Sanctuary Bay (19 page)

Sarah stared at her wordlessly. What was there to say?

Izzy smoothed her wavy hair into place. “I'm heading back. You coming?” She strolled away without waiting for Sarah's response.

It took Sarah almost a full minute to realize she was standing alone in the woods with a dead body. When it hit her, she ran blindly through the dark, pine branches slapping at her, scratching her face and hands, the only parts of her body unprotected by the robe.

She raced from the woods, across the back lawn, and up to the main building. She yanked open the door and started to slam it behind her, stopping herself just in time and shutting it quietly. She couldn't get caught coming inside when a body would be found soon. A body. How could she be thinking of Karina as
a body
already? Tears stung her eyes. She took a few steps, then stopped abruptly. She didn't know where to go. Not back to her room.
Their
room. Hers and Karina's and Izzy's. She couldn't go there. She never wanted to see Izzy again.

The den? No. The rest of the pack—including Nate—had run off and left her.

Dr. Diaz. He'd helped her before, he'd help her now. She pulled her cell out of her pocket. “Locate Dr. Diaz,” she whispered, her voice shaking.

“Teachers' quarters,” the cell replied cheerfully. Sarah glanced at the dots on the screen—she'd never been to the teachers' area before. Dr. Diaz's dot was two floors above the sitting room near the front entrance. She raced up the main staircase and followed the blinking yellow dot up another set of stairs and down to his door. She tapped on it, and he didn't take long to appear.

One look at her face was all he needed. “What's wrong?” he asked. “What happened?” He held the door open wider and she hurried inside.

Sarah opened her mouth— What was she supposed to say? How could she tell him what had happened? What they'd done? She let out a shaky sob.

“Sit down,” Dr. Diaz told her.

Sarah let him lead her over to the chair in front of his desk. She sat down. A little muscle beneath her right eye had begun to twitch.

“You're starting to worry me, Sarah. I need you to talk.” Dr. Diaz pulled an armchair over next to her and sat. “Please, tell me what happened. Let me help you. Did you have another memory surge?”

She wanted to tell him everything. But she wasn't going to bring the Wolfpack into this. She couldn't. Without them she might lose too much.

Dr. Diaz took her arm and laid his fingers on her wrist, eyes on the wall clock. “Can you tell me your name?” He didn't sound freaked out now. He sounded calm. Professional. Like the doctor he was.

The doctor voice snapped her out of her shock. Sarah pulled her wrist away. “I'm fine. I, you were right; I just had one of my memory things. I'm okay now.” She stood up.

“Are you sure? What's with the robe?” Dr. Diaz asked.

The robe? The ceremonial robe! Sarah still had it on! She hadn't even thought about it when she'd come tearing up here. How could she explain it?

“I, I … We killed Karina!” she burst out, her calm resolve shattered by his question. The words were like a tidal wave now, unstoppable. “I'm in this secret group. The Wolfpack. We decided to sacrifice someone. I thought it was just a, just pretend, a twisted game. But there was a gun. And—”

Dr. Diaz was on his feet. “Where was this?” he asked.

“In the woods.”

“You need to show me. Now,” Dr. Diaz told her. Sarah blinked. “She might still be alive,” he explained. Could she be? Sarah hadn't gotten close to her. She'd seen Karina's limp body, her unblinking eyes, her mouth open in an endless scream. “We need to go now,” Dr. Diaz ordered.

“Okay.” Sarah shoved herself to her feet, tearing off the robe. She'd be able to run faster in her jeans and sweater. And maybe Karina was alive. It was dark out. Maybe Sarah hadn't seen right. Except that the moon was so full, the light from it so bright. Pushing the thought away, she raced back down the stairs, Dr. Diaz right behind her. Together they ran out the rear exit, down the path across the lawn, through the woods.

But when they reached the clearing, it was empty.

There was no gun lying on the ground.

There was no body hanging limply from the tree.

There weren't even any footprints in the pine needles.

 

11

“Let's just get you back to your room,” Dr. Diaz said. But everything had changed. He didn't sound like himself, not even his ultraprofessional doctor self. His voice was different—
careful
. Like she might explode.

“I swear to god she was here, she was dead,” Sarah whispered, her eyes flicking from the iron ring in the Pine Tree to the spot on the ground where Sarah had tackled Izzy. There was no sign of a struggle. “I'm not crazy,” her voice broke.

Dr. Diaz took her arm and gently steered her back through the woods. “Try to think, Sarah. Were you and your friends doing anything you shouldn't have been?”

You mean like murdering someone?
she thought wildly. That little muscle under her eye was twitching again, faster now.

“Did you do any drugs?” he pressed.

“No,” she said automatically.

He sighed. “I'm not asking as a teacher, Sarah, I'm asking as a friend. I won't tell anyone. But if you took something, it's possible that a drug might've caused your memory to get confused. A mind-altering substance mixed with a brain like yours, well, that could get complicated.”

“You think I imagined it?” she asked, trying to focus on her feet, on stepping over branches and not slipping on fallen leaves. Normal things, not murderous things.

“Truthfully, I don't know. But I think there are drugs that cause hallucinations, hallucinations anyone might find vivid and real. I tried a few of those, years ago. Once I came out of it, I knew I'd been tripping, as we called it back in the day.” He smiled, but it looked forced. “But for you, even later you might not be able to distinguish a hallucination from reality, because your brain stores data differently.”

Sarah thought about it. She was almost certain that the Blutgrog was a drug, not just alcohol and berries or whatever. It had always made her feel strange, always made the rest of the Wolfpack lose pretty much every inhibition they had. But it had never caused hallucinations. The things the Wolfpack did were very real. Like branding Grayson. Horrific, but real. She and Izzy and Karina—
Karina
, her name was a surprise punch to the gut—they'd talked about Grayson's punishment afterward. They'd all had the same experience, and hallucinations didn't work like that.

And Sarah had always felt extraordinarily clearheaded when she drank it, all her senses heightened, her reality amped up. Her
reality.
She shook her head. “No drugs.”

They tramped through the woods silently until they finally hit the smooth expanse of the back lawn. “Okay, not a hallucination. A dream then,” Dr. Diaz said thoughtfully. “Bleeding into your perception of reality. You think you're remembering the truth, but you're only remembering a dream? We talked about how that can happen to people with extraordinary memories.”

“I don't know,” Sarah murmured, lost in thought. Nothing like that had ever happened to her before. In a surge, she felt as if she was inside a memory, that the memory was happening in the present. The memory could feel real, but she'd never felt that a dream was real. She'd never confused them.

But maybe Dr. Diaz was right. Maybe her brain processed data differently than other people's, even in a dream. It made more sense that the whole thing had been a horrible nightmare. Izzy wouldn't have killed Karina. Or acted so casually about killing that boy, that had devastated her. “Maybe you're right—” She stopped abruptly, a realization slamming into her.

“But you saw me in the robe. We wear robes for the ceremonies. I didn't dream that I put it on,” she pointed out. Right now she needed to think like the science geek she was. Neither the hallucination theory or the dream theory made sense. She wished they did, but they just didn't. She'd had Blutgrog a ton of times by now, and it had never made her sleepy or given her hallucinations.

“I'm not saying everything was a dream. You could have put on the robe to meet with your friends, then you could have fallen asleep without undressing,” Dr. Diaz suggested as they stepped inside the building. “You thought you were playing a game. Maybe you did, and parts of the game even ended up being incorporated into the dream.”

But why would tonight be the first time in her whole life where a dream felt like a memory?

“We both saw the clearing, Sarah. There was no indication that anyone had even been out there earlier tonight.”

They reached the main staircase and began to climb. He was right. No footprints. All the pine needles undisturbed. A wave of dizziness washed over her, and for a moment she felt her grip on reality shift.

“Get some sleep, Sarah.” Dr. Diaz's voice startled her. She glanced up, realizing they were at the top of the staircase. She needed to go down the hall to reach the east wing. Dr. Diaz needed to go up the next staircase that started a few feet away. “The morning always brings clarity. We can try to figure this out tomorrow.”

“Okay.” In a daze, she took the first step. “Thanks.”

She didn't look back, but she knew Dr. Diaz stood there watching her. He was worried.
Well, not as worried as I am.
The image of Karina's lifeless eyes rose up again, and Sarah clenched her teeth, willing herself to stay here, in the reality of this present moment. She couldn't risk remembering too clearly—the shot, the scream, the way Karina's long dark hair fell over her face and just stayed there, her eyes staring from behind it. If she let that memory take over, she'd go mad.

“It's not real,” Sarah whispered. “There was no body.”

But it
was
real. She was sure of it. She knew herself. She knew her brain.

Karina was dead.

*   *   *

“You're going to sleep through your first class, lazy.” Izzy's voice filtered through the layers of sleep into Sarah's consciousness. “It's almost eight thirty.”

I'm late,
Sarah thought, panicked. She sat up in bed, her heart pounding, trying to remember where she was supposed to be.

“Don't worry, you're way ahead of Karina,” Izzy went on.

Karina. Shrill scream. Dead eyes. Body slumping forward, stopped from falling only by her hands tied to the iron ring.
Stop. Stopstopstop.
Sarah was fully awake now, all her energy focused on keeping herself
out
of the memory of Karina. Not that she could stop a true memory surge, but she could try to stop herself from thinking about all the unspeakable details of the night before. She turned horrified eyes on Izzy.

Izzy smiled and cocked her head toward Karina's bed. “She's not even back yet.”

Sarah didn't have to look to see that the bed was still made. She knew Karina hadn't slept there, because Karina was dead. Izzy had killed her.

“Can you imagine how late she's going to be? It's not like she can go straight to class wearing the same clothes. Our Karina's not the walk-of-shame type.” Izzy turned toward her mirror and pulled out a tube of Chanel lip gloss in the palest pink, the gold band under the cap catching the light. Focusing on the details helped Sarah keep her mind where she wanted it, away from Karina's face, drained of life.

“What? What are you talking about?” Sarah finally managed to squeak.

“Karina.” Izzy met her eyes in the mirror. “She obviously must've taken it to the next level with Ethan. She never came home last night. And Ethan isn't the letting-the-girlfriend-sleep-in-his-room type, even though he has a single. Wonder how she pulled it off.”

Sarah stared at her roommate, speechless.
What's going on? Am I dreaming?
she wondered frantically. She pinched the spot on the inside of her elbow and an arrow of pain shot up her arm. Not dreaming. Her mind replayed the words on Izzy's lips last night: “I took very careful aim, and he hit that corner perfectly.”

That conversation had happened. Body or no body. Footprints in the clearing or no footprints. It
had
happened.

“Iz…” Sarah trailed off.

Izzy raised her perfectly arched eyebrows, waiting. After a moment, she shook her head and laughed. “You're really out of it today—maybe you had a little too much fun last night.” She tossed the lip gloss on her dresser, grabbed Sarah's leather jacket, and headed for the door. “See you. Don't be too late!”

When she was gone, Sarah sat very still for a long time, trying to process things. Karina was dead. Izzy shot her while everyone watched. Sarah remembered every single second of the horrible incident. But Izzy didn't seem to remember it at all. Or else Izzy was the worst human being in the entire world, somebody who not only thought it was okay to murder your roommate in cold blood, but who also thought it was fun to spend the next morning acting like it never happened. Did she expect Sarah to go along with her? Was this her attempt at getting away with it?

Without looking at Karina's bed, Sarah got up and pulled on her ancient Target jeans and a black top. She automatically reached for the sweater Izzy had traded her, but her hand stopped before touching it. She couldn't wear Izzy's clothes, not anymore.

It was cold outside, and her ratty old Goodwill sweatshirt wouldn't help much, but Sarah didn't care. She hurried out of the suite. All the happy memories she'd had there were tainted now. She had to get away.

“We've got to hurry if we don't want to miss English,” Maya said as soon as Sarah stepped out the back door.

Sarah jumped in surprise. Had Maya been waiting there for her? They didn't usually meet up to walk to class.