Found (13 page)

“Oh, no,” Jonah said. His eyes sprang open again, and he caught a glimpse of his own stricken expression in his parents’ dresser mirror. “The note. The note I left for my parents when we went to the library, just in case something happened…”

“Did they read it?” Chip asked, horrified. “You think they came over and erased my computer files? Would they do that?”

“No….” But Jonah took the phone and rushed down the hall to his own room. The note was still hidden in the top drawer of his desk, right beside the mysterious letter,
Beware! They’re coming back to get you.
He thought about the casual way Dad had shouted up the stairs about the phone call—Dad hadn’t seen this note. And Mom was still out running errands. She hadn’t seen it either.

Then he remembered the man at the library, struggling under the table as Jonah scrambled out the window.

Go, Jonah! Hurry! And Jonah—I saw your note! You have to be careful! Careful where you leave anything that could be seen later…anything that could be monitored—

“Oh, no,” Jonah moaned. “It was one of them.”

“Them who?”

But Jonah was peering suspiciously around his room. It looked like usual, the NBA poster a little crooked on the wall, the blue bedspread slightly rumpled, the closet door open a crack with his shoes half-in and half-out. It was all so familiar. But it had been invaded at least twice now, that he knew of. The very air seemed to crackle with danger.

Except—was it really dangerous right this minute? If people could just appear anywhere they wanted (and he was still trying to get his mind around that idea), why didn’t someone just grab him now? Why hadn’t they taken him back with the plane, or during any one of the thousands of seconds of his life since then?

Maybe time travel wasn’t so easy.

Be careful! Careful where you leave anything that could be seen later…anything that could be monitored—

Seen later. Monitored
…Maybe the next word after that would have been
later
too. Maybe, if time travel even existed, there were limits to it. Maybe it was something about the rotation of the earth, or sunspots, or something bizarre like that. So anything written down was dangerous, because it could be seen at any time. And other things, things that could be monitored were cell phone pictures, and computer hard drives, and…

Jonah gasped.

“Chip, I can’t tell you anything right now. Not over the phone.”

“Why not?” Chip demanded. “This is crazy—you’re starting to sound like Angela.”

“What if Angela’s right?”

Jonah, Chip, and Katherine slumped in various chairs in Chip’s basement.

“Is this safe?” Katherine asked. “Talking together here now?”

“I don’t know,” Jonah said miserably. “How long do sound waves stay in the air?”

“I can check online,” Chip said. He turned around to the computer and began to type in,
How long do…

“Chip, someone could check your search record, find out that you asked that question,” Jonah objected.

“So what? I could just be doing science homework,” Chip said. But he stopped typing. The words
How long do
stayed on the computer screen.

How long do we have to figure everything out?
Jonah wondered.
How long do we have before someone appears out of nowhere and carries us away?

He’d finally told Chip and Katherine about seeing an intruder in his room, the night they’d first gotten the lists of witnesses and survivors. Then he’d explained his theory about how someone—the janitor? The janitor’s enemy?—had found out about Chip’s computer files from the note in Jonah’s desk. And how, if he—whoever “he” was—could find Jonah’s note and Chip’s computer files, then that person could just as easily tap their phones. For all Jonah knew, someone could have gone back in time to tap their phones ten years ago, but was listening to their conversations fifty years in the future.

Jonah was beginning to feel hopeless. How could you resist someone with that kind of power?

“All right,” Katherine said briskly. “Let’s assume that talking is safe because, if it isn’t, we can’t do anything. Chip, do you have any paper?”

“Katherine, I told you—they can read anything we write down!”

Katherine rolled her eyes and reached down to pull a sheet of paper out of Chip’s printer. She snagged a pen out of the middle of a stack of computer games and dodged Jonah’s hands when he tried to pull the pen away from her.

“I know, I know,” she said impatiently. “I’ll destroy the evidence as soon as I’m done. I’ll eat the paper if I have to. But we have to get organized!”

She bent over the computer desk and wrote two headings on the top of her paper:
What we know
and
What we think
. She drew a line down the middle of the page, dividing the two topics. Under
What we know
, she wrote,
JB gave us witnesses/survivors lists
. And then under
What we think
, she added,
So JB’s probably not the one who took them away
.

“
JB
?” Chip asked.

“Janitor boy,” Katherine said. “I would have called him CJB for ‘cute janitor boy,’ but that’s just my opinion, and probably not how you and Jonah think about him, so—”

“Katherine!” Jonah growled through gritted teeth. He pointed to the list. “Focus!”

Katherine grinned triumphantly, not looking chastised at all. Dimly, Jonah realized that she may have been
trying
to aggravate him, to jolt him out of his gloom. She shook her wet hair gleefully, sending out drops of water all over the paper.

Wait a minute—had Katherine really agreed to come down here to Chip’s without blow-drying her hair first? Jonah hadn’t noticed before, because he’d been so freaked out. But this undoubtedly meant that Katherine
didn’t
have a crush on Chip. Or, if she did, she thought this mystery was more important…

Jonah decided to apply his brainpower to Katherine’s list instead of her love interests.

“JB was trying to protect us from E,” he said, pointing to the
What we know
column. “And
E
stands for
enemy
.”

Nobody argued with him.

“Okay,” Katherine said after a pause, and wrote it down.

“We need another category,” Chip said. “
What we don’t know
—why was JB protecting us? What did E want to do with us?”

He pulled out another sheet and handed it to Katherine. None of them commented on the fact that
What we don’t know
got a whole sheet of paper, while
What we know
and
What we think
got only a half sheet apiece.

JB tried to warn Jonah
went into the
know
category, but they all agreed that
the phones are tapped
only qualified for
What we think
.

“Angela vanished into thin air,” Jonah said. “Know.”

He was glad that Chip didn’t challenge that one.

Without asking, Katherine added
into a time warp?
and
with our lists
under
What we think
.

“And then under
What we don’t know
, you can add about a billion questions,” Chip said. “How? Why? How did she know the time warp was there? How did she go through it today when she’d been studying time travel for thirteen years and hadn’t gotten anywhere?”

Katherine chewed on the pen thoughtfully.

“I bet JB helped her,” she said.

“But Jonah would have seen JB if he’d been there with her,” Chip objected.

“Maybe he told her how the time warp worked,” Katherine said. “Or…maybe he was invisible.”

Invisible?
Jonah thought.
We’ve got to worry about invisible people too?

“Angela didn’t look upset or anything,” Jonah said. On the contrary, when he pictured her stepping into nothingness, re-living that moment he’d already re-lived so many times already, he thought she’d had an excited expression on her face. Or…determined. “But—maybe we should call her. Just to make sure. And to see if she has our lists.”

“Call her?” Chip asked. “Fifteen minutes ago, you wouldn’t even talk to me on the phone!”

“I know, but if we’re careful about what we say, just kind of hint that we want to meet with her again, to find out what happened, to see if she has our lists…. Hand me the cell phone, Katherine,” Jonah said.

Katherine dug the phone out of her pocket and handed it over.

“We don’t have her phone number anymore, remember?” Chip said.

“I’ll call information,” Jonah said. He was already starting to punch in numbers.

Katherine scrunched up her face, like she was thinking hard.

“She lives on Stonehenge,” she said. “Stonehenge Court or Street or something like that—I remember thinking that someone involved in a mystery should have a mysterious address like that.”

“Thanks,” Jonah said. To the operator, he said, “I need the number for an Angela or A. DuPre on Stonehenge—DuPre—
D-U-P-R-E
.”

“Thank you,” the operator said. And then, a second later, “I don’t have a listing for any A. or Angela DuPre anywhere in the city.”

“But I know she’s there!” Jonah protested.

“Maybe her number’s unlisted,” the operator said. “Or she just uses a cell phone. Lots of people are doing that now, and they’re not in the directory.”

It would be like Angela to have an unlisted number,
Jonah thought.

“Thanks anyway,” he said, and cut off the call.

Chip and Katherine were staring, like they were worried about him now.

“It doesn’t matter,” Chip joked. “She’s probably not back from the time warp anyhow.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Katherine said. “You could go through a time warp, and stay in the other time for thirty years, and then return just a split second after you left.”

“I was still watching a split second after she left,” Jonah said grumpily. “She didn’t come back.”

Not being able to find Angela’s number bothered him more than it should have. It was like he didn’t have control over anything.

“Okay, then,” Katherine said, with forced cheer. “How about all the stuff Angela told us about the plane and the babies? And—her theory about you two being from the future?”

“That’s all impossible,” Chip said. “Isn’t it?”

And yet, they’d sort of begun treating it like it was real, like they believed it.

“Why would anyone come back from the future to now?” Jonah asked. “What’s happening now that matters? And here—in Ohio?”

“Yeah,” Katherine said. “If you’re going to go back in time, you save Abraham Lincoln from being assassinated. Or John F. Kennedy. Or, you keep the
Titanic
from sinking. Or you stop 9/11. Or—I know—you assassinate Hitler before he has a chance to start World War II.”

“Or you bet on who’s going to win the World Series, which you already know because—duh!—you’re from the future,” Chip said. “Or you invest in Microsoft stock before anybody’s ever heard of Microsoft.”

Jonah shrugged.

“Maybe there’s something big that’s about to happen here that we don’t know about,” he said. He saw Katherine trying to suppress a shiver. “What I don’t get is why there are two sides fighting over us.” He looked down at Katherine’s list, which was full of
JB
’s and
E
’s. “What do they want from us?”

“And how can we find out before it’s too late?” Katherine asked.

They were stymied.

For the next week, practically every day, one of them had a brainstorm.

On Monday, Katherine thought of actually walking or riding their bikes to visit every single kid in Liston they remembered being on their list. But they couldn’t remember very many street names, and the ones they remembered turned out to be way over on the other side of the highway, too far away.

On Tuesday, Jonah thought of calling other DuPres to ask them if they knew Angela, and, if so, if she was all right.

“JB and E already know that we know Angela,” he argued with Chip and Katherine. “They saw us talking to her. What could it hurt if they find out that we’re looking for her again?”

His arguments didn’t matter—the only DuPre he could find from directory assistance had just moved from Louisiana and had never heard of Angela.

On Wednesday, Chip said, “That’s it. I’m calling Daniella McCarthy back. I don’t care who hears me.”

But her phone rang and rang and rang, and then a computerized message clicked on: “This phone has been disconnected.” There was no other number given.

“Ergh!” Chip kicked his desk chair, and sent it spiraling across the basement floor. “They probably canceled their landline and went down to just cell phones during the move. That’s what we did—oh, why didn’t I call her back last week?” He pounded his fists on the desk.

On Thursday, Katherine thought of riding their bikes slowly down Robin’s Egg Lane, looking for
FOR SALE
or
SOLD
signs or—if they got really lucky—moving vans. They did find a McCoy Realty sign stuck in the yard at 1873, which
sounded
right to Jonah and Chip. But when they knocked at the door, the sound echoed vacantly. All the windows were covered with blinds, so they couldn’t see in.

A woman stepped out on the porch across the street.

“Nobody’s going to buy your band’s candy or raffle tickets or whatever it is you’re trying to sell there,” she said. “That house has been empty for months. And while we’re at it, I don’t want to buy anything either.”

“Oh, we’re not selling anything,” Katherine said quickly.

Jonah jabbed his elbow into her ribs, because what if the woman jumped to a worse conclusion? What if she thought they were planning to break in?

Katherine ignored him.

“We’re just from the, uh, middle school Welcome Wagon,” she said. “We had information that a thirteen-year-old girl was moving in here, and we came to make sure that she feels comfortable in Liston. Do we have our dates wrong? Do you know when the McCarthys are moving in?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that,” the woman said. “I do seem to remember hearing something about the paperwork on that house being messed up, delaying everything—but, of course, it’s none of my business.” She gave them a sharp look. “Or yours.”

Friday afternoon, Jonah shoved aside his math homework and wrote on a clean sheet of paper:

Then he tore the paper into pieces and threw it in the trash can beside his desk, because how would JB know that they called him JB? And what if E found the note instead?

It was a good thing that he’d destroyed the evidence so quickly, because a few moments later his mom poked her head in his door.

“Jonah, I didn’t want to bring this up in front of Katherine, but we got this flyer in the mail today.” She held out a glossy sheet of paper. Halfway across the room, Jonah could read the title:
Adoptees on the Cusp of Their Teen Years…a Conference for Adolescents and Their Parents.

“It’s part of a series put on by the county department of social services,” she said. “This conference is just for families in Liston and Clarksville and Upper Tyson, so it probably wouldn’t be a huge crowd. You’ve just been acting so…disturbed lately, ever since we met with Mr. Reardon. Not that I blame you—I was disturbed by that man too! But even before that, you were asking questions about your adoption…. All the books say the teen years are when a lot of adoptees begin struggling with their identities. I think we should go to this. You and Dad and me.”

Liston and Clarksville and Upper Tyson
, Jonah thought.
Perfect.

“Okay,” Jonah said, trying very hard to hide his eagerness. He needed to sound reluctant, put-upon—maybe even still disturbed. He tried to sound as if something new had just occurred to him, as if he didn’t much care: “Oh—could we make a copy of that? I think Chip and his parents will want to go too.”