Sanctuary Bay (7 page)

So every time she moved to a new place she never really slept for at least the first few nights, until she figured out if she was in danger or not. Or until she was so exhausted that the pinching, or, later, the massive amounts of caffeine, wouldn't work anymore.

She knew she was safe here. Only she, Karina, and Izzy could get past the fingerprint scanner on the door to the suite. She didn't know her roommates well enough to truly trust them, but she did trust that they wouldn't try to hurt her while she slept.

Except she couldn't sleep. She'd trained herself too well. Maybe she should go out into the living room and watch TV or something. She could do that here—there were no rules. She didn't have to worry that she'd get thrown out of the place if she bothered someone.

Or she could take a bath in the deep claw-foot tub. The bathroom was on the other side of the living room. The sound of the water running wouldn't wake Izzy up.

Or she could get her laptop—
her
laptop!—and read the English notes Maya had zapped her.

Or … she could just go to sleep. She felt the ache of fatigue in her burning eyes and heavy limbs. She'd hardly slept last night. She'd felt secure at the Yoders', but knowing she'd be leaving for the school the next morning had kept her mind racing. Then there'd been the hours on the plane, bus, ferry, and boat.

Sarah rolled onto her back and pulled the covers up a little higher, grateful to have heavy blankets to protect her from the cold spot that came from deep under the school. Where the POW camp had kept the prisoners. Like the prisoner who had hurled himself over—

Stop it.
Going over the stupid ghost stories Karina and Izzy had told her was not going to help her drift off. She closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing. In, out. In, out. The smell of cedar mixed with something spicy—cloves, maybe—filled her nose. It was a good smell. In, out, in, out.

Weird. That wasn't how the suite had smelled when she first came in. She remembered noticing the scent of lavender and vanilla. Must be plug-in air fresheners, with a different fragrance in the living room and this one. Although she hadn't noticed a difference in the rooms' odors earlier.

No thinking,
she reminded herself.
I'm just supposed to be breathing
. In, out. In, out. Each breath brought her deeper into that spicy scent. Cedar and—

And she was in.

In the grayness, following Daddy's rules. Being quiet. Being still. Hiding. Waiting until he or Mommy opened the tunnel door. Smelling the musty tunnel, the spicy scent of Daddy's cologne fading.

She was trying not to think of monsters crawling toward her. Daddy said there were no monsters. But monsters liked tunnels. They liked little girls.

Thinking about the rules helped. She needed to keep remembering the rules. If something bad happens, wait until it's safe. Then run. Run fast. Find a lady with kids. Tell her your name is Sarah Merson. Merson. Merson, Merson,
Merson
. Ask for help.

Her nose twitching, itching from the thick air. Making her want to sneeze. But she had to be quiet.

Then Mommy screaming. Were the monsters out there and not in the tunnel?

She had to move. On hands and knees, creeping toward the slits of light, heart pounding.

Seeing her. Mommy on her knees facing the hotel room wall.

Someone's legs. A hand reaching down. A silver bird staring at her from the ring on the finger. Staring with a horrible little black eye. The finger pulling the trigger of a gun.

A bang. Her ears filling with bees. Mommy collapsing on the floor. Red spilling.

Sarah shoving her fingers into her mouth. Quiet. Being quiet.

Daddy's legs running by. The bird man chasing.

Something bad happening. Feeling a hand on her shoulder.

And she was out. Sarah jerked up off the bed, searching wildly for anything she could use to attack.

“Sarah, Sarah, it's okay. It's me. Karina.”

There was a delay between hearing the soft words and comprehending them. “Right, okay,” Sarah answered, keeping her voice low the way Karina had. She twisted her head to the side, trying to wipe her face on the shoulder of the oversized tee she slept in.

Had she been crying for real? Or just in the memory surge?

“Come on. Let's go out to the living room for a minute. Izzy's asleep,” Karina whispered.

Sarah glanced at Izzy's bed. Karina was right. Izzy lay on her stomach, one arm thrown out. It was hard to imagine someone sleeping so peacefully right next to the hell Sarah had been going through.

She slid out of bed, her heart still pounding like it was going to rip free from her chest.

“That must have been some nightmare,” Karina said after she shut the door behind them. She switched on a floor lamp, leaving the living room dim.

Sarah sank down on the sofa. She didn't think her legs would carry her any farther. She couldn't bring herself to look at Karina. First a surge in front of the dean, and now this. She'd known this girl for less than twenty-four hours, and already she'd ruined things with this psychotic meltdown.

“I'm fine,” Sarah said. “You can go back to bed.”

Karina sat down beside her. “I wasn't in bed yet.” She was still wearing the clothes she'd had on at dinner. Pay attention. Focus. Be normal. “I just got back from hanging with Ethan,” Karina continued. “You were kind of … thrashing around. I didn't know if I should wake you up, but it looked so horrible. And then I realized your eyes were open. I thought for a second you'd woken yourself up, but you were still dreaming, almost like in a trance. You looked like you were…” Her voice trailed off. “Like you were fighting with something,” she added after a moment.

“Sorry,” Sarah told her.

“Don't be stupid,” Karina said gently. “There's nothing to be sorry for. You know what we should do? We should watch cartoons. When I have a nightmare I hate to go back to sleep right away. I need to get something happy in my head first.” She used her cell to click on the TV. “The school has an insane library of stuff we can stream. Music too.” She hit another couple of buttons and started to scroll through a list. “Oooh!
Maggie and the Ferocious Beast
! I haven't seen that show in forever, since kindergarten probably. Did you watch it when you were little?”

Sarah felt a small smile tug at her lips. “Great googly moogly.” She'd actually watched that show in the Before. Before she was a foster kid. Before her parents died. Back when things were good.

“We have to watch one. Izzy would have a fit.” Karina broke into a wide smile. “But Izzy is asleep.” A few seconds later, the theme song to the cartoon started to play. Sarah could have sung along. She remembered every word, along with the words to every other song she'd ever heard. But she thought she'd remember the
Maggie
song even if she had a normal brain. It had come on at lunchtime, and she and her mom had always watched it while they ate.

“I remember this one! Can you believe it? It's the one where—”

“The Jelly Bean Team gets their own train,” Sarah finished for her.

“Yes!” Karina clapped her hands. “The Jelly Bean Express!” She grabbed one of the pillows off the sofa and held it cuddled against her, and for that second it was easy to picture her as a little girl with her favorite stuffed animal.

Sarah and Karina watched for a few minutes in silence. Then, eyes still on the TV, Sarah spoke without thinking for once. “It wasn't actually a nightmare,” she confessed.

“What?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Karina turn toward her. But she couldn't bring herself to look back. Eyes on the three-horned polka-dotted cartoon beast, she went on, “It was a memory. Of when my parents died. They were both killed on the same day, when I was really little.”

Karina let out a gasp.

Stop talking. You don't talk about your parents getting murdered so soon after meeting someone. But something about Karina felt so comforting, so accepting … But that didn't mean she wanted to know all the horrific details of Sarah's life.

“Oh my god, I'm so sorry,” Karina said softly. “What made you think of that?”

The air freshener smelled like my dad's cologne,
Sarah imagined herself saying.
It triggered a memory surge that put me right back into that hotel room watching them die.

But she couldn't. The surges—they were too strange. It was bad enough she'd just spewed the news about her dead parents. “I'm not sure,” she said finally. “Maybe just the stress of being in a new place. It doesn't matter anyway. It was a long time ago.” She shrugged. “Listen, I'm fine now. You can go to bed. I'll just watch a little more
Maggie
.”

“You are
not
fine,” Karina protested. “If my parents—” Her cell buzzed, and she pulled it out to look at it. “Oh.”

“What?” Sarah asked.

“Um…”

“Karina?” Izzy emerged from the bedroom, yawning. “Let's go.” She waved her cell in the air.

Karina shot a glance at Sarah. “I'm so sorry,” she murmured. “I hate to leave you when you're so upset.”

“Leave me?” Sarah repeated, baffled.

“Yeah. I—I mean we—have to go.” Karina stood up. Izzy, still in her pajamas, was already at the door. “I'm really sorry.”

“Where are you guys going in the middle of the night?” Sarah asked.

“Watch another
Maggie
, it'll make you happy before you go back to bed,” Karina said, forcing a smile.

Izzy gave Sarah a little wave, and then they were gone, leaving Sarah alone.

She stared at the door for a long moment, trying to process what had just happened. Where were they going? Why hadn't they invited her?

Because they've known me less than a day,
she thought.
I can't expect them to include me in everything just because I was assigned to their room.

Still, she felt lonely and embarrassed. Why had she told Karina about her parents? They were probably talking about how weird she was on their way to … wherever they were going.

Sarah clicked off the TV and wandered slowly into the bedroom. She put her cell on the little bedside table—black with an intricate pattern of leaves, flowers, and diamonds in white. Her roommates took this kind of stuff for granted, and she was almost afraid to even touch any of it.

“I've got to sleep,” she said to the empty room. She'd been awake for almost twenty-four hours, and her mind felt foggy. “Maybe that's why I had the bad surge.”

The room still smelled like cedar and cloves. Sarah didn't want the scent to hurl her back into the night of her parents' murders again. She hurried to the window and opened it, letting the smell of the ocean in. She leaned on the windowsill for a moment, the fresh air filling her nostrils. The view was incredible, over the lawn stretching out to the edge of cliffs and a glimpse of the ocean beyond. So far, the ocean was her favorite thing about this whole place. She loved the sound, the constant gentle shushing.

As she turned away, she thought she heard a new sound mixed with the whispering of the waves. She jerked back around, holding her breath.

Yes. There it came again. A keening cry, soft, but definite. Sarah leaned out the window and craned her neck so that she could see the spot Karina and Izzy had shown her earlier. Suicide Cliff. She pictured a woman in a long white nightgown running toward the edge, her arms bound across her body by a straitjacket. She wouldn't even be able to throw out her arms as she plummeted, not that anything would prevent her from being killed when she hit the rocks.

She gulped.

Remember what Ethan said,
she thought. Wind in the caves. It's a completely logical explanation.

That sound, though. It seemed filled with sadness and longing and pain. It was hard not to believe it was something more, something unearthly. This was definitely not going to make getting to sleep any easier. Sarah pulled back and shut the window all the way, but she could still faintly hear the ocean, the cries. Not cries, she told herself again. Wind in the caves.

She was about to turn away from the window again when she saw shadows racing across the lawn. Sarah pressed her hands on the cool glass, staring hard. People, the shadows were people. Maybe twenty of them.

As one, they all dropped to the grass, still moving, but now crawling on their bellies. “What the fuck?” Sarah whispered. About half a minute later, they were up again, running. Moving like they had a single brain. She couldn't look away, watching until they circled around the edge of the building and out of sight.

Away from the window,
Sarah ordered herself. She couldn't take any more creepiness. She rushed back to bed, squeezed her eyes shut, and wished Karina and Izzy were here.

But she was all alone.

*   *   *

Sarah found her steps quickening as she happily headed to chemistry class on Monday. It was her favorite subject, and she rocked it. She could recall all the facts she needed to ace most subjects as long as she'd done one pass through the textbook, but chemistry she actually loved. It was precise. Complex, but if you understood the rules and formulas, predictable in a way most things weren't.

Like her roommates.

When Karina and Izzy took off in the middle of the night without bothering to tell her why, Sarah figured it meant they were done being tour guides for the new girl. They were friends with each other, and she was just their roommate. Which was fine—Sarah liked to know where she stood with people, and bad or good didn't matter.

But when she woke up Sunday morning, they were both back in the room and acting like nothing had happened. She'd slept late, something she hadn't expected to do, and Karina and Izzy had waited to have breakfast with her. After that they'd walked her around the campus, showing her the lacrosse and soccer fields and the track. The outdoor track. There was also an indoor one, in what they called the sports center. The center also had a rock-climbing wall, two basketball courts, a bowling alley, a coffee place with a billion designer coffee drinks and juices and snacks, and an Olympic-sized pool, not much use to Sarah, who had only mastered the dog paddle. She could deal with the Jacuzzis in the locker room, though,
very
easily deal with those. There were saunas too, but her hair didn't appreciate steam.