Revealed (5 page)

But kid Mom looked so young . . . and vulnerable . . . and unprotected.

“How about if you stay here and
I
go out knocking on doors?” Jonah suggested. “You can take it easy, and—”

“I am not going to ‘take it easy'!” Mom said through gritted teeth. “I am not going to deal with something bizarre and incredible like this by sitting around playing Angry Birds on my cell phone!”

“Is that what Dad is doing?” Jonah asked weakly.

Kid Mom nodded.

“It's like
Home Alone
up there,” she said.

At least he's staying safe inside the house
, Jonah thought. He sighed.

“Maybe we should both go out knocking on the neighbors' doors,” he suggested.

It would give him a chance to grill Mom about exactly who Charles Lindbergh was. And maybe after just a few houses Jonah could convince her that her plan was pointless, and maybe she would come back to the house and relax by trying on Katherine's other clothes—er, no, not if Mom had been such a tomboy. Maybe he could talk kid Mom and kid Dad into going down into the basement to play Ping-Pong. The basement would be a safe place for them, wouldn't it?

Mom was already over by the shoe caddy by the back door, grabbing her running shoes.

“Oops, these are too big too,” she muttered. She pulled out a pair of Katherine's, held them beside her feet, and complained, “And these are too small. I feel like Goldilocks.”

Jonah was hoping no shoes meant that Mom would have to stay inside. But before he could suggest that, she began pulling on Jonah's second-best sneakers.

They fit.

“I'm going, with or without you,” Mom said.

Jonah scrambled to catch up.

By the time he had his own sneakers on his feet, Mom was already out the door. She was walking slowly, though, looking around suspiciously as she rounded the corner of the house toward the front yard.

It was a sunny November day, and nothing around them seemed to require suspiciousness. The white picket fence bordering the front of their yard stood perfectly straight; the two-story houses up and down the street were neat and well-tended; the trees and bushes and fall flowers that surrounded the houses seemed just as tidy. From what he could see around them, Jonah thought the worst danger anyone could expect here was that in a strong gust of wind the red maple in the front yard might drop a few leaves on his head.

But just last night Jonah—and Katherine and Chip and another friend, Daniella—had been kidnapped from the sidewalk between the Skidmores' house and Chip's. And only a week before that Jonah and Katherine had been zapped from the doorstep in front of Chip's house back to the year 1903. And . . .

Stop thinking about the past
, Jonah told himself.
Figure out how to fix today's problems.

“Um, Mom?” Jonah said, though it seemed wrong to call her that. He was almost tempted to say,
Linda?
He forged ahead anyway. “Who was Charles Lindbergh?”

Kid Mom turned and looked at him as though she had no clue why he was asking. Maybe she'd forgotten the conversation she and Jonah and Katherine had had in the living room before she'd un-aged thirty years.

“One of those old-time pilots,” Mom said. “The pilot who—”

Mom broke off suddenly. Her eyes bulged slightly, as if something had taken her by surprise. She gulped, swayed dizzily back and forth—and then crumpled to the ground.

“Mom!” Jonah cried.

He fell to his knees beside her, pushing back her hair and the hood of Katherine's stupid CHEER! sweatshirt.

Check for the pulse point on her neck
, Jonah told himself, scrambling to remember what he'd learned about fainting for his First Aid badge in Boy Scouts. Healthy people didn't just collapse like that, did they? Especially not healthy thirteen-year-olds?

What if un-aging grown-ups back to being thirteen was something that could kill them?

Mom's pulse was thumping nice and strong, and her chest rose and fell in what seemed to be normal breaths. But her eyelids didn't even flutter. Jonah started to grab her shoulders to try to shake her back to consciousness. But maybe he wasn't in such great shape himself—he was
trembling so much that his left hand slipped from her shoulders and slid up onto her neck.

Something metallic hit his hand.

A necklace?
Jonah wondered.

He was pretty sure Mom hadn't been wearing a necklace.

The metal thing seemed to be embedded in Mom's neck. And it seemed to be barbed, like a dart or . . .

Jonah decided he didn't have time to analyze it further. All he needed to know was that this was some kind of projectile that had knocked Mom out. He grabbed Mom's feet and pulled her back around the corner of the house. He thought about pulling the barb out, but was afraid that could cause worse damage. Instead he flattened his back against the side of the house and peeked around toward the front.

This is when I need Chip with all his Middle Ages training
, Jonah thought desperately.
He'd know how to figure out where that barb was shot from. He'd know how to set up a defensive battle station. He'd know how to put together scary-looking weapons from a few sticks from the ground and a handful of dead oak leaves. And he'd know how to fight off dozens of enemies. . . .

Jonah didn't even know how far it was safe to stick his neck out, peeking around the corner of the house.

He couldn't see anything out of the ordinary—he
could barely see anything at all through the various tree limbs blocking his view. Why had his parents in their adult days thought it was such a great idea to plant a spruce tree right there at the corner? He shoved his head out a little farther—and then instantly jumped back.

“Ha-ha!” someone screamed right beside him, right at the edge of the tree. “You should have seen your face a minute ago!”

Jonah backed away even more, slamming his elbow into the side of the house. He had to get that much distance to actually see who was laughing at him: a kid. A kid who looked about thirteen; a kid with thick, glossy dark hair; a kid who was so good-looking Jonah was willing to bet all the girls at his middle school would be in love with him . . .

That is, if the kid actually was in middle school, and Jonah was pretty sure that he wasn't.

At least he wasn't
now.

“JB?” Jonah whispered.

“He's a genius!” the kid said mockingly, and laughed again.

“You went back to being thirteen too?” Jonah asked.

This time the kid—JB—only nodded and frowned.

“Do you know how to fix it?” Jonah asked.

“Well . . . ,” kid JB began.

“No,” someone else said, stepping up quietly behind JB.

This was another kid—probably another thirteen-year-old, Jonah guessed. But this was a very tall, very pretty girl with dark skin.

“Angela?” Jonah said. “You're a kid now too? Are there any adults around who are still adults? What about Hadley or the other time agents—”

“We can't reach Hadley or any other time agent,” kid Angela said, her face creased with worry. “Whatever changed us also zapped our Elucidator.”

“We know the un-aging affected at least this immediate area,” kid JB said. “We're not sure how much farther it went than that, but Angela and I were just turning in to your neighborhood—”

“—when suddenly my feet didn't reach the gas pedal anymore,” kid Angela said. “Or the brake.”

“I had to dive down and hit the brake for her,” kid JB bragged.

“I told you, I would have gotten it myself!” kid Angela argued. “I was stretching my leg out and sliding forward . . . And then I was going to move the seat up—that was all I needed! You almost
caused
an accident, getting in my way!”

JB and Angela didn't sound like themselves. It wasn't just their kid voices—it was the fact that they were squabbling like . . . well, like Jonah and Katherine.

It's like one of those stupid cartoons from when we were little
,
Jonah thought.
Baby Looney Tunes. Bugs Bunny should not be a baby. Tasmanian Devil should not be a baby. JB and Angela should not be teenagers.

JB and Angela were supposed to be the adults. The ones who could take care of Jonah's problems.

Jonah looked down at kid Mom, still unconscious on the ground. She was someone else who had always taken care of Jonah. But now she had dead leaves blowing over against her body, starting to bury her.

Jonah shivered.

“So—were you two planning to shoot my mom with a tranquilizer dart even
before
you turned into teenagers?” he asked, and was surprised at how much anger his voice carried. “It
was
just a tranquilizer dart, right? What's going on?”

He was relieved to see JB nod and mumble, “Right—just a tranquilizer dart.”

But then Angela admitted, “We don't know what's going on.”

At least now there was a little bit of the compassion in her voice that she'd always had as an adult.

Kid JB stepped closer to Jonah, practically pushing kid Angela out of the way.

“We got a report that there was an unspecified threat against all thirty-six of the missing kids from history who were now in the twenty-first century,” JB said. Jonah had
come to appreciate how authoritative JB's adult voice almost always sounded; even when everything was falling apart around them, JB as an adult could usually still sound calm and confident and in control.

Kid JB sounded like this too. But that tone sounded fake coming from a kid. It made Jonah want to punch kid JB, not listen carefully and do what he said.

Jonah made himself listen anyway.

“Angela and I were hurrying to watch over you and Chip,” kid JB continued.

“Yeah, well, you were too late,” Jonah said bitterly. “And wrong about who was actually in danger.”

The other two kids stared at him blankly.

“You're still here,” JB said, practically smirking. “You look fine.”

“Katherine's not,” Jonah said. And somehow, having so many adults suddenly become much younger, Jonah kind of wanted to act a lot younger himself, too. What he really wanted to do was throw himself down on the grass and sob and scream and pound his fists like a toddler throwing a tantrum.

He didn't do any of that.

JB and Angela just kept squinting stupidly at him.

They don't know
, Jonah thought numbly.
They don't know anything about what happened.

Did that also mean that they wouldn't know how to get Katherine back?

Jonah gritted his teeth and swallowed hard. And then he forced himself to tell them everything that had happened. The other two only interrupted once, to repeat incredulously, “Charles Lindbergh? It was Charles Lindbergh in your living room?”

“That's who Mom said it was,” Jonah said. “She acted totally certain.”

The other two exchanged worried glances. Jonah could tell they were really hoping Mom was wrong.

“Here—see for yourself,” Jonah said, remembering that he still had the cell phone in his pocket. He pulled it out, scrolled over to the photo roll, and showed the other two. “Katherine took a picture.”

Angela took one glance and nodded.

“That's Charles Lindbergh all right,” she said.

Digging around in his pockets reminded Jonah that he also had the scrap of paper Lindbergh had left behind. He showed that to JB and Angela too.

And then there wasn't anything else to tell.

JB was backing away from the Lindbergh paper. He smashed right into the spruce tree and didn't even seem to notice.

“This is bad,” he said dazedly. “Really, really bad.”

“Thanks for your expert analysis,” Jonah said sarcastically. “What should we do?”

JB winced and clutched his chest. He seemed to be struggling to catch his breath.

“Had asthma as a child . . . the first time,” he gasped. “I guess . . . it's back. Need . . . inhaler. Anyone have . . . ?”

Did JB think there'd be one just lying around somewhere?

Jonah racked his brain for some other solution. Hadn't they said in his first-aid training that there were treatments for asthma that didn't involve drugs?

“Do you remember any special breathing techniques you can use?” Jonah asked.

JB shook his head.

“Would it help to be around steam?” Jonah asked.

“Maybe?” JB struggled to say. “I think my mama used to . . . boil a pot of water . . .”

Jonah tugged on kid JB's arm, pulling him toward the door back into the house.

“Could you bring my mom inside too?” he hollered back at kid Angela. “I don't want to just leave her lying on the ground!”

Angela nodded, but her eyes were wide with fear and worry. She looked even more terrified than Jonah felt.

And I thought if JB or Angela showed up, they'd solve everything
,
Jonah thought frantically.
But now JB is just someone else who needs my help. . . .

Jonah hesitated. He stopped dragging JB toward the house just long enough to toss the cell phone back to Angela.

“After you get Mom inside, call the school,” Jonah said over his shoulder. “The number's on the refrigerator door—Harris Middle. Pretend to be Chip's mom or Chip's dad's assistant or something like that—some kind of adult. Tell them there's an emergency at home and Chip needs to get out of school
now
.”

If the adults weren't going to be any help—for that matter, if they weren't even adults anymore—then Jonah needed another kid around he could count on.

And since Chip had lived part of his life during the Middle Ages, maybe he knew how someone could survive an asthma attack without an inhaler.