Field Trip by Gary Paulsen Read Free Book Online

bribed.
    “Hey, Dad,” I say oh-so-casually as we happen to be standing near the driver’s door. “I could hear your phone buzzing with messages and emails all day. I know you’re too conscientious a driver to check your phone when your eyes should be on the road, but it must be killing you to miss all that business.” I pause to let that sink in. “How about Brig drives the next shift and you can sit in the back and answer some of those calls and messages? Maybe get some shut-eye?”
    Dad leaps at the suggestion and Brig climbs into the driver’s seat. I sit next to him, map in hand.
    No one notices that I direct him to get back on the freeway, headed in the same direction we came from.
    I shake off the guilt; soon I’ll be enrolled in hockey academy and Dad will be ashamed of himself for putting me in such an awkward position.
    I just hope I can keep everyone in the dark and time the drive right. And score a walk-on tryout. And dazzle the recruiters before Dad can shove me back into the van.
    First things first: I need a good, lengthy distraction.
    Another one.
    “STOP. THIS. VAN!” Jacob bellows from the seat next to the order window. He’s hanging out the window waving and hollering, and all I can see from the front seat are his legs kicking and feet flailing inside the van. It’s freaking me out, like maybe we’ve lost a tire or are about to drive straight into a fiery inferno.
    Even Dad looks alarmed. “Brig! Pull over!”
    “What is it? What happened? What’s wrong? Are you okay?” We bombard Jacob, and Atticus and Conor bark their heads off.
    “Look!” Jacob’s hand is shaking as he points across the highway.
    It’s a bunch of semis and trailers and—what is that? Gigantic silver umbrellas and miles of black cable all over the ground. No blazing fire or space alien landings. What is he so upset about?
    “It’s a movie set. They’re setting up for an overnight shoot,” he whispers. “Look: lights and generators and camera track and the mike boom. All I want in my whole entire life is to be in a movie. I just know I was born for it and that everything in my life has been leading to this moment. We’ve got to go over. Movie sets always need extras. I don’t care if we just stand around and watch. Good thing I always carry my headshots; maybe I’ll run into someone from casting.”
    Brilliant.
    Jacob digs in his backpack and, sure enough, comes up with a stack of eight-by-ten glossy photographs. He thrusts them into Charlotte’s hands and kicks off his hiking boots. “Avert your gaze,” he instructs us. No one does, of course, and we watch as he kicks out of his cargo pants and replaces them with black suit pants and dress shoes from his bag. He rips off his T-shirt and slides into a white button-down with a necktie already looped through the collar, and a jacket that matches the pants. He travels with business clothes? That don’t have a wrinkle on them? Man, I’m lucky if I have the right number of clean boxers.
    “Let’s go make dreams come true.” Dad opens the van door and we all pile out.
    “It’s an intergalactic, postapocalyptic, war-of-the-zombies movie,” Charlotte briefs Jacob, looking up from her tablet. “Loosely based on a bestselling graphic novel originally published in Japan and adapted by the guy who also wrote the screenplay for the totalitarian regime werewolf love story.”
    We all nod. Good stuff.
    “They will totally want us to be extras,” Jacob says, studying the set. “They don’t have nearly enough dead bodies for an endgame scenario. And we already look horrible from cleaning the house!”
    Dad lets the border collies out of the van as we head over to join a line forming near the set.
    “Uh, Dad? Don’t you think we should leave them here? We’re gate-crashing a movie set, which is probably not proper etiquette. The guys will just call attention to us.”
    “No one will even notice them, Ben. Atticus and Conor are impeccably trained. It’s