Crushing Read Free Page A

because it was raining, we would get in trouble if we were caught out here. Games of hide-and-seek in the warm summer rain were the best, but getting caught on the course meant a lecture from the parents and probable grounding.
    The man got out and opened the trunk of the car. He went into the shack. What would he need out of there? When he came out he carried something big over his shoulder. It looked like a big canvas sack. I couldn’t tell if he worked here or not. As he went to put it in his trunk the canvas slid off, and I saw a head of black hair hanging down. Good grief, was that a person?
    I started to breathe too fast and the wheezing started. A ton of dust and stuff was floating around in here. I started to cough. He must have heard because he whipped his head around fast. He paused, staring right at the woodpile. I covered my mouth with my hand. The woodpile was too far away for me to make out his face because of the rain, but I could see he had heard me. He started to head directly toward my hiding spot.
    I was a little dizzy. I felt around in my pocket. Oh man. Where was it? At that moment I had a picture of my inhaler at home sitting on the bathroom counter. This was bad. I knew I needed to get out of there, but what if he saw me? I had to try to sneak out the back side of the woodpile and get to the woods.
    I started to slowly scoot my way backward on my butt. I was coughing and wheezing with almost every breath now. I had almost made it out of the opening, when a big piece of wood fell and landed on my leg. Time to panic. I tried to pull my leg out. I didn’t have enough breath to pull very hard. Stuck. The wood was too heavy. And I couldn’t pull back hard enough.
    I couldn’t see out the front anymore, but I could hear him coming. He called out.
    “Hey there. Why don’t you come on out?” His voice singsonged.
    Totally creepy. Did he sound familiar? I could barely hear him over the wheezing of my breath. I pulled harder. It didn’t even budge. He was going to get me. I heard the man call out from even closer.
    “Don’t be shy now.” I saw a hand reach into the peephole. I was going to die.
    He grabbed the leg that wasn’t stuck and pulled me forward. “I’ve got you.”
    I screamed as I sat straight up in bed. I was hyperventilating and wheezing. I grabbed my inhaler off the nightstand. I breathed in the medicine and tried to calm down. The nightmare. Again. My body poured sweat, and my heart pounded in my chest. I sucked in air and tried to breathe slowly. Please don’t let me have screamed too loud. Sometimes I could scream pretty loud and sometimes I couldn’t, depending on how bad it was. I listened for anyone coming down the hall. No running feet. Okay. The last time I remembered having that nightmare I was eleven or twelve. I rubbed my face and got out of bed. I opened the curtains to my balcony and looked out past the golf course to the ocean.
    I had put those memories into the back of my mind and purposely didn’t ever think about that day. The story didn’t end there, but I always woke up screaming at that exact moment. The nightmares hadn’t started until Gage moved away a couple of weeks after the incident.
    It made sense, I guess. In my dream I woke up right before he saved me. As soon as he’d moved away, my brain must have thought creepy guy would get me and Gage wouldn’t be there to save me. But in the real story, he did.
    I had been pulling as hard as I could to get both of my legs free, when I felt two hands grab underneath my arms. I was about to really panic, when Gage whispered from behind me.
    “It’s me. Shhhhh.” He had maneuvered himself into the small space as far as he could. He pulled and I yanked, and my leg finally came free of the wood. The momentum pulled me out of the creep’s hand. We scrambled out the back, and once we were upright Gage pushed me in front of him. I tried to run for the trees, but I stumbled. I heard a bellow from the woodpile, and I