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    The Courage Test
    The Courage Test
    The Courage Test
    Ebook147 pages1 hour

    The Courage Test

    By James Preller

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Will has no choice. His father drags him along on a wilderness adventure in the footsteps of legendary explorers Lewis and Clark--whether he likes it or not. All the while, Will senses that something about this trip isn't quite right.

    Along the journey, Will meets fascinating strangers and experiences new thrills, including mountain cliffs, whitewater rapids, and a heart-hammering bear encounter.

    It is a journey into the soul of America's past, and the meaning of family in the future. In the end, Will must face his own, life-changing test of courage.

    This title has Common Core connections.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateSep 13, 2016
    ISBN9781250093929
    The Courage Test
    Author

    James Preller

    James Preller is the author of the popular Jigsaw Jones mystery books, which have sold more than 10 million copies since 1998. He is also the author of Bystander, named a 2009 Junior Library Guild Selection, Six Innings, an ALA Notable Book, and Mighty Casey, his own twist on the classic poem, “Casey at the Bat.” In addition to writing full-time, Preller plays in a men’s hardball league and coaches Little League. He compares coaching kids to “trying to hold the attention of a herd of earthworms.” He lives in Delmar, New York with his wife, three children, cats and dog.

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    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      A realistic fiction novel, The Courage Test, brings a young man closer to his mother and his father despite their divorce. This novel isn’t so much about being courageous as about being kind. Will chooses unkindness because he’s angry. He’s made the All-Star team, but his dad is making him go on a trip with him instead of play. His dad is not athletic, but he’s pretty smart. For thirteen years he has been researching Lewis and Clark. He’s now going to take Will, his son, driving, canoeing, and hiking down part of the path. Will can only be angry so long because “being a jerk is exhausting” (10). Will begins to have a good time and learns a lot about the true courage it took for these people to go into the unknown for two years. In their journey, they re-meet each other. Instead of the dad that Will feels abandoned him, he finds a man who knows how to take care of himself in the wilderness and who has interesting friends and who is kind. Will misses his mom but finds the vastness of the wilderness amazing and even scary. He’s convinced a bear will attack him. He even meets an Indian whose family came from this part of the world and a homeless illegal Mexican with a very large dog. This is a novel about what one learns on a journey. Will will learn about his dad and his mom and about what it takes to be a courageous and kind human. In other words, he has to learn to “man up” with grace and dignity. It’s an easy novel to read, geared definitely more for students who don’t want much depth in their novels and enjoy the great outdoors.

    Book preview

    The Courage Test - James Preller

    CHAPTER ONE

    OFF THE MAP

    My mother pushes me out the door, and I don’t know why.

    I don’t want to go, I tell her.

    I know, she says.

    But why now? I ask again. All-Stars starts this week. I don’t want to miss it.

    We’ve been over this, she says.

    She might as well say what every parent resorts to when they run out of good answers: Because I said so. There’s no explanation, no more discussion. It’s time for me to go.

    I feel ridiculously, stupidly, helplessly annoyed, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I see in that instant my mother is getting old. Stray gray hairs, wrinkles around the down-turned corners of her mouth. She looks tired and thin, sick of arguing with me. I carry a fully loaded metal-frame backpack on my shoulders and a smaller gym bag in my right hand—stuff for the long drive, all my technology’s in there. I don’t want to go, but I can’t stand here forever. So come on, Mom, let’s do this.

    You’ll have fun, she says. It’s good for you and your father to spend time together.

    Please, Mom.

    He’s the only father you’ve got, she says.

    I give her nothing in return. Not a nod. I’m not even listening. I turn my back to her.

    Bye, she says, and adds, I love you, Will.

    I walk away like I don’t hear.

    Will?

    I raise my hand in good-bye without looking back.

    My father waits in the car. He steps out as I approach. I nod to him, hey. None of this is my idea. I have no say, no choice. I refuse to be happy about it. I’m not going to make this easy.

    Here, um, let me help you with that. He reaches to take my backpack.

    No, I got it, I say, leaning away.

    Oh, okay, sure, he says.

    He stands there, not knowing what to do.

    Are you going to pop the trunk? I ask. Because: obviously.

    Flustered, my father moves to the driver’s side door. He fumbles in the front pocket of his water-resistant khakis, drops the keys on the road, stoops to the ground. I glance sideways, slyly, to check how this is playing from the front window. But my mother is no longer watching.

    She’s gone.

    *   *   *

    Ready? my father asks. His body is half turned in inquiry, one hand on the steering wheel, the right gripping the ignition key.

    A question with no true answer.

    I don’t have a choice. So, sure, Dad, I shrug, I’m ready. But the truth is I’m not. He knows it, too, yet asks anyway. And away we roll.

    It is awkward all around.

    This is the man who moved out of the old house fifteen months ago. He started a shiny new life—soon featuring a new girlfriend—while my mother and I got stuck rebuilding the old one.

    As the car slides forward, I spy my friend Yoenis on the sidewalk. Tall and dark and slender, he juggles a soccer ball on his foot, tap-tap, tap and pop, and he snatches the ball between his hands. A bright smile sunbeams across his face. He’s a guy who can do anything he wants. Yoenis glimpses me through the car window, and his smile drops. He waggles a finger skyward. His head shakes. I don’t know what it means. Is he pointing to the sun, the sky? Is he gesturing to God above? Or is he just saying, no, don’t go, you’ll miss everything.

    I wonder if he knows something I don’t know?

    *   *   *

    Thwap, thwap, thwap.

    I am sprawled, unbuckled, in the backseat—my choice, not his, more legroom—playing catch by myself. A glove on my right hand, a baseball in my left. Yeah, I’m a southpaw from Minneapolis. I’m making a point. He can drag me away from the game and All-Stars and from all my friends. But he can’t make me forget it—and I won’t let him, either.

    I don’t forgive easily.

    Meri, please, he says, not in the car. It’s a distraction when I’m driving.

    There is a pause now, a moment that stretches out for a mile or so as the car zooms past the windblown grasses of the prairie landscape. West, west. And then I start up again.

    Thwap, thwap, thwap.

    When he checks the rearview mirror, he can see my grin.

    And don’t call me Meri, I say. "Please, Bruce, it’s annoying."

    I’ve never called my father Bruce before, and I watch as his eyeballs register the disrespect. Blinking, thinking, not responding.

    We are headed to a place near Bismarck, North Dakota, where I guess there’s a museum or fort or old Indian village or something. Dad says I’m going to love it. But I think, Not if I can help it.

    As if reading my mind, my father says, You can’t stay angry the entire trip.

    Want to bet?

    He passes back a bag of Doritos. I agree to eat them, crunching loudly on the orangey goodness. Being a jerk is exhausting. My father knows how to inch over to my good side. It’s through an extra-large bag of Doritos.

    *   *   *

    To pass the time, my father tells fifty miles of cringeworthy jokes. Each one is worse than the next. He’s trying really hard—I can see that—but still. This is making my ears bleed. Then he says, I read this one in a magazine. Let me see if I can remember it.

    He says this before every single joke he tells. Let me see…

    I’m slumped in the backseat, barely listening. This is going to be a long, long ride.

    Oh, yeah, okay, he says, snapping his fingers. A man and a woman are watching the news on television when the announcer says that six Brazilian men died in a car accident. Upon hearing this, the woman starts sobbing hysterically. She can’t stop. ‘It’s sad, honey,’ the man finally says, ‘but accidents happen.’ After a minute, still sobbing, she asks, ‘How many is a Brazilian?’

    Before I can help it, a small laugh escapes my lips. I hate it when my father says something funny when I’m trying like crazy to stay mad at him. He’s not making this easy.

    *   *   *

    Where in the world are we going?

    Good question.

    Right now we’re on a highway headed west toward North Dakota. My father says our trip really begins there, at Fort Mandan, where the explorers Lewis and Clark and the entire Corps of Discovery hunkered down for the winter of 1804–1805. After that, they went into the unknown.

    Uncharted territory.

    Disconnected from the so-called civilized world.

    My father is a college professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He’s obsessed with American history. For the past ten years, or nearly my entire life on the planet, he’s been trying to write a book about the Lewis and Clark expedition. He even has a title, Off the Map, which I think is not half bad. Whenever I ask him how much he’s written, he shrugs and looks away. He says he’s been focusing on the research end of the enterprise, whatever that means.

    He has a girlfriend now. So maybe that’s part of it. A blond-haired lady named Susan. She’s okay, I guess, for someone I almost hate. She tries too hard and smells like apricots. Every time I’m over there, Susan wants to cook my favorite meals, play board games, enjoy together time.

    Who plays board games anymore?

    She’s always right in my face, asking, So how are YOU today?

    How is anybody supposed to answer that? I say, Fine, and my father gets mad at me for not answering politely. Nothing I do or say is good enough. I’m supposed to be a new and improved version of my old self. But really, I just want to go into my room and shut the door.

    My dad is always asking me to give Susan a chance. I don’t know how to answer him, exactly. It feels like a pop quiz every time I go over there, and I keep flunking it. I’m trying to be myself. Sorry that’s not good enough anymore.

    When my parents got divorced, it came as a big surprise to me, because what kid ever thinks about that stuff? Parents are just there, like a mountain or a river. A natural fact. You don’t question it. Then one still-wintery day in March they sat me down for a talk. When they finished, they solemnly asked if I had any questions. I said, Can I go Yoenis’s house? He got the new FIFA game.

    They were like, What?

    I don’t know. What was I supposed to say? What did it matter

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