Read The Boston Breakout for Free Online Page B

was all he usually did, he had trouble doing anything else. So he just nodded.
    Muck nodded back, then stood up and walked away to make his phone call.

8
    “N O FAIR !”
    Nish was livid. He was bouncing around the hotel room, slamming his fist into furniture, slapping walls, and kicking beds and the coffee table. Beet red, near tears, flailing like a two-year-old having a tantrum at the mall. Yes, Travis thought to himself, Nish is all grown up and mature now.
    “They can’t do this to me!”
    Data wheeled his chair out of the raging bull’s way. Data had come to the door with his tablet,and Nish had thought they were going to work on the Nishikawa Stinger.
    In a way, they were. Data had come to close the project down.
    “I was looking through websites for propulsion ideas,” Data told Nish, his fingers tapping on the tablet as he worked through a search engine. “And I’m afraid there already is a company out there that sells the same thing. It’s called the Boni Goalie Trainer. Here, have a look.”
    Nish ripped the tablet from Data’s hands and began poring over the website.
    “They stole my idea!”
he shouted.
    Lars giggled. “I imagine they had the idea before yesterday, Nish.”
    “
No way!
” Nish yelled. “
Look at this
.” He practically slammed the screen into Lars’s nose.
    “They even stole my name,” Nish hissed. “I called mine the Nishikawa Stinger. They have three pro models, and one of them is the Stinger! How do you explain that?”
    Lars looked bewildered. “Maybe
coincidence
?”
    “Ha!” said Nish. “I’ve just proved they stolemy idea. I should take them to court and sue the pants off them.”
    “I wouldn’t recommend that,” said Data, trying to bring Nish back to reality.
    There was a light tap at the door and Travis hurried over to let whoever it was in.
    It was Sarah, and she looked as white as a ghost.
    “What’s up?” asked Travis, instantly concerned.
    “It’s Sam,” Sarah said in a shaky voice. “She’s gone!

9
    “S am picked up some leaflet at the demonstration outside the aquarium,” Sarah said, as she and Travis hurried to the room Sam, Sarah, and Jenny were sharing. “She got really caught up in it.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Well, you saw her reaction at McDonald’s. She says she’s a vegan now.”
    “A
what
?”
    “A vegan is like a vegetarian times a hundred. She says she’ll never eat an animal product again – nobeef, pork, chicken, seafood, not even milk or cheese.”
    “She’d die.”
    “No, she wouldn’t. She’d eat vegetables and other foods – just nothing that has any connection to any living creature. She says her world was changed forever at that rally outside the aquarium.”
    “I thought they were a little extreme, didn’t you? It looked to me like the penguins were happier and safer there than they would be in the wild.”
    “Doesn’t matter what you and I might think, Trav – Sam has become a true believer. She must have found something in that leaflet that made her head out this evening on her own. She didn’t tell any of us she was going. I tried to find the leaflet but she must have taken it with her.”
    “Wait!” Travis stopped fast and reached for his back pocket. “I might have it right here.”
    He fished in his pocket and pulled out the leaflet. He hadn’t even looked at it when he took it, and had forgotten all about it until now.
    Quickly he unfolded the leaflet. “ FREE THE PENGUINS! ” was written in bold letters across the top. Inside was a lot of information on human cruelty toanimals around the world, including photos of tightly penned pigs and beakless chickens and force-fed geese, and several of wild animals struggling to escape from traps. One showed a fox that had chewed its own foot off to get free of a snare.
    “Yuck!” said Travis, and he quickly turned the page. He and Sarah scanned the words as quickly as they could in search of a clue, any clue, to where Sam might have gone.
    On