1
“First time on the water,” the captain said.
It wasn’t a question, but Sarah nodded as she tightly gripped the rail, the chipped paint rough under her palms. The rolling motion of the ferry made her stomach churn. “First time anywhere,” she mumbled. Ever since she’d left her latest foster home behind in Toledo, that’s all she’d had. First plane ride, first time out of Ohio since her parents died, first Greyhound ride, first boat.
An entire day of firsts thanks to what was probably a clerical error made by Sanctuary Bay Academy. The elite prep school had handed her a scholarship, even though she hadn’t applied or been recommended, even though the records from her countless schools made it sound like community college was her best hope—if she even got that lucky.
The chilly Maine wind blasted across her face, stinging her eyes and turning her kinky hair to a tangled mess. “Do you ever get used to how big it is?” she asked. “The ocean?”
The captain laughed, his red face crinkling. “Try being out in the middle, where you can’t see the shore.” He swung himself onto the steep staircase and headed down to the enclosed bottom deck.
Now her only company was a big white dog tied up near a stubby, rusty metal … thing … with a thick rope coiled around the base. Her perfect memory would tell her what it was if she’d ever come across it in a book or heard someone talk about it before, but that hadn’t happened. The dog’s tongue hung out of his mouth happily as they bounced roughly over the water, the ferry leaving thick trails of white spray as it plowed toward Sanctuary Bay Academy. Clearly the dog had more travel experience than her.
She turned around, facing the shore to get a break from the out-to-infinity view. But now all she saw was the rest of the world slowly getting farther away. If her social worker was right, if the scholarship was the real deal, she wouldn’t see that world again for almost two years. The academy had a strict policy of isolation.
Not isolation. Total immersion. Nothing but school.
But it still meant no contact with the outside world until she graduated.
“Which doesn’t matter,” she told the dog. “Seeing as I have no friends or family to miss.”
Her last foster family, the Yoders, they’d been okay. Sure, they were extremely white. Big and blond and rosy cheeked and just … white. Sarah was sure when they looked at her they saw a black girl with kinky-curly dark hair and a wide nose. But it had been no different when she’d had black foster families. It wasn’t as if they saw a white girl when they took in her green eyes and latte-hued skin. But they didn’t see themselves, either. They didn’t see black. If she’d been one thing or the other, instead of both, would she have found a place—a family—that she really fit with?
She’d never fit at the Yoders. Besides the whiteness, they were just too normal. Three-square-meals-a-day-bowl-a-few-frames-this-Saturday normal. Creepy normal. But she’d liked it there. No one tried to slide into bed with her. There’d been no hitting or screaming—Mr. and Mrs. Yoder actually seemed to like each other. Decent food. Some new clothes. From Target and Walmart, but new, and hers. Mrs. Yoder had even cried when she hugged Sarah good-bye this morning.
“Maybe she’ll miss me,” Sarah said quietly. She faced the ocean again, and the dog gave her a wag.
“I’m not petting you,” she told it. She didn’t have much experience with dogs. It was one of her gaps, or at least that’s how she thought of them. She’d lived in so many different homes, with so many different people. She should have experienced more than the average sixteen-year-old, but she had a bunch of gaps. Friends—you couldn’t make real friends when you switched schools that often. The ocean—the Maumee River in Toledo didn’t come close. Dogs—none, except the one the Weltons kept chained to the front door, and that one wasn’t exactly a tail wagger. Parties—she’d never even been invited to one.
Never had a pony or a Lexus with a bow on top for my sweet sixteen, either, she thought, mocking herself. “I just wish this part was over, the not knowing,” she said aloud to the dog. She could deal with anything as long as she knew what was going on. It was the not knowing that had her stomach roiling, no matter how many times she tried to tell herself it was only seasickness.
The dog stood up, so it could wag its whole butt and not just its tail. It moved closer, until its leash pulled taut, choking it. “Stupid mutt,” she muttered, but it kept on wagging. Okay, fine. Today was New Thing Day, so what the hell. Sarah slowly stretched her fingers out just far enough to brush its head. A second later, her hand was thoroughly slimed.
She smiled, wiping the drool on her jeans. “Thanks for not eating my hand,” she told the dog. “I’m weird enough already. I don’t need to be known as Stumpy the Scholarship Girl.”
Would that be a thing? Would there be a big divide between scholarship kids and everybody else? At her public schools the rich kids had always stayed away from people like her—well, at least at the schools she’d gone to that even had rich kids. But Sanctuary Bay was way beyond that. Her social worker had said students got their pick of colleges after graduation, that the best families in the country sent their kids here. That meant not just rich kids, but outrageously rich kids. Kennedys and Romneys and people like that. Sarah had tried to find information about the school online, a picture or something.
But she hadn’t found anything. Maybe since Sanctuary Bay had such an amazing reputation they didn’t need to be online. No need to advertise. If they wanted you, they’d let you know.
And they wanted her.
Or they wanted Sarah Merson at least. There had to be another one out there somewhere. A Sarah Merson with fantastic grades and a normal brain and parents who were still alive to help her get into a school like this. A girl who’d never been accused of being on drugs or cheating. A girl no one had ever considered might be “emotionally unstable,” to quote Sarah’s seventh-grade teacher. That was the girl who was supposed to be on this ferry.
“Maybe they’ll never figure out they screwed up. Sucks for the other Sarah, but I probably need it more than her, right?” she asked the dog.
The boat veered to the left, bringing what looked like a row of the world’s biggest floor fans into view. They had three blades each and were mounted on enormously tall yellow pillars—she guessed they were about four hundred feet tall—and each pillar was attached to a floating platform.
As they continued steadily toward the platforms, Sarah realized that two people were standing on one of them, inside a small white metal railing wrapped around the bottom of the platform’s pillar. One of them pointed at her, and then they both started to wave. Sarah turned around to make sure no one had joined her on the upper deck. Empty.
“You know these people?” The dog whined in response. They were probably just waving to wave.
The boat kept speeding toward the platform. It must be farther away than it looks, Sarah thought. Because it looked like they were going to run right into it if they kept going for much longer. She heard footsteps clambering up the metal stairs. “You, let’s go,” the captain called to her.
Sarah grabbed her suitcase and her backpack. “Wish me luck,” she murmured to the dog before she started toward the stairs. The dog wagged, as if to say it was all good. But it wagged at everything. How could this be my stop? she wondered. She’d never been on a ferry though. Maybe he was just getting her ready for a stop that was coming up in twenty minutes.
“Anything fragile in your gear?” the captain asked.
“Uh, no. Mostly just clothes,” Sarah told him. Foster kids traveled light. The boat veered, pulling up alongside the platform. Now she could see the two people standing by the pillar were around her age, a boy and girl. They were still waving.
“Hi, Sarah! We’re your welcoming committee,” the boy—on the short side, muscular, cute, close-cropped dark brown hair, Hispanic—called to her.
“So, welcome!” the girl—preppy-pretty, straight red hair, white—added.
She sighed. Sarah always got frustrated when people tried to put her in a black or white box, like it had to be an either/or thing. But more frustratingly, she found herself automatically doing it too. She saw someone and checked off boxes. Size. Age. Race. Attractiveness. Economic status. But race was always there because it was the one box that she never knew quite what to check for herself.
The captain took her suitcase and heaved it over the rail. It landed on the floating platform with a thump. Sarah blinked in surprise. “Nothing breakable, you said.”
Sarah managed to nod. She was starting to get blender-brain. It was only yesterday that her social worker had told her about Sanctuary Bay, while Mrs. Yoder buzzed around excitedly. And since then it had been pow, pow, pow—new stuff thrown at her every second. Now she was getting dropped off in the middle of the ocean onto a platform the size of a basketball court.
Oh, but wait. There was a boat tethered nearby on the other side. She’d been so focused on the people and the high fan—a wind turbine, her brain had finally provided when she’d realized she had arrived at a floating wind farm—that she hadn’t noticed it. It looked more like a spacecraft than a boat, a spacecraft for James Bond. Low to the water with sleek metal lines, stretching out in two long points in front of a glassed-in … she wanted to call it a cockpit, but she was sure there was a better word. One word that definitely applied to the whole thing was magnificent. Just magnificent.
“You want to wear the backpack down, or should I toss it too?” the captain asked after a long pause. Sarah looked over at him and saw that his eyes were wide, locked on the boat beside the platform. So she wasn’t the only one who thought it looked like something that wouldn’t be invented for decades. The guy who made his living on the ocean did too.
“Toss it,” Sarah told him after realizing she was going to have to awkwardly climb down a metal ladder running down the side of the ferry.
“Sarah Merson, come on down,” the boy cried in a cheesy TV-show announcer voice, like she was a contestant on The Price Is Right. He gave her a cocky grin. He knew exactly how cheesy he was being and that he was hot enough to pull it off. More than hot enough.
Did rich people even watch The Price Is Right? The boy waiting for her at the bottom of the ladder definitely seemed like a rich boy, knowledge of PIR withstanding. Except it looked like his nose had been broken at least once, and it hadn’t been returned to perfection with plastic surgery. The girl looked rich too. They both just had a well-groomed glow that she’d never seen outside of Us Weekly. Not that Sarah was smelly with chipped nail polish or anything. But there was a difference.
Don’t stand here staring, she told herself. You’ve done this all before. Not the boat part, but she’d been the new girl too many times to count. And she still hated it. Don’tfalldon’tfalldon’tfall, she thought as she stepped onto the ladder, her sweaty palms sliding across the metal railing. She narrowed her focus to the steps until she reached the gently bobbing platform.
“Nate Cruz,” the boy said, holding out his hand. She shook it, praying her palms were no longer sweaty. “Junior class president,” he added. His eyes were a golden brown, like caramels, his skin just a few shades darker, and the way he looked at her made her feel like she was the only person not just on the platform, but in the entire world. She was relieved when the girl stepped up beside them. Nate’s gaze was so intense she felt like she needed a reason to look away.
“I’m Maya,” the girl announced. “I don’t feel the need to give my title every three or four seconds.” She smiled, shaking hands with Sarah too. It was kind of like they were all at a business meeting, or what Sarah imagined a business meeting would be like, anyway.
“She doesn’t feel the need to announce her title because she’s class secretary, and it’s not worth mentioning.” Nate shot Maya what Sarah was already starting to think of as The Grin, then wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Maya tried to pull away, but he gave her smacking kisses on the cheek as he pulled her tighter against him.
So that’s how it is, Sarah thought. Good to know. She liked to figure out as much as she could about the people in a new place as soon as possible. It made her feel more in control. Nate and Maya a couple. Noted.
Have I said anything? She felt a spurt of embarrassment. Had she just been standing there gawping at the pretty, shiny boat and the pretty, shiny rich kids? Say something. Anything. Anythinganything. “I thought the ferry would take me all the way to the school,” she mumbled.
“Nope, the school’s boat brings students the rest of the way. No need for a regular ferry to Sanctuary Bay,” Maya answered. “Once you arrive, you’re there ’til grad.”
“But don’t worry about not being able to leave,” Nate told Sarah. “We make our own entertainment.”
“We do.” Maya gave her words a spin, making it clear she was talking about epic sex. “The only thing I really miss is shopping,” she added. “We can get packages every three months, but that just means we get what people think we want. My mom tries, but she’s basically hopeless, or else she thinks I’m still in fifth grade. Some of the stuff I get? I’m like—‘Seriously, Mom?’ Doesn’t matter though. There are always people who want to trade.”
Sarah remained quiet. She didn’t think her first thought, That’s what we call a first-world problem, bitch, was quite the right way to go about making friends. Instead she turned to Nate. “And you?” Sarah asked. “Does Mommy still think you’re a little boy?” The words came out with an edge she hadn’t intended.
“I’m past the age of needing a mommy,” Nate answered, his own tone a little sharp. “Let’s get to Sanctuary Bay so you can see the place for yourself,” he quickly added, the warmth back in his voice. He gave a light rap on the smoked-glass roof of the cockpit. A second later the back slid up, smoothly and soundlessly, revealing six matte-black leather chairs, ones that could easily sit at some swanky bar without looking out of place.
Sarah drew in a shaky breath. She had to stop with the poor-kid attitude. Everyone here was rich—she couldn’t be mad at them all, not if she wanted them to accept her. Luckily, if her question had pissed Nate off, he’d only let it show for a second. She got why he was class president. There was something of a politician in him, a calculation under his friendly manner. Again she was being too harsh. It was probably just sharp intelligence.
“Can’t wait,” Sarah smiled, putting her polite voice back on. “I’m almost insane with curiosity. Do you know there’s not one picture of the school online?”
Nate stepped into the cockpit, and stretched out his hand to help her onboard.
“The school has it set up so we can access the Web for research, but that’s it. Nothing from us can go out. No e-mail. No way to get on Instagram or Snip-It, so there’s no way to post pictures,” Nate explained. “We have our own private network though, so we can send stuff to each other, and we have cells that work on-island.” He grabbed Maya by the waist and swung her down beside him.
“The Academy wants us focused on school,” Maya said as they each strapped into one of the chairs behind the pilot who sat at the control panel. “That’s why they have the rule about us staying on campus.”
“Total immersion,” Sarah said softly, remembering.
“Exactly,” Nate replied. “And it works. Sanctuary Bay students get the highest SAT scores in the country.”
“And I’m sure Sarah is properly awed by that.” Maya smiled at her. “But I’m also sure there are other things she’d like to know about the place.”
“Only everything!” Sarah tried to sound eager and perky like Maya.
“Okay, for starters, there are a hundred and eighty-nine students, counting you,” Nate said. The hatch glided back into place and the boat began rushing across the water. “Nine hundred raging horses in this baby,” he commented. “And it can also run on solar power. Slower, but still.”
Maya shook her head. “He’s such a boy.” She didn’t sound at all displeased. “The school, Mr. President. We’re talking about the school.” She turned to Sarah. “First thing you’re going to need to decide is if you’re with the Puffins or the Lobsters. Those are the two lacrosse teams. Stupid names, I know—they’re Maine wildlife. Somebody thought it was clever.”
“There are two teams at one school?”
“Have to be,” Nate told her. “We stay on the island, so the only way we can play is if we play each other. Just think of it like the Bengals and the Browns.”
Sarah’s chin jerked up. There weren’t that many states with two football teams. “Are you saying that because you know I’m from Ohio?” she demanded, forgetting herself.
Nate gave her The Grin. “Not many states with two NFL teams,” he answered, echoing her thought.
“So you did know?”
“You’re the new girl. Of course we found out everything we could. With less than two hundred kids, fresh blood is a big deal,” Maya said.
Sarah flushed. How much did everything include? Her being a foster kid? Accounts of her random outbursts? The cheating accusations? The ones about drugs?
“So how am I supposed to decide between the, uh, Puffins and Lobsters?” she asked, trying to quiet her rapidly beating heart.
The heat in Sarah’s cheeks faded as Maya rattled off the reasons why being a Puffinhead was the only option, clearly, since she and Nate were on the side of the Puffins.
“First view of the island coming up,” Nate announced a few minutes later.
Sarah leaned forward, wishing the glass wasn’t smoked. It made everything appear a little eerie, all shades of gray, even though the day was bright. “I don’t see it.”
“A little to the left. It doesn’t look like much more than a smudge right now,” he said.
She turned her head a fraction, and saw a darker spot out in the water. She kept her gaze trained on it, and as the boat sped on, the spot gradually gained size and definition. Rocky cliffs that rose high over the water dominated the island, at least on this side. There didn’t seem to be much of a beach, just more jagged rocks. “How big is it?”
“About thirty square miles,” Nate answered. “Take you about an hour and a half to walk from the farthest two points, if you could walk in a straight line, which you can’t. Once you’re off the main campus, there’s a big stretch of woods with only a few trails.”
More details came into focus. She could see the trees, and among them …
Sarah’s heart felt like it had been squeezed by an ice-cold hand. Was that the school? She could just make out a brick building almost hidden in the tree line. It obviously used to be fancy, but now sat in disrepair with a crumbling roof and walls smattered with holes where bricks had fallen out, making it look like a smile with missing teeth.
“That’s the Academy?” she asked, keeping her voice steady so she didn’t betray her unease.
“Oh! Hell no!” Nate quickly answered.
“The school’s on the other side of the island. You can’t see it yet. It’s nothing like that.” Maya flicked her hand in the direction of the building Sarah had spotted, dismissing it. “You should have seen your face.” Maya twisted her mouth into a horrified grimace and bugged out her eyes, laughing. “That’s just some old ruin left over from before the Academy was here. You can hardly see it from our side.”
Sarah relaxed back into her chair, realizing all her muscles had tensed at the sight of the creepy old ruin. The boat glided into a series of curves as the pilot navigated around the island, and Sarah spotted several cell towers along the shoreline. They made her feel better. Cell towers were modern, not like that decaying old place.
“That’s a lot of towers,” she said.
“It’s a closed system,” Nate recited again, as if that explained anything.
The boat powered up to a long jetty made of large flat stones stacked on top of one another and glided to a stop. The hatch slid up and the world exploded into color again. The rich gold of the setting sun turned the perfectly fluffy clouds orange, amber, and pink. The sea held dozens of shades of blue. The stones of the jetty had appeared gray, but now that Sarah could see them without the barrier of smoked glass, she realized they were actually subtle shades of charcoal, lavender, purple, sand, tan, and even a dusty rose.
It was beautiful.
“Thanks, man,” Nate said to the pilot, who only nodded in response. As soon as Sarah, Nate, and Maya stepped onto the jetty, the hatch slid back into place, turning the pilot into a shadowy figure inside. A moment later, the boat was flying across the water, a strange high-tech blip on the ocean.
Maya sighed as she watched it go. “If only we could use it every few weeks for a mall run. We’re blocked from online shopping too,” she explained to Sarah. “But the school is fabulous enough that missing out is no biggie.”
“Your closets are stuffed as it is,” Nate said. “She’s always begging me to let her store some shoes in mine,” he added to Sarah.
“It should be a privilege,” Maya shot back. “They’re extremely cute shoes.”
“My Chucks like their privacy.” Nate started down the jetty after grabbing Sarah’s suitcase and backpack. Was it weird to let a stranger haul your crap? Maybe he was just being a gentleman, as Mrs. Yoder would say.
Sarah watched him for a few seconds, carrying her bags like they were weightless.
“Coming?” Maya asked.
“Yeah. Sorry,” Sarah answered, heading across the stones after Nate, Maya trailing behind. At the end of the jetty, more of the same stones had been used to create long, high steps up the side of the cliff. A small brown rabbit skittered out of the way as Sarah started to climb.
The cliff was so steep that Sarah couldn’t see what lay above until she reached the second step from the top. Then her whole field of vision was filled with a wide, vividly green manicured lawn, leading to the most beautiful building she’d ever seen. Her eyes flitted about, trying, and failing to take everything in all at once. Stone base, red brick walls, four stories high, with window upon window, tall and crisscrossed with white latticework all the way across the first floor, Greek columns flanking both sides of the glass entrance doors. Two wide staircases, also of stone, ran in graceful curves from the lawn up to the wide veranda that wrapped around the entire building. A balcony followed the line of the veranda on the floor above. Arched niches held classical statues of white marble. A bell tower rose out of the center of the white roof, a chimney on either side of the roof continuing the symmetry that the whole structure possessed.
Nate glanced over his shoulder. She stood rooted in place, unable to take the last step. There was too much to see. “Now this,” he said, “is the school.”
“No fucking way.” The words escaped before Sarah could stop them. Classy, Sarah. Real classy.
“Fucking way,” Nate replied. He smiled, not The Grin, but something softer, his eyes intent on her face.
If she’d seen a picture of the place online, she wasn’t sure she would have gotten on the plane, no matter how big of a life-changer the school was. This place wasn’t meant for someone like her.
“Don’t you want to see the rest?” Maya piped up from behind.
Sarah was still trying to see all of this. You can make me relive this moment as much as you want, she told her freaky brain. She took the last step, breathing in the smell of freshly mown grass, her eyes still flicking over the school. Two three-story wings stretched out from both sides of the main building, columns alternating with the huge windows on both of them.
Don’t go falling in love with it, not until you’re sure you are staying, she told herself sternly.
A flash of movement and color caught her gaze, a long banner unfurling from one of the smaller windows on the third floor of the east wing. The fuchsia cloth kept unrolling until it was only a few feet above the veranda. Vivid yellow letters in a vertical row spelled out WELCOME, SARAH!!!
She suddenly felt like she needed to sit down in a small quiet room by herself for at least a few minutes, just to breathe. To digest everything that had happened since five this morning when the social worker picked her up to drive her to the airport.
“I think we’ve been outclassed as the welcoming committee,” Maya commented as they headed down the path that led across the huge lawn. “Here comes Karina. She’s one of your suitemates, Sarah. And that banner came out of the window of your room.”
Sarah watched as a petite girl with long dark hair took the steps from the veranda to the lawn two at a time. She reached them before they were even halfway across the lawn. “I’ve been standing by the window for an hour to get that timed right,” she exclaimed.
“Yeah, thanks for making us look like slackers, Kar,” Maya teased. “Let me state the obvious. This is Sarah Merson. Sarah, meet Karina Sharma.”
“That was amazing. That banner. Thanks so much,” Sarah said. She’d started at new schools what felt like a thousand times and the most she’d ever gotten was a tour from a kid who worked in the office.
Karina gave her a fast hug. Sarah felt herself stiffen, and hoped Karina hadn’t noticed. “Just wanted you to know we’re happy to have you here, like Jamiroquai dancing and tetherball happy.” Sarah had no idea what that last part meant, but she got the idea, and anyway, Karina was talking too fast to try to interrupt with a question. “‘We’ being me and Izzy, your other roommate,” Karina continued. “I’ve been here since I was a freshman, but Iz just started last year. She’s a senior. I’m a junior like you.”
“Your lung capacity must be phenomenal,” Nate commented as they started walking again. “You got all that out without taking a breath.”
“I’m phenomenal in a wide variety of ways, Cruz. Are you only just starting to realize that?” Karina winked at Sarah.
She’s gorgeous, Sarah thought, sneaking a glance at her new roommate. Not just pretty, gorgeous. East Indian, Sarah was pretty sure, with skin almost the same shade as her own, and eyes such a deep brown they were almost black. Every guy there probably got palpitations when she walked by.
After they climbed the stairs to the main entrance, Karina took Sarah’s suitcase from Nate, swinging it away when Sarah reached for it. “You two are dismissed,” she told Nate and Maya.
“We were going to give Sarah a tour,” Maya protested.
“Nope! She’s probably tired, and I’m taking her to our room, letting her sit down, and getting her a beverage of some sort,” Karina answered. “You can do an official tour later. Or just let Izzy and me show her around.” She pulled one of the glass doors open and waved Sarah in first.
“You good with that?” Nate asked Sarah.
“Sure.” It sounded great actually, as close as she was going to get to sitting in a small, quiet room by herself right now. She needed it more than ever. Her senses were on overload as she took in the elaborate wallpaper of the—again her vocabulary failed her. Sitting room? Waiting room? Lobby? Whatever the room should be called, it was huge, with a ceiling that went up two floors. A mammoth fireplace dominated the far end of the room, and there were clusters of furniture—chairs, love seats, sofas—on Persian carpets that almost created small rooms within it. The colors and patterns complimented each other, but didn’t match. It was as if everything was special, one of a kind.
“Don’t worry,” Nate said quietly as he handed over her backpack. “In a few days you’ll feel like you’ve been here forever.”
Again, he’d known what she was thinking. “That’s not possible,” Sarah murmured. She started to turn away, but Nate still held one of the backpack straps.
“It is. But only if you leave all your crap behind,” he said, his voice so low only she could hear it, eyes locked on hers, like he was trying to give her a coded message. “Sanctuary Bay is who you are now.”
Sarah stared at him, surprised. Nate’s intense look vanished, and The Grin reappeared. He released the backpack. “You have an appointment with the dean at six. I’ll come by your room and escort you over.”
“Thanks,” Sarah said as he walked away.
The dean. If Sarah could get through that meeting without getting sent back home, her whole life would change—as long as she left all her crap behind, apparently. Sanctuary Bay is who I am now.
“Okay,” she told Karina. “Show me everything.”
Copyright © 2015 by St. Martin’s Press
