Jonah patted Andrea on the back.
“See—this isn’t about you!” Jonah said. “It’s just—you need to be with your tracer! We’ll find it! I promise!”
“Go away,” Andrea mumbled. “Leave me alone.”
Brendan crouched beside her, leaving his tracer behind.
“Andrea?” he said. “I don’t know anything about your tracer, and I don’t know why my tracer hasn’t been thinking about Croatoan Island. But I can tell you—Antonio and me, our tracers—we’re honorable tribesmen . . . er, people. If our tracers told John White we’ll take him to Croatoan Island, then that’s where we’re going. And that’s probably where your tracer is, right?”
“That’s what . . . we think,” Andrea said, sniffing a little.
“Jonah?” Katherine said, in a too-loud voice. “Don’t you think we should get back to looking for that rubber band?”
“Uh, right,” Jonah said.
They walked together back toward the canoe.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Katherine asked.
“I don’t know,” Jonah said. “What are you thinking?”
This could have been part of a comedy routine, but Katherine didn’t have the slightest trace of humor in her voice. And Jonah didn’t feel anything like laughing.
“Maybe the people who wrote history didn’t know anything about John White’s trip in 1600,” Katherine said. “But time travelers would.”
“JB knew,” Jonah said grimly.
“And . . . even before Second got involved . . . JB wouldn’t have sent us back with Andrea if she was just supposed to have a happy little family reunion,” Katherine said. “There’s still something we’ll have to rescue her from.”
“Well, yeah,” Jonah said. “And then who’s going to rescue us from Second?”
Jonah woke the next morning to the smell of cooking fish. He groaned and rolled over.
Andrea was sitting in the sand right beside him, leafing through one of John White’s sketchbooks. She must have been waiting for him to wake up, because she looked up immediately.
“I was mean to you yesterday,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Jonah said.
“No,” Andrea shook her head, her hair whipping side to side. “It’s not. I—Do you ever feel like you just have to really, really care about something—or someone—or else you might as well be dead?” She didn’t give Jonah much of a chance to answer. Which was good, because Jonah didn’t know what to say.
Andrea stared down at the sketchbook and kept talking.
“Ever since my parents died, I just latch on to things . . . and I forget . . . other people have feelings too.”
Was there any way Jonah could say something like, Oh, I do have feelings—I have feelings for you? Without having it sound completely cheesy?
Jonah decided that was impossible.
“It’s okay,” he said again. “It’s just . . . why do you care so much about your grandfather? You don’t even know him!”
“I feel like I do,” Andrea said quietly. “What I read about him, what he wrote about trying to get back to his family, it’s kind of how I feel about . . . you know.” She didn’t have to say, my parents. “And just looking at the pictures he drew—they’re so real.”
She tilted the sketchbook toward Jonah. He sat up so he could get a better look at the picture she was gazing at. It showed another Native American village, but from a different perspective than the other drawing Jonah had seen. It was as if John White had stood in the village square and looked all around: at dogs sleeping in the sunlight, at little boys guarding the cornfield, at women braiding their daughters’ hair.
“He really was a good artist,” Jonah said, though he didn’t really know anything about art. “That picture makes you feel like you’re right there, and all those people are still alive.”
And, Jonah realized, they might be.
“I’m telling myself this is what Croatoan Island is going to be like,” Andrea said. “Except there’s a big group of extra people who came from England right over here”—she pointed to the empty section of paper, off to the side—”who fit right in. And a grandfather/governor/artist who’s totally awake and ready to draw them all. . . .”
“Andrea,” Jonah began.
“Just let me have some hope, okay?” Andrea said.
They set off as soon as they’d cleaned up from their all-fish breakfast. It turned out that Katherine and Andrea had figured out a rhythm to hanging out in the canoe all day. No matter what, everyone had to keep out of the way of Brendan and Antonio, who had to stay with their tracers to paddle, so the real canoe and the tracer canoe stayed precisely together as one—all so John White wouldn’t get separated from his tracer. But sometimes Brendan and Antonio’s tracers would take breaks from paddling, and then the two boys could come out of the tracers enough to talk.
Jonah decided it was a good time to test Brendan’s and Antonio’s memories, or at least find out a little more information. He’d missed a lot when he was sleeping.
“Okay,” he said, when the two boys were taking their first break, as the canoe drifted in the gentle current. “I know you said your tracers aren’t letting you know anything about Croatoan Island—”
“They’re just not thinking about it,” Brendan corrected lazily, stretching in the back of the canoe. “That’s all.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right,” Jonah said. “But do they know anything about what happened to the Roanoke Colony? I mean, they were right there!”
“Antonio and I have heard rumors in our tribe,” Brendan said, “that there might be a boy with yellow hair living two tribes away. That he might be one of the people-who-look-like-ghosts who came across the waters to Roanoke, many moons ago.”
“‘Many moons ago?’” Antonio snorted. “Don’t talk like that around them. They’ll laugh.”
“No we won’t,” Andrea said softly.