Sabotaged (10 page)

“Yeah . . . yeah . . .” Jonah didn’t want to talk about tricks and traps and dilemmas with the others. Not yet. He didn’t want to talk about how they might have ruined time by saving the man’s life. Because that wouldn’t change anything they did from here on out—it wasn’t as if they were going to push the man back into the water. Jonah opened his eyes, cleared his throat, tried to remember how to act normal.

“I’m fine,” he told Katherine. “Thanks to you throwing that branch in.”

“Yeah,” Andrea agreed. She was brushing sand from a huge scrape on her leg. “That was really smart. How’d you think of it?”

“Oh, you know me, I’m just so
brilliant
,” Katherine said, grinning. She hadn’t used up all her energy fighting the waves, so she had some left for clowning. She held one hand out, placed her other hand on her stomach, and dipped down in a mocking bow. “Thank you. Thank you very much.” Then she shrugged. “Really, though, I just thought of it because I saw what
they
did.”

“They, who?” Jonah said, baffled.

Katherine was already pointing, toward a spot directly
behind Jonah.

“Them,” she said.

Jonah turned around. There in the grass were the two tracer boys they’d seen earlier.

And lying between them was a tracer version of the man Jonah and Andrea had just rescued from drowning.

It took Jonah’s waterlogged brain a moment to figure out what that meant.

If the two tracer boys rescued the drowning man in the original version of history, then . . .

“He was supposed to live!” Jonah burst out. “We didn’t ruin history by saving him! We saved history by saving him!”

Andrea whirled around and glared at Jonah.

“Is
that
why you didn’t want me jumping into the water?” she growled at him. “You think
history
is more important than a man’s life?”

“No, no—” Jonah tried to explain. “I was worried about you! I—”

“If I’d gotten back to my parents the day of their crash, would you have stopped me from saving
them
?” Andrea asked.

“Of course not!” Jonah said. “I would have helped you! But . . .”

“But what?” Andrea asked, her glare intensifying.

“I don’t think we would ever get that choice,” Jonah said.

“Because of Damaged Time,” Katherine reminded Andrea.

Jonah could have left it at that. It would have been easier. But he had too many ideas roiling around in his mind. Some of them were going to spill out whether he wanted them to or not.

“I think some things just aren’t possible, even with time travel,” Jonah said. He turned to Katherine. “Don’t you remember JB talking about how time protects itself from paradoxes? Certain things aren’t supposed to be possible.” He gestured at the man who had nearly drowned, at the churning waves beyond. “
This
wasn’t supposed to be possible. We weren’t supposed to be here!”

Andrea patted the man’s chest protectively.

“But we
are
,” she said. “And we saved him.”

Jonah shook his head.

“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “I’m not saying it right. I’m glad the man’s alive. I helped save him too, remember? But don’t you think there was something wrong with how it all worked? Don’t you feel . . . used?”

“Used?” Andrea repeated numbly.

“Why were we here on this island, in this time period, just at the right moment to see the man drowning?” Jonah challenged.

“You mean . . . because I changed the Elucidator code?” Andrea whispered.

“And because Dare barked,” Katherine reminded him. “Don’t forget that.”

Jonah reached over and grabbed Dare.

“How do we know he’s even a real dog?” Jonah asked furiously. “How do we know he’s not some . . . some animatronic thing that’s supposed to spy on us and direct us wherever Andrea’s mystery man wants us to go?”

Jonah rolled Dare over on his belly and felt around in his fur, looking for some on/off switch or computer chip implant. The dog yelped and squirmed away.

“Jonah, you’re being paranoid,” Katherine said. “It was JB who gave us Dare, not the mystery man.”

“And why would he need a fake dog to spy on us?” Andrea asked. “Couldn’t he watch us anyhow? Can’t time experts do that, if they know where you are?”

Oh, yeah . . .

Jonah turned his face to the sky.

“We’re onto you!” he yelled at the dark clouds. “We know exactly what’s going on here!”

But he didn’t. That was the problem. He didn’t know what would have happened if the man they’d rescued had died. He didn’t know if there still might be other reasons Andrea’s mystery man had wanted her to go to the wrong time. He didn’t know where the real versions of the tracer boys were, when they were supposed to be right here, acting like lifeguards.

He spun toward the tracer boys, as if he could catch them doing something wrong. But they were only tending to the tracer man: pulling tracer seaweed out of his hair, brushing tracer sand away from his mouth. Somehow that made Jonah angrier. He scrambled up and stood over them.

“Where are you for real?” he screamed at them. “Why aren’t you here?”

He reached out toward the curly haired boy, wanting to shake his shoulders. But of course Jonah’s hands went right through the tracer. And he’d been so sure that he could grab the tracer boy’s shoulders that he was thrown off balance. He fell facedown in the sand.

For a moment he just lay there, not moving.

Then he felt a hand on his arm, pushing him to roll over. It was Katherine.

“Jonah?” she asked, peering down at him. “Jo-oh?”

The old baby name steadied him a little. That was
what she’d called him when they were in preschool. But that had been a long time ago. He braced himself for her to start making snarky comments about how teenage boys couldn’t control their temper.

Instead, she just kept looking at him.

“I don’t like this setup either,” she said. “But what do you want us to do?”

“What JB sent us to do,” Jonah said stubbornly. “Fix time. Save Andrea. Then go home.”

And not have to think,
he could have added.
Not have to worry that everything we do might ruin time. Not have to watch out for tracers.

“But we’re not where JB sent us,” Katherine said. “So . . .”

Jonah could tell she was trying to choose her words very carefully, trying not to set him off again.

“What if everything’s connected?” Andrea asked, looking up from beside the man they’d rescued. She was mimicking the tracer boys almost exactly, picking kelp out of the man’s hair. “What if we have to fix their problems with time”—she pointed to the tracer boys—”before we can fix mine?”

Jonah felt really, really tired all of a sudden. How could they solve tracers’ problems? Tracers didn’t even exist, not really. They were just place holders. Signs of
trouble. They were useless without their real selves.

At least we have the real version of the drowning man,
Jonah thought.
Could he be a clue?

“Hey, look,” Katherine said abruptly. “Their guy’s sitting up and talking.”

She gestured toward the tracer man, who was looking dazedly from one tracer boy to the other. He seemed to be thanking them.

“Is our guy awake too?” Katherine reached over and tapped on the real man’s shoulder. “Sir? Sir?”

The man didn’t respond. His eyelids didn’t even flutter. He lay deathly still.

“What’s wrong with him?” Katherine asked.

She put her wrist against his forehead, feeling for a fever. She put her finger against his neck, feeling for his pulse. She put her hand on his head, ready to turn it side to side. Jonah guessed she wanted to study the bruises already showing up on his face. She stopped.

“Oh, no,” she whispered.

She lifted her hand.

It was covered with blood.

Jonah was amazed that Katherine didn’t start screaming, “Ew! Ew! Get it off me!” and start running away from the man. She did look a little pale. But she just wiped her hand on a clump of beach grass and said faintly, “Maybe, if there’s something we could use as a bandage . . .”

“My sweatshirt!” Andrea volunteered. She took off running down the shore, to the spot where she’d left her sweatshirt and shoes right before she’d rushed into the water.

“How bad is it?” Jonah asked quietly.

“I forget how it works with head injuries,” Katherine said. “Do they bleed a lot and always look worse than they really are? Or is it the other way around?”

Jonah didn’t know.

He looked carefully at the man for the first time. It
had been easier to stay mad when Jonah wasn’t looking, when he was thinking of the man as just part of some trick or trap—or a clue—not as a real live, flesh-and-blood person. But the man was real. Beneath his tattered white shirt, his chest rose and fell in shallow breaths, and Jonah almost felt like cheering at each sign that the man was still alive.

“He’s old,” Jonah said, surprised.

The man had wrinkles beneath the sand caked on his battered face. Along with his thinning white hair, he had a white beard that might have looked dapper and well trimmed if he hadn’t just gone through a boat crash.

“Why would an old man go out in a boat by himself?” Jonah asked.

Before Katherine had a chance to answer, Andrea was back and handing Katherine two sweatshirts. She’d picked up Jonah’s, too.

“The one sleeve dragged in the water a little,” Andrea said breathlessly. She pulled her shoes back on; she hadn’t taken the time to do that before.

“That’s okay,” Katherine said. “If we just wrap them around like this . . . and press against the wound . . .”

Andrea held her hand firmly on the sweatshirts, even when the blood began to show through. She glanced back at the tracer man behind them.

“Why doesn’t
he
need a bandage?” she said.

Jonah walked over to the tracer man and studied the back of his head.

“He doesn’t have any big cuts like that,” Jonah said.

That was probably the reason the tracer was sitting up and talking—even weakly—while the real man lay still and unmoving.

And what does that do to time?
Jonah wondered dizzily.
Is this man’s head injury part of the trap or the trick? Or is it just . . . something that happened?

“It doesn’t make sense,” Andrea complained. “Both men were rescued the same way. Right?”

“You and Jonah were just a little later getting the man away from all those broken boards,” Katherine said apologetically. “From where I was standing, I could see the one tracer boy swim out to him while you were still floundering about, getting thrown around by the waves.”

Jonah wanted to protest,
We were doing the best that we could!

But then, to his surprise, Katherine added, “And I was a lot slower holding the branch out to you . . .”

Just then a sudden gust of wind shoved against them, practically knocking Andrea over. Both girls were forced to hold their hair back so it didn’t whip into their faces. Andrea peered up at the sky, where the dark clouds were
now racing even faster.

“I think there’s a storm coming,” she said, shivering in her wet clothes. “That’s why the water’s so choppy.”

Katherine frowned.

“The man’s not even conscious,” she said. “He can’t stay out here in a storm.”

A bolt of lightning slashed the sky, followed by a crack of thunder. Andrea looked up appealingly at Jonah.

“Will you help us get him to safety?” she asked. “And then worry about what it all means for time?”

“What kind of a person do you think I am?” Jonah asked indignantly. “You think I’d leave a hurt old man out on a beach in the middle of a storm? Of course I’ll help!”

“Thanks,” Andrea said, smiling at him. Even with her hair blowing around, the smile made her look pretty again.

Am I being used again?
Jonah wondered.
Did Andrea’s mystery man know that I’d react to her like that? Did he know this storm was going to blow in? Did he
cause
it?

Or was Jonah just being paranoid, as Katherine had said?