Andrea shook her head, her eyes very solemn.
“No, and this is kind of weird,” she said. “I started with Virginia Dare, and I meant to move on, but I just… kept… reading about Virginia Dare.”
“Ooh…” Katherine let out a low, spooky-sounding moan. She’d stopped squinting-now her whole face was lit up with excitement. “So you must have known that’s who you were. Did you just have this feeling about Virginia Dare? Like something subconscious, or not so subconscious, telling you, ‘That’s who you are. It has to be!’”
Jonah glared at his sister. Didn’t Katherine remember how Andrea had reacted back in the time hollow with JB, when JB had said she was really Virginia Dare? That’s not me! That’s not my mother! she’d screamed. Was Katherine trying to upset Andrea again?
But Andrea didn’t scream this time. She just tilted her head thoughtfully to the side, considering Katherine’s questions.
Maybe Jonah didn’t understand anything about girls and their moods.
“I don’t think I knew anything,” Andrea said after a few seconds. “Even subconsciously. I was just really interested in the Virginia Dare story. I think it was because of the grandfather coming back-how hard he tried to get back to his family, and how many times he failed, and then when he finally made it to Roanoke…”
“No one was there,” Katherine whispered.
Jonah should have been immune to all of Katherine’s dramatics after living with her for nearly twelve years. But he couldn’t help shivering at the eerie tone in her voice. Off in the distance, Dare’s barking seemed to have a plaintive, desperate quality to it now.
“That’s not just him barking at the deer anymore, is it?” Jonah asked.
“No-do you think he’s hurt?” Andrea asked. “Fallen into some hole left by a hunter or-oh my gosh, they wouldn’t have had metal leg traps at Roanoke, would they?”
She whirled around and started running toward the sound of Dare’s barking. Jonah and Katherine rushed after her.
They weren’t going back into the woods now, but into an area of tall grasses that whipped against their faces and cut into their arms. Jonah began wishing he’d kept his sweatshirt on, despite the heat, just to protect his skin. But there wasn’t time to stop and put it back on.
Dare’s barking shifted, becoming higher pitched, more panicked.
“Something is wrong!” Andrea called back to Jonah and Katherine. “I can tell. We have to…”
She didn’t finish her sentence. She just sped up.
“Wait, Andrea! You don’t know what’s out there!” Jonah called after her. He didn’t even know what danger he should be worrying about. The mystery man, back to steal Andrea away completely? Whatever enemy had destroyed the Roanoke Colony and the Indian village to begin with? Some other danger the mystery man wanted Andrea to encounter? Pirates, brigands, murderers, thieves…
Listing dangers helped Jonah run faster. But the faster he went, the faster the grasses whipped against his face, against his bare arms, against his ankles. He was glad when the grasses thinned out, but then he was running through sand. It spilled into his shoes, making every step twice as hard.
And then he sped around a corner and discovered that Andrea had caught up with Dare.
The dog wasn’t caught in a metal trap. He wasn’t being carried away by evil time travelers or pirates. Instead, he was crouched on a narrow beach and barking furiously at something out in the water.
“What is it, boy?” Andrea asked him. “What do you see?”
Still running, Jonah put his hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes from the bright sun so he could stare out into the surf. The waves were rocking violently back and forth; it was almost impossible to tell from one moment to the next which section of the water he’d already looked at and which he still needed to scan. There was a dark shape bobbing up and down out there-or was it just a shadow?
Jonah squinted harder and ran closer to the edge of the water. The dark shape began to make sense.
“It’s an upside-down boat,” he said. “Smashed up, like from a shipwreck.” He instantly regretted saying that word. Shipwreck, car wreck-maybe Andrea won’t think about the similarities? “It probably happened years ago,” he added soothingly. “I think sometimes it takes debris like that a long time to wash up onshore.”
“Jonah, it was right side up a minute ago,” Andrea said. She raced to the edge of the water. She jerked off her right shoe, then her left. She rolled up the bottom edges of her shorts.
“What are you doing?” Jonah asked.
Andrea shoved away the sweatshirt she’d knotted around her waist. It dropped onto the sand, one sleeve trailing into the water.
“There was someone in there!” she screamed. “I saw him!”
13
Jonah barely had a moment to think before Andrea plunged into the water.
“No!” Jonah called after her. “It’s not safe!”
Jonah knew there were other objections he should be yelling at her-something about time, about how you weren’t supposed to change time, about how maybe this was a trap or a trick set up by the mystery man? But she was being buffeted by the waves so completely he couldn’t put two words together. She was underwater; she was back on the surface; she was underwater; she was back on the surface…
Beside Jonah, Dare was now barking furiously at Andrea. The dog put one paw into the water, got hit by a huge wave, and backed out, whimpering.
“You’re a lot of help,” Jonah muttered. He dropped the sweatshirt he’d been carrying, so he could cup his hands around his mouth and scream, “Andrea! Come back!”
Andrea turned slightly-maybe to yell back at Jonah-and a wave knocked her sideways, somersaulting her deeper into the water.
She didn’t resurface.
“Andrea!” Jonah screamed.
He threw himself into the water and began paddling desperately toward the spot where he’d seen Andrea disappear. His shoes and clothes got waterlogged within seconds, dragging him down. But he didn’t have time to tug off even his sneakers. He kept pushing forward, doggedly, even though all the water in front of him looked the same now. He couldn’t remember where Andrea had vanished. He reached down, and his fingers brushed something soft-seaweed? Or Andrea’s hair?
Jonah kicked hard, lifting his head high above the water, trying to gulp in a good breath before he dove down to search for Andrea.
The wind seemed to be calling his name.
“Jonah! Jonah!”
Jonah looked to the right, and it was Andrea.
“Swim-parallel-shore!” she called.
Oh, yeah. Jonah knew that. That’s what you did when you got caught in an undertow.
He wasn’t sure if the force tugging at him was really an undertow-or if it was just the dragging weight of his own clothes. But he did a sort of modified dog paddle toward Andrea.
“It’s coming close!” she shouted.
It took Jonah a moment to realize that she meant the boat. It wasn’t just coming close-it was rising up, towering over them. In a minute, depending on how the wave broke, it could be slamming down on them.
“Watch out!” Jonah yelled, just as Andrea screamed, “The man!”
Jonah glanced back at the boat, and caught a quick glimpse of a man’s hand, clutching one of the splintering boards.
“This way,” Jonah shouted, getting a faceful of salty water. It seemed as if an entire gallon had landed in his open mouth. He sputtered and coughed, but still managed to grab Andrea’s arm and shove her toward the shore. That sent Jonah reeling backward, barely able to keep his head above water.
The waves heaved up, then hurled the boat down, down, down…
It didn’t hit Jonah. It hit a rock formation Jonah hadn’t even known was there. The boat shattered instantly, setting off an explosion of broken boards. So now it wasn’t just one boat Jonah had to watch out for, but dozens of sharp, pointed remnants of the boat, constantly being tossed by the waves near Jonah’s head.