Margaret Haddix: Sabotaged

The woods were full of tracers.

“We didn’t create those tracer boys,” Jonah whispered. “Or, if we did, there were other tracers here first.”

“Now, how could you know that?” Katherine asked mockingly.

“Because of that,” Jonah said, pointing to the glowing vine. “And that.” The line of ants. “And that.” The bird in the tree.

Katherine gasped and put her hand over her mouth, as if she’d just discovered the entire woods were radioactive.

“They’re-they’re everywhere,” Andrea whispered.

“Right,” Jonah said. “And how long do you think we’ve been here? Half an hour? An hour? No way could there be so many tracers created just in that time, just because of us.”

Katherine was still looking around, her eyes huge and dismayed.

“Something’s really, really wrong here,” she whispered. “That’s what this means.”

As they stood watching, a real bird landed right on top of the glowing tracer bird, melding completely. The glow instantly vanished. Now it was just an ordinary bird on an ordinary tree branch.

“Well, there,” Jonah said. “That’s one bit of time that’s been fixed.”

He didn’t want to admit how relieved he felt-or how much he wished all the other tracers glowing before him would go back to normal too.

“JB told me that people-and, I guess, animals, too-can’t see tracers unless they’ve traveled through time,” Andrea said. “How did that bird know its own tracer was there? How did it know to land in that exact spot?”

“Chip and Alex said they felt this almost magnetic pull to their tracers,” Katherine said. “The bird must have felt it too.”

“They why aren’t all the other tracers disappearing?” Andrea asked. “One by one, the lights blinking out, everything going back to normal…”

Jonah realized he was holding his breath, watching. The lights were not going out. If anything, their numbers were increasing: new pinpricks of light where insects were supposed to be flying, where seeds were supposed to be falling, where squirrels were supposed to be scampering.

“Something’s holding all those tracers in place,” Katherine whispered. “Something won’t let time go back the way it’s supposed to.”

“Is it-is it my fault?” Andrea stammered. “Did I ruin everything because I didn’t come back at the right time, at the exact moment that JB thought I should come back? Is this what happened when I messed up all those variables the projectionist set up so carefully?” She sniffled and waved her hand toward all the glowing remnants of tracer branches and vines and insects and ants. Her hand shook. “Does this mean I destroyed time forever?”

Jonah and Katherine exchanged glances. Jonah decided not to say, Shouldn’t you have thought of that before you changed the code on the Elucidator? But he didn’t know what to say instead.

“Well, no offense, Andrea, but how could you be that important?” Katherine asked, her voice gentler than her words. “You weren’t royalty, like Chip and Alex. You were just the first English kid born in North America, and then you disappeared. That’s all anybody knows about you.”

“Knew,” Jonah corrected automatically. “That’s all anybody knew about Virginia Dare in our time.”

Katherine glared at him.

Oh, yeah, Jonah thought. I guess I’m not helping her argument. But Jonah was working on a new idea, one he’d never thought of before.

And he thought it was important.

“Nobody knew what happened to Virginia Dare because nobody wrote down what happened to her the rest of her life,” he said. “Well, not that we know of. But once there was time travel-time travelers could have known every single thing she did, every moment of her life.”

Andrea was actually blushing now.

“And I bet you did something great,” Jonah said. “I bet that’s why it mattered so much that you had to be returned to time.”

Katherine’s glare had turned into the kind that could vaporize enemies.

“And-and-we’ll make sure you get to do that thing. Whatever it is,” Jonah finished lamely. “And whenever. We’ll get you to the right time. I promise.”

Andrea sniffed. If anything, she looked more discouraged than ever. She crossed her arms and clutched the sleeves of her T-shirt, as if she was desperate for something to hold on to.

“Maybe we should keep walking?” Katherine suggested.

Jonah started to turn back around, facing toward the greatest number of tracer lights. But Andrea, beside him, didn’t turn at the same time, the way he expected her to. He bumped against her.

“Sorry,” Jonah muttered.

Still clutching her sleeves, Andrea stared at him.

I said I was sorry, Jonah thought. What’s she waiting for?

“Oh!” she said, a baffled look traveling across her face. “Do that again. Wait a minute.” She bent down and picked up a small rock, holding it out slightly from her body. “Now.”

Puzzled but obedient, Jonah jostled her shoulder.

Andrea jerked back and forth, but tightened her grip on the rock. A second later, she crouched down and carefully put the rock back exactly as it had been before, eliminating its tracer. Then she straightened up.

“I was wrong,” she said. “It wasn’t Jonah’s fault that I lost the Elucidator.”

“Isn’t that what I said all along?” Jonah said indignantly.

Andrea nodded.

“You were right. I’m sorry. It was just the timing of things… You bumped me right after I hit ENTER on the Elucidator, so I got confused about cause and effect.”

“You’re losing me,” Jonah said.

“There are different ways to lose things,” Andrea explained. “I didn’t think about how it felt different, until you bumped into me just now, when I was holding on to my sleeves. I didn’t let go. And I didn’t let go of the Elucidator when you ran into me the first time. It was me holding on, holding on-and then suddenly the Elucidator just wasn’t there.”

She collapsed her fingers against the palm of her hand, showing what it’d been like to clutch something that had vanished.

“So?” Katherine said, sounding as baffled as Jonah felt. “Why does it matter?”

“Because of the code,” Andrea said. “The code I typed in myself-that’s what made the Elucidator vanish. That man who came to visit me in secret? It wasn’t just that he wanted us to go to the wrong time. He really didn’t want us telling JB about it.”

“Well, duh,” Jonah said, completely frustrated now. “Because he knew JB would put us back in the right time! All that proves is that JB wasn’t your mystery man-and we already knew that!”

Andrea’s face fell.

“I thought that was something important,” she mumbled. “I thought I’d figured something out.”

Katherine put her arm around Andrea’s shoulder, somehow managing to pat Andrea’s back comfortingly while she fixed Jonah with an even more scorching glare.

“You did,” Katherine said. “Anything you think of is helpful.”

The two girls began walking again, easily following the trail of tracer lights leading them deeper and deeper into the woods.

Jonah glanced down at the dog waiting patiently beside him.

“Looks like you’re the only one who’s not mad at me now,” he muttered. He tugged on the dog’s collar. “Come on, boy.”

As they walked forward-exiled a few paces behind the girls-Jonah remembered how much he’d wanted to help Andrea from the beginning, how he’d vowed to take care of her.

How can good intentions get so messed up? he wondered.

Ahead of him, he could hear Katherine murmuring to Andrea, “Well, you know, teenage boys. They don’t always think before they speak…”

Jonah tuned her out.