We landed near the creek behind our school.
“Whew,” Zack said happily. At least this time we didn’t land in the water. My socks are still damp from 1805.”
“Mine are too,” I said, but I was so excited to tell Mr. C about our adventure, the soggy socks didn’t really bug me too much.
We hurried over to join the rest of our class. Mr. C was collecting team journals.
“We had fun,” Eliana Feinerman said as she handed him her group’s book. She quickly showed the class how they’d drawn the map in the dirt, then carefully copied it into their journal.
Once Sacagawea caught up with her brother, this was exactly how Chief Cameahwait would make the map for Captain Lewis to copy.
I couldn’t wait to hear more about their map in social studies class.
Shanika’s group had made Eliana’s map by correcting old maps from the library. I wondered how old mapmakers recorded facts about the creek. Were they right? Or way wrong, like the trapper maps that Lewis and Clark had to use and corrected? I was anxious to see Shanika’s class presentation.
It was our turn to hand over our team journal. I knew our book was mostly blank. I started to sweat.
“Don’t worry,” Mr. C said with a wink. “I already have your team’s journal.” Pushing up his glasses, he asked, “How did it go?”
“In the end, we succeeded. But when we first got there—” I was about to tell him about Sacagawea’s dreams, meeting Dr. Baker, and the sneaky dream-thief Babs Magee when Jacob, shoving me, said, “TMI.”
I stopped talking immediately. We’d have to tell Mr. C everything later, after the field trip. When we were all alone.
Mr. C was glad our special project went well. He gathered the class to return to school together.
We hung back while the other two groups rushed on ahead. “All right, Abigail,” Mr. C said to me. “Now I’d like to hear the details. What happened on your trip to 1805?”
I finally got to share TMI. I told Mr. C everything. Way more information than he needed. It felt good to tell it all.
When I finished, Mr. C sighed and said, “I’m worried about what Babs is doing. Maybe I should give up my new invention and time-travel myself instead. Now I finally understand why everyone on my list is quitting!” He smacked his thigh and exclaimed, “I can’t believe she copied my list of famous people and stole Big Blue!”
“You can’t quit too,” I told him. “Someday we might be talking about what the world would be like if Mr. C never finished his new invention.” As I said it, I wondered what he was working on.
“Please,” Jacob begged. “We can handle this. We can convince all those people on your list not to quit.”
“And someday,” Zack added, “we’ll catch Babs and get Big Blue back.”
Mr. C was silent. He seemed to be thinking about whether we should still have History Club meetings. We were almost at school when he finally said, “All right, I won’t cancel History Club. But watch out for Babs Magee. She’s gone to the dark side, eh?”
“But the Force is with us,” Zack said with a laugh.
“More than one force is protecting you kids,” Mr. C said, glancing over his shoulder toward the trees.
I swear I saw something, or some things, moving out there by the creek. But this time I wasn’t scared.
At the back door to the school, Mr. C told us that History Club would meet again next Monday in the school cafeteria. He held the door open, but Zack blocked our way into the building.
“Mr. C,” Zack said, “Jacob and I are supposed to walk home today, but I don’t want to go yet. Can I use the office phone to call my mom and tell her I’ll be late? I’m going to finish our team’s map.” Mr. C looked at him sideways. “Well, I mean, I’m going to start our team’s map. And then I’ll finish it.”
“But your team doesn’t have to make a map. Your team is going to report on Sacagawea,” Mr. C reminded Zack.
“The other guys can tell about her,” Zack responded. “I want to finish the map.”
“It’s not too B-O-R-I-N-G?” Mr. C asked Zack.
“No,” Zack replied. “In fact, I love cartography!”
I nearly fell over, I was laughing so hard. Zack had found a new hobby. I hoped this one lasted longer than a week. “Well,” I managed to say between giggles, “if Zack’s staying, then so am I.”
“As long as you’re calling home, Zack, you might as well tell Mom I’m staying with you,” Jacob told his brother.
“I can stay too,” Bo said, asking if he could have the two-pole chain and compass. Bo would call his mom at work to let her know where he was.
Mr. C handed us back our equipment and team journal. He was thrilled that we’d decided to map the creek after all.
Being me, I had a few burning questions before we rushed off to do the project. “Mr. C,” I asked, “would we catch up with Babs Magee if we left earlier?”
“It wouldn’t make a difference.” Mr. C shook his head and nibbled on his lip. “Big Blue is programmed according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, which brings space and time together in a four-dimensional arrangement. On the other hand, your computer follows Sir Isaac Newton’s conception of a three-dimensional space as having the property of motion, independent of the frame of reference in which it is measured.”
I looked at him blankly. Jacob rolled his eyes. Zack yawned and said to me, “You had to ask, didn’t you?” Only Bo looked interested. But Bo always looks interested.
Mr. C revved up to continue. “Because wormholes are a handle in the topology of space, therefore—”
“Stop!” we all shouted at the same time. Mr. Caruthers laughed.
“Mr. C,” I asked, “are you trying to tell us that even if we left earlier, it wouldn’t make a difference?”
“Exactly!” Mr. C cheered, as if he’d made it all crystal clear. “Now you understand why you can only time-travel on Mondays. Obviously, Babs must follow the order of my list, and no matter when you leave, she will always arrive first. It has to do with the subtle differences in the way the two computers were created and because of the space-time continuum. You see—”
I gave up trying to understand and I interrupted his thoughts with what I hoped was an easier kind of question. “Why does Babs always wear a yellow coat and matching hat?” I asked simply.
Mr. C came back to earth and answered. “Yellow was always Babs’s favorite color. It’s a bright color that gets noticed. And that’s what she wants. You kids told me that her dream is to be famous. But we all know she’s going about getting there the wrong way.”
We left Mr. C muttering to himself about worm-holes and distortions of the space-time curvature.
Back at the creek, we were ready to map. We realized the first thing we needed to do was name the creek that ran behind our school. Just like Lewis and Clark had named Camp Fortunate after something good that had happened there, we wanted a name that reflected something good too.
The creek should be named after someone we admired. A true hero.
Zack opened our team journal, and there, on the first page, in big bold letters, he wrote: CARUTHERS’S CREEK. It was perfect.
Suddenly, I heard wild animal noises again: a growl. Scampering little feet. The chewing of crunchy leaves. A howl. And a loud, echoing roar.
“Did you hear it this time?” I excitedly asked the boys. They looked surprised because, this time, they definitely heard the sounds.
We all looked off into the shadows of the distant trees. Our animal spirits were watching us: a raccoon, an antelope, a coyote, and a mountain lion. They were guarding us. Protecting us.
And near them, we caught a final glimpse of Sacagawea’s spirit, come to say good-bye. It was the spirit of the Dreamer. A large brown bear.