Sanctuary Bay

by Laura Burns

  “The wind is really loud.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s a nor’easter coming. We’re on a tiny island in the ocean. This is how it sounds.” Izzy rolled to face the wall, and within minutes Sarah heard her steady breathing. Karina would’ve gotten up and sat with her, talking about the Ferocious Beast. Karina would’ve cracked jokes about how the wind sounded like a bad effect in some lame horror movie. Sarah sighed. When Karina was here, everything had been so great. Life at Sanctuary Bay had been beyond anything Sarah could have imagined.

  Sarah had been happy.

  Her bed felt like it was whirling around her. She was so tired. The air smelled of oranges and limes now, with only a hint of the burned scent from before.

  I’m sleeping, she thought. I’m dreaming about being asleep. She didn’t know when she’d fallen asleep, but she must have, because a man was in their room, and she hadn’t seen the door open.

  Sarah watched him glide across the floor, fascinated by how quiet his movements were. The man wore black, and he was thin. In the darkness she couldn’t tell his race or his eye color, but he was coming closer so maybe she’d see then.

  Her eyes closed, and she smiled, thinking about how weird it was that you could go to sleep in a dream. She was dreaming now, but she was dreaming about closing her eyes. Could she dream about opening them?

  Her eyes popped open. The man stood directly above her bed with his hand on her arm, holding it still. Something in his hand flashed a dull silver in the moonlight. A word formed in Sarah’s head: “syringe.” He plunged it toward her arm.

  Izzy’s entire body slammed against him, knocking him over. The syringe clattered to the floor.

  Sarah bolted upright, her heart pounding. This was no dream. Never had been.

  “Get out! Get away!” Izzy was screaming. She’d straddled the guy and was slamming her fists into his face, over and over. He grabbed one of Izzy’s wrists and twisted until she cried out in pain.

  Sarah jumped out of bed and snatched the syringe from the floor, holding it like a weapon.

  The guy shoved Izzy off him and got to his knees. Izzy grabbed Sarah’s bedside lamp and hurled it at his head. There was a sickening thump as it hit him, and he stumbled against the bed. Without hesitation, Izzy picked up the lamp again, yanked the cord from the wall, and wrapped it around the guy’s neck.

  Lights, Sarah thought, stunned. It’s too dark.

  “Turn on—” Her voice was a croak. Sarah swallowed hard and tried again. “Turn on lights!” Spots danced in front of her stunned eyes as the overheads came on. Izzy had her knee on the guy’s chest, pinning him against the bed while she tightened the cord around his neck. His eyes bulged, and his boots scraped against the floor as he tried to get free.

  “Izzy, no!” Sarah screamed.

  Izzy jerked her head toward Sarah, and Sarah gasped. Her roommate’s eyes were lit with excitement. This was Izzy-in-the-woods. Izzy-the-murderer. So many times, Sarah had wondered if she’d imagined that girl, but here she was again.

  She’s going to kill him.

  Sarah rushed toward them, lifted the syringe, and plunged it into the man’s arm, pushing down the stopper. The guy’s wild eyes—brown, Sarah saw now—turned to her for a brief second. Then his eyelids fluttered and he stopped fighting.

  Sarah left the syringe in his arm and grabbed Izzy, prying her away from him, forcing the cord out of her grip. “Izzy, stop it. Stop! He’s sedated. He’s out.”

  Izzy stared down at him, breathing hard. “He broke into our room,” she said. “He deserves it.” She reached for the cord again.

  “You can’t kill him,” Sarah insisted, tightening her grip.

  “Yes I can,” Izzy growled.

  Izzy-the-murderer. It’s who she really is, just like I thought after that hideous night at the Pine Tree.

  But this time Izzy-the-murderer had saved her life.

  “Let’s go,” she said, taking Izzy by the arm. “We have to get out of here before someone else comes.” She didn’t wait for an argument, but yanked her roommate to her feet and dragged her out the bedroom door. Sarah jumped when her eye snagged on a dark shadow, but it was just the black tree decorating the living room wall. She kept a tight hold on Izzy as she crept to the door, inched it open, and peered out into the hallway.

  “What are we doing?”

  “There will be more. He came from the school. He must have,” Sarah said. “Come on.” She hauled Izzy out into the hall and they both ran.

  Sarah had no idea what time it was. The corridors were empty, the whole place silent except for their loud breathing. But Sarah felt as if there were eyes on her every step to Ethan’s room.

  She pounded on his door. It felt like forever until he yanked it open, angry. One look at Sarah and Izzy wiped the glare off his face. “What happened?”

  Sarah pulled Izzy inside as Ethan closed the door quickly behind them. “There was a man in our room. He had a syringe, and he tried to inject me. Izzy—”

  “Izzy beat the shit out of him,” Izzy cut in. She smiled at Ethan, plopping down on his bed.

  “What?” He gaped at Sarah.

  “She did. She saved me—I thought I was dreaming when I saw him. It was strange. Maybe because I was so exhausted,” Sarah said. “Then Izzy almost killed him.”

  “But she didn’t?” he asked in a low voice.

  “No. I stabbed him with his own syringe,” Sarah explained. “I guess it was a sedative. He passed out immediately.”

  Izzy picked up a magazine from the nightstand, and calmly started flipping through it.

  “Why would someone want to sedate you in your room?” Ethan’s voice held all the fear that Sarah had been avoiding feeling.

  “I don’t know.” Her legs buckled from under her, and Ethan grabbed her.

  “It’s the school. Who else could it be?” he muttered. “We have to go.”

  “Where?” Sarah cried. “If the school is sending people to attack us, we’re dead. There are no police here, nobody to save us. The school is the only authority.”

  “If the school is sending people to attack you, then I’m next,” Ethan pointed out. “We’ve been nosing around, and they noticed. So we have to get out of my room. Now.”

  “I’m with him, since killing seems not to be acceptable. We need to get out of here,” Izzy said, tossing the magazine aside. “But I’m wearing pj’s. Ethan? Jacket?”

  “Of course,” he said, rushing over to the closet. He grabbed a few sweatshirts and jackets and tossed them to Sarah and Izzy, then pulled a thick sweater over his own head.

  Sarah hadn’t even realized she was still in the yoga pants and T-shirt she used as pajamas. She pulled on Ethan’s sweatshirt, the smell of him washing over her.

  “What about shoes?” Izzy asked. “I’m in socks. So are you, Sarah.”

  “Mine will be too big on you,” Ethan said.

  “Well, we can’t go back to our room,” Sarah replied. “Just give me some sneakers.”

  Ethan threw them each a pair, and Sarah tightened them as much as she could. She would just have to hope they stayed on.

  “Do you have your cell?” Ethan asked.

  “No. I don’t have anything. We just ran,” Sarah replied.

  “Izzy?”

  Izzy shook her head.

  “Good,” Ethan said. He tossed his cell onto the bed. “No cells.”

  Sarah felt a cold, numbing dread seep over her, replacing the panic and fear of the past ten minutes. Ethan was right. The cells could be used to track them, and they were running for their lives. Running away from Sanctuary Bay.

  “Let’s go.” Ethan held out his hand to her.

  “Go where?” she whispered, but she already knew the answer.

  “We have to get off this island,” Ethan said. “Now.”

  17

  “How are we going to get off?” Sarah asked through chattering teeth. The rain was freezing, and the wind whipped the words away so fast that she had to yell jus
t to be heard.

  “There’s an old dock down at the beach in front of the asylum,” Ethan yelled over the storm. “The security guys keep a dinghy there sometimes.”

  “So why didn’t you ever steal it and leave?” Izzy asked. Her blond hair flew around crazily in the wind.

  “It was always guarded, sort of.” Ethan bent over, peering closely in the dark at the ground to follow the thin trail that led to the asylum. “Every time I went, there were security people asleep in it, or smoking, or having sex.”

  “We can’t steal their dinghy if they’re always watching it. They’ll catch us,” Sarah protested.

  “I doubt they’ll be out in this storm,” Ethan replied. “It’s our best hope.”

  “Even if someone’s there, they won’t be expecting company. And there are three of us,” Izzy said. “We can take them out and steal the boat. Of course … we’ll drown in this weather. Nor’easter. Dinghy.”

  Sarah wrapped her arms around herself and focused on following Ethan. She didn’t want to know how she would fare in a fight with trained security guards, and she didn’t want to think about being in a dinghy on the giant storm swells. She wasn’t even sure what a dinghy was. In her mind it sounded like a rowboat.

  “I’m hoping we can put it on the other side of the island somewhere and wait ’til the worst is over,” Ethan said. “If they don’t know where to find us, they’re not going to come after us in this weather. Then we can escape as soon as it’s calm.”

  “Do you know how to control a boat enough to get around the island without being pulled out to sea in this?” Sarah asked.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” he said grimly.

  “If you don’t, I do,” Izzy put in. “I learned to sail before I could even ride a bike. A little rain doesn’t change that.”

  Sarah shook her head. Sanctuary Bay had been her ticket to becoming a person like Ethan or Izzy or Karina, someone who knew things like how to sail and how to use the right fork. But now it was a scary, violent place she had to flee. And even running away from it, she didn’t have the skills everyone else did.

  In spite of the rain pelting her and the dread coursing through her cold body, the thought of Karina made her wonder. “Hey, Iz?” she asked. Izzy turned and looked at her. “Do you remember shooting Karina?”

  Izzy raised an eyebrow. She was Izzy-in-the-woods now, Izzy-the-murderer. She had to remember. She had to know what happened to Karina.

  “Karina?” Izzy began. She opened her mouth to say more—and then she collapsed.

  “What the hell?” Ethan cried.

  “Izzy? What happened? What’s wrong?” Sarah dropped to her knees next to Izzy in the wet, overgrown grass. “Izzy.”

  Her roommate was slumped over in a heap. She didn’t answer or even look at them. Her head hung limply, her chin resting on her chest. Ethan knelt next to Sarah. “Izzy, get up. We have to go.”

  Izzy didn’t move. Sarah grabbed her wrist and checked her pulse. “It’s slow, but steady.” She lifted Izzy’s chin up. Izzy’s eyes stared back at them blankly, like blue marbles. “Oh my god, it’s the same thing that happened after her treatment,” Sarah gasped. She shook Izzy, hard. But her dead eyes just kept staring, unseeing.

  Dead eyes, Sarah thought, filled with horror. First Karina’s dead eyes and now Izzy’s.

  “We can’t carry her. It’s too hard in this wind and rain, too slippery,” Ethan said. “Obviously she can snap out of this, because she did before. You said she was at the cliff when Nate—” He didn’t finish. “And that wasn’t too long after she collapsed in the treatment room.”

  “But we don’t know how they revived her. Maybe they gave her something to wake her up after the guard took us to the dean’s,” Sarah said. “She was still out when we left.”

  “Okay, well, what made her collapse in the treatment room? I had her in a chokehold, but not one tight enough to make her pass out. Suddenly she just went limp. Did you see anything?”

  “No. I was trying to get the nurse to give her a sedative, because she was attacking you and that guard. That’s all I remember,” Sarah cried, hands still on Izzy’s shoulders.

  “There must be something.” Ethan took Sarah’s hands in his. “Sarah. Try to remember the details. Everything that happened. In the treatment room, Izzy was going crazy before she collapsed, but this time she wasn’t. This time she was just talking.”

  “All I saw is that she dropped to the floor unconscious,” Sarah insisted.

  “There might be an element you’re not thinking of,” Ethan said. “You’re the one with the amazing memory. Like when we were in the asylum. You said that you cried out because you remembered something and it was like a vision. You said it was completely real, with smells and sounds and everything. Do that.”

  “I can’t just do that!” Sarah cried out. “That’s not how it works. I don’t control those kinds of memories. I just sort of get kicked into them by something.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Like a sound or a feeling. In the asylum, it was a flash of light reflected off a piece of glass. It was the flash from the gun muzzle, and suddenly I was right back in the clearing, seeing Izzy shoot Karina.”

  “Okay, so focus on something you saw when Izzy collapsed yesterday. Or something you heard or whatever,” Ethan urged.

  “I said it didn’t work like that!” She jerked her hands away, frustrated. He didn’t get it. Nobody did.

  “Just try, Sarah.” Ethan wiped the rain off his face. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Her eyes! I thought her eyes looked like marbles then, and just now.” Sarah lifted Izzy’s face again. The cold, dead blue eyes stared back at her. She brushed Izzy’s hair out of her face, forcing herself to look into them fully. Izzy’s eyes stared back lifelessly like two cold blue marbles.

  And she was in. The treatment room in disarray. The smell of disinfectant and sweat and blood. Something else, something chemical she didn’t recognize. Ethan saying “Give her a minute.” The faint hum of the fluorescent lights. Izzy’s skin, warm beneath her fingers. Sarah sliding her hand down to Izzy’s wrist. The pulse, strong and steady. But looking in Izzy’s eyes told Sarah everything she needed to know. Her body might still be working, but Izzy wasn’t there.

  Go back. To before she collapsed. Was there anything happening like today? A vague awareness came over Sarah through the memory. For a moment she felt sick, unsure of which time she was in: the treatment room with Izzy? Or the stormy field with Ethan?

  Let the memory be, and just watch. Hold yourself out of it.

  Sarah forced the thought into the back of her mind somewhere, a place she had never known she had, one where present-day Sarah could observe.

  The treatment room, the nurse crouching down, holding his abdomen in pain. A grinding, metallic sound filling the air, and then Izzy jumping from the table. The security guard appearing, and Izzy going straight for his eyes, her hands like claws. The security guard and Ethan grabbing Izzy. Izzy raking her nails down the guard’s cheek. The coppery smell of blood.

  Izzy twisting like a mad thing in the guard’s grip, kicking over one of the carts, sending it crashing to the ground. Tinkling, jangling as surgical instruments flew across the floor. Ethan wrapping one arm across Izzy’s neck in a chokehold. Izzy sinking her teeth into his arm. Izzy kicking both feet into the guard’s chest with a meaty thump. A metallic clang as his head bounced off the tipped-over cart when he hit the ground.

  Her screaming, “Stop! Izzy, stop!” The guard bellowing in pain. Ethan’s bright red blood soaking into his blue-and-white checked flannel shirt. Ethan still holding Izzy.

  Sarah-in-the-treatment-room turning on the nurse. “Do something. Don’t you have a sedative?”

  The nurse ignoring her, staggering over to the counter next to the computer. He wasn’t preparing a hypodermic. He was pulling up a virtual keyboard.

  I have to pay attention. The nurse never sedated her, but she collapsed an
yway.

  The guard grunting and bleeding. Izzy screaming and fighting like a cornered cat. A clicking sound. The nurse typing something into the computer, his face grim. Izzy’s screaming stopping abruptly.

  I have to go back. I passed it. Sarah-in-the-treatment-room was panicking, confused. But Sarah-in-the-field was watching calmly from that place deep inside herself the sensations of the memory couldn’t touch. Both there and not there.

  She heard a clicking sound. Look. Sarah-in-the-field let her attention drift from the guard’s grim face to the source of the sound. The computer keys clicking as the nurse’s fingers hit them, letters and numbers appearing on the screen.

  Xk32R. Standby.

  The screaming stopped. Izzy going limp in Ethan’s arms. Izzy crumpling to the floor.

  That’s it. And she was out. Sarah drew in a deep breath and fell back onto the wet grass. For a moment she was so stunned she barely even noticed the pelting rain or the howling wind. All she could think about was that nurse.

  “What just happened?” Ethan asked.

  “I saw how they sedated her. Or something. I think,” she answered. “But it can’t be right.”

  “Thanks for being so clear,” Ethan said sarcastically, then immediately muttered, “Sorry.”

  “I told the nurse to sedate her. But he didn’t. He just typed something into the computer, and she collapsed.”

  For a long moment, the only sound was the whooshing of the wind and the thunder in the distance. Izzy sat hunched between them, perfectly still. Finally, Ethan spoke.

  “Are you saying that him using the computer is what made Izzy go catatonic?”

  Sarah nodded. “I know it’s impossible and I sound like a nut. But I … I paid more attention now than I did when it was happening. I saw what he typed.”

  Ethan looked at her appraisingly. “You can pay attention in your memories?”

  “Well, I never did before.” Sarah admitted. “But you said to try, so I did. I was there—the way I usually am in one of my freaky memory surges—but I was also here, watching. Is this really the time to be discussing my memory?” she asked, exasperated.