Bobby Gene and I pulled our piggy banks from their side-by-side spots on top of our bookcase. I shook mine to listen to its satisfying rattle.

My pig was green and Bobby Gene’s was blue. Mine had a little yellow polka-dotted bow tie, and his had a red newsboy hat. They were ceramic, like kitchen mugs, and not too heavy. Unfortunately.

We didn’t have much need to spend our savings, so that’s why we had never cracked them open before. For all we knew, we were already sitting on hundreds. Maybe thousands.

We set the pigs down on the carpet in front of us and gave them each a last look.

“Goodbye, old friends,” I whispered.

“Are we sure we want to do this?” Bobby Gene asked. He had the hammer in his hand. “I mean, this cash is probably supposed to go for stuff we really need someday.”

We needed that moped.

“We have to count it,” I said. “Styx will be impressed if we get a head start on the Grasshopper fund.”

We’d decided to use this as the moped’s official code name in case anyone overheard us talking about it.

“Okay.” Bobby Gene still looked skeptical. “So, I really have to hit them with the hammer? It’s going to get shards all over the place.”

I reached up to his bed and yanked his pillowcase off.

“Here, do it on this.” I laid the pillowcase over the carpet like a drop cloth.

“Hey,” he complained.

“This is how they do it in the movies.” I could picture it: the big moment when the hero grabs the bank and smashes it against the table. A million dollars in quarters spills out. Urgent soundtrack music pounded in my head.

I rolled the piggy banks over onto their sides. We stared at them, ready for slaughter. This was turning out to be a bit sad.

“What’s that?” Bobby Gene pointed at a blue rubber circle on the belly of his pig. Mine had a green one.

“There’s a plug!” After a few tugs, it popped right out. Coins poured into my hand.

“Sweet! We don’t have to kill them.” Bobby Gene opened his own bank.

We shook the coins out and tugged out the bills with hooked fingers. We kept our piles separated with an oversized pencil.

Bobby Gene’s bank was quite a bit fuller than mine. I wasn’t so happy about that. We’d gotten them at the same time, after all. A Christmas gift from Granddad some years back.

We stacked up our dollar bills and separated the coins by type. That was the easiest way to count, Bobby Gene said.

My total was $27.20. Bobby Gene had a whopping $77.46.

So, had he been keeping more of the change for errands we’d been running together? That wasn’t fair. I’d have to keep my eye on him.

“Over a hundred dollars, total!” I exclaimed. “That plus the fireworks is a really good start.”

Bobby Gene looked skeptical. “We’re a long way from four ninety-nine ninety-five. And I don’t think we should give Styx any of this money.”

“What? Why not? It’ll get us to the moped faster.”

“We should wait and see what happens. Dad says never put all your cards on the table, right?”

My skin flushed. Why should Dad get to make all the rules? “We made a deal with Styx. We’re going to get the Grasshopper.”

“He’s supposed to get us money, not the other way around.”

I shook my head. Proving ourselves to Styx meant showing him all we had to offer.

Bobby Gene was still talking. “Now that we know we can count our savings anytime, we can keep the banks as backup.”

“You can keep yours,” I snapped. “I’m not letting you screw this up for both of us.”

I snatched up my coins and started to stuff them back into my pig, one by one.

Clink.

Plink.

“It’s just practical, right?” he said.

“Practical and STUPID!” I shouted. Bobby Gene looked shocked. I was shocked. And yet my mouth kept moving.

“People like Styx and me, we’re going places.” To the city. To the horizon. To infinity. “Don’t stand in our way.”

Clink.

Plink.

I needed to make a dramatic exit. I scooped up each careful stack of coins and dumped them into my shirt, holding up the hem like a net. I took the wad of bills into my fist, hugged the piggy bank to my chest and charged up the ladder to my bunk.

The coins poured out on my sheets and I kept on stuffing them. Clink. Plink. Plunk.

I glared over the railing. Bobby Gene sat in the middle of the carpet, with a real set look on his face. Why did he have to shoot down my dreams?

“You’re going to sleep with that thing up there now?”

“Sure am. You can’t have any of it.”

My fingers shook but I kept on sliding coins into the slot. What was happening? Why did it feel like everything I’d ever hoped for was slipping away? Bobby Gene and I got into stupid fights all the time, but it had never felt exactly like this before.

Clink. Plink. Plunk.

“We’ve known Styx for like a week,” Bobby Gene said. “How come you want to trust him with your savings more than you trust me?”

I didn’t have an answer for that one. At least, not in words. In my heart, some kind of answer rose up.

Bobby Gene was everything familiar. Everything I already knew. Styx represented what was possible. All the invisible things that eventually might be seen. And to be seen would change everything.

Silence fell between us as my coins dropped into the bank. Clink. Plink. Plunk.

It wasn’t the greatest thing to try to do mad. It was slow and precise and I felt stupider and more ordinary with every coin I dropped.

Bobby Gene sighed and started refilling his own bank. The sound of him coming back to me settled my racing heart.