93 pages • 3 hours read
Margaret Peterson HaddixFound
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 15-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary
Katherine and Chip keep researching without Jonah, who refuses to listen to any of their updates. Chip and Katherine call the survivors. All of them were adopted, are around 13 years old, and “got the letters too” (129). The survivors also all live in the same general area as Jonah and Chip. There is one girl on the list, Daniella McCarthy, who has two addresses—a new one in Chip and Jonah’s city and an old one hundreds of miles away. Chip calls the old address and is surprised when Daniella picks up. Chip asks about the new address, but Daniella does not know what he is talking about. She hangs up but calls back a minute later to ask how Chip knew she was moving when her parents did not know until yesterday. He and Chip are baffled that the FBI knew Daniella’s family was going to move days before her parents decided to buy a house. The chapter ends with them realizing the FBI would not know “[u]nless they’re the ones making her move” (142).
Chapter 16 Summary
Chip wants to call all the kids on the list back with this new information and asked why they moved. Katherine is too cheerful, and Chip asks Jonah to help instead, reminding Jonah of his promise to help. After school, Chip takes his time checking the mail in hopes Katherine will get bored and go away. He receives a letter with no return address, but this one is “not like the others” (145). It is from someone on the witnesses list, who says they will meet at the library to talk in person.
Chapter 17 Summary
Katherine is sure the letter is from Angela DuPre, and the three agree to go to the meeting. Jonah leaves a detailed note on his desk for his parents in case something goes wrong, including that all the information they have is on Chip’s computer. The three come up with an elaborate plan for the meeting. Chip will be in the room with his phone on speaker, and Katherine will have a walky-talky near the phone so Jonah can hear the conversation from across the library. The witness is, in fact, Angela DuPre. She sees through the group’s elaborate plan and invites Katherine and Jonah to join the meeting. They do, and Jonah stands guard by the door. Angela says she can tell them about what she witnessed and that she does not know where they came from but “might have a pretty good guess about when” (159).
Chapter 18 Summary
Angela describes the events from the prologue. Reardon was part of the FBI detail on the case, and he wanted Angela to sign a confidentiality agreement. Angela refused and was deemed unfit to work by the government. Angela explains the insignia that shifted from Tachyon Travel to Sky Trails and defines tachyons as “particles that travel faster than the speed of light” (173). Theoretically, anything traveling faster than light could travel through time. Angela believes the plane was a time machine and that Chip, Jonah, and the other babies from the plane “came from the future” (174).
Chapters 15-18 Analysis
Daniella McCarthy is another emotional catalyst for Jonah. Her situation makes Jonah realize he cannot be unconcerned about the strange events surrounding his adoption. Angela’s note cements Jonah’s resolve to be involved in the investigation. Jonah still cannot rationalize everything that is happening, but distancing himself from the events only makes him more concerned. He knows Katherine and Chip will meet Angela without him. Jonah feels a responsibility toward them, since the investigation partly centers around him. His desire to protect Chip and Katherine wins out over his inability to deal with the impossible.
Angela’s refusal to explain anything in her note or have the kids on the phone during the meeting foreshadows Jonah’s discovery that written records are unsafe. Angela’s final statement in Chapter 17 is the first suggestion that Jonah and Chip are from another time. Angela believes they are from the future, which turns out to be incorrect, but her theory almost sends Jonah into another backslide. He cannot understand how he could be from a different time. He knows time travel is impossible, which also turns out to be false.
Angela defines tachyons in Chapter 18. She links the events of the prologue to the circumstances of Jonah’s adoption and foreshadows Jonah and Chip learning they are from the past. The final chapter of the book shows Jonah, Katherine, and Chip going back in time, affectively becoming tachyons themselves.
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By Margaret Peterson Haddix
