To Take a Dare

Book excerpt: The day Chrysta Perretti runs away from her crazy parents in Benton, Illinois, she feels she’s angry enough to stay on the road forever. But two years later, when the car she’s in suddenly breaks down in a small Arkansas town, Chrysta's road fever dies too, and something new is born: something tells her that it's possible to start over and she doesn't have to be alone. In Excelsior Springs, Chrysta comes to learn the power of lasting friendships, for it is because of her newfound friends that she just might survive a dark, unexpected, and dangerous new episode in her life. Crescent Dragonwagon and Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Zindel explore what happens when a thirteen-year-old runaway dares to stop running and learns to face the good – and the bad – in herself.