?” Jonah demanded. “Couldn't you convince the school that you were an adult?”

“That's not the problem,” kid Angela said. “It's because . . .”

She paused, as if trying to steady herself enough to keep speaking.

“What?” Jonah exploded.

Angela gazed sadly back at him.

“Because,” she whispered. “He's vanished too.”

The steam swirled around Jonah's head. For a moment his brain felt just as foggy, but he reminded himself that Katherine and Mom and Dad and JB and Angela—and now Chip as well?—needed him to stay sharp.

Focus
, Jonah told himself.
Try to think . . .

“Did Charles Lindbergh snatch Chip, too?” Jonah asked. “Did anyone see it happen? Why—”

Kid Angela winced.

“The school office says Chip hasn't been there all day,” she said. “So I went over to Chip's house and snooped around. . . . His parents look like they've turned back into thirteen-year-olds too. Not very pleasant thirteen-year-olds, actually. But because Mr. Winston was smoking and had the living-room window open to let the smoke out—and because he and his wife were screaming
at each other—I heard exactly what happened.”

“Which was . . . ?” Jonah prompted.

“Chip had been standing by the front door, ready to go to school,” Angela said. She'd slowed down the pace of her voice, as if she was dreading describing what happened next. “One minute he was there; the next minute . . . he wasn't.”

“Maybe he
did
go out the door,” Jonah said. “Maybe he just didn't go to school.”

A few months ago, when Chip had been angry about finding out that he was adopted, Jonah could have imagined Chip skipping school just to get back at his parents. But after traveling back to the Middle Ages—and sort of temporarily growing up—Chip wasn't like that anymore. This morning he should have been trying just as hard as Jonah and Katherine to act like everything was normal.

“Jonah, Chip's mother saw him disappear,” Angela said. “That's what his mom and dad are fighting about—Chip's dad says she has to be lying. So she just keeps telling the story over and over again, in her whiny voice. . . . Sorry. Editorial comment there. But I
really
don't like Chip's parents.”

“Nobody does,” Jonah muttered.

He felt numb.

Chip can't help?
he marveled.
And now I need to figure out a way to rescue him, too? All by myself?

He realized that Angela had actually helped a lot. He shouldn't think she was useless just because she was only thirteen. Didn't Jonah hate it when people assumed that about him?

“We need to check on everyone else, then,” Jonah said. “The other missing kids, I mean, to see if they're okay. Gavin and Daniella and . . . and Andrea . . .”

Jonah choked up and couldn't say another name after Andrea's. She was another missing child he and Katherine had helped back in the 1600s, when everything about history had been horribly confused. There was a time when he'd hoped she'd become his girlfriend, but she'd given him the “just friends” speech. Or the “we can't be anything except friends right now, because time travel has left me too messed up” speech, which was even worse.

Something slammed into Jonah from the back. It was JB, still wheezing a little, but able to talk better now.

“No,” kid JB said, his imperious tone back. “There's no time for checking on anyone else. First things first. If Chip's been taken, we've got to get you to safety. So nothing happens to you.”

JB was pushing Jonah forward, trying to hustle him out the door. Jonah shoved him back. JB was actually a little smaller and shorter than Jonah right now—the force of Jonah's elbow knocked the other boy against the back wall.

“What about the others?” Jonah asked. “What about their safety?”

“They already have time agents assigned to them, taking care of them,” JB growled.

“Yeah, because you and Angela did such a great job protecting Chip,” Jonah grumbled.

And Katherine
, Jonah thought, though maybe it wasn't fair to blame JB and Angela for her disappearance. Katherine wasn't a missing kid from history and wasn't supposed to have been in danger.

While Jonah was thinking all that, JB shoved off from the wall, pulling a towel with him.

“Get down!” kid JB ordered. “Hide!”

He tackled Jonah with the towel, covering his head and knocking him down to the floor halfway out into the hall.

Jonah heard footsteps nearby. He peeked out from the towel.

“What are you all doing?” kid Dad asked, standing over them. “Playing tackle football inside the house? Or capture the flag? Can I play too?”

Real, normal, adult Dad would never in a million years ask that. He'd be lecturing Jonah about how much it would cost to replace the towel racks or the wall tiles if Jonah broke them with his roughhousing.

“Actually, Dad . . . ,” Jonah began, trying to think of a good explanation.

JB didn't wait for words. He lifted his hand. Jonah heard a zinging noise, and a second later kid Dad slumped to the floor.

“You had to knock him out too?” Jonah protested.

“Didn't have to, but it saves time,” JB explained. “We've got to get you out of here
now
.”

Jonah curled his fingers around the edge of the hallway rug, holding on tight.

JB sighed, a little bit of a wheeze left in the sound.

“Your parents will be fine,” he said. “We'll leave them here, and those tranquilizer darts will keep them knocked out until we can fix everything. . . . They'll be safe. After all of this is over, they'll wake up their normal ages and not remember much more than a weird dream.”

Jonah wanted to believe him. But kid JB—or adult JB either, for that matter—hadn't realized that Katherine was in danger. How could Jonah leave his parents behind when he didn't know what was going on? When he couldn't be 100 percent sure that they would be safe?

“You can keep them tranquilized,” Jonah said through gritted teeth. “But if you're taking me to safety, you're bringing my parents, too.”

JB sighed again.

“It's not—” he began.

Angela stepped in front of him.

“I'll go get the car from in front of Chip's,” she interrupted. “Won't take me a minute. Why don't you two start carrying Jonah's parents toward the garage? We'll take them out that way—less chance of being seen.”

“We can't protect everyone!” kid JB fumed. “We don't have time to worry about people who aren't actually in danger!”

“These are his parents,” Angela said simply as she turned to go.

Jonah was glad that Angela, at least, was on his side. He picked up kid Dad—the boy was scrawnier than he looked, and Jonah had no trouble lifting him by the armpits and dragging him across the floor. Real, normal, adult Dad was six inches taller than Jonah and kind of heavyset; it was frightening to have Jonah's father seem so lightweight and frail.

Fragile
, Jonah thought.
Easily hurt.

It was a huge relief that JB picked up Jonah's mom—he seemed to be going along with Angela's plan without any more arguments. Jonah had such a lump in his throat he couldn't have said anything else.

Angela already had the car in the driveway when Jonah hit the garage door opener.

“You run out and crouch down in the backseat,” JB told him. “I'll get your parents in beside you and then we'll throw a blanket over all three of you to keep you hidden.”

“But I need to shut the garage door before we leave—” Jonah began to argue.

“I'll handle that!” JB ordered. “You stay out of sight!”

There was such tension in his voice that Jonah obeyed.

Who does JB really think would be watching?
Jonah wondered.
Gary and Hodge? This Charles Lindbergh character?

The entire street looked deserted, and as far as Jonah could tell, the blinds were still drawn in the front windows of all the houses around them. But Jonah knew from his past experiences with time travel that there were ways for people to watch him without being anywhere nearby—without even being in the same century, actually. In one of his first encounters with time travelers, he'd learned that it wasn't even safe to write down certain things that a time traveler might see at some moment in the future.

Charles Lindbergh—he's the past
, Jonah reminded himself.
Mom said he was an old-timey pilot. . . .

This didn't make Jonah feel any better.

In no time at all Jonah was huddled in the backseat of Angela's car, with the unconscious kid versions of both of his parents beside him. JB tossed a quilt from the hall closet over the top of all three of them.

Jonah reached over and fastened seat belts around both his parents. It didn't seem like enough protection, not after he'd watched Katherine disappear right before his eyes barely an hour ago. Because he was under the quilt anyhow, and no one could see him, he reached out and held on to Mom's right hand and Dad's left hand.

There
, Jonah thought.
If anyone or anything zaps them to some other place or time, we all go together.

But would that make it more or less likely that he would be able to rescue Katherine?

From the way the car lurched around corners, squealing tires at every turn, Jonah could tell that Angela was more concerned about driving fast than anything else. He poked his face out from the quilt a little so he could tell her, “You may have forgotten what it's like to be thirteen, but if the cops stop you for speeding, they're not going to believe you're who your driver's license says you are. They'll think you stole your mom's car
and
her license.”

“We'll slow down once we're out of the afflicted area!” JB yelled back to him. “Now—stay hidden!”

Afflicted area?
Jonah thought. He guessed JB meant the area where adults had un-aged into teenagers. But “afflicted” made it sound even more horrifying than that.

He grasped his parents' hands with only one of his own, and used his other hand to pull the quilt back up in front
of his face. But he left himself a small peephole beside the window, no bigger than his eye. This was enough that he could see they were still in Jonah's neighborhood, on the main street that led out of the subdivision.

There wasn't another car in sight. For that matter there wasn't another person in sight.

Jonah suddenly realized how odd that was.

Where are the grown-ups driving to work?
he wondered.
Where are the dog walkers? Where are the moms pushing their babies and toddlers in jogging strollers?

Had they
all
turned back into thirteen-year-olds? Were they all so stunned and terrified by the change that they could only cower indoors? (Or argue, in the case of Chip's parents?) Was Jonah's mom the only one brave enough to step outside to try to figure out what was going on?

And look what happened to her
, Jonah thought grimly.

Kid JB reached over the back of the seat.

“I said stay down!” he screamed at Jonah, shoving Jonah's head lower. “It's for your own good!”

“You can come out when you're safe!” Angela yelled back at him. “We promise!”

It was too unnerving to try to look out, anyhow. Jonah did notice that after a few more turns Angela slowed down to a pace more suited for a staid old lady driving to church on a Sunday morning.

Does that mean that the adults who became thirteen-year-olds were all within a mile or two of my house?
Jonah wondered.

Was Jonah's school close enough to be affected? He tried to imagine his teachers as thirteen-year-olds; he tried to imagine the principal and the custodians and the cafeteria ladies as teenagers too. In another mood the whole scenario would have struck him as hilarious. But he had too much else to worry about to laugh right now.

Katherine . . . Charles Lindbergh . . . Am I Charles Lindbergh's son?

He thought about hissing to JB and getting him to answer some of Jonah's questions as Angela drove. But Jonah could hear bits and pieces of an argument going on in the front seat, and it sounded like JB was way too busy yelling at Angela about the quickest and safest way to get wherever they were going.

“We'll have to take the back way in—” JB was demanding.

“No. I told you,” Angela argued back. “When I went back, a lot of those trees were gone. Right up to the front entrance. It looked like there'd been a storm, and—”