Free Caught (Missing) by Margaret Peterson Haddix Page B

tracers—they just made him feel guilty.
    Like now. Over by the window, Mileva was awash in tracer lights. In original time, it seemed, she was supposed to have fallen asleep over Albert’s papers and the picture of Lieserl. Her tracer lay sprawled in her seat, disturbed only by an occasional grimace that probably just meant she was having bad dreams.
    But the real Mileva was still wide awake, sitting upright and poking and prodding the Elucidator, muttering under her breath.
    What if she broke it?
    What if she figured it out?
    She seemed smart—maybe not Albert Einstein smart, but determined and strong-willed enough to possibly make up the difference.
    Jonah wished he could shut his own brain off entirely.
    Hours passed. Eventually Katherine kicked him, and Jonah realized that, whether he’d managed to sleep or not, the night was coming to an end. Dim light crept in through the window, and Jonah could just barely make out lumps in the near-darkness that might be buildings outside. They seemed to be in a city again—was it Budapest?
    Jonah had already forgotten that Katherine had kicked him. She seemed to be trying again to get his attention—jarring his shoulder this time.
    “Mileva’s writing something,” Katherine hissed in his ear. “Can you lean over without her knowing and make sure it’s not anything about the Elucidator or us?”
    Jonah nodded silently. He leaned just far enough that he could see the words on the card in Mileva’s lap:
    Dear Johnnie,
    I’m already in Budapest. It’s going quickly, but badly. I’m not feeling well at all. What are you up to, little Johnnie? Write me soon, okay?
    Your poor
    Dollie
    Mileva moved her hand, and Jonah realized she was adding a date in the top right corner: August 27, 190  . . . Before he could quite read the last digit, she was folding the letter and slipping it into an envelope. No portion of her body glowed with tracer light, so Jonah knew that nothing she was doing had been changed by contact with him and Katherine.
    “It’s not about us,” Jonah whispered back to Katherine. “It’s just a love letter to Albert.”
    Now, why had he called it that? There hadn’t been a single “I love you” or “I miss you” in the whole letter. But it was as if every word had that as its secret meaning.
    For the first time since they’d left the twenty-first century, Jonah let himself think about Andrea, the girl he’d had a crush on ever since their trip to 1600. He didn’t like remembering the “let’s just be friends” talk she’d given him when they got back to the twenty-first century. But he could see writing a letter to her—or, well, a text message or e-mail, anyhow—almost like Mileva’s.
    Dear Andrea,
    I’m in 190—well, something. I can’t tell how this trip is going, because I can’t figure anything out. But how are you? Are you frozen like everyone else in the twenty-first century? Or are you somewhere worrying about me? If you could, would you let me know how you are? And . . .
    Katherine jostled Jonah’s shoulder again.
    “You’re not going to make fun of love letters?” she asked incredulously. “Have you actually grown up, or something?”
    “I haven’t gotten enough sleep to do anything,” Jonah mumbled.
    The train stopped, and Mileva got out, mailed her letter—and vomited once again. Jonah hoped scarlet fever wasn’t terribly contagious, or that it was one of those diseases that he and Katherine had been vaccinated against as infants.
    The rest of the day passed in a sleep-deprived blur of waiting in train stations and waiting on trains. Finally, in the late afternoon, Jonah heard the conductor walking through the train car calling out, “Next stop, Novi Sad. Novi Sad, next stop.”
    Jonah looked out the window at acres and acres of farm fields turning brown in the August sun. It was as if all the mountains they’d seen back in Switzerland and Germany and Austria had been ironed out flat. He nudged Katherine