Margaret Haddix - Sabotaged

This setup was a trap, Jonah thought. It was a trick.

Back when he was in 1483, Jonah had argued with JB about taking so many chances with Chip’s and Alex’s lives. But even JB wouldn’t have set Jonah and Katherine up with a dilemma like this one.

“Not fair,” Jonah muttered. “Not fair.”

He didn’t know how it had worked, but he felt certain that the mystery man had planned for Jonah and Andrea to be on the beach right at that moment, right as the boat capsized. He had planned for them to have to make a choice.

Did he know what we would choose? Jonah wondered. Does he know what will happen because the man didn’t drown? Does he use projections, like JB?

“Jonah? Are you all right?” Katherine asked.

Jonah realized he still had his eyes squeezed shut. And he was probably moving his lips, like a little kid just learning how to read silently.

“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.