Sanctuary Bay (22 page)

“Karina and I. We come here sometimes to … have our privacy.” He smirked. “She enjoys getting loud.”

Sarah winced. This place was horrifying—it was nothing more than a crumbling old prison where people were locked away without windows, trapped on an island, and stuck in a hole with no escape. “You guys use this as a romantic getaway? That is truly messed up.”

“Nobody from the school would ever find us.”

“How did you find it, then?” she asked. Ethan led the way to a place where the brick had collapsed, creating a hole in the wall. He stepped inside. Sarah followed, shivering a little as she left the sun behind.

“My first try at looking for an escape route meant heading toward the water,” he said. “It's an island. Every way off is going to involve the ocean. So I spent my first six months at Sanctuary Bay exploring every inch of the coastline. It's hard to miss this place.”

The room they stood in was some kind of wardroom—rusting metal beds lined each side of the long, narrow space. But Sarah was too busy staring at Ethan to take it in. “
What?
” she cried. “Are you telling me you were serious all this time? You've been looking for an escape route for real?”

He stared at her, shaking his head. “Haven't I told you that about a million times?”

“Well … yeah,” she said. He had. It simply hadn't occurred to her to believe him. She'd figured it was just part of his I-hate-this-school shtick, which she also didn't really believe. It had always seemed like one more way for spoiled Ethan Steere to feel that the best things in the world still weren't good enough for him.

“I haven't found a way off yet,” Ethan said, “but I have managed to spot a few places where I can be alone. Off the grid, like here. It's not escape, but it's … temporary escape, I guess. Mental escape.”

“From what?” Sarah asked, baffled.

“Sanctuary Bay. All the
activities
and made-up lacrosse games and rah-rah stuff.” He ran his hand through his hair and gave a little shudder. “Sometimes I just need to get out of there, be where I can think my own thoughts, you know?”

“I guess,” she answered, although until today, she'd never wanted to leave the campus.

Ethan headed deeper into the room, his eyes scanning the decaying mattresses, the jagged, broken bed frames.

“Why did you come here in the first place if you hate it so much?” Sarah pressed. “There's got to be a thousand kids like me who would die for a chance to go to Sanctuary Bay. Who would love to take your spot if you don't want it.”

“You think I had a choice?” Ethan gave a bitter laugh. “I'd gladly let the plebes take my place if I could just get off this damn island. Alive, I mean.”

“Is that supposed to be a joke?”

“You tell me. My brother never made it.” Ethan stopped walking and stood still, his back to Sarah. Something about the hunch of his shoulders made her want to go over and hug him.

“I didn't even know you have a brother,” she said.

“I
had
a brother.” Ethan turned and looked her in the eyes. “Philip. He was five years older than me.”

Sarah was transfixed by the sound of his voice. It sounded hollow, like it belonged to someone else.

“What happened to him?” she whispered, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“I don't know. He got on the ferry when he was fourteen, and he didn't get off of it when he was eighteen. Everyone else did—I know, I was there. My parents and I stood on the dock watching every single Sanctuary Bay graduate walk down the gangplank, but Philip didn't show. When we asked the school, they said he got on the ferry to go home. They said he finished the immersion program, he got accepted to Yale, he graduated, he got on the boat … and that's it. Nobody knows anything else.”

Sarah let out a sharp breath. “I'm sorry,” she said.

Ethan raised one eyebrow, and suddenly his lips quirked into a knowing smile. “You think he fell off the ferry and drowned,” he said.

“Um…” Sarah grasped for something to say, anything that wouldn't sound terrible. She knew what it was like when people refused to believe you. “I don't know what else to think.”

“That's because you trust them.” Ethan spun around and began walking through the room again. “Karina's not here. We have to look farther inside.”

“I trust who?” Sarah asked, trailing after him. “The school? Why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't
you?
I mean, I guess they're negligent if they let someone fall off the ferry and they don't even notice it.” She frowned. “But that doesn't mean they'd lie about it. They told you what they knew.”

“They told my father, and he told my mother, and she told me. Who knows if I ended up hearing anything the school really said? If they even said anything at all,” Ethan muttered.

“Stop walking,” Sarah commanded him.

Ethan glanced back at her, surprised. She saw a flash of anger in his blue eyes, but he stopped anyway. “Sorry, can't you walk and talk at the same time?” he asked. “They really shouldn't have cut funding to the Head Start program.”

Sarah didn't want to get sucked into one of their snarkfests. “You're talking about your dead brother and looking for your maybe-dead girlfriend. You can take two seconds and stand still while you do it,” she snapped.

“My maybe-
dead
girlfriend?” he repeated.

“No. I just mean … I didn't mean that. He's missing. She's missing. I don't know what I'm talking about,” Sarah fumbled. “I only wanted you to stop and explain this to me.”

“Fine.” He sighed. “All I know is that I said good-bye to my brother when I was nine. He was my best friend and my idol and he never, ever treated me like an annoying little kid, even though I probably was.”

“Probably,” Sarah agreed, before she could stop herself.

He shot her a sharp look, but he kept talking. “I didn't understand the full-immersion thing then. I was too young to really get that I wouldn't hear from Philip for years. He obviously understood, because he cried when he hugged me good-bye. And after a while, I started to realize that I didn't have a brother anymore. Not in the way that counts, anyhow.”

“I never thought about that,” Sarah admitted. “I don't have any family, so the immersion doesn't matter. I just thought about how it would affect the students here, not about how their families back home must feel.”

“Yeah, well, their families feel awful,” Ethan said. “Every three months my mom would send off a care package—I'd always go help pick shit out—but there was never anything that came back for us. It was like mailing a box off into the void. We had no way of knowing if the stuff got to Philip. We had no way of knowing if he was even still alive, except for the report cards the school sent. Hell, those could've come from a chimpanzee playing with a computer for all we knew.”

“Wow. When you put it that way, I'm kinda surprised everybody's folks keep sending the packages so regularly,” Sarah said. “It's an entirely one-way relationship.”

Ethan shrugged. “My mom never stopped.”

“Maybe the time seems shorter to parents,” Sarah suggested. “You were just a kid—four years seems like forever to little kids.”

“It is forever. I don't even remember what Philip looks like,” Ethan murmured, his voice barely above a whisper. “I remember facts about him—his hair was reddish, he loved the Red Sox, he would do physics equations for fun. But I don't remember
him.
”

“I … I can't imagine that,” Sarah admitted. “I remember everything. I have an eidetic memory. It's when—”

“I know what it is,” Ethan cut her off, snapping out of his sadness.

“I also have this thing called HSAM, where I can remember an insane level of detail about everything that's ever happened to me.”

“I didn't know that about you,” he said.

“You're upset because you forgot your brother, but sometimes I wish I
could
forget my parents. They died when I was three, but I still remember everything about them. People say that's impossible, but it's not.”

“Doesn't that make you feel better, to remember?”

“No. It's worse. They still feel real to me, as if they're still here. Because I remember them like I saw them yesterday. But I didn't. And they're not.” Sarah tried to shake off her thoughts. “We're talking about you, though. And Philip.”

“Actually we were talking about me and my escape wish,” Ethan said coolly. “You asked why I want off the island, and I'm telling you it's because I think Sanctuary Bay killed my brother. Or kidnapped him. Or … something. I don't know what.”

“Why are you here though, if you think they're so bad?” she asked.

“I never wanted to be here. Two months after Philip fails to show up, my dad comes home one day and announces that Sanctuary Bay wants me. Like it's a good thing.”

“Even after Philip?” Sarah frowned.

“Yup. I freaked out. My mom got hysterical. Dad acted as if we were both crazy. He just kept talking about how it was the best school in the entire world.” Ethan gave another bitter little laugh. “I figured I was safe—my mother had to be sedated, she was so upset at the idea of me going here. She kept screaming that she wouldn't lose another son.”

“Understandable,” Sarah said.

“Then a week later, she packed my suitcases and told me I was leaving for Sanctuary Bay in the morning. Like it never happened. Like Philip never existed, like she'd never been hysterical, like she had never fought with my dad about it,” Ethan said. “It was the most bizarre thing I've ever seen in my life, the most horrible. It was my mom but not my mom, you know?” He paused for a moment. Sarah had the urge to touch him again, but didn't. “All the way to the ferry I tried to talk her out of it,” he went on. “I kept reminding her of how she'd reacted a week before. She just smiled and ignored me and then kissed me good-bye.”

“Why'd you get on the boat?” Sarah asked.

“I was fourteen and my parents had gone insane,” Ethan replied. “Exactly what option do you think I had?”

Sarah didn't answer. Her own experience coming to Sanctuary Bay had been so different, it was hard to know what to think.

“So, about my maybe-dead girlfriend,” Ethan said. “You want to tell me what you're talking about?”

“I just meant she's missing,” Sarah said again, trying to sound convincing.

“Great, so let's go find her. Can I walk now? You done grilling me?” he asked.

“Yes. Sorry.” Sarah took a shaky breath. She hadn't thought things could get more intense after last night, but hearing Ethan's story had brought it to a whole new level. “Where are we going now?”

“I told you, farther inside. Karina likes the stairway in the old lobby, because there's a great view of the water from there.”

Sarah trailed after him, wrinkling her nose at the musty scent in the air. She would've expected the crumbling walls to let in the smell of the ocean, but instead it just smelled like animal droppings and mildew. “I can't believe you guys hang out here voluntarily,” she muttered. “You're weird enough, but Karina likes things to smell nice. And not have rats.”

“You clearly haven't had good enough sex. Karina's not here for the nice atmosphere.”

Sarah ignored the dig, but felt her face flush. “If she's here right now, she's not here for sex with
you
,” she pointed out.

“If she's here, she's trying to make me worried so I'll come find her … and then we'll have sex. Not sure if you've noticed, but your roommate thrives on drama, even if she has to create it herself.”

Karina did have a flare for the dramatic. She started just as many fights with Ethan as he did with her. Maybe they both liked making up.
Be here,
Sarah silently begged.
Be here, Karina. Be here to laugh at me for the great prank you pulled. Be here to make out with your boyfriend.

Ethan moved aside a heavy board that hung from one rusty hinge—which used to be a door, Sarah guessed, judging from the thick metal dead bolt attached near the top.
The lock is on the outside,
she thought with a shiver. It was there to lock people in the room, to trap them there.

They went through a short hallway, rounding a bend where another door had stood. The next room was bigger, with marble on the floor and a once-grand doorway on the ocean side. It had partially collapsed, and the columns that had stood on either side of it were covered in bird poop. “This was the lobby?” Sarah guessed. “The part they let visitors see.”

“That's my guess. It had a higher roof and nicer materials. And check out the stairs.” He pointed across the open space to a wide, curving staircase that swept up into the darkness above.

“It looks like something in a mansion,” Sarah said.
And a little bit like something from our school,
she thought.

“The asylum was paid for by a consortium of New England's wealthiest families,” Ethan told her. “They funded it, then they sent their crazy relatives here and washed their hands of them.” He grinned. “The good old days.”

Sarah rolled her eyes, knowing he just wanted to get her mad.

“So the part the rich families saw was gorgeous, but the inmates slept in that awful room,” she said. “Typical.”

Ethan let her little jab at rich people go. He went over to the stairs and started climbing.

“Are they stable?” Sarah asked, alarmed.

“Karina and I have given them a few good workouts,” he said suggestively. “Nothing ever fell down, so I think it's okay.”

Sarah glared at his back as she followed him up, a strangely jealous feeling she tried to ignore shooting through her.