Rescued by Margaret Peterson Haddix

almost to the tip of his boot.
    The man with the lantern took a step closer.
    â€œGet us out of here!” Maria hissed, so softly that Leonid wasn’t sure either Elucidator could hear her.
    But one must have. Because, suddenly, everything vanished.
    *    *    *
    Leonid zoomed through time, clutching on to Maria and Anastasia. His heart pounded in his chest; his eyes kept seeing the edge of light that had come within a hair’s distance of his boots.
    Another second, and the soldiers would have seen Leonid.
    Another two seconds, and they probably would have killed him. Him and Maria and Anastasia . . .
    â€œI had to be rescued again ,” Leonid said with a groan. “Rescuing me just endangered you.”
    â€œNo—rescuing you got us all out of there safely,” Anastasia said, with some of her usual sassiness back.
    â€œBut—you didn’t have to be in danger,” Leonid said. “Why in the world did JB send the two of you? If someone had seen you—if someone had recognized you—”
    â€œJB said we were the only ones who could get in and out fast enough, since that was our native time,” Maria said. “Katherine or Chip might still have been lying on the ground with timesickness when the soldiers showed up.”
    â€œAnd—we’re the ones who need you in the twenty-first century,” Anastasia added.
    â€œWhy would you need me there?” Leonid asked. “You’re royalty. I’m just a kitchen boy.”
    â€œNone of us will be the same people where we’re going,” Maria said. “We’ll all need one another.”
    Leonid thought about Clothilde affecting a French accent. He thought about his Uncle Ivan bringing peasant boy Leonid to the palace. They were people who knew how to change. And Leonid had thought they were the ones he needed, the ones who needed him. But he hadn’t been able to save either of them.
    â€œWhy did JB even let me try to save Clothilde?” Leonid asked. He jerked away from Maria and Anastasia, so they were all three floating separately through the empty darkness. “He could have stopped me, right? Didn’t he know it was for nothing?”
    â€œHe couldn’t tell for sure,” Anastasia said. “There was a chance, and that’s why he had to let you. If Clothilde had wanted to go with you, maybe . . .”
    But she didn’t , Leonid thought, his heart aching.
    He thought about all the sadness and sorrow he’d seen, about all the people he’d lost.
    â€œLeonid—if we hadn’t gotten out of 1918 just then, our next opportunity wouldn’t have come until four days later,” Maria said. “ That’s how much JB believed in you. And that’s how much we wanted to rescue you.”
    This time he wasn’t horrified by the risks they’d taken.
    He was honored.
    Even with everyone I lost, these are the people I kept , Leonid thought. And—they’ve kept me too. They’ve kept me alive, and they’ve kept me in their hearts. Katherine, Chip, JB. Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei.
    Then he corrected himself: No, not Anastasia and Alexei. Daniella and Gavin.
    As they approached the point of time travel where time itself seemed determined to tear everyone apart, Leonid reached out and grabbed Maria’s and Daniella’s hands. It wasn’t because he was scared. It wasn’t because he thought they might be scared. It was because they all needed one another.
    Leonid and the two girls landed on some sort of hard surface—Leonid remembered that JB had called it a sidewalk. A split second later, Katherine, Jonah, and Chip were there too.
    â€œLater!” the three of them called, following JB’s orders to run toward their homes.
    Leonid rolled toward the bushes alongside Maria, Daniella, and Gavin. Even Gavin moved smoothly, seeming not to worry at all about hitting any small twig or sharp blade of