Crushing Read Free Page B

thought we were both going to die. He was going to grab us, but Gage never even broke stride. He grabbed me up into his arms and just ran for my house full-out. I ended up in the hospital for a day or two, and this time I was kind of glad. In my eleven-year-old mind it had seemed like a safe place to be.
    Gage had come to see me in the hospital with his grandma.
    “You okay?” He asked. He always used as few words as possible. Even with me.
    “Yeah, just an asthma attack. No big deal. You know the drill.” I shrugged. I checked to see that my mom was busy chatting with his grandma. “Did you see him?”
    He shook his head.
    “Should we tell someone?” I asked
    “I-I d-d-don’t think they’ll believe us. I d-d-didn’t s-s-s-see what you saw,” he pointed out.
    I nodded. It was the last time we spoke of it.
    In the wake of teenage girls disappearing from the area all summer, people were starting to panic. People in our small sleepy town started locking their doors. Two weeks after the woodpile incident a body of one of the missing girls washed up on one of the beaches not too far away. I thought about telling someone, but what would I say? That I saw “someone” putting “something” that looked like a body in a trunk? Gage hadn’t even seen the guy, only heard his voice. We were kids. We were also trouble. We shouldn’t have been there in the first place. They would never have believed me. In my world adults rarely took anything we said seriously. The whole thing didn’t seem real. Sometimes I thought maybe I had imagined it. So I kept quiet. Gage moved away shortly after that, and, strangely, the disappearances stopped by the time school started.
    I did, however, start having nightmares and woke up screaming almost every night, starting when Gage moved away with his grandparents. It was always the same dream. Looking back on it now, I knew that part of it had been the fear and the asthma. I had always had nightmares about suffocating or drowning when I was having an attack in the middle of the night. But the other part had been the grief over the loss of Gage. Loss was something new in my life. I didn’t understand where they had gone or why, and nobody really knew. Or if they did, they didn’t want to tell me.
    For the next year my whole family didn’t get much sleep. My brothers were annoyed, and my dad couldn’t understand why my asthma was so out of control. Most nights someone ended up sleeping on my bedroom floor. More hospital trips. Lots of nightmares. He hounded the family doctor until we finally found something that worked. At the same time I decided to stop even thinking about or remembering Gage. It was too painful. The nightmares finally stopped, and life went on with a little piece of my heart missing. Until now. Hmmm.
    I got back in bed and lay on my side so I could look out my balcony doors. I wasn’t exactly sure if I was happy he was back. I had been a mess when he left. I didn’t know if I was willing to allow him—or anyone, for that matter—that kind of power again.
    #
    The next day I wanted to sleep in since it had taken me so long to get back to sleep after my nightmare, but I had to get up with enough time to go shopping. My friends had decided we needed new outfits for the beach party tonight, and spending a day of mindless shopping with the girls was perfect after yesterday’s drama. Thankfully, Wynter Island was only a twenty-minute drive and a quick trip over a bridge to get to Charleston’s King Street shopping.
    I was meeting the girls at our island’s local coffee house—Running Latte. Then we were heading out. My mom had given me her credit card and a budget, so I was set.
    We had been shopping for a few hours and were trying to decide where to go for lunch, when the day started to go sideways. We were crossing the street not paying attention, when out of nowhere Dominic and his buddies surrounded us.
    “Where are you ladies going?” He put his arm around me as