Redeemed by Margaret Peterson Haddix Read Free Book Online

back. “What if the two of you had dropped the Elucidator, like what we thought happened that time with Andrea? Then we really would have been in a mess!”
    â€œWell, I didn’t drop it, did I?” Katherine asked, a bit of her usual sassiness back in her voice. “And I knew Jordan would never give it to me. Or you. So I had to grab it. Just . . . do what you have to do! The lights are getting close!”
    Lights on the horizon zoomed toward them, faster and faster and faster. What did that mean?
    Jonah bent his head toward the phone/Elucidator and spoke firmly: “Elucidator, send Jordan, Mom, and Dad home to safety.”
    Jordan braced himself to be sucked backward. But once again, nothing happened.
    â€œJonah?” Katherine cried, her voice edgy with fear. “What’s going on?”
    Jonah didn’t answer her. He was muttering into the phone/Elucidator, “I said, send them home! Home! Mom, Dad, and Jordan! Send! Them! Home!”
    â€œJonah!” Katherine cried. Even in the near-complete darkness, Jordan could see that the color had drained from her face. “We’re almost to the lights! We don’t even know where we’re going in the future! Do something!”
    Jonah looked up from the phone/Elucidator.
    â€œI can’t,” he whispered. “JB wasn’t just pretending that this Elucidator was messed up. It really is broken!”

SIX
    Jordan began spinning. He felt like every cell in his body—or maybe every molecule? Every atom?—was being torn apart.
    â€œDon’t worry!” Katherine screamed. “This part doesn’t last long! We’ll land soon!”
    Jordan wasn’t sure how he could hear her, because it felt as though his ears—like every other part of his body—had been broken down into individual atoms. Or maybe individual electrons, protons, and neutrons.
    If this really is just some hallucination caused by cold medicine, I am never doing any actual serious drugs, Jordan thought. This is what they should do to kids in DARE class, instead of giving all those stupid lectures. . . .
    And then he couldn’t think anything else. Maybe his body really had been torn to bits.
    The next thing Jordan knew, he was lying on some sort of flat, motionless surface—a floor? The ground?
    Probably floor, he decided. Something indoors, because it’s so smooth. . . .
    He knew from camping in Scouts that no matter how carefully you tried to pick a flat space for your sleeping bag outdoors, there were always tiny pebbles and twigs and clumps of dirt that would poke into your back in the middle of the night.
    And how could he be thinking about Scouts and sleeping bags and dirt at a time like this?
    Think about . . . finding that other Elucidator thing to fix Mom and Dad, he reminded himself. And maybe that will make it so I’m back in my normal dimension, or whatever gives me back my normal family and my normal life. . . .
    Finding anything was going to be hard, because he felt both blind and deaf. He couldn’t see or hear anything. He tried blinking a few times, and feebly lifted one hand to hit the side of his head, to try to clear his ears. He couldn’t even feel his own hand. Had he lost all his senses?
    Even as he started gasping in panic, he began hearing Jonah whispering nearby, “Elucidator, don’t make any noise. And please make us invisible. Please, please, please, Elucidator, let that function still be working. . . .”
    Invisible? Jordan thought. Is that why I can’t see?
    Somehow he knew that wasn’t right, but it took his brain a moment to figure out why: Oh, yeah. Invisible is when other people can’t see you, not that you can’t see anything. . . .
    â€œWhat was in that cold medicine?” Jordan tried to say. But it came out more like “Unh ah inh . . .” because his tongue felt as