Sabotaged (23 page)

“You mean Antonio and his tracer were following all the rules of tracerdom, as we know them,” Jonah said, back to joking a little bit, because he couldn’t stand being so deadly serious all the time. “Except for Antonio—and Brendan—not knowing everything their tracers know, and
maybe
that’s not that different from the last time. Maybe we just didn’t notice it before. Nobody broke any other tracer rules after that, did they?”

Katherine bit her lip.

“I know you were asleep all afternoon, but . . . haven’t you been paying attention since then?” she asked. “Haven’t you noticed how easy it is for Antonio and Brendan to move in and out of their tracers?”

Jonah gaped at his sister, his brain finally catching up.

“
That’s
why kept you shaking your head at me!” he said. “You didn’t want me to notice. . . .”

“No, I didn’t want you to say anything in front of
the others
,
” Katherine said. “Andrea’s already sick with worry about her grandfather, and Brendan and Antonio are plenty freaked out as it is.”

“So you want to protect them, but it’s okay to worry me?” Jonah said jokingly.

“Yeah. Because . . . ,” Katherine took a deep breath, and for a moment Jonah was afraid that she was going to say something sappy like,
Because you’re my big brother,
or
Because we’re in this together.
Or even,
Because I trust you most of all.
Jonah wasn’t sure he’d be able to take it if she did that. Instead, she just frowned and said, “You know how people are supposed to behave with their tracers. You’ve seen it before. You already know something’s wrong with John White and his tracer, even though that might just be because of his head injury.”

“Antonio and Brendan don’t have head injuries,” Jonah said.

“Right,” Katherine said. “So isn’t it weird that they have to
try
to stay with their tracers? With Chip and Alex it practically took nuclear warfare to keep them
away.
”

“Yeah,” Jonah agreed. He almost added,
Or true love.
But this was not the right time to tease Katherine about that.

Katherine hit the palm of her hand against the sand. They’d both given up on pretending to look for a rubber band.

“I hate this,” she said. “We know Second did something wrong again, and we know everything’s messed up, but it’s like we’re boxed in—we don’t know what we can do about it.”

Another trap,
Jonah thought.
Or is it just another trick?

He looked back at the other kids: Andrea hovering near her grandfather, Brendan banking the fire, and Antonio . . . well, it looked like Antonio was posing, showing off his six-packs abs in front of Andrea. He was talking to her, too, probably saying,
Look at me. Aren’t I hot?
Jonah clenched his fists.

“Are you
sure
it wouldn’t help to punch Antonio?” he asked.

“Would you stop that?” Katherine said. She shoved at Jonah’s fists, knocking them uselessly against the sand. “None of this is Antonio’s fault. Can’t you tell he’s scared out of his mind?”

“Well, yeah, when he heard the wolves.” Jonah snickered. “Did you see how fast he was running?”

“Not just then,” Katherine said. “Ever since he got here, anytime he’s not thinking with his tracer’s brain, he’s terrified. It was like he couldn’t even hear half the things Andrea and I told him in the canoe. That’s why he keeps saying all those mean things, trying to make it so we don’t see how scared he is.”

“Oh, come on, Katherine,” Jonah scoffed. “Have you been listening to too many of those bullying assemblies at school? That’s the kind of thing a guidance counselor would say!”

“That doesn’t mean I’m wrong, does it?” Katherine challenged.

Jonah was about to make a snappy comeback or—to his surprise—maybe to grudgingly agree. But suddenly, across the beach, he heard Andrea scream.

“For real? Are you serious?” she yelled at the top of her lungs.

Jonah was already running toward her when he realized: No matter how loudly she was screaming, she didn’t
sound upset.

She sounded delighted.

Jonah skidded to a stop in the sand right by Andrea and Brendan and Antonio. Katherine sprinted up behind him. By then, Andrea was grabbing Antonio in a tight hug.

“Thank you!” she cried. “Thank you!”

She hugged him again before letting go.

Antonio took a step back, just enough to blur away at the edges of his tracer. He barely missed stepping on Dare.

“What did I do?” Antonio asked, stunned.

“You told me the right
year
,” Andrea said, her face glowing. “The year!” She looked over at Jonah and Katherine, and her grin grew bigger. “We were wrong, what we thought, and what I told Brendan, and he didn’t know any different. But Antonio, my new best friend Antonio did. . . .” She threw her arms around him once more, before jumping back, too excited to stand still. “It’s not 1590, after all!”

“Uh, really?” Jonah said blankly. “And that’s a good thing because . . . ?”

Andrea laughed gleefully.

“You don’t get it, do you?” she said. “Come on, Jonah, you were the one who figured this out before! When you were wrong!”

Jonah could feel his expression getting blanker. Still, Andrea only laughed more giddily.

“Virginia Dare was born in 1587,” she said. “She—I—wasn’t even a month old when my grandfather went back to England for supplies. He came back and found his colony deserted three years later, in 1590. So, you guys thought, John White, deserted island—it must be 1590. Doomed trip for him, no chance for us.”

Jonah was sure he hadn’t made everything sound so simple-minded.

“But,” Andrea said. She held up one finger for dramatic effect. “But! We don’t know about anything John White did after 1593. He wrote a letter describing his ill-fated 1590 voyage, and it was published in a book by a guy whose name I can’t remember. And for all anybody knows, John White might as well have died the day after he mailed that letter. But he didn’t! He didn’t!”

“You know that?” Katherine asked cautiously. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because!” Andrea crowed. “Antonio here remembers when he—er, his tracer—”

“It was both of us, really,” Antonio said. “Together. Before Gary and Hodge kidnapped me and made it so there was a separate tracer. When I was just a Spanish kid about to be adopted by Indians.”

“Okay, okay,” Andrea said impatiently. “What matters is that Antonio remembers what
year
he sailed from Spain,
and how long he’s been in North America. Antonio?”

Antonio flashed her a puzzled look.

“I still don’t get why this is such a big deal. But . . . it was 1597,” he said. “Three years ago.”

“So don’t you see? That means it’s 1600 now!” Andrea exclaimed. “A new century! A completely different trip! And I’m thirteen years old!”

Andrea might as well have said,
Ta-da!
She seemed that thrilled with her revelation.

Everyone else just looked at her. Even Dare tilted his head quizzically.

“So?” Jonah finally said. “What’s the big deal about being thirteen?”

“Are you Jewish?” Katherine asked. “That whole bar mitzvah—er, bat mitzvah thing—”

“No! That’s not it!” Now Andrea sounded exasperated that the others didn’t understand. “I mean, I’m the right age for the year! I’m the age my grandfather would expect for his granddaughter! So—it wouldn’t be weird for him to see me and know who I am!”

She beamed at them, expecting everyone else to catch on. Jonah’s brain was slowly cranking out,
Oh. Then that means . . .
Katherine had her mouth open, but didn’t seem to have decided yet what she wanted to say. Antonio and Brendan were watching Katherine as if they expected her
to tell them what to think.

Only Dare responded quickly. He began barking happily and jumping up against Andrea’s legs, practically dancing around her.

“Don’t you see?” Andrea said, reaching down to hug Dare, before letting him go to dance some more. “Don’t you think this means that . . . that everything was meant to be? My grandfather is supposed to find me, I don’t have to go back to being a toddler—everything’s going to work out!”

The other kids were still squinting and stunned and trying to understand.

“Then . . . you think history’s completely wrong?” Brendan said slowly. “What you and Katherine were telling us in the canoe—you said John White never found his family or anyone else from Roanoke.”

“The last time. In 1590,” Andrea said. “He never found anyone in 1590. But it’s 1600 now, and John White came back. And this time—he doesn’t
have
to fail
.
” She snorted. “The history we told you wasn’t
wrong.
Just . . . incomplete.”

“You mean, nobody in history kept track of what happened to John White in 1600,” Jonah said numbly. “Nobody wrote anything down so nobody knows. . . .”

Something about this—history having secrets, history hiding its holes—really bothered him. But he didn’t have
time to think about it because Andrea was already flitting on to another point.

“Don’t you think it’s because he found his family and was happy and didn’t bother to write home?” Andrea asked. She giggled. “It’s not like there was postal service back to England!”

She pointed out toward the water glowing with the last rays of the sinking sun. The water seemed boundless; it was hard to imagine other lands off in the distance.

“This would explain why things didn’t match up on Roanoke Island,” Katherine said thoughtfully. “Why John White was alone instead of with other sailors, and why he didn’t see the word
Croatoan
and get driven away in a storm.”

“So maybe Second didn’t sabotage time that badly,” Andrea said. “Really, the only important thing that got messed up with my grandfather on Roanoke Island was that the wrong kids saved him from drowning.”

“And he got a head injury,” Antonio said. Jonah was glad it was Antonio who pointed that out, because Andrea glared at him.

“Yeah, but . . . ,” Andrea seemed to be trying very hard to hold on to her excitement. She glanced down, and her whole expression changed. “I bet his head injury really isn’t that bad! Now that Antonio and Brendan are here for
real—and he can see them, just like his tracer can—I bet the reason he’s unconscious is just because of us! Because his mind can’t deal with us wandering around in twenty-first-century clothes!”

She jumped up and began rummaging through her grandfather’s treasure chest. Jonah knew exactly what she was looking for: the dresses. She yanked out one that was pale yellow with a pattern of tiny roses.

“Andrea, no,” Katherine said sharply. “That can’t be the answer. People saw Jonah and me in modern clothing back in the fifteenth century, and that didn’t make anyone half-unconscious!”

“Just let me try!” Andrea said stubbornly.

She jerked the dress down over her shoulders, completely covering her T-shirt and shorts. The hem dragged down in the sand as she rushed to her grandfather’s side. He was lying practically flat on his back, his tracer eyes staring toward the darkening sky. His real eyes were still closed.

Andrea knelt beside him. Something about the dress made her move differently, or she was making a conscious effort to act like a girl from 1600.

“Grandfather?” she murmured. “I have just learned of your arrival and your rescue by these fine, uh, natives. They sent word to me to come right away, and they gave me the dress you brought. So, please, please wake up. . . .”

In her own way, Andrea sounded as ridiculous as Jonah had when he was doing his
Pirates of the Caribbean
imitation back on Roanoke Island. But she was looking so hopefully at her grandfather.

He stirred, swaying side to side. Andrea clutched his hand.

“Grandfather?” she said.

John White opened his mouth.

“Treachery!” he cried out. “Betrayal! Deceit!”

Andrea collapsed in despair at his side, hiding her face in the skirt.

“Andrea!” Jonah called out. “He’s not talking about you! His eyes are still closed! It’s just him and his tracer thinking the same thing—it was
random
.”

“The savages betrayed us, and we betrayed them,”
John White continued. “And I’ve never met a sea captain I could trust. . . .”

Jonah patted Andrea on the back.

“See—this isn’t about you!” Jonah said. “It’s just—you need to be with your tracer! We’ll find it! I promise!”

“Go away,” Andrea mumbled. “Leave me alone.”

Brendan crouched beside her, leaving his tracer behind.

“Andrea?” he said. “I don’t know anything about your tracer, and I don’t know why my tracer hasn’t been thinking about Croatoan Island. But I can tell you—Antonio and me, our tracers—we’re honorable tribesmen . . . er, people. If our tracers told John White we’ll take him to Croatoan Island, then that’s where we’re going. And that’s probably where your tracer is, right?”

“That’s what . . . we think,” Andrea said, sniffing a little.

“Jonah?” Katherine said, in a too-loud voice. “Don’t you think we should get back to looking for that rubber band?”