Peter Lee's Notes from the Field Read online

  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 © 2021 BY ANGELA AHN

  ILLUSTRATIONS COPYRIGHT © 2021 BY JULIE KWON

  Tundra Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers, a division of Penguin Random House of Canada Limited

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Title: Peter Lee’s notes from the field / Angela Ahn; Julie Kwon, illustrator.

  Names: Ahn, Angela, author. | Kwon, Julie, illustrator.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200182315 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200182331 | ISBN 9780735268241 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780735268258 (EPUB)

  Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.

  Classification: LCC PS8601.H6 P48 2021 | DDC jC813/.6—dc23

  Published simultaneously in the United States of America by Tundra Books of Northern New York, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers,

  a division of Penguin Random House of Canada Limited

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER: 2020933319

  Edited by Lynne Missen

  Book design by John Martz, adapted for ebook

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  a_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1: May The Force Be With You

  Chapter 2: Full S.T.E.A.M. Ahead

  Chapter 3: Fact: Sisters are Annoying

  Chapter 4: Origin of the Species (L.B.)

  Chapter 5: Hands-On Learning

  Chapter 6: Freedom in the Air

  Chapter 7: Organization—Extreme

  Chapter 8: (Scientific) Adventure Awaits

  Chapter 9: Cramped Van, Short Tempers

  Chapter 10: Define Holiday

  Chapter 11: Steamy, Like the Mesozoic Era

  Chapter 12: Dreams do Come True

  Chapter 13: Fieldwork is not for Wussies

  Chapter 14: When an Asthmatic Meets Ancient Rock Dust

  Chapter 15: Mission: Get Out of Drumheller

  Chapter 16: The Hoodoo That You Do

  Chapter 17: Convert This

  Chapter 18: Pacific Breezes Are the Best Breezes

  Chapter 19: A Rare Event

  Chapter 20: Defying the Laws of Physics

  Chapter 21: Too Groggy to Report

  Chapter 22: Let There be Cake

  Chapter 23: Treasure Hunting

  Chapter 24: Never Tell Me the Odds

  Chapter 25: Wanted: More Space

  Chapter 26: Resistance is Futile

  Chapter 27: A Risky Choice

  Chapter 28: A Wet Blanket

  Chapter 29: The Very Definition of Colic

  Chapter 30: He Shoots! He Scores!

  Chapter 31: Last Gasp

  Chapter 32: What’s that Smell?

  Chapter 33: A New Partner in Crime

  Chapter 34: Santa’s Little Helper

  Chapter 35: Do. or Do Not. There is no Try

  Chapter 36: Under Pressure

  Chapter 37: Truth Time

  Chapter 38: When Mom Doesn’t Know Best

  Chapter 39: This Asian Whiz Kid

  Acknowledgments

  THIS NOTEBOOK IS PROPERTY OF:

  PETER LEE

  Chapter 1

  MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU

  Tuesday, May 14, lunch

  Conditions: Light rain, high humidity

  The ball came at me so fast I barely had time to throw my right hand up in the air to block it. But just like Deinocheirus, a dinosaur from the late Cretaceous period, I have unusually long arms. The leather of the ball grazed my gloved fingertips. I had just counteracted a basic scientific law: the ball would have stayed in motion and sailed right through the goalpost if I hadn’t applied the smallest amount of force. Force wreaks havoc on motion, and in this case, it caused the ball to change its trajectory, leading to the sweetest sound a goalie can hear—thunk. The ball firmly hit the goalpost and rebounded back into play. That was a close one.

  “No!” Ryan Gagnon screamed as he clenched his fists and arched his back in frustration. “You got lucky, Peter!” He clearly did not understand physics at all. Luck has no part in science.

  We glared at each other briefly and then Ryan ran ahead to keep close to the action.

  I leaned against my goalpost and watched the other boys run back to the far end of the field. It wasn’t long before they stopped to argue.

  “I did not!” Ryan shouted.

  “I saw it, Ryan! You’re lying!” Joe Flores threw his hands up. “It was so totally a handball!” Joe was my good buddy and an excellent judge of character.

  The rain was starting to come down, but we never called games off because of the weather. Sometimes I walked around with wet shoes all day and didn’t notice until I got home and peeled my socks off—instead of toes, I had stinky prunes.

  It looked like the argument was going to be a while, so I ripped off my goalie gloves and patted my front pant pockets. I felt the familiar lumps of my small coil notebook in my left pocket and my inhaler in my right pocket. My asthma was getting better the older I got—I hadn’t even had to go to the emergency room in a few years—but I was still supposed to take a dose every day and an extra dose before exercise, not during exercise. Sometimes, like today, I forgot to follow the plan. I made sure it was a good time to turn my back to the game so I could privately take a quick puff.

  The game had come to a complete stop. Even if he had touched the ball, Ryan would never admit it. Joe was trying to argue, but this was Ryan. I sighed and waited for the game to resume. I needed to keep loose, so I swung my long arms around and around like helicopter blades. As a goalie, the only player on the field who can use their arms, all this height has an advantage. At five foot nine, I’m the tallest boy in my fifth-grade class. I get to stand in the middle of the back row for the class photo. That’s the Top Dog spot and it has been mine for years.

  I am really freaky-tall if you factor in the Korean thing. The Korean thing being that I’m a Canadian-born Korean. Koreans are known for lots of things: electronics, cheap cars with a weird company name, addictive TV shows and K-pop; but Koreans aren’t known for their height. I break all the rules.

  As the argument got more heated, I watched Samuel Pak leave his basketball game and casually saunter up to Ryan and the other boys. Samuel and his friends in sixth and seventh grade played basketball on the court right next to the end of the soccer field.

  As soon as they saw Samuel coming, Joe and Ryan stopped arguing. They stood frozen, waiting in anticipation for Samuel to speak. If a person could be so cool that it left everybody else feeling chilled, that was Samuel.

  Samuel was the only other Korean boy in the whole school and sometimes we saw each other at family parties because his grandmother was friends with Hammy, my grandmother, and he would always be polite, but just not
overly talkative. It was the same at school. He had this quiet bad-boy vibe about him, like you wouldn’t be totally surprised to see him sitting in the principal’s office because he either got in trouble or because he was helping with something. He was hard to figure sometimes. I mean, he wasn’t my friend, but he didn’t treat me like carrion either. From the other end of the soccer pitch, Samuel gave me his usual chin-up greeting, which I returned.

  I couldn’t hear everything Samuel was saying, but I did catch: “Who cares, dudes? Get a life and just play. This ain’t the World Cup.” Samuel sounded disgusted. He flicked his hand through the air, dismissing them.

  When Samuel spoke, fifth graders listened. He said his piece and slowly walked back to the basketball court. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Even when he was sweaty, it wasn’t gross, it was athletic.

  I held on to the goalpost for balance to stretch out my calf, while watching the argument get sorted out. When they stopped talking, I jumped to the center of the goal. I put my goalie gloves back on and assumed my “ready” stance.

  “Game’s on!” Liam shouted down the field to me. Liam and I had only one thing in common—our last names. Liam was also a Lee, but he was the Chinese kind, not the Korean kind. He was Ryan’s best friend. Was it a coincidence that they were both like two tiny, barky attack dogs? I doubt it.

  Joe was running across the field, dribbling the ball between his feet. He was speedy and had good control of the ball. His Vancouver Canucks shirt was a blur of blue and green as he danced around the field, looking downfield for an open player. Ryan started to charge at him, trying to take possession of the ball from Joe. Ryan had intense, angry eyes, which was kind of just his everyday look.

  Joe was having none of that. He kicked the ball so hard that Ryan barely had time to get out of the way. It ricocheted off Ryan’s backside—kinetic energy at its best. I couldn’t stop the “Ha!” that came out of my mouth. His pale gray track pants were left with a dirty, wet circular stain. Right on his butt. He’d have to walk around like that all day. It was perfect. I saw a lopsided smile flash across Joe’s face. That stain was going to make Ryan even madder. The ball rolled out of the soccer field and bounced toward the playground, closer to the school.

  Because the rain had started to come down hard, the playground was empty, except for L.B. I eyed my little sister from across the field. No matter the weather, she was always in the playground, even if she was alone. She was usually alone anyway.

  The boys cupped their hands around their mouths and shouted, “L.B.!” They pointed to the ball.

  My little sister had been whizzing back and forth on the zipline. When she reached the end of the line, she gracefully jumped onto the platform and skipped to the ball, which had come to a stop near her.

  L.B. picked up the ball and balanced it in her right hand. She looked like a baseball pitcher at the ready—her body turned to the side, her elbow bent and then her high leg kick. The ball flew through the air in an impossibly long arc.

  “Whoa,” said Liam. His cheeks were flushed and his dark hair shiny with sweat. I watched him as he watched the ball fly through the air.

  “Thanks!” the other boys shouted across the field as the ball landed near their feet.

  “Hi, Petey!” she yelled, waving. I shooed her away. The game was back on.

  Unlike me, L.B. was small. She was the smallest child in her second-grade class. She sat in the front row on the end of the bench in her class photo. That’s the Shrimp Spot. Nobody wants the Shrimp Spot. In this year’s class photo, L.B. wore yellow leggings with a unicorn pattern all over them, and a white T-shirt covered in rainbows. Her socks even had pink hearts; you could see the pattern poking out between her running shoes and the hem of her pants. She always dressed herself in a way that made her look…I don’t know…kind of loud and flashy, like an exploding glitter bomb. Sometimes all the girl stuff on her clothes was a bit much. Even the rain jacket she was wearing right now was covered with sparkly bits. She was hard to miss.

  As Ryan ran by me, he said in his mocking squeaky voice, “Hi, Petey!” I tried to swat at his back with my gloved hand, but I missed. He didn’t have a younger sibling who humiliated him like I did. I had a love-hate thing with Ryan. I loved to hate him.

  The bell rang and, as I half-jogged, half-walked back to class, I heard the supervision aide blow her whistle and yell at L.B., like she does almost every day. “Last one in again, L.B.? Get back to class!”

  Chapter 2

  FULL S.T.E.A.M. AHEAD

  Saturday, May 18, 9:30 a.m.

  Conditions: Barometric pressure rising

  “We’ve got to go in thirty minutes,” Mom said as she glanced up at the clock in the kitchen. She passed me a bowl of oatmeal. I rubbed my head and tried to open my sleepy eyes wider.

  “Why?” I perked up.

  “We’re going to the…” Mom squinted and stared at her note on the calendar. “Chemical Engineering Lab of Innovation.”

  I sat up straighter. “That sounds cool!”

  Dad snapped his newspaper open and, without looking at me, said, “Oh, sorry, Peter. It’s not for you.”

  I slumped over my breakfast. Of course not. Why would it be for me?

  I listlessly shoveled a spoonful of oatmeal into my mouth and squished it around before swallowing.

  L.B. skipped into the kitchen, still wearing her pajamas with emoji faces all over them, and she pulled out a chair.

  “Good morning!” L.B. said happily to nobody in particular.

  Mom pointed a finger at her. “We’ve got that thing today.”

  L.B.’s shoulders slouched slightly. “Is that today?”

  “Yes. It’s a real privilege.” Dad pushed his glasses up on his nose and folded the newspaper closed. He took a sip of coffee. L.B. sighed and looked outside. She flipped one of her braids behind her shoulder.

  “Do I have to go?” I asked as I scraped my last spoonful of oatmeal from the bowl. The weekends were my “Ryan-free” days and I usually managed to do something relaxing, like watch dinosaur videos, or sometimes I’d call Joe and we’d go to the corner store and get a freezie. Taking L.B. to a new program was not exactly as fun as sucking brightly colored sugar water out of a plastic tube.

  “Yes,” Mom answered decisively as she sat down at the table.

  “Can’t I just go to Hammy and Haji’s?” I put my bowl and spoon into the dishwasher.

  “They’re coming too.”

  “I love extended family outings!” L.B. said as she nibbled her breakfast.

  “You don’t have much time, so please try to eat quickly!” Mom said firmly to L.B. Last month, it took her four hours to eat half a pomegranate.

  “Why are Haji and Hammy coming?” I asked.

  But before Mom could answer, there was a knock at the door.

  “That’s probably them,” Mom said. “Peter?” She motioned with her head toward the door. I looked at Dad. He wasn’t about to move either. They were experiencing the scientific phenomenon known as inertia: a body at rest tends to stay at rest. Inertia was the scientific word for laziness.

  I was still wearing my dinosaur pajamas, the ones covered in different-colored Triceratops on skateboards, not the pair with the big Diplodocus across the chest, but it was just Hammy and Haji, and they had seen me in my pajamas a thousand times. When I opened the door, I was startled because it was not Hammy and Haji. It was a brown-uniformed delivery man wearing a baseball hat. I tried hiding behind the front door.

  “Special Saturday delivery!” He handed me a stack of envelopes and turned to go back to his van. “Cool pj’s.” He winked at me.

  “Thanks,” I replied reluctantly, closing the door. I hated it when I couldn’t tell if an adult was making fun of me or not.

  I looked at the top envelope, which was addressed to Mom. The sender was Golden Sunset Active Liv
ing Centre. I stared at it for a few seconds trying to figure out why Mom would be getting special delivery mail from a place like that.

  “Peter, it wasn’t Hammy and Haji?” Mom shouted from the kitchen as she leaned back in her chair so she could see me standing in front of the doorway.

  “No, it was a mail delivery.” I held up the envelopes to show her.

  “Mail delivery?” she asked, surprised.

  I started to say, “The Golden Sunset…,” but she leaped out of her seat, managing to put the coffee cup down at lightning-fast speed, and grabbed the envelopes out of my hand before I could look at the next one. Until that very moment, I would never have described my mother as fast and agile, but caffeine has amazing powers on adults.

  “What—” I started to say. My hands were in midair, imagining that they were still holding on to the envelopes that had just been there a second ago.

  “It’s probably just junk mail,” Dad said casually as Mom dashed upstairs with the envelopes. “We’ve got to get going soon! You should brush your hair, your teeth! Lots of things need brushing!” He laughed strangely.

  I squinted at him suspiciously.

  There was another knock at the door.

  “That will be Hammy and Haji!” Dad said as I turned the knob.

  “Good morning, everybody!” Hammy said as she stepped in and gave me a warm hug. She was wearing a colorful floral scarf and a yellow cardigan sweater—it was her signature look. She had countless scarves and every color of cardigan. She always wore some combination of the two. Her hair was short and she had given up coloring it a long time ago. I loved how her hair had different shades of gray and some black hairs that had refused to age.

  “Peter!” Haji gave my back a gentle pat.

  L.B. hugged Hammy, then turned to Haji and did a little leap, springing herself at him. He caught her, but barely.

  “L.B.!” Dad chided. “You’ve got to make sure he’s ready when you do that!” She shrugged her shoulders unapologetically.