Rescued by Margaret Peterson Haddix

They said the rest of the world was not like Russia.
    They said the rest of time was not like 1918.
    And that, the strangers said, was why they’d rescued Leonid.
    They said he should be grateful.
    *    *    *
    Leonid opened his eyes to a room without windows or doors. It was just four blank walls, a ceiling, and a floor. Nothing else.
    â€œAnother prison,” he whispered.
    Katherine, the girl from the future, shook her head so hard that strands of her blond hair tangled together. If Leonid squinted, he could see her hair as a sort of golden crown, almost like the ones the grand duchesses used to wear.
    â€œNo, no,” Katherine said. “This isn’t a prison. It’s a time hollow. A place away from time where we’ll be safe.”
    â€œWe’re trapped. There’s no way out,” Leonid observed, even though he thought that should be obvious.
    â€œSure there is,” Katherine said. “You get in and out with an Elucidator. It’s like a cell phone that lets you travel through time.”
    Leonid didn’t know what a cell phone was. And he didn’t have an Elucidator, whatever that was.
    So doesn’t that make this a prison for me? he wondered.
    The others in the room were sorting themselves out, untangling arms and legs from the heap they’d landed in. Besides Katherine, there were two others from the future, a man and a boy. Leonid had heard names for them, but surely those were fake. The boy was called Chip, and the man had only initials, JB.
    Was the future such a strange place that adults—even adults powerful enough to travel through time—had only random letters to call their own? What could have happened to the patronymics, the way your father’s name was built into yours, always identifying you as your father’s son and showing your exact place in the world?
    Being people from the future who were used to traveling through time, JB, Chip, and Katherine were already springing to their feet. Katherine bounced up and down on her toes, a motion that made her seem more familiar, like some young girl Leonid might have known back in his own time. Up until now she had seemed completely alien: She wore dungaree pants like a boy and a bizarre item of clothing he’d heard someone call a “sweatshirt”; she interrupted men while they were talking, even old men whose gray beards should have earned them respect.
    And, everyone said, she had saved Leonid’s life. His and Chip’s and the grand duchesses’ and the tsarevitch’s, the most important one of all.
    How could a mere girl have saved them?
    Leonid turned his attention to the others who had traveled with him from 1918: two of the grand duchesses, Maria and Anastasia, and . . .
    And where was the tsarevitch?
    â€œHis Royal Majesty!” Leonid cried, slipping in his panic and using a proper term for the boy, even though he thought he’d managed to break that habit months ago. The Bolshevik guards in Ekaterinburg beat anyone who referred to the royal family as royalty. Still, Leonid had never gotten comfortable with calling the boy his familiar name, Alyosha, or even the slightly more formal Alexei or Nikolaevich. Using any of those names was like claiming there were no barriers between Leonid and the tsarevitch, and there were. There were . So mostly Leonid had referred to Alexei as “you” or “he” or “him.”
    Somehow, everyone back in 1918 always knew who he was talking about.
    â€œWhere is he?” Leonid shouted now.
    Katherine reached over and patted Leonid’s shoulder. (Girls in Leonid’s time also did not pat older boys’ shoulders. Not unless they were betrothed, or about to be. And Leonid had gotten the impression that Katherine belonged to Chip. He’d seen them kiss.)
    â€œDon’t worry about Gavin—I mean, Alexei,” Katherine said, using yet another name for the tsarevitch.