Field Trip
Authors: Gary Paulsen
Alida's Song ⢠The Amazing Life of Birds ⢠The Beet Fields ⢠The Boy Who Owned the School â¢
The Brian Books:
The River, Brian's Winter, Brian's Return,
and
Brian's Hunt ⢠Canyons ⢠Caught by the Sea: My Life on Boats ⢠The Cookcamp ⢠The Crossing ⢠Crush ⢠Danger on Midnight River ⢠Dogsong ⢠Family Ties ⢠Father Water, Mother Woods ⢠Flat Broke ⢠The Glass Café ⢠Guts: The True Stories Behind
Hatchet
and the Brian Books ⢠Harris and Me ⢠Hatchet ⢠The Haymeadow ⢠How Angel Peterson Got His Name ⢠The Island ⢠Lawn Boy ⢠Lawn Boy Returns ⢠The Legend of Bass Reeves ⢠Liar, Liar ⢠Masters of Disaster ⢠Molly McGinty Has a Really Good Day ⢠The Monument ⢠Mudshark ⢠My Life in Dog Years ⢠Nightjohn ⢠The Night the White Deer Died ⢠Paintings from the Cave ⢠Puppies, Dogs, and Blue Northers ⢠The Quilt ⢠The Rifle ⢠Road Trip
(with Jim Paulsen)
⢠Sarny: A Life Remembered ⢠The Schernoff Discoveries ⢠Soldier's Heart ⢠The Time Hackers ⢠The Transall Saga ⢠Tucket's Travels
(The Tucket's West series, Books One through Five)
⢠Vote ⢠The Voyage of the Frog ⢠The White Fox Chronicles ⢠The Winter Room ⢠Woods Runner
Canoe Days
and
Dogteam
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2015 by James Paulsen and Gary Paulsen
Jacket photographs copyright © 2015 by Eric Isselee/Shutterstock
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Wendy Lamb Books and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Paulsen, Gary.
Field trip / Gary Paulsen and Jim Paulsen. â First edition.
pages cm
Sequel to: Road trip.
ISBN 978-0-553-49674-1 (hardback) â ISBN 978-0-553-49675-8 (lib. bdg.) â ISBN 978-0-553-49676-5 (ebook) [1. Fathers and sonsâFiction. 2. Automobile travelâfiction. 3. Border collieâFiction. 4. DogsâFiction. 5. Brothers and sistersâFiction. 6. TwinsâFiction. 7. HockeyâFiction. 8. School field tripsâFiction.] I. Paulsen, Jim. II. Title.
PZ7.P2843Fie 2015
[Fic]âdc23
2014037288
eBook ISBNâ9780553496765
eBook design based on printed book design by Vikki Sheatsley
Random House Children's Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v4.1
ep
This book is dedicated to
Jonathan, Lori, Rebecca, and Jared
and to the good people at
Dog Patch,
A Place to Bark,
and Young at Heart,
who work tirelessly
to find good homes for
dogs in need.
Woof.
I stagger in the back door after hockey, wrecked. Thursdays are brutal: strength and conditioning training for ninety minutes before school; then, after the last bell rings, back to the rink for a few hours on the ice. After twenty years of hard work (well, I'm fourteen, but ice time is way longer than real time), I finally made the best hockey team in town.
When I get home, all I want to do is eat and go to bed. A guy needs some peace and quiet. But peace and quiet are pretty rare at our house these days.
Last summer Dad suddenly quit his job as a corporate pencil pusher and started a business flipping houses. No, he's not a giant; flipping means he buys crummy places, fixes them up, and sells them. He's pretty good at what he does, I have to admit that; he's bought dumps that looked to me like nothing but rotting drywall and turned them into show houses.
But there's always the awful wait for the house to sell. And when Dad bugs out about things that are beyond his control, he rips apart something in
our
house.
For the past ten months, we've been living in a construction zone. When Dad's not at work, which is most of the time, he's home tearing down walls and pulling up floors.
Initially, I was really into Dad's company, Duffy and Son, and I worked for him last summer. But once I made the travel hockey team, I didn't have time for that. And I can't stand not having running water, and being able to see through the floor of my bedroom because Dad yanked up the boards. He and Mom love the constant remodelingâhe thrives on the challenges, she enjoys the new stuffâbut I hate it.
Today it's quiet when I get home. Just Atticus and Conor waiting for me. It's been this way for monthsâme and the guys. Sometimes I think they're the only ones who notice if I come home, and they're the main reasons I come home at all.
Atticus sneezes as I walk into the kitchen; the drywall dust bothers his nose. He's our fifteen-year-old border collie, and the construction makes him extra cranky.
Conor, the rescue puppy we adopted last summer, caroms around the corner into the kitchen, sliding into the wall with a thump. His paws scrabble on the new hardwood floorâhe hasn't gotten the hang of the slick wood yetâand he bats his stuffed lamb my way, to throw it for him to chase, but I kick it so the toy skids to him, pucklike. He pounces on itâgoal denied! I have visions of putting together the world's first-ever canine hockey team. I am all hockey, all the time.
“Awesome defense, buddy.” I try to get Conor to high-five me, but he tips over when he lifts a paw. He might be a little too clumsy for hockey. Atticus just watches the toy slide past him and then looks at me sadly. He'll catch Frisbees and balls, but hockey isn't his thing. Weird that we're related.
Atticus whines and stares at the slow cooker on the counter.
“Beef stroganoff today,” I tell him. His ears prick up. I've been cooking for myself all year, and a slow cooker is a hungry guy's best friend. I had to start making my own meals after Mom took on the finances at Duffy and Son; she still works full-time at her old job, but now she takes care of our books in the evenings and on weekends. I looked up a bunch of easy recipes and started fending for myself. I don't know what Mom and Dad do about meals; I can't remember the last time we ate together.
I dump kibble in two bowls for the guys, then sit down with my plate of beefy noodles, and the three of us start inhaling supper. I look through the mail as I eat.
Two envelopes are addressed to
The Parents of Ben Duffy.
“My name is on them,” I assure Atticus, who has stopped eating to watch me, his ears flattened in disapproval. “It's okay.”
The first letter is from the assistant vice principal at my school. Atticus and Conor are nudging my thigh, so I read the letter to them. “ââBen's attendance record is less than optimal.' That means I miss a lot of school because my hockey team has been red-hot this season and we've been invited to a bunch of tourneys and skills seminars,” I explain. Atticus groans and lies down, and Conor scratches an itch behind his ear and falls over again. “ââFurthermore, he seems to be coasting in his classes, failing to live up to his full potential.' That's because I give everything I've got to the game. Duh.”
Atticus sighs and rests his chin on my gear bag. He understands my priorities. Conor chews the bag's shoulder strap. He has yet to perfect supportive gestures the way Atticus has.
“Good thing I intercepted this note,” I tell them. “It's the kind of thing that would worry Mom and Dad, and they have enough going on these days without school causing trouble. I know what I'm doing.” Atticus tilts his head, doubtful. Conor snatches the letter from my hand. “That's what I think: out of sight, out of mind. Thanks, dude.”
I open the second envelope. This letter is a lot more interesting, and I jump up and start pacing as I read because I'm so psyched. The guys follow me back and forth across the kitchen.
“Listen to this: âBrookdale Hockey Academy is hosting invitational tryouts for the best and brightest hockey talent. Beginning this fall term, BHA will offer a live-in facility featuring a high-quality classroom education along with daily training for the country's highest-caliber student athletes. We are pleased to inform you that your son, Ben Duffy, has earned an invitation to apply for admission to our elite program.”
My mind is racing. I've heard rumors about a place like this starting up a few hours away. I guess the academy is a go! And they want me! It's perfectâclasses scheduled around practice, living and training with the best players, being coached by brilliant hockey minds. I'll finally be surrounded by people who get where my head is at and who will encourage my dream of playing pro someday. Not like Mom and Dad, who only nag me about leaving smelly gear in the kitchen and show up late to my games, when they can even make them.
Atticus paws at my leg, and Conor, who studies Atticus like he's going to be tested later, pounces on my shoe. I stop pacing and grin down at them.
“Best. News. Ever.” Atticus makes a noise that sounds like
Noooooo,
but that can't be right: he's always got my back.
I turn my attention back to the letter. “Tryouts are this weekend! Acceptances are being announced next week. That's fast. Figuresâhockey is the fastest game on earth. I have to call Coach, ask around to see if any of the other guys on the team are trying out, and arrange a ride.”
“A ride where?” Dad comes in from the garage. He's carrying blueprints and paperwork; he must have bought a new house to flip. The Duffy family is on a winning streak today.
I'm so jazzed, I can't even find the words; I hand over the letter and wait for him to read the words that will change my life forever.
“Boarding school?” Dad frowns at the letter. “We never talked about you going away to school, much less a hockey academy.” He makes air quotes when he says “academy,” as if he doubts it's a real school. “Mom and I will have to talk this over, Ben. It's a big decision. Very expensive, too.”
“It's not a decision, it's destiny. You know how hard I've been working and how I'veâ¦sacrificed.” I wait and let that sink in; last summer Dad had to go back on his promise to let me go to hockey camp because of the new business. It was a heartbreaker, but I joined a summer league in town and learned a lot, really upped my game. The disappointment about camp helped me develop new skills, and I've been working my butt off ever since. “Playing hockey is all I've dreamed of and worked for since I was five and got my first skates. Hockey's not just a game to me, Dad. It's what I love more than anything else in the world. And this is the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“You said that about camp last summer. And the travel team last fall.”
“Oh, uh, well, when you're a true-blue player like me, whose entire future revolves around hockey, you're bound to have more opportunities of a lifetime than average people.” It's so hard to explain stuff like this to regular folks.
Before Dad can sit down and get caught up in the new house, I give it my best shot.
“I wish you knew what it feels like to be flying over the ice, working the puck, blowing past an opponent who looks like he's in slow motion, spotting the net, and then flipping your stick just right and sending the puck spinning past the goalie.” I'm practically hyperventilating.
Dad's trying to listen, but he's sneaking glances at the blueprints on the table. This isn't the first time he's zoned out on me, thinking about boring stuff like money and bills, when I've been trying to tell him something important about the game. Mom does it, too.
I take a deep breath. Find the perfect words. “Hockey is the only thing I care about. It's all I think of. Hockey is my whole lifeâit's my future. I hope you keep that in mind when you talk to Mom.”
I know enough to leave the room before I say something I'll regret. Like “Don't be a hypocrite, Dadâyou're always talking about believing in yourself and how everything will work out if you just work hard enough.” It may be the truth, but it'll torpedo my chances.
Besides, there's no way Mom and Dad won't let me go.
No. Way.