Katherine nodded excitedly.
“So the guy who sabotaged us calls himself Second,” she said, acting like she was Sherlock Holmes making a brilliant deduction. “And he’s the same guy communicating with us now.”
Jonah didn’t see any reason for excitement.
“Communicating?” he said bitterly. “That’s not communicating.” He pointed at the melon. “‘You’re doing great’?” He yelled up at the sky, “We are not doing great!”
He suddenly realized that the melon might be a response to their experiment from the night before—or to Andrea’s deciding to keep John White with his tracer, no matter what. Either way, the message was annoying. Insulting. Patronizing. Jonah threw his head back farther and yelled even louder: “We don’t want to do ‘great’ for you!”
“Calm down,” Katherine said. “Second. Let’s see. Second place? Second rate? Second-in-command? Second, as in, not a minute or an hour, but a really, really short period of time?”
“Who cares?” Jonah asked disgustedly.
“If someone calls himself Second, there’s got to be a reason,” Katherine said.
“Yeah, maybe his parents didn’t have any imagination with names, and he’s just their second kid,” Jonah said. He shoved at the melon in Katherine’s hands. “I don’t like this guy, and I’m not going to pretend this makes any sense. And I am not doing anything he tells me to do. Eat this? I’d rather starve!”
Andrea turned to Katherine.
“What about you?” she asked. “Are you going to eat it?”
Katherine stared down at the melon, her face scrunched up in concentration.
“No,” she finally said. “It’s too much like Alice in Wonderland. ‘Eat me,’ and then it’s something that makes you grow or shrink. Or . . . it’s like having a stranger offer you candy. Everybody knows you shouldn’t take that.”
“This isn’t candy,” Andrea said. “It’s a melon. And we’re hungry.”
“Do you think we should eat it?” Katherine challenged.
Andrea bit her lip.
“You two can do whatever you want,” she said. “But . . . I’m going to.”
“What?” Jonah said.
“Look, my grandfather needs to eat, or he’s never going to get better,” she said. “But if there’s a chance this is dangerous, I’m going to try it myself, first.”
She took the melon out of Katherine’s hand and hit it against a rock sticking up in the dust. The melon broke into even halves, revealing five brown pellets where there should have been the fruit and seeds.
“Five?” Katherine muttered.
Andrea flipped over one of the pellets, which was a slightly lighter shade of brown. It had the words, “For Dare,” carved into its surface.
The others weren’t labeled.
“Okay, then, at least test the food on the dog first,” Jonah suggested.
“No, I’ll be the test case,” Andrea said.
She hesitated for a second.
“Don’t do it,” Jonah said. “Please.”
Andrea popped a pellet into her mouth.
Jonah had a sudden image in his mind of the girl in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory puffing up and turning blue after chewing defective gum.
“Spit it out!” he yelled at Andrea.
Andrea swallowed instead.
“Okay, you guys can watch me for the next couple hours, and then we’ll know if it’s safe to give this to my grandfather,” she said calmly.
Jonah shook his head.
“You’re crazy,” he said.
Andrea shrugged.
“Time will tell, won’t it?” she said, grinning slightly.
“That’s not funny,” Jonah objected.
Andrea scooped the other four pellets out of the melon half and put them in her pocket. Katherine and Jonah watched her warily.
“Look, I feel fine so far,” Andrea said. “Not so hungry anymore, but maybe that’s just my imagination. It couldn’t work that fast. Let’s just . . . go on, okay?”
Go on, Jonah thought dazedly. What would that mean? Fixing time? Rescuing Andrea?
Those had been his original goals, but everything was so mixed-up now. How could they fix time when it just kept getting more and more messed up? How could they rescue Andrea when she was determined to do crazy things like talk to her grandfather and eat suspicious food?
Right then, out of the corner of his eye, Jonah saw one of the tracer boys pat John White’s shoulder and stand up. The tracer boy was nodding, nodding. . . . Had John White’s tracer just asked him to do something? The old man’s tracer was still speaking, but he kept blinking, as if he was fighting off sleep. He seemed to be struggling to get the words out before he slipped toward unconsciousness, toward joining the real man completely.
The tracer’s eyes closed, and now Jonah could hear what he was saying because the real man was speaking, too.
“Find it,” John White murmured. Clearly the tracer and the real man were thinking the same thing. “Please find it, I beg of you.”
The tracer boy nodded once more and began walking out of the village.
“Did you hear that?” Jonah asked Katherine and Andrea. “This is a clue! We should follow him, see what he’s looking for!”
Andrea shook her head, firmly.
“I’m staying with my grandfather,” she said.
“But this is something for him!” Jonah said. “Maybe it’s connected to you! Or your tracer!” He turned to his sister. “Katherine?”
Katherine was grimacing.
“You go,” she said. “I’ll stay here with Andrea.”