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no, not if Mom had been such a tomboy. Maybe he could talk kid Mom and kid Dad into going down into the basement to play Ping-Pong. The basement would be a safe place for them, wouldn’t it?
    Mom was already over by the shoe caddy by the back door, grabbing her running shoes.
    â€œOops, these are too big too,” she muttered. She pulled out a pair of Katherine’s, held them beside her feet, and complained, “And these are too small. I feel like Goldilocks.”
    Jonah was hoping no shoes meant that Mom would have to stay inside. But before he could suggest that, she began pulling on Jonah’s second-best sneakers.
    They fit.
    â€œI’m going, with or without you,” Mom said.
    Jonah scrambled to catch up.
    By the time he had his own sneakers on his feet, Mom was already out the door. She was walking slowly, though, looking around suspiciously as she rounded the corner of the house toward the front yard.
    It was a sunny November day, and nothing around them seemed to require suspiciousness. The white picket fence bordering the front of their yard stood perfectly straight; the two-story houses up and down the street were neat and well-tended; the trees and bushes and fall flowers that surrounded the houses seemed just as tidy. From what he could see around them, Jonah thought the worst danger anyone could expect here was that in a strong gust of wind the red maple in the front yard might drop a few leaves on his head.
    But just last night Jonah—and Katherine and Chip and another friend, Daniella—had been kidnapped from the sidewalk between the Skidmores’ house and Chip’s. And only a week before that Jonah and Katherine had been zapped from the doorstep in front of Chip’s house back to the year 1903. And . . .
    Stop thinking about the past , Jonah told himself. Figure out how to fix today’s problems.
    â€œUm, Mom?” Jonah said, though it seemed wrong to call her that. He was almost tempted to say, Linda? He forged ahead anyway. “Who was Charles Lindbergh?”
    Kid Mom turned and looked at him as though she had no clue why he was asking. Maybe she’d forgotten the conversation she and Jonah and Katherine had had in the living room before she’d un-aged thirty years.
    â€œOne of those old-time pilots,” Mom said. “The pilot who—”
    Mom broke off suddenly. Her eyes bulged slightly, as if something had taken her by surprise. She gulped, swayed dizzily back and forth—and then crumpled to the ground.

EIGHT
    â€œMom!” Jonah cried.
    He fell to his knees beside her, pushing back her hair and the hood of Katherine’s stupid CHEER! sweatshirt.
    Check for the pulse point on her neck , Jonah told himself, scrambling to remember what he’d learned about fainting for his First Aid badge in Boy Scouts. Healthy people didn’t just collapse like that, did they? Especially not healthy thirteen-year-olds?
    What if un-aging grown-ups back to being thirteen was something that could kill them?
    Mom’s pulse was thumping nice and strong, and her chest rose and fell in what seemed to be normal breaths. But her eyelids didn’t even flutter. Jonah started to grab her shoulders to try to shake her back to consciousness. But maybe he wasn’t in such great shape himself—he wastrembling so much that his left hand slipped from her shoulders and slid up onto her neck.
    Something metallic hit his hand.
    A necklace? Jonah wondered.
    He was pretty sure Mom hadn’t been wearing a necklace.
    The metal thing seemed to be embedded in Mom’s neck. And it seemed to be barbed, like a dart or . . .
    Jonah decided he didn’t have time to analyze it further. All he needed to know was that this was some kind of projectile that had knocked Mom out. He grabbed Mom’s feet and pulled her back around the corner of the house. He thought about pulling the barb out, but was afraid that could cause worse