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said. “People from the future can see pretty much anything we do. Anytime.”
    â€œThat’s creepy,” Mom said, hunching up her shoulders and shivering. “Why isn’t that illegal?”
    â€œIt typically is in connection with the recent past,” JB said in a soothing tone. “But—”
    â€œI’m confused,” Dad complained, his voice whiny again. “JB wasn’t in the future. He was standing right here with the rest of us. I didn’t hear Jordan make any noise. How did JB know he was out of his room?”
    â€œHis Elucidator told him,” Katherine explained. “That thing that looks like a cell phone. He got a message from the future.”
    Seriously? Jordan thought. Katherine thinks we’re going to fall for that?
    Nobody laughed or even smirked. The other kids all looked grim. JB frowned and put his hand over the pocket in his shirt where he’d evidently put his cell phone. Or his “Elucidator.” Whatever.
    â€œMaybe we can limit the explanations to only the information that Jordan—and, for that matter, Linda and Michael—absolutely need,” JB muttered, sweeping his hand toward Mom and Dad, lumping them in with Jordan. “They’re not going to travel through time ever again, so they won’t need to know about Elucidators.”
    â€œBut it sounds like Elucidators and time travel shaped our lives—and our family,” Mom said in a steely voice. “Don’t we need to know about them to understand our past? What’s the saying? ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’?”
    Trust Mom, even as a teenager, to come up with something like that.
    JB stopped beside the island in the middle of the kitchen. Jordan would have preferred to sit down—he still felt a little dizzy—but everyone else seemed too keyed up for that. They all stood around the island, almost as if they were squaring off and choosing sides for an argument.
    â€œYou can’t expect the Skidmores not to have questions,”Chip said. It sounded like he was trying to be a peacemaker. “I mean, even I’m confused, and I’ve been to other centuries! The separate dimensions with Jonah and Jordan—how did that work? They were both in the same dimension back in the nineteen thirties, right?”
    The nineteen thirties? Jordan thought. What?
    But once again, everyone else seemed to accept this with absolute calm.
    JB sighed and leaned against the island. “Jonah and Jordan, like typical identical twins, were born in the same dimension,” he began. “There was only one dimension when they were born, more than eighty years ago. Time split when they were kidnapped from history and—”
    â€œNo, no, no, no, no,” Jordan interrupted, because he couldn’t stand it any longer. “I don’t know about that Jonah kid, but I was not born more than eighty years ago. I’m thirteen! I’m not like them”—he gestured wildly at the kid versions of Mom and Dad—“I’ve never been any older than this! I’ve never been kidnapped, and I wasn’t ever in ‘history,’ and, and . . . I do not have an identical twin!”
    Everyone looked back and forth between Jonah and Jordan. Jordan didn’t have to be a mind reader or have any of those time-travel Elucidator hocus-pocus skills to be able to tell: Every single person in the room was thinking some variation of Dude, scream all you want. But you two are identical .
    â€œI mean, I’m not supposed to have a twin!” Jordan said. “It’s not right! It’s never been this way before!”
    JB looked around at the whole crowd. “And you thought knowing more would make things easier for him?” he asked.
    â€œThis is hard no matter what,” Jonah said, and for some reason everyone turned to him respectfully, as though he were some wise person