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Did Chip think they should start interviewing all the kids around them? Jonah could just imagine it:
Gotten any strange mail lately? Ever seen anyone disappear? Know anything about time travel?
He didn’t think that would go over very well with the tough-looking crowd they’d already annoyed. Those kids were standing in a clump off to the side—now that he was behind them, Jonah could see that their sweatshirts all had skulls on the back.

Nice.

“All right!” a short enthusiastic man with wiry hair called as he dashed halfway up a stairway behind the registration table. He spun around to face the crowd. “Can everyone see and hear me now?”

Mumbles. “Yeah.” “Sure.” Someone—Jonah thought it was a kid in the skull group—muttered, “Why would we want to?”

“Great!” the man enthused, ignoring or not hearing the surlier comments. “I’m Grant Hodge, a caseworker at the county department of children’s services. There are soooo many of you—which is absolutely wonderful; I’m not complaining at all—but we’ve decided to break you up into two groups for our activities today. One group will come with me, and the other group will go with Carol Malveaux, over there by the door.” He pointed. “Wave at everyone, Carol.”

A woman with short dark hair lifted her arm and waved vigorously.

“One of us has got to get in the same group as Sarah Puchini,” Chip whispered in Jonah’s ear.

“I know,” Jonah said grimly.

Mr. Hodge was pulling a list out of a folder.

“When I call your name, come stand behind the table if you’re with me, or go over by the door if you’re with Carol. Got it?” Mr. Hodge was saying. “I’ll call my group first.”

“Listen to all the names!” Katherine hissed at Jonah and Chip. “We’ve got to pay very close attention!”

Jonah missed hearing the first name because of Katherine.

“Shh!” He glared at her.

“Jason Ardul,” Mr. Hodge said. “Andrea Crowell.”

Katherine grabbed Jonah’s arm and squeezed hard as a girl with light brown hair quietly slipped around the table at the front.

Jonah and Chip both nodded and mouthed the words, “I know,” at Katherine. Andrea Crowell was a name they all recognized. Jonah stared at the girl, to make sure he’d recognize her later on too. She had her hair pulled back in two braids—the style seemed to suit her, though Katherine would probably say it wasn’t very fashionable. Andrea was gazing down at her shoes, as if she was too shy to look out at the rest of the crowd.

“Maria Cutler,” Mr. Hodge continued. “Gavin Danes.”

Another squeeze from Katherine, this one a surprise. Jonah hadn’t remembered any Gavin.

Jonah got eight more squeezes before Mr. Hodge reached the middle of the alphabet. Katherine looked so excited she might burst, like a Miss America contestant waiting to hear her own name called.

“Daniella McCarthy,” Mr. Hodge said.

Another squeeze, practically breaking Jonah’s wrist this time. Jonah winced, squeezed Katherine’s arm back even harder, and glanced around, because Daniella McCarthy was someone he really wanted to see. But no one was shoving her way forward in the crowd. No one was stepping aside to make way for the girl who’d been so upset about moving.

“Daniella McCarthy?” Mr. Hodge called again.

The name hung in the air while everyone looked around. Jonah saw Katherine bite her lip, grimacing. Then, suddenly, decisively, she pulled the name tag off her shirt, and crumpled it in her hand.

The minute it was out of sight, she called out, “Oops, sorry. I’m Daniella.” She gave a sheepish wave. “My bad. I wasn’t listening.”

“Kath—” Jonah started to call after her, to yell, “you can’t do that!” but she stamped on his foot as she shoved her way forward. The “Kath—” turned into an “ow!” And then she was too far away from him to say anything. She slipped around the table and sidled up between Andrea Crowell and Michael Kostoff.

“What’d she do that for?” Jonah muttered to Chip.

“Beats me,” Chip muttered back.

“If we’re all in the same group because of this, and we don’t get to talk to all the kids, she is in big trouble!” Jonah fumed.

Sure enough, when Mr. Hodge got down to the end of the alphabet, he finished up with, “And Jonah Skidmore and Chip Winston, you’re in my group too. All the rest of you, go with Carol.”

Jonah stomped up to the front of the group, while everyone else around him except Chip was pushing back toward Carol. He slid up behind Katherine and hissed in her ear, “You go tell them you’re in the wrong group right now, so you can talk to the survivors in Carol’s group, or, so help me, I’ll, I’ll…”

He was too mad to think of an adequate threat.

Katherine turned to him with troubled eyes.

“Weren’t you listening?” she whispered back. “There isn’t anyone from the survivors list in the other group.”

Jonah blinked. His fury melted into disbelief.

“What?”

“Mr. Hodge called out every single one of the nineteen names we know, even Dalton Sullivan, who has to be the Dalton on our list,” she whispered. “Jonah, we were being sorted.”

The way she said
sorted
brought out goose bumps on Jonah’s arms. He forced himself to stay calm, to think back, his brain processing information he’d been too angry to fully take in before. Mr. Hodge had called out Sarah Puchini’s name—the blond girl was standing over by Anthony Solbers, a chubby boy with pimples. Haley Rivers was behind the table too and Josh Hart and Denton Price and…

“But there are other kids in this group, too,” he whispered urgently to Katherine. “It’s not just kids from the list.”

Somehow that detail seemed very important, something to hold on to. Jonah didn’t feel like his brain was working very well at the moment, but he knew he wanted other kids around, nonsurvivors. Ordinary kids who had nothing to do with a strange plane or ghost stories or mysterious letters. It was like he believed those kids could protect him.

“Jonah, we never saw the complete list,” Katherine reminded him. “Angela said there were thirty-six babies on the plane. I think Mr. Hodge called out thirty-six names.”

Jonah stared at his sister in astonishment. He didn’t want his brain working properly now. He didn’t want it to reach the conclusion it was racing toward. He wanted to stay numb and ignorant and safe. Most of all, he wanted to stay safe.

Katherine spoke the words for him, shattering his hopes for ignorance.

“I don’t know, I can’t be sure, but I think…,” she began. Her eyes were huge with worry now. “I think, except for Daniella McCarthy, they have all the babies from the plane back together again. Right here. Right now. They have you.”

“Why?” Jonah whispered. But Jonah knew the answer. He didn’t even have to think about it.

Beware! They are coming back to get you.

The words from the letter echoed in his mind, leaving room for nothing else but panic.

“Chip!” he whispered in his friend’s ear. “If they say, ‘Great news! We got an offer to give out free airplane rides this morning’—don’t get on the plane! Do you hear me? Don’t get on any freaking plane!”

“Okay…,” Chip said, puzzled. He apparently hadn’t figured anything out, the way Katherine and Jonah had. He hadn’t been able to hear their conversation.

Jonah didn’t have time to fill him in. He turned back to Katherine.

“Katherine, you’ve got to tell them you’re not Daniella,” he said. “Maybe that will stop them. Maybe if they just realize she’s still in Michigan or wherever—”

“They’d just put me in the other group,” Katherine said. “I’m not leaving you and Chip.”

She crossed her arms, stubbornly, and jutted out her lower lip just like she always did anytime she fought with Jonah. But today Jonah loved her for it, loved her for it even as he wondered,
What if something happens to me and Katherine both? That would kill Mom and Dad….

“Besides, you need me around to figure things out,” Katherine argued infuriatingly.

“You’re not the only one with a brain,” Jonah countered.

“I’m the only one whose brain isn’t traumatized,” Katherine said, looking at Chip, who just now seemed to be putting everything together. His face had gone pale, and he was mouthing the words, “Plane? Plane? Do you really think—?”

At the front of the group, still several steps up on the staircase, Mr. Hodge clapped his hands together.

“All right, group, let’s get started. We’re the lucky ones—we get to go outside first, while Carol’s group is sitting in a classroom,” he said.

“Does that mean we’ll get stuck in a classroom this afternoon?” someone asked. It was one of the kids with the skull sweatshirts.

Jonah missed Mr. Hodge’s answer, because he was thinking,
Oh, please. An ordinary classroom. With some ordinary dull adult voice droning on, so the greatest danger is that I might fall asleep….

Jonah knew he was in greater danger than that. He could feel the adrenaline coursing through his system, his whole body on alert. But he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with all that adrenaline. He didn’t know exactly what the danger was. He didn’t really believe they were going to be herded onto an airplane.

But do they need an airplane to send us somewhere—sometime—else? What if it’s like what happened to Angela, where we take one step forward and suddenly we’re gone?

Katherine jabbed an elbow into his ribs. Jonah realized that he’d begun swinging his head from side to side, his arms tensed, and his fists ready, like someone looking for a fight.

“Don’t act so weird,” she whispered. “People are starting to stare.”

Jonah dropped his fists and forced himself to concentrate on what Mr. Hodge was saying.

“Before I go on, I need to introduce Gary Payne, another caseworker who will be assisting me with your group today,” he said. “Gary, come on up here.”

A younger man, dressed more casually in a sweatshirt and jeans, jogged up the stairs to stand by Mr. Hodge. He was barely taller than Mr. Hodge, but he was much bulkier. Jonah could see bulging muscles where Gary had pushed up his sweatshirt sleeves.

Muscles?

“Is that E?” Jonah leaned over and whispered urgently to Katherine and Chip.

Helplessly, they both shrugged. Who could tell?

“On the hike, I’ll lead the way, and Gary will bring up the rear, to make sure there aren’t any stragglers,” Mr. Hodge said, grinning to make it seem like a joke. Like, who would want to lag behind on such a beautiful day, on such a lovely hike?

Mr. Hodge began explaining the point of the hike, something about fitting into nature, finding one’s identity through connecting with one’s environment.

“For the first part of the hike, I want you to walk in complete silence, to really concentrate on what you’re seeing around you,” he said. “Then we’ll stop and chat about what we’ve discovered in that silence.”

We’re not allowed to talk?
Jonah thought, his panic spiking again.
Not to each other, not to the other kids?

“Let’s head for the middle of the pack,” Katherine whispered. “So Gary and Mr. Hodge can’t see us talking.”

Oh, that’s right. Break the rules.
It was strange how much relief Jonah felt, realizing that was possible.

Mr. Hodge jumped down from the stairs and began leading the group through a hallway and out a door at the back of the school. Jonah let about a dozen kids file out ahead of him; he could see them stretched out across the yard in the sunshine, headed for the woods of the nature preserve. It was a cheerful scene, but Jonah got chills watching. It reminded him of something, something from when he was a little kid….

The Pied Piper
, he thought. He and Katherine had had a book of fairy tales when they were little. She had loved it, but he had hated it, because of one illustration that frightened him: the one of the Pied Piper leading the children of Hamelin to their doom. In the picture the children were skipping and laughing and dancing to the piper’s tune, but Jonah knew what was going to happen to them. He couldn’t stand for them to be so happy when they ought to be scared.

Mr. Hodge isn’t playing any music
, Jonah reminded himself.
He’s not magical. He can’t force us to do anything we don’t want to do.

And yet Jonah was following him, pushing his way out the door….

“We’ve got to warn the other kids,” Jonah murmured to Chip and Katherine.

Katherine looked startled, but Chip nodded and fell back to talk to the boy behind them.

“I’m Chip Winston,” he heard Chip say softly. “I called you a few weeks ago—have you gotten any more strange letters?”

No! That approach would take too long! What if they had only a few more minutes?

Jonah sped up and fell into step with the girl ahead of them. He didn’t even take the time to glance at her name tag, to see if she’d been on their survivors list or not.

“You can’t trust Mr. Hodge or Gary,” he muttered. “Pass it on.”

She gave him an
Are you crazy?
look and pointedly did not step forward to talk to anyone else.

Jonah sighed and stepped up to the next kid himself.

“You can’t trust Mr. Hodge or Gary,” he whispered quickly. “We’re in danger. Be careful.”

Jonah reached three more kids before he felt a hand on his shoulder, just as they were about to step into the woods. It was Gary, who’d rushed up from the end of the line.

“Didn’t you hear the instructions?” he hissed in Jonah’s ear. “This is the silent part of the walk. If you can’t follow directions, you’ll have to stay at the back of the line with me.”

So they stood at the edge of the woods while all the other kids filed past. Katherine shot Jonah a white-faced worried look as she walked by, but there was nothing she could do.

Chip didn’t even glance in Jonah’s direction.

Good
, Jonah thought.
Pretend you don’t know me. Then they won’t be watching you, and you can give out the rest of the warnings….

He could feel the weight of Gary’s hand still on his shoulder, heavier than it should be, holding him in place. Finally the last kid walked past, and Gary let go.

“Okay, your turn,” Gary said quietly. “But remember—no more talking!”

How could Jonah talk when Gary was right behind him, watching?

Despairing, Jonah trudged forward. He could see the other kids snaking along the trail ahead of him, going deeper and deeper into the woods. Jonah had managed to talk to only five of them. Even if Chip reached all the others, would they believe him? What could they do, anyhow?

After about a mile, Jonah realized that Mr. Hodge was gathering everyone together at the front of the line.

“Circle up,” he called out.

He was standing on a rock now, so they could all see him. Jonah joined the back of the crowd and tried to inconspicuously angle himself away from Gary, toward Katherine and Chip. Gary didn’t try to hold Jonah back, but Jonah could feel his eyes on him.

“Few people know this, but there’s a rather extensive cave back here, right off the path,” Mr. Hodge was saying. “It’s one of the best-kept secrets of Clarksville. It’s usually off-limits to the public, but we’ve received special permission to take all of you in. We’ll talk about your identities in the cave.”

Did those words sound ominous to anyone else? Jonah looked around, but most of the kids just looked bored and distant, as if this was a particularly dull class at school.

Mr. Hodge bent down, ready to scramble down from the rock, but then he straightened up again.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said. “There’s a really interesting rock formation, right as you enter the cave. I forget the exact scientific explanation, but there’s something odd about the composition of the rock, so if you spread your hand out and touch it in the right spot, you can feel one patch of the stone that’s about fifteen degrees colder than the rest of the rock. It’s very bizarre. I’ll show you where to touch as we’re going in.”

Then he hopped down from the rock and led them downhill, down a winding offshoot trail toward a crevice behind the rock.

“Touch right here,” he instructed the first boy behind him, a gangly kid who kept tripping over his own feet. Mr. Hodge pointed to an outcropping along a towering stone wall. “Spread your fingers out—feel it?”

“Uh, yeah,” the boy said, sounding surprised.

“Now, you go on through there, and you can sit on one of the benches at the back of the cave,” Mr. Hodge said. “Next?”

Jonah watched a girl repeat the same process. After barely a second with her hand against the wall, she jerked back.

“Ow!”

“Oh, you couldn’t have felt it that quickly,” Mr. Hodge said. “It doesn’t hurt. Here. I’ll show you.”

He took her hand and pressed it against the rock once more.

“See?” Mr. Hodge said.

“Sure,” the girl said, but Jonah had the impression that she was just trying to get away. She followed the gangly boy into the cave.

Jonah watched the next few kids, watched the way Mr. Hodge seemed so determined that each kid touch the rock, that each hand linger on the rock for at least a couple of seconds. It reminded him of something from a movie, a scene he couldn’t quite remember. It was a movie he’d watched at school, in science…the one about that horrible epidemic maybe? Oh, yeah—when the scientists went into their laboratories, where all the deadly viruses were kept, they’d had to place their hands on a scanner to get in, to prove who they really were.

There couldn’t be any dangerous viruses in the cave, could there? Not with it hanging open, the air circulating freely…

Jonah saw his mistake.

“Katherine!” He spoke softly, through gritted teeth, because Mr. Hodge was looking back at him, looking at all the kids coming down the hill.

Katherine turned her head—maybe it would just look as if she’d heard an unusual birdcall and was trying to listen more closely.

Jonah pretended to trip, stumbling against Katherine’s back.

“That’s a hand scanner!” he hissed in her ear. “Like fingerprinting! They’re checking our identities, making sure we really are the babies from the plane, I bet. Whatever you do, don’t touch that rock! Just pretend.”

He watched Mr. Hodge pressing another kid’s hand against the rock, forcing the kid’s palm flat against the stone.

Jonah changed his mind.

“No,” he told Katherine. “Run! Run back to Mom and Dad, tell them we’re in danger, tell them to come and save us….”

Katherine shook her head, nervous red spots standing out on her pale face.

“What could I say that they’d believe?” she whispered. “No. I’m staying with you.”

Jonah thought about grabbing his sister, holding her back, dragging her away to Mom and Dad and safety. Or just bolting himself. The muscles in the backs of his legs tingled, wanting to take off, all but screaming,
Run!
All the adrenaline in his body seemed to have pooled there. It was like the moment in a basketball game when every cell in his body seemed to know,
Time for your breakaway…go! Now!

But what about all these other kids, the ones he and Chip had never gotten a chance to warn? The ones stepping so trustingly into the cave? The ones marveling so stupidly to Mr. Hodge, “Oh, you’re right! It is cold!”? The ones who were actually giggling?

How could he leave them behind?

The kids in front of him kept stepping up to the rock, then into the cave. The kids behind him pressed forward, trapping him and Katherine and Chip between them and the stone wall, the rock, and the cave. Even if Jonah decided to run now, he couldn’t.

The girl in front of Jonah moved up to the stone wall—it was Andrea Crowell; Jonah recognized the braids from behind. She pressed her hand firmly against the rock, tilted her head to the side, deliberating. She turned to Mr. Hodge.

“Does it have something to do with oxidation levels?” she asked.

Behind Andrea, Katherine held her hand toward the wall. Only Jonah was in a position to see that she didn’t actually touch it, that she kept a millimeter of air between her fingertips and the rock.

She stood like that for a long time, then slipped past Andrea into the cave while Mr. Hodge was explaining to Andrea, “I don’t know; I’m not a scientist. I’ve heard the explanation, and it might be something about—what did you call it? Oxi—oops, hold on there, young lady, did you touch the rock?”

He was talking to Katherine now; he’d seen her trying to slip past.

“She did—she took forever,” Jonah complained. “Isn’t it my turn now?”

Quickly, probably hoping that nobody would notice, Mr. Hodge looked back toward Gary, who was watching from the end of the line. Gary gave a small nod, and Mr. Hodge let Katherine past.

Jonah stepped up to the rock. His knees were trembling now; all the adrenaline seemed to have drained away.