Revealed (3 page)

They're just invisible
, he told himself.
Even Katherine and I managed to make that function work on the Elucidators we used. Well, most of the time. Maybe that's all this Lindbergh guy did too—he just pressed some button on an Elucidator in his pocket, and he turned them both invisible. . . .

“Katherine?” Jonah called. “Say something. Make some noise. Please!”

No one answered. No matter how violently Jonah waved his arms around, his fingers didn't brush anything except the lamp, the chair, the candlesticks on the mantel. Things Jonah could see.

Lindbergh and Katherine were gone.

Jonah kept swinging his arms, but it was a despairing gesture now. The side of his hand connected with one of Mom's brass candlesticks, and it crashed down to the hearth below. The candle snapped in half; the brass clanged against the hearthstones like a gong ringing out someone's doom.

Katherine's?
Jonah agonized.
And mine, when Mom sees I dented her candlestick . . . and lost her daughter?

The clanging sounded loud enough to echo through the whole house. Strangely, Mom wasn't rushing back into the living room crying out,
What just happened? What is going on in there?

She'd also stopped yelling about how Jonah and Katherine needed to get into the kitchen right now to eat breakfast.

This was very, very odd.

Did that Lindbergh guy zap away Mom and Dad, too, even without touching them?
Jonah wondered.
Have I lost my entire family?

Jonah didn't think his legs could hold him up as he thought about this awful possibility. But they didn't just hold him up—they also carried him toward the kitchen without him even having to consciously think about it.

“Mom?” he called. “Dad?”

His voice creaked and cracked and came out an octave higher than it should have. How could even his own voice betray him at a time like this?

He got to the breakfast nook area of the kitchen, where Mom had laid out sunflower place mats and perfectly spaced silverware and cereal boxes and cartons of juice and milk. The cell phone Mom had taken from Katherine was lying on the table too, as if that was supposed to be a reward for coming to breakfast. Jonah picked up the phone and slipped it into his pocket, but kept going.

“Mom?” he called again. This time his voice sank to a bass register, but he might as well have been a terrified baby wailing,
Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!

No one was sitting in any of the kitchen chairs, not at the table and not at the desk across the room, either. No one was standing over the stove or near the refrigerator or beside the kitchen counters.

Jonah whirled around the corner and farther into the kitchen anyhow. He started waving his arms again—even though that hadn't worked in the living room, maybe it would work here. This time he hit his hand on a granite countertop. He doubled over in pain, leaning across the top of the island in the center of the kitchen. Just before he squeezed his eyes shut from the pain, he caught a glimpse of blond hair on the other side of the island, below the level of the counter.

His eyes popped back open.

“Katherine?” he cried.

It made no sense for Katherine to have disappeared from the living room in Charles Lindbergh's arms a few moments ago only to reappear here and now, crouched beside the kitchen island. But Jonah was willing to believe that that had actually happened, if it meant that Katherine was back.

If it meant he hadn't lost his entire family.

Jonah spun around the corner of the island, simultaneously crouching lower and lower himself. If Katherine had just gotten back from traveling through time while Jonah was experiencing a couple moments of panic, there was no telling what she'd suffered through; there was no telling how long she thought she'd been gone or how many lies they'd have to tell Mom and Dad to get them to believe that nothing had happened at all.

“Let me help,” Jonah said, reaching out to her.

The blond hair moved. Jonah noticed that Katherine had evidently lost her ponytail rubber band during whatever trip she'd just returned from: her hair was hanging down loose now, spread across her shoulders and hiding her face. Really, the hair was all Jonah could see. But Katherine was painstakingly starting to tilt her head back to look up toward Jonah. The hair was sliding out of the way.

“Don't worry about the timesickness,” Jonah said, patting Katherine's arm. “Take it slow. I'm watching out for you. You're not in any danger.”

He hoped that that was true.

Katherine lifted her hand to brush the hair out of her face. Her mouth appeared. Her nose. Her eyes.

Jonah started blinking frantically, trying to make the girl crouched in front of him look like she was supposed to—to make her look like the sister he'd seen vanish only moments ago. But something was off. It was like this was some almost-Katherine, some slightly changed version that seemed familiar but not quite right.

“Katherine?” he said doubtfully, bending closer.

The girl squinted at him.

“I'm
Linda
Katherine,” she said, as if correcting him. Then she moaned. “Ooohh. I feel so . . . weird. Everything's so strange.”

Jonah rocked back on his heels. His feet slipped out from under him, and his tailbone slammed against the hard tile floor. He barely noticed. All he could do was stare at the girl. He knew who she was now. Not Katherine—she'd never been Katherine. This was the same person who'd been standing in the kitchen a few moments ago, when Charles Lindbergh had disappeared from the living room with Katherine clutched in his arms.

This was Jonah's mom.

Only somehow she'd turned back into a kid again.

“What just happened?” kid Mom groaned. “Why do I feel like . . . like . . .”

Jonah put his hand on her shoulder.

“Don't worry about it,” he told her. “You're just . . . sick. Yeah, that's it. You have a very high fever, so you're imagining things.”

He was proud of himself for coming up with that explanation so quickly. But kid Mom narrowed her eyes at him.

“Don't you lie to me, Jonah Skidmore,” she said, and even though she still looked like Katherine—and about Katherine's age—at least now she sounded more like herself. Or like she was trying to sound like herself. She winced. “I remember now. I have a thirteen-year-old son named Jonah and an eleven-year-old daughter named Katherine. I was getting them ready for school. Why do
I feel like I should be going to school myself right now? And like . . . like maybe I should only be in seventh grade?”

Seventh grade like me?
Jonah thought.
Not sixth, like Katherine?

He wasn't sure what that meant. He didn't know what to say, anyway, so he didn't answer.

Kid Mom flashed him a look that seemed to be a mix of Katherine's
my brother is so annoying
expression and normal, adult Mom's
Jonah, I'm disappointed in you
stern gaze. She gave a little snort that sounded exactly like Katherine when Katherine was about to say something like,
Well, if you can't handle this, I'll take care of it myself!
Then she started to stand up.

Her clothes fell down. Her silky red sweater slipped down on her shoulder, and she had to hold on to the waistband of her black pants to keep them from sliding into a heap on the floor.

“What?” she exclaimed. “These are my tight pants!”

Jonah realized she was still wearing the same clothes she'd had on ten minutes ago when she was regular, normal, adult Mom. Now that she was roughly the same size as Katherine—give or take a few inches and pounds—the clothes seemed clownishly huge.

“Um, maybe you should go upstairs and change?” Jonah suggested. “Maybe you could borrow something from Katherine's closet?”

Kid Mom shot him another annoyed look.

“Just where
is
Katherine, exactly?” she asked suspiciously.

Jonah was saved from having to answer that because suddenly there was a burst of laughter out in the hall.

Another kid raced into the kitchen—a boy with wild, untamable-looking hair and crooked teeth and what appeared to be the beginnings of a monstrous zit on his nose. He was wearing jeans and an Ohio State T-shirt that Jonah was pretty sure had been hanging in his own closet earlier this morning.

“I am having the best dream ever!” the boy exclaimed, practically bouncing up and down. He dashed over to Jonah and threw his arm around Jonah's shoulder. “Hey, old buddy, old pal. I don't know how long this is going to last, but it's like I'm your age again. Thirteen! Whoo-hoo! What do you say we go out in the yard and throw the old pigskin around?”

Jonah was too stunned to speak.

“What's wrong—you scared I'll beat you, now that I don't have to worry about creaky knees?” the boy asked. “Or would you rather play soccer? You pick the sport—I'll take you on! Chal-lenge!”

The boy began dancing around in what Jonah guessed were supposed to be amazing soccer moves.

“Are you . . . ?” kid Mom started to ask, her tone a mix of astonishment and horror.

The boy stopped dancing and leaned in conspiratorially toward Jonah.

“I'll tell you a secret,” he said. “I'm married! I'm thirteen years old, and I'm married. Isn't that crazy?” He started giggling and pointed to Mom. “And I'm married to
her.
Don't you think she's hot?”

Oh, no
, Jonah thought, his worst suspicions confirmed.
No, no, no, no, no.

This was the kid version of Dad.

“. . . Michael?” kid Mom finished.

Kid Dad flashed her a cheesy, slightly panicked grin and leaned back toward Jonah.

“Can you help me out here, buddy?” Dad whispered. “Can you make sure she doesn't see I've got this humongo zit on my humongo nose? Maybe you should stand in front of me. . . .”

He pushed Jonah over to the right, so Jonah blocked Mom's view of Dad's face.

“I'm not blind,” Mom said sarcastically. “I already saw it. And I'm not deaf. I heard everything you said. Could you stop acting like such a fool?”

Dad cowered behind Jonah.

What am I supposed to do now?
Jonah wondered.
Arrange marriage counseling for my thirteen-year-old parents?

How could he keep them out of trouble while he figured out how to rescue Katherine?

Then he had another problem: The kitchen phone started ringing.

“Michael!” kid Mom called out. “Did you already have that conference call? Before we, uh . . . before whatever happened to us happened?”

Kid Dad was practically trembling behind Jonah.

“I'm supposed to call in on my cell phone at seven fifteen,” Dad said. His voice squeaked. “I'm supposed to talk to China. I can't talk to China like this! What am I going to do?”

Dad's voice sounded even more unreliable and squawky than Jonah's ever had. Jonah glanced at the clock on the wall. It was twenty after seven.

The answering machine clicked on, Dad's normal adult voice asking callers to leave a message. After the click, a frantic male voice came on, begging, “Michael? Are you there? Did you oversleep? Did you forget the call with the Chinese? I'm not getting through on your cell phone. This is so not like you—”

Jonah walked over and picked up the phone.

“Mr. Wilson?” he said, because he was pretty sure this was Dad's boss. “This is Jonah Skidmore, Michael's son. My dad's been trying to call you, but something was messed up—it wouldn't even go to voice mail.”

“Put him on now,” Mr. Wilson ordered.

Jonah looked over at kid Dad, who was shaking his head, panic spread across his face.

“That's the problem,” Jonah said. “He woke up this morning with a really bad case of laryngitis. He's been gargling with salt water, but he still can't even whisper.”

“Tell him to try,” Mr. Wilson growled.

Jonah held out the phone to Dad and mouthed,
Fake having laryngitis
, but Dad just backed away, shaking his head even more violently.

Jonah whispered into the phone instead, “I'm sorry, Mr. Wilson. This is a disaster . . .”

“I can't hear you,” Mr. Wilson said. He sighed. “I'll let the Chinese know we have to reschedule. Stay home and try habanero peppers. That always works for me. You've got to get over this soon!”

Jonah hung up the phone. Both his parents were staring at him in astonishment.

“Everyone should be the hero of his own dreams,” kid Dad complained. “But I just acted like a scaredy-cat and my own kid had to take over. This dream is really starting to suck.”

Then he clapped his hand over his mouth and glanced guiltily at kid Mom.

“Oops,” he said. “We aren't supposed to say words like
‘suck' in front of the kids. Speaking of the kids . . . where's Katherine?”

No way was Jonah going to try to explain that one.

“Maybe your dream will get better if you go back to bed,” Jonah said.

“Oh,” Dad said, wrinkling his brow. “I didn't think of that.”

“I'm going upstairs too, for a minute,” Mom said. “I think I'll be able to deal with all this better if I'm not scared the whole time that my clothes are going to fall off.”

“That's—” Dad started to say.

Kid Mom's hand shot out and covered his mouth.

“You are not saying a word about that,” she said. “Not until you're a grown-up again.”

Jonah barely waited until they were out of the kitchen before he had the phone back in his hand. He was pretty sure Mom planned to come right back, so he didn't have much time. There was exactly one grown-up he knew in the twenty-first century who understood about time travel—exactly one grown-up he could call who might be able to help.