Second frowned.
“But I was so sure,” he muttered.
Jonah decided it was time to take control of the conversation.
“Don’t worry, Andrea,” Jonah said. “Remember, this is all just temporary. We’re going to fix time-well, whatever that means now-and then we’re all going back to the twenty-first century and have our normal lives.”
Normal was sounding especially good to Jonah right now. Even the most boring moments of his ordinary twenty-first-century life seemed achingly precious. The time he’d spent brushing his teeth. Opening the refrigerator to look for a snack. Flipping through the TV channels with the remote control. Waiting for the computer to fire up. Sitting through Social Studies class at school and feeling like none of it really mattered-it was all history and dead and gone and past…
“Oh, Jonah,” Andrea said, shaking her head sadly. A hint of tears glittered in her eyes once again. But, oddly, this time it seemed as if she was about to cry over Jonah. She was staring straight at him, just as intently as she’d always stared at her grandfather. “You never give up, do you? I just hope…”
She broke off, because something strange was happening to Second. He let out a strangled cry: “Erp-” It sounded like he was having trouble swallowing.
No. It was more like he was being swallowed.
In the next moment, Second seemed to age several years at once. His blond hair suddenly looked blond and brown, all at once. His face seemed to unravel and reknit itself into a completely different form.
And then Second pitched forward, looking like himself again. But he left behind someone else in the space he’d occupied a moment earlier. Someone taller and older, with darker hair.
JB.
JB glared down at Second on the ground before him.
“Traitor,” JB said.
43
The next thing JB did was surprising: He reached out and grabbed Katherine with one arm and Jonah with the other, so he could draw them both into a tight hug.
“I was so worried about you,” he murmured. “Are you all right?”
Jonah pushed away, because he wanted to show JB he could stand on his own two feet.
“We’re fine,” he said. He couldn’t stop himself from adding the rest: “Now that you’re here.”
It was such a relief to know that JB would fix the mess that Second had made of time. It was such a relief to see the smug look wiped from Second’s face. He seemed almost harmless now, lying stunned in the sand.
“I’m sorry,” Jonah told JB. “We let him manipulate us.”
“You did the best you could, under the circumstances,” JB said. “Nobody could expect any more than that.”
Katherine surprised Jonah by pulling away from JB and kicking Second’s shoulder.
“You lied to us!” She cried. “You were working for Gary and Hodge the whole time, weren’t you? You were going to steal Andrea and Brendan and Antonio-and, and Jonah-and take them off to be adopted in the future… and you probably would have left me here alone…”
She would have kicked him again, except that JB pulled her back.
“Katherine,” he said warningly. “He actually didn’t tell you any lies. A few evasions, yes, a few partial truths, but no actual lies.”
Katherine stopped in confusion.
“But-he said he worked for you! He said he was your projectionist!”
“That’s true,” JB said grimly. “Or-it was.” He narrowed his eyes, peering down at Second. “You’re fired.”
“Wh-what?” Second moaned.
“You heard me,” JB said. “Would you like to hear my reasons? Number one, for sabotaging a crucial time mission, completely subverting the purpose of sending these kids back in time. Number two, for repeatedly endangering six lives-all the kids’, plus John White’s. No, make that seven lives. I’ll count the dog, too. Number three, for double-crossing my every effort to find Jonah and Katherine and Andrea after they disappeared from contact.”
Jonah felt oddly cheered by this item on the list. He knew JB wouldn’t have left them stranded and scared on Roanoke.
“Weren’t you looking for Brendan and me?” Antonio interrupted. Jonah was surprised-he hadn’t even noticed when the other two boys and Dare had shown up beside them.
JB glanced sympathetically at Antonio and broke off his list making.
“To the best of my knowledge-which, obviously, wasn’t very good-I thought the two of you were still safely in the twenty-first century,” JB said. “You were supposed to be going on with your lives, waiting your turn to go back in time. And”-JB glared at Second again-”it wasn’t their turn yet.”
“But-but-Andrea and us,” Brendan said. “We’re connected.”
“Not really,” JB said. “Only because Gary and Hodge were supremely lazy and sloppy in the way they pulled the three of you out of time in the first place.” He sighed heavily. “This was all so unnecessary.”
“How can you say that?” Andrea asked wildly. Her voice was thick with emotion. “My grandfather-”
“Was a remarkable man,” JB said. “History has never given him the respect he deserved. But neither did time.” He sighed again. “His best efforts were doomed to fail. His connection to you-except as a fairy tale, a pleasant story your mother told you-all of that was supposed to end when you were a baby. You truly were never supposed to see him again.”
“That’s so wrong!” Andrea complained, and this time she made no effort to hide the tears brimming in her eyes.
“You of all people know that things go wrong all the time,” JB said gently. “And I know it’s no comfort, but as a time traveler, I’ve seen so many ways that wrong things can turn out to be right after all, that bad can lead to good, that no one can get the good without the bad coming first…”
“You’re right,” Andrea said, snipping off the ends of her words. “It’s no comfort.”
JB shrugged helplessly.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“What was supposed to happen to Andrea and Brendan and Antonio?” Katherine asked. “What were they supposed to do when they came back in time?”
JB nodded, as if he thought this would be easier to talk about.
“Gary and Hodge kidnapped Andrea from Croatoan Island while she was in the midst of burying all the skeletons and corpses,” he said. “She actually would have been a good candidate for them to take to the future, if they’d just waited a few extra days, until she’d finished.”
“Only the animal bones were left,” Andrea murmured.
It took Jonah a minute to grasp this.
“Hold on,” Jonah interrupted. “That’s all you wanted me and Katherine to do when we came back with Andrea? Help her bury some bones?”
“Not even that,” JB said, shaking his head. “You just needed to be there. My brilliant projectionist said you and the dog would provide the ‘emotional support’ she’d need during her task, which would be too ‘traumatic’ otherwise,” JB’s tone cast doubt on every word. He snorted scornfully. “And I fell for it!” He nudged Second’s shoulder with his foot. “You must have thought I was a complete fool! Trusting you!”
“Wasn’t complete lie,” Second muttered. “Jonah… gaga… over Andrea… Romance always… distracting…”
Now Jonah felt like kicking Second too. He didn’t quite dare to look at Andrea-or anyone else-to see how they took this news. He was grateful when JB ignored Second and kept explaining.
“You wouldn’t think a scattering of animal skeletons would matter so much in the grand sweep of history,” JB continued. “But if Virginia Dare hadn’t moved them, Croatoan Island would have kept its reputation as an evil island. The memory of the plague spread by the Roanoke colonists would have lingered, setting off massacres when the next wave of English colonists arrived…”
“So Virginia Dare did do something crucial to history,” Katherine said. “It wasn’t just that she was famous for being born.”