Gabby figured it out first, and her eyes bulged with shock.
“That’s the student newspaper of Rutgers!”
“That’s right.”
“Wait a minute,” Cooper said. “You’re telling me this…this wasteland is—”
“Yes,” Mr. C replied. “This is what’s left of the Rutgers campus. This is where we were just before we started this journey. Right here.”
Chelsea’s mouth fell open. “So that means the tree over there is….”
“That’s what’s left of our Imagination Tree.”
Everyone went silent then, turning and staring at the tree for a few moments. It looked like a giant gnarled hand reaching for the sky.
“I’ll never see my family again,” Maya said, starting to cry softly. Gabby wrapped her arms around her in a hug.
“And I won’t be able to play with my dog,” Cooper murmured. Jamal put his arm around his shoulder.
“Or go back to school,” Chelsea added.
“Or the park,” Simon said.
“Or—”
“No!” Mr. C said abruptly. Then he surprised them with a big smile. “Absolutely and positively no! We’re not stuck here forever! That’s not why we were sent here!” He looked at the newspaper again. “Now I get it! Now it all makes sense! Come on, you guys, think about it!”
“We are thinking,” Cooper told him. “We’re thinking about all the ice cream we’re never going to eat, and all the TV shows we’re never going to—”
Mr. C shook his head. “Where have we been before this?”
Gabby shrugged. “In the past.”
“That’s right. And during what moments in the past?”
“Just before something awful happened,” Simon answered.
“Right again. Every time we appeared at some moment in history, something terrible was about to happen. The Revolutionary War was about to break out, or the Titanic was about to sail, or the horrors of 9-11 were about to unfold. And each time, what happened to us?”
“We tried to stop those terrible things from happening,” Jamal said, “but we didn’t.”
“No,” Mr. C told him. “That’s not the point of all this. It’s not that we didn’t. It’s that we—”
“Couldn’t!” Chelsea nearly yelled.
“That’s right!” Mr. C said almost as loud. “And why not?”
Cooper was thinking hard. Then his mouth curled into a giant smile of his own. “Because the past can’t be changed!”
“YES!!!” Mr. C howled.
“That’s been a huge part of what we’re supposed to learn from all this,” Maya said. “That the past cannot be changed!”
