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“What if it’s a trap?” Katherine asked.

“How could it be a trap?” Jonah asked. “It’s sponsored by the county.”

The two of them were rather listlessly playing basketball in the driveway. Mom had shooed them outside—“Go! Get some fresh air! You’ve both been so mopey lately. I don’t think you’re getting enough exercise!” So they were standing under the hoop, but they kept forgetting to bounce the ball, to shoot it.

Chip was at a dentist’s appointment, so they hadn’t been able to share the news about the conference with him yet.

“The county,” Katherine snorted, giving the ball a hard shove toward Chip. “Yeah, and we got the list of survivors and witnesses from the FBI, which is also the
government
. How do you know that E didn’t set this whole thing up?”

How do we know that the government’s not involved in everything?
Jonah thought.
How do we know that they didn’t help E tap our phones? How do we know that the time travelers—JB or E or both of them—can’t manipulate the government however they want to? How do we know that anything’s safe?

He didn’t care anymore. He was going to the conference, no matter what. He was sick of feeling stymied.

What he said to Katherine was, “I went back and looked at the county Web site—the conference has been on their schedule for more than a year. It’d be hard to set that up as a trap.”

“The county Web site?” Katherine’s eyes bugged out a little. “So you left a trail on our computer….”

“Don’t worry, I went back in and cleared the browsing history,” Jonah said. “A kid at school showed me how to do that.”

He shot the ball with exaggerated swagger, false confidence. The ball sailed through the hoop, but Jonah had the feeling that it could just as easily have bounced off.

Just as the conference could be a trap.

“I don’t like it,” Katherine said, grabbing the rebound. “It just seems too convenient that it’s for Liston and Clarksville and Upper Tyson, and those are the same places where all the kids on the survivors list moved.”

“But it will be a perfect opportunity to talk to some of the kids from the list—I’m sure at least some of them will be there. You do remember the names, don’t you?” Jonah said.

“Sure,” Katherine said. “Andrea Crowell. Haley Rivers. Michael Kostoff.” She began bouncing the ball in time with the names. “Sarah Puchini. Josh Hart. Rusty Devorall. Anthony Solbers. Uh—” The ball landed on her foot and began rolling down the driveway. She waited while Jonah chased the ball out into the street. “Chip probably remembers the other names, or we’d remember them if we heard them.”

“Wait a minute,” Jonah said, running back. He bounced the ball back to Katherine, a little harder than necessary. “What do you mean, ‘we’?”

Katherine took a shot. The ball swished cleanly through the net. She didn’t even look surprised.

“I mean, I’m going too, of course,” she said, grabbing her own rebound and holding on to it. “You and Chip will have to pretend to be paying attention to—what are some of the sessions called?—’Identity Issues for Teen Adoptees’? Or whatever. So you’ll need me there too to get a chance to talk to all the other kids.”

Jonah didn’t want to admit it, but what she said made sense.

“How are we going to explain this to Mom and Dad?”

“Easy,” Katherine said. She bounced the ball without looking at it. “You tell them you want me to come.”

Jonah tried to steal the ball from her, but she saw him coming and jerked it out of reach.

“Now, how am I going to get them to believe that?” Jonah asked.

“You’ll figure something out,” Katherine said. She smiled sweetly. “That librarian thought you were a good actor.”

When Jonah went back into the house, he saw that Mom had already written
9–3, adoption conference
in the October 28 square on the kitchen calendar. Quickly he grabbed a pen and began inking over the words. He hadn’t thought he’d have to worry about Mom and Dad’s writing something that JB or E might see.

Mom came around the corner just as he’d managed to obliterate the last
e
of
conference.

“Jonah—what are you doing?” she said, startled.

“I just, uh, started doodling,” Jonah said. “Guess it got a little out of hand.”

Mom looked completely bewildered.

“Even when you were a toddler, you didn’t do things like that,” she said.

“Mom, duh,” Katherine said from across the kitchen, where she was pulling a Gatorade bottle from the refrigerator. Both Jonah and Mom turned to look at her. Somehow Katherine managed to roll her eyes and gulp down Gatorade at the same time. She lowered the bottle. “Think about it. If Jonah’s suddenly all confused and worried about his identity, the last thing he needs is to have you write
adoption conference
in a public place like that.”

“This isn’t a public place,” Mom said. “It’s our kitchen.”

“Yeah, but Rachel and Molly are in here all the time, and Chip, and all Jonah’s other friends, and my other friends, and your friends, and Dad’s friends….” Katherine made it sound like thousands of people trooped through their kitchen every day.

“There’s nothing wrong with the word
adoption
,” Mom said defensively. “Or with being adopted.”

“Yeah, but Jonah doesn’t want it
advertised
,” Katherine said. “Show some sensitivity. Jeez.”

Mom turned her gaze from Katherine to Jonah and back again.

“I really thought Jonah was capable of speaking for himself,” Mom said, suspicion creeping into her voice.

“Oh, he is,” Katherine said sweetly. “Jonah, didn’t you have something you wanted to ask Mom about the conference?”

Jonah shot Katherine a look that very clearly said,
I’m going to kill you when all this is over.
To Mom, he said, “Uh, yeah. I was just thinking, since Katherine seems to be having so many issues with
not
being adopted, that maybe she should go to the conference too. So she can find out what horrors she avoided by getting birth parents who were crazy enough to want to keep her.”

“Oh, Jonah, that’s not the way to look at this,” Mom protested, at the same time that Katherine said, “Oh, could I go to the conference with you? That’d be great!”

Mom squinted at Jonah.

“Are you serious?” she asked.

It was really hard for Jonah to keep a straight face as he assured her, “Yep. Katherine wants to go to the conference, and I want her to go too.”

“Could I? Please?” Katherine begged.

Mom frowned.

“Some days I can’t figure out the two of you at all,” she said.

Behind Mom’s back, Katherine jerked her head at Jonah, as if to say,
Your turn. Close the deal!

“So, can she come to the conference with us?” Jonah asked, trying to keep his eyes wide, his expression innocent.

“I suppose,” Mom said. “Though I really don’t understand why either of you wants this.”

Katherine threw her arms around Mom’s shoulders.

“Thanks, Mom,” she said. “Just think—next year I’ll be a teenager too, and then we’ll really confuse you!”

The next few weeks seemed to crawl by. Neither Chip nor Jonah got any more mysterious letters. Neither they nor Katherine saw anyone else appear out of nowhere or disappear into thin air. In fact, if it weren’t for the butterflies that seemed to multiply in Jonah’s stomach as October 28 approached, Jonah almost could have believed that his life had gone back to normal. He took another social studies test, about Mesopotamia and Babylon this time. He attended an informational meeting to find out about seventh-grade basketball tryouts. He went on a Boy Scout camp-out where it rained all weekend and two kids came down with bronchitis and coughed all night long, until the Scout leader gave in and called their parents at 5:00 a.m.

Katherine and Chip stayed obsessed.

“I figured out why you and Chip were adopted in different states,” Katherine announced one night as Jonah was brushing his teeth.

“Why?” Jonah said, through a mouthful of Crest.

“Think about it,” Katherine said, loitering outside the bathroom. She spoke in a low voice, as if she were afraid that Mom and Dad might hear her from downstairs. “There were thirty-six babies. If Mr. Reardon had dumped you all on one adoption agency—or even several adoption agencies, all in the same city—there would have been a lot of talk. But you send one baby to Michigan, one or two to Chicago, one or two to Indianapolis…that’s not so noticeable. There could be that many abandoned babies in each city at once.”

Jonah spit into the sink, bending low so she didn’t see how the word
abandoned
stabbed at him.

I wasn’t abandoned
, he reminded himself.
I was sent. On a plane.

But was that better or worse than being abandoned?

“So do you think Mr. Reardon knows why we’re all being gathered together again?” he asked, mostly to distract himself from his own thoughts. “Is he doing the gathering? Is JB? Is E? Mr. Reardon had all the kids’ new addresses in Liston and Clarksville and Upper Tyson—was
he
the one who wanted to force poor Daniella McCarthy to live on Robin’s Egg Lane?”

“I don’t know,” Katherine asked, fiddling with a strand of her hair. “I’m not even sure Mr. Reardon knew about the survivors list.”

“It was on his desk,” Jonah said.

“But JB put it there,” Katherine said. “Not Mr. Reardon. Maybe he was just worried about us seeing the witnesses list.”

Jonah jerked his toothbrush back and forth across his teeth with unusual force. He spit again.

“Katherine, it’s all a big mystery, okay?” he said. “Maybe we’ll never find out all the answers.”

“Or maybe we should figure out as much as we can now, so all the final pieces will fall into place at the conference,” Katherine retorted.

Jonah frowned at Katherine’s reflection in the bathroom mirror. The concentration in her gaze made her look like Sherlock Holmes about to solve his biggest case.

Meanwhile, the toothpaste on his lips made it look like he was foaming at the mouth.

Who’s the crazy one?
Jonah wondered.
Her or me?

For his part, Chip kept finding excuses to ride past 1873 Robin’s Egg Lane. The house there stayed closed-up and empty.

Chip also tried talking his parents into attending the conference. Embarrassingly, Jonah heard one of his attempts, because Jonah had just stepped onto the Winstons’ front porch, ready to ring the doorbell and ask Chip over to play basketball.

“For the last time, no!” a man’s voice shouted from inside the house. “I’ve got a golf date that morning, and your mother’s got a spa appointment. We don’t have six hours to waste on some namby-pamby, touchy-feely types, who are just going to try to make us feel guilty for not being the perfect parents! Subject closed!”

Jonah stabbed the doorbell.

“You can go with us,” he told Chip, as soon as he opened the door. “I’ll make my parents take you.”

Chip just nodded.

October 28 dawned clear and crisp, the perfect autumn day. Jonah woke up earlier than he usually did on a Saturday, probably because Katherine was already up and banging around in the bathroom. He heard her turning the water on and off, switching the fan from low to high, jerking her towel off the towel rack in a way that rattled the rack against the tile of the wall. He stumbled out into the hall.

“Today’s the day!” Katherine announced brightly, as she dodged him to head back to her room, her hair wrapped in a towel.

“Let’s go, team,” Jonah muttered under his breath, because the tone of Katherine’s words made them sound like they should be accompanied by cartwheels and splits and arms thrown victoriously up in the air.

“Ah, jeez,” he whispered, leaning against the bathroom sink. “She really is a cheerleader.” And it seemed suddenly that this was true—not because she was an airhead or a hottie or a nonjock, but because she could throw herself so wholeheartedly into someone else’s cause, because she could care so much and try so hard from the sidelines.

How could he understand so much about his sister’s identity and so little about his own?

Three hours later the whole family—plus Chip—were all loaded into their minivan, headed toward Clarksville Valley High School.

“The weather’s so nice, it looks like they’ll be able to do some of your sessions outdoors,” Mom said, turning around to talk to Katherine, in the middle seat, and Jonah and Chip, in the far back.

“Yeah, I’m really looking forward to the hike and outdoor confidence-building exercises,” Katherine said.

A baffled look spread over Mom’s face once again.

“Katherine, those teen sessions really aren’t intended for
siblings
of adoptees,” she said. “It’s not too late to turn around and drop you off at home, or at a friend’s house, so you’re not a…a distraction for Jonah and Chip.”

Katherine turned around and raised her eyebrow at Jonah, as if to say,
You have to deal with this one.

“She won’t be a distraction, Mom,” Jonah said. “Chip and I want her along. Right, Chip?”

“That’s right, Mrs. Skidmore,” Chip said.

Mom still looked skeptical, as if she knew something was going on. But she turned around and began reading Dad the directions for getting to the school.

Jonah had never been to Clarksville Valley High School. It was a huge new building backing up to a nature preserve, on the very edge of the city. The street leading up to the school was lined with new subdivisions, with houses in various states of completion.

Dad whistled.

“These neighborhoods are so new, you can almost smell the paint drying, can’t you?” he said. “Nice houses, huh?”

“We’re not moving!” Jonah shouted up from the backseat.

Both his parents stared back at him.

“Who said anything about moving?” Mom asked.

“Never mind,” Jonah muttered.

Act normal
, he reminded himself.

They parked close to the front door of the school and joined a line of parents and kids waiting to register at a table in the lobby.

“What did you do, adopt
triplets
?” the woman in front of them asked when she glanced back.

Katherine glowed at the suggestion that she might be the same age as Jonah and Chip.

“No,” Mom said, sounding a little reluctant to explain. “This is our son, Jonah, and his friend Chip, whose parents couldn’t come today; and our daughter, Katherine, who’s not adopted but wanted to be here to, uh, support her brother.”

“Well, isn’t that nice,” the woman said.

“Mom, can we go sit down while you’re registering?” Jonah asked, because he didn’t want to hear any more of this conversation. And he could see people already filing into an auditorium. If they could just scout out some of the other kids, see if any of them were the ones named on the survivors list, then they’d have an advantage when they broke up into groups later.

“Okay,” Mom said.

“Wait—you should get your name tags first,” the woman in front of them said. “Here.”

She passed back a stack of blank name tags and markers. Jonah’s hand shook as he carefully wrote his name,
Jonah Skidmore
. His name had never looked so strange to him before, so alien, as if it didn’t really belong to him.

What if I really am supposed to have some other identity?
he wondered.
The identity of a boy who’s…missing? Or from the future? Would I want to know that or not?

“Hurry up!” Katherine muttered beside him, jabbing her elbow into his side. “We’re going to run out of time!”

Jonah put the cap back on the marker, peeled the backing off the name tag, and slapped it on his chest.

“I’m ready,” he said, though he didn’t feel ready.

The three of them drifted through the crowd, peering at other kids’ name tags. Sam Bentree? Nope. Allison Myers? Nope. Dalton Sullivan?

“There was a Dalton on the list, but the last name and the address and phone number were cut off,” Chip whispered excitedly. “That
could
be right.”

“Let’s see if we can find anyone we’re sure about, before we try to talk to Dalton,” Katherine said. “We can get back to him at the end.”

They headed on into the auditorium. Right inside the door they saw a group of kids who were laughing and talking together, as if they had known each other for years. They wore ripped jeans and dark sweatshirts and glared when Jonah stepped close, trying to read their name tags.

“What are you looking at?” one of the guys jeered.

“Oh!” Katherine giggled flirtatiously. “Sorry. We’re just looking for some kids we met online, in an adoption chat room. We know their names, but not what they look like. And”—she glanced around, lowered her voice conspiratorially—“our parents don’t know we visit those chat rooms!”

“Only dorks visit chat rooms,” one of the girls said, looping her arm around the jeering guy’s elbow.

“Um,” Jonah said. “Okay. Thanks anyway. We’ll leave you alone now.”

He pulled Katherine away.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “Trying to get beat up?”

“Oh, please,” Katherine said. “We have to have some cover story.”

“That girl thought you were hitting on her boyfriend!”

“So what?” Katherine put her hands on her hips and stared defiantly at Jonah.

Jonah’s head swam. Didn’t Katherine understand anything? What if he hadn’t been there to protect her?

Chip tugged on Katherine’s arm and Jonah’s sweatshirt.

“Come on, you two,” Chip said. “Cut that out. Let’s keep looking.”

But Mom and Dad came through the doorway just then. At the front of the auditorium, a man stepped toward a podium on the stage.

“Take your seats, please,” he said into the microphone. “We’ve got a full slate of activities for the day, and I’m sure you’re all eager to get started!”

Everyone began sitting down, even the group of tough-looking kids in the back.

Jonah got a seat right on the aisle, so he could peer over sideways at the kids in the next section of seats. The man at the microphone began talking excitedly about what a great turnout they had, what a great program they had planned, how well the county department of social services worked…. Jonah tuned him out. There was a Bryce Johnson in the aisle seat across from him, a Ryan—or was that Bryan?—Crockett one row up. Jonah wondered if he could write those names down, pass them along to Chip and Katherine, and get them to shake their heads yes or no without Mom or Dad’s noticing. He felt a little guilty that he’d never studied the survivors list the way they had, that he hadn’t made a single phone call to any of the other kids.

Jonah turned his head farther, so he could see the girl behind Ryan/Bryan Crockett. She had long blond hair covering her name tag, but she chose that exact moment to flip the hair over her shoulder.

Her name tag said
Sar—
. She flexed her shoulders, stretching in her seat and revealing the rest of the name tag:
Sarah Puchini
.

Sarah Puchini. Yes!

Jonah remembered that name. It was one Katherine had told him when they were in the driveway, playing basketball. So there was at least one other kid at the conference who’d received the mysterious letters, whose name was on the survivors list, who might want to hear what Jonah, Katherine, and Chip knew—and who might have information to share with them, too.

Jonah turned to Chip beside him.

“Sarah Puchini,” he whispered in Chip’s ear. “One row back.”

Chip’s face lit up.

On the other side of Chip, Katherine was already standing up.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Jonah muttered.

Katherine looked at him blankly.

“They just said for all the kids to go back out to the lobby, to start our activities,” she said. “Weren’t you listening?”

“Oh,” Jonah mumbled.

Mom leaned over the seats.

“It sounds like you guys will be eating your lunch out there on your hike. So we’ll just meet you back here at three, okay?”

“Sure,” Jonah said.

Dad raised his hand from his armrest in a miniature good-bye wave and mouthed something that might have been, “Have fun.”

Jonah whirled around, hoping he could catch up with Sarah Puchini in the aisle, but her blond head was already disappearing through the door back out into the lobby.

Jonah joined the stream of kids flowing toward the lobby. Chip and Katherine were right behind him. The three of them rushed through the doors together.

“Where is she?” Chip asked, as the crowd came to a stop near the table where everyone had signed in. Jonah could see a woman quietly closing the door to the auditorium behind them, probably to keep the noisy cluster of kids from interrupting the adults’ program.

“Don’t know,” Jonah said, trying to stand on his tiptoes, to get a better look. There was a blond head right up front near the table. No, wait—was that Sarah over toward the side?

“How many kids do you think are here, altogether?” Chip asked.

“Fifty?” Jonah guessed. “Sixty?”

“Angela said there were thirty-six babies on the plane,” Chip whispered. “We only had eighteen names to start with. Nineteen, if you count Dalton without a last name.”