Sanctuary Bay

by Laura Burns

  “Hey, Izzy, we’re here,” Karina called, pushing open the door. The first thing Sarah noticed was the way the small living room smelled—like lavender and vanilla. Then she noticed the colored strings that looped around the ceiling. They held dozens of photos clipped to them with clothespins. Either Karina or Izzy—or both—was a creative type. A black tree had been painted on one of the sky-blue walls.

  A door opened, pulling Sarah’s attention away from the room, and a girl stepped through. Were there any ordinary people in this school? Izzy was as gorgeous as Karina, if in a completely different way. Your basic all-American boy’s wet dream, blue-eyed with wavy blond hair that fell to the middle of her back, swimsuit model body, long legs, big boobs.

  “You survived Hurricane Karina, I see,” she smiled, then crossed over to Sarah and shook her hand. “I’m Isobel Trescott. Izzy.”

  “Hi.” Sarah made a mental note to shake hands and give her last name the next time she met someone. Nate had done that too, and Nate seemed to understand a thing or two about fitting in. People here shook hands, so if you wanted to seem like one of them, you shook hands.

  “I’m not a hurricane,” Karina protested. “I’m simply enthusiastic.”

  That was for sure. But Sarah kind of liked it. Having two girls that enthusiastic in the same room would be too much. But one of them meant there was no pressure to keep a conversation going.

  “I’ll notify Merriam-Webster that one of their definitions is wrong,” Izzy said, smiling affectionately.

  “Izzy thinks enthusiasm is low class. It’s the Boston thing,” Karina teased back, warmly.

  Karina pointed at Sarah. “I promised you a beverage. I could make Barbacoas. They’re practically my signature cocktail.”

  “Garnished with, if you can believe it, beef jerky,” Izzy said. “Californians have a million ways to fuck up a drink.”

  “You don’t have to have one. I’m almost out of mezcal anyway. But this is a special occasion. Sound good, Sarah?” Karina asked.

  “Um…” She didn’t plan on meeting the dean—the school had a dean—drunk off her ass.

  “Diet Coke?” Izzy offered.

  “That sounds good. Maybe I could try the other thing later,” she told Karina.

  “You’ll love it. I promise,” Karina replied. “Oh! You haven’t even seen the bedroom yet! We share. There’s only one bathroom too, sorry. But we make it work.” She started toward the door Izzy had come out of.

  One bathroom. Three people. Sounded like a pretty good ratio to Sarah, but she forced the thought away. It was part of the crap she had to leave behind. Poor people shared bathrooms. Rich people apparently thought sharing was something to apologize for.

  Karina threw open the bedroom door. Sarah shivered when she stepped through.

  “I know. It’s freezing in here,” Karina said, noticing. “But we made sure you have lots of blankets.”

  “There are cold spots all over the school,” Izzy added as she headed toward the mini-fridge in the corner. “The island bedrock goes really deep, and it makes it hard to keep the building warm.”

  “Why would the bedrock have anything to do with the heat?” Sarah asked skeptically.

  “It’s not the rock, it’s all the caves and tunnels down there,” Izzy said. “The whole place is filled with holes, and the cold just sort of seeps out from the tunnels in some places. I’m not sure the school even knows where all the passages are. I don’t think they want to know.”

  “That’s right, I didn’t tell you yet!” Karina cried out. “The school is built over the remains of a POW camp from World War Two. At one point it got blasted to bits by a bomb, and the whole operation was moved into the bomb shelter underneath. They made it bigger, carved rooms right out of the stone. Nazi soldiers were kept here during the war. Actual Nazis. Their cells are still down there.”

  “That can’t be true. The East Coast was never bombed during World War Two,” Sarah protested.

  “Right, and the government never covers anything up,” Karina said sarcastically.

  The room felt even colder to Sarah now, and she wrapped her arms around herself. The school was so beautiful, every detail perfection. The discovery that something foul lay deep underneath was disturbing.

  Like there wasn’t something foul right in my face in half the places I’ve spent my life, she thought. Compared to them, hell, compared to pretty much anything, Sanctuary Bay was a paradise, no matter what lay hidden underneath it.

  * * *

  “Obviously you know more than that I come from Toledo,” Sarah told Nate as he walked her to the Administration building for her meeting with the dean. “You know I’m a foster kid, and all the rest, right? That’s what you meant by ‘my crap.’ I have to pretend none of it ever happened.”

  She’d been thinking of his words all afternoon, and she needed to know exactly what he’d meant. Mr. Class President had seemed to guess what she was thinking more than once, and that bothered her. Every time she went to a new place, Sarah made sure to figure out where she stood and where everyone else stood. But she didn’t particularly like the feeling that somebody else was doing the same thing to her—that had never happened before.

  Nate didn’t answer fast enough, so Sarah rushed on. “Does everyone know, or did you and Maya get a special briefing since you were coming to meet me?”

  “Actually, by ‘your crap’ I meant your attitude,” Nate replied.

  Sarah was so surprised she stopped walking. “Well, that’s blunt.”

  Nate shrugged. “You have a chip on your shoulder. About being a foster, being poor, being whatever else you think makes you different. I can practically see the resentment.”

  “Wow,” Sarah said. “I thought I was pretty good at hiding it.”

  “Nope,” he replied. “Your face was judgmental when Maya was talking about her care packages.”

  “Sorry,” Sarah muttered. “It wasn’t her, she was nice, but you guys are so out of touch with reality. As if not shopping is some kind of huge hardship—”

  “This is exactly what I mean,” Nate cut her off. “Sanctuary Bay is a clean slate, Sarah. You can be whoever you want to be.”

  Sarah sighed, defeated. “Only somebody who has everything can say that. People like me don’t get a clean slate. People like you—”

  “Why do you think I can spot your resentment? I spent the year before I came here couch surfing,” Nate said. “I moved on whenever somebody’s parents got tired of feeding me.”

  Sarah stared at him.

  “Dad was out of work for three years before he took off, and afterwards Mom liked to take it out on me, so I left,” Nate explained. “My life was shit. The scholarship to Sanctuary Bay changed everything.”

  “I … thought you were like everyone else here,” Sarah faltered. “I’m sorry, I’m such an idiot…”

  “Look, the people at this school will end up running banks. And universities. And countries. I want to be one of them,” Nate said. “Don’t you?”

  “I do.” Sarah felt a rush of desire so strong she could barely breathe. “God, I really do. This place could give me a whole different life.”

  “Then drop the attitude. Don’t resent them. Learn from them.” He started walking again. “Come on. You don’t want to be late.”

  Sarah fell in next to him silently. They didn’t say another word until they were at the door of the dean’s outer office. She was still struggling to take in what he’d told her, reconciling it with the polished, confident guy she’d thought she had pegged the second she saw him.

  “Thanks … for bringing me over,” Sarah said. She wanted to thank him for telling her about himself, but she couldn’t find the words.

  Nate nodded. “You deserve this opportunity, Sarah. Throw the crap away and take it,” he replied softly, opening the door for her.

  Sarah’s eyes stung and she had to blink fast to clear them. She’d heard stuff like that before, from social workers and school counselors and
Mrs. Yoder. But it felt different hearing it from Nate, from someone who actually got it, got her.

  There was no receptionist behind the desk, probably because it was almost six o’clock on a Saturday. She watched the grandfather clock in the corner until the minute hand was straight up, then walked over to the dean’s closed door and knocked.

  The door swung open and Sarah stuck out her hand, doing her best impression of Izzy, and Nate, of someone who knew they deserved to be here. “Hi, I’m Sarah Merson.”

  Dean Farrell smiled and shook her hand, and Sarah quickly ran through her usual checklist. White. Thirties. Black pants. Fitted black jacket. Black-rimmed glasses. Mint-green pumps with seriously high heels. Short black hair that showed off a pair of diamond studs. Red lipstick.

  The pants and jacket were sort of severe and professional looking. But the shoes were fun. Sexy, even. Did that mean confidence? The hair wouldn’t take much time. Did Dean Farrell make practical choices? But she cared about how she looked, and she had the kind of face for short hair. Had to be ambitious to get this job by her age. And smart. Probably went to one of the colleges these kids were trying to get into.

  Sarah had changed out of the clothes she’d worn to travel and done what she could to tame her hair. After the plane, bus, ferry, and boat, she’d needed to. She was just in khakis and a long-sleeved T-shirt. But it was no secret to the dean that she was poor.

  Dean Farrell motioned her into one of the chairs over by a low sofa, and took the seat across from her. She could have chosen to sit with a desk between her and Sarah, but she hadn’t, and Sarah figured it was some kind of welcoming behavior to put the new student at ease.

  If this was all a screwup, now was when she’d find out.

  But the dean didn’t say anything about how she was so sorry but there was this other Sarah Merson who should have received the scholarship. Instead, she talked about how impressed she was with Sarah’s test scores and her exceptional aptitude for chemistry and how she knew Sanctuary Bay was going to offer Sarah the chance to shine.

  As the dean reached up to adjust her glasses, the sleeve of her jacket moved, revealing a silver bracelet, just a linked chain with a single charm in the shape of a heart.

  Sarah’s gaze caught on the heart, and—

  She was in. Sitting in the car on the way to a new foster home. On the I-90. The seatbelt pressing lightly across her chest. The sun glinting off the social worker’s bracelet, a silver chain with a heart charm. Tasting a cherry Life Saver. Feeling it on her tongue, down to a thin sliver, the edges almost as sharp as glass. “Last Friday Night” playing on the radio. Her foot tapping to the beat, even though the song annoyed the hell out of her. The social worker saying, “We could stop at Tim Horton’s. I know you love those Maple Dips.” Sarah answering, “I guess. It’s not like…”

  And she was out.

  Sarah’s body gave a tiny jerk. She flushed when she realized she’d murmured those last words aloud. She’d worked so hard to break that habit, and she mostly had. The stress of meeting the dean must have shook her up more than she realized.

  Sarah felt frozen, stuck in place while her body adjusted to reality, to the fact that she was sitting motionless, not in a car going sixty-five. It was 2016, not … She tried to place the memory, but couldn’t. Too many trips in that car. Too many stops for doughnuts. Too many moves. Maybe she wouldn’t mind having her freaky memory thing if more of her memories were good.

  Finally she felt her mind clear and her body relax. The memory surge was over. She raised her eyes to Dean Farrell.

  The dean was staring back at her.

  I guess this is where I get off the Sanctuary Bay ride, Sarah thought. I couldn’t even make it a whole day.

  “What just happened?” Dean Farrell asked, eyes scanning Sarah’s face.

  “I … I don’t know,” Sarah mumbled. Should she describe the memory issue? Talk about how Mrs. Yoder was convinced it was epilepsy and the foster mom before that had thought it was demons? How half her elementary school teachers had thought she had a learning disability and the other half had thought she was just doing it for attention? “I, um, I space out sometimes. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, you’ve got to be exhausted from the trip,” Dean Farrell replied with a casual shrug that didn’t match the way she’d been staring when Sarah came out of the surge—like Sarah was an exotic bug she wanted to stick a pin through. “I’m sorry we had to rush you here so quickly. A spot opened up unexpectedly, so we wanted to bring you in now instead of waiting until next fall since the semester’s barely started.”

  Sarah just gaped at her. That was it? No interrogation? Usually when she had a memory episode in front of an adult, they freaked out. They wanted answers—are you sick, are you on drugs, did you pass out, was that a seizure? They never wanted the truth, that occasionally instead of just remembering something, Sarah got thrown back into the moment itself, living that memory as if it were happening all over again, every sound, every sight, every single sensation and detail.

  “Let’s finish up quickly so you can go get some rest,” the dean said cheerfully. And then, as if nothing had happened, Dean Farrell began talking about what classes Sarah would take. She had Sarah press her finger on a touchpad so the door to her room would recognize her, gave her a cell phone that could be used only on the island, and said that Sarah should feel free to come to her if she had any problems. Then another handshake and meeting over.

  Sarah walked slowly on her way back to the main building, trying to accept that she was official now. She was really going to go to school here. Live here. Learn to become one of these privileged people, just like Nate had said. When she reached the dorm room door, she put out her hand to knock, then stopped herself. This was her room. Because she lived here. She pressed her finger against the small silver pad next to the door and heard it click open.

  Karina bounced out from the bedroom. “How’d it go? I’m sure it went great. What kind of shoes was Farrell wearing? She’s such a shoe whore. Not that I don’t love a nice shoe myself. I very much do.”

  “They were pumps. Light green.” Sarah was probably supposed to know the brand, but she didn’t bother looking at stuff she couldn’t have.

  “Probably the new Louboutins. He’s into that color palette right now. I wonder if she has a personal shopper send her care packages.”

  “The teachers can’t leave either?” Sarah asked, surprised.

  “All part of the total immersion the school is so proud of,” Izzy told her, appearing in the bedroom doorway. “They think teachers will impart knowledge and wisdom to us if they are forced to spend time with us outside class.”

  “Well, Mr. Fisher does impart some insane weed,” Karina said.

  Sarah’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, yes, drugs have infiltrated our sacred Sanctuary, even with virtually everyone here twenty-four/seven,” Izzy said, laughing at the look on Sarah’s face. “Think prison contraband.” Which explained Karina’s alcohol stash. “Even the support staff has to stay on the island as long as they work here. Continuity is part of the whole ‘new educational system’ that’s supposed to make us all superior in every way colleges care about.”

  “Oh,” Sarah said. “Uh … sucks for them, I guess.” Though she couldn’t imagine many better places to live than this, it seemed like it was trendy to complain about being stuck on the island.

  “We should head to dinner,” Karina said. “The dining hall is a ways behind the main building. It’s not far, but it gets cold at night, so grab a jacket.”

  Sarah wondered if she’d get to the point where Karina’s mothering would piss her off. Right now she actually appreciated being told what to do. And she was glad both her roommates seemed to assume they’d be eating together, at least tonight. For once, she was at a new school where she wouldn’t have to figure out where it was acceptable for her to sit in the cafeteria. Accidentally sitting in someone’s regular seat wasn’t a good way to introduce herself.

  Iz
zy moved out of the doorway to let Sarah and Karina into the bedroom. Sarah’s suitcase and backpack had disappeared from where she’d put them on her bed. “Oh, I unpacked for you,” Karina said, following her gaze. A hot burst of anger mixed with shame shot through Sarah. Who did this girl think she was?

  She took a deep breath in, and let it out slowly. If she followed Nate’s advice to not judge, she would just accept that Karina was being friendly.

  “Which I told her was completely inappropriate,” Izzy said, reading Sarah’s expression. She sat in her desk chair and smiled. “That being said, I want your leather jacket.”

  Sarah was confused. Her leather jacket? The one she bought for six bucks at Goodwill without even switching tags? Izzy stood up and opened her closet. It was stuffed. She flicked through the hangers and pulled out a gray sweater, holding it out to Sarah.

  It took less than a second for Sarah to place it—she’d seen that sweater in a magazine at the library. She could picture the entire page layout, the headline, and each item shown. This sweater had been worn by an Asian model with her hair in a high ponytail. The text next to the photo said, “Alexander Wang. Chunky open-knit cardigan. $625.”

  Sarah sank down onto her bed. People actually bought things like that? One sweater for hundreds of dollars? She’d always assumed the clothes in magazines belonged to movie stars only, not regular humans.

  “Trade?” Izzy asked.

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Karina said. “But we’re always trading stuff here. It’s one of the few ways to get new things before package day.”

  Sarah frowned, trying to think it through. Trade her six-buck jacket for a six-hundred-and-twenty dollar sweater. Was it some kind of pity move? Or would it turn out to be a trick?

  “My jacket’s from Goodwill,” she said. What was the point in trying to pretend she wasn’t poor as dirt? They’d seen her stuff. They knew. “It would take about a hundred of those jackets to make a decent trade for that sweater.”

  “Right, it’s vintage,” Izzy replied.