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make him more stubborn than ever. “I’m going,” he said. “If you go you have to take me too.” He wasn’t raving now or whispering. Just speaking in an ordinary dead calm voice. Dead calm and determined.
    But Dani could be determined too. She shook her head and was still shaking it when Stormy said, “Promise. Promise I’m going too. If you don’t I’ll …”
    “What? What will you do?”
    Dani was still sitting on the edge of the bed with the broken pig bank in her lap, and Stormy was standing in front of her holding the hammer in both hands. Hands that were clenched so tightly the knuckles were turning white. Keeping the hammer in the edge of her vision, Dani asked cautiously, “What will you do if I don’t promise?”
    Stormy’s face had turned back into an angry mask. “If you don’t promise—I’ll tell.”
    Dani couldn’t believe it. Stormy Arigotti wasn’t exactly perfect. She’d always known that he was a sneak and a shin kicker, for instance, not to mention a hyperactive nonreader. But it was hard to believe that he was actually threatening to snitch on her running-away plans. Sitting there silent and blank-eyed as a statue, Dani told herself she didn’t believe it. But at the same time, her mind was racing around like crazy. Around and around, picking up ideas and then putting them down again.
    First of all she thought of telling him what people thought of snitches. How snitches were just about the lowest of the low and … But then she realized that wouldn’t help at all. Stormy didn’t care what people thought of him. Some of the time he didn’t even care what Dani thought of him.
    Then she had a great idea. At least for a moment, it seemed like a great idea. “If you do,” she started, making every word count. “If-you-tell-I’ll-never …” She stopped there. What she’d been planning to say was that she’d never read to him again. But, of course, that was pretty stupid because if he didn’t tell, she would go ahead and run away, and there’d be no more reading anyway. Stormy might not have been the smartest kid in the world, but he was smart enough to figure that out.
    Finally she gave up. At least she gave up on trying to come up with an argument that would convince Stormy to keep his mouth shut. And that only left letting him come too. Or—she thought for a moment longer—or at least letting him think he was going to come too. Putting one hand behind her back—the one with the crossed fingers—she said, “All right. I give up. I guess you can come with me.”
    “I can? You promise?”
    Dani nodded.
    Stormy lifted the hammer over his head. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s smash the pig.”

Chapter 5
    T HE MONEY IN THE pig bank turned out to be a big disappointment. It had felt so heavy that Dani was sure there would be at least fifty dollars, but it turned out to be only thirty-three dollars and seventeen cents. And that meant there wasn’t anywhere near enough. Dani knew she’d have to transfer twice and by checking the bus schedule in the post office she’d discovered that the first leg of the journey, from Rattler Springs to Reno, would be thirteen dollars and fifty cents. At least that was what it was for an adult ticket, which meant anyone twelve years old or older. The trouble was, she wasn’t sure exactly how much the ticket on to San Francisco and then the one to Sea Grove would be. And she didn’t dare ask anybody for fear of giving away her plans. But as near as she’d been able to figure, the tickets to go all the way to Sea Grove by bus would be almost forty dollars. And that was just for one person. Of course Stormy could buy a child’s ticket, but that would only be a few dollars less.
    “For two of us,” she told Stormy, “we’re going to need almost eighty dollars and that’s not even counting money for stuff to eat.”
    Stormy said that was all right because he could bring lots of Beer Nuts, and then he insisted on counting the money all