Sanctuary Bay (20 page)

“I can't believe I overslept!” Maya continued.

“Me too,” Sarah muttered. But she might as well let Maya drag her to English. Ms. Coté, the teacher, would drone on about Emerson, and Sarah could tune out and try to figure out what was going on. After all, she'd already read all the assigned essays and criticism. She would also remember every word of the lecture today, even if she didn't pay much attention—the same way she remembered everything that had happened last night.

They had gone into the woods.

They had tied Karina to a tree.

And Izzy had shot her.

Dead.

“Hey, Merson, is that a little beard burn on your face?” Kayla asked in a loud whisper, giggling as soon as Maya and Sarah entered the room. Logan, sitting next to her, made kissing sounds and laughed.

What?

“I'm going to sit with them,” she told Maya. Maya rolled her eyes, but didn't try to follow. Nobody was supposed to know about the Wolfpack, but somehow it always seemed as if nonmembers could tell when they weren't wanted.

Sarah took a deep breath and headed for her friends. Logan grabbed his jacket off the chair next to him so she could sit. Both he and Kayla were grinning as if there was nothing wrong.

“As I was saying,” Ms. Coté gave Sarah and Maya pointed looks. Maya looked abashed. But an angry teacher didn't even register on Sarah's radar this morning, not when Karina's dead eyes kept flashing in her mind. “I want you to break into groups of three or four. There are books of nineteenth-century art on the shelf. Take one, choose a landscape, and discuss it in conjunction with Emerson's ‘Nature.' I'll give you half an hour, then we'll hear a short summary of your conclusions.”

Sarah, Logan, and Kayla immediately pulled their desks together. She sighed with relief. She wouldn't have to suffer through class until she could talk to someone from the Wolfpack. Logan shook his head when Taylor tried to join them. “Full up.” She looked like she wanted to argue, but jerked her desk over to another group with a huff of irritation.

“Have you heard anything? What's up?” Sarah whispered.

“Nate's dick!” Logan joked. Kayla smacked his arm, but she was giggling.

“Excuse me?” Sarah knew her voice had an edge to it, because they immediately stopped laughing.

“Oh, don't be embarrassed. We tease everybody who decides to do sexy times at the meetings,” Kayla said. “Usually Nate doesn't get into PDAs unless we're in party mode, but I guess you made him get over that.”

“That's not the only thing she made him do!” Logan cried. Ms. Coté shot them an angry look as she slammed one of the art books, which none of them had bothered to fetch, onto Logan's desk.

“God, you're disgusting. That doesn't even make sense,” Kayla told Logan, lowering her voice a little. “Anyway, it's not like we did much official meeting stuff.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Sarah asked.

“You and Nate getting busy during the movie in the den last night,” Logan replied. “Oh, I'm sorry. Did you even know there was a movie on? You were a bit … distracted.”

“A movie?” A rush of dizziness made Sarah's brain feel like it was shutting down.

“Yeah,
The Conjuring.
That opening scene?” Kayla gave an exaggerated shiver. “I hate anything with creepy dolls.”

Sarah felt like she was losing her mind. She didn't know exactly what she'd been expecting, but this was not it. The two of them were acting as if Karina's murder didn't matter at all.

“You mean you all went back to the den and watched a freaking movie after that?” she practically shrieked.

A few kids glanced over at them, and Kayla's eyes widened. “Quiet!”

“Everyone took off. I had no idea where you guys were,” Sarah said, lowering her voice a notch. “If you saw Nate getting busy after that, it certainly wasn't with me. How sick are you people?”

Kayla and Logan stared at her, confusion in their eyes. “Sarah, what the hell?” Logan whispered. “After
what
?”

“After … after the sacrifice,” she whispered. She couldn't bring herself to say Karina's name.

Logan's eyebrows drew together in bewilderment. “What sacrifice?”

Sarah's mouth felt dry. There wasn't a flicker of fear or guilt or remorse on either of their faces. They were acting just like Izzy, like it was a normal day. Like nothing had happened.

“Don't you remember we were supposed to make a sacrifice on Halloween, to bind us together as a group?” Sarah pressed, desperate for someone to remember what she did. “We drew stones. We went out to the woods.”

“I remember doing the opening ritual,” Kayla murmured. “But then we put the movie on.”

“No. We went out to the Pine Tree,” Sarah insisted.

“We did not. It was raining. Who wants to go out and get soaked?” Logan replied.

“Seriously. I would've ruined my leather skirt,” Kayla said.

It wasn't raining last night,
Sarah thought. It was a perfect, star-filled sky last night. There weren't even any clouds blocking that huge orange moon. And this morning? No puddles. No damp lawn.

“What about Karina?” Sarah said. “Don't you remember anything about her?”

“I think she was there.” Logan shrugged and shot a questioning look at Kayla.

“We were all there, weren't we?” she asked, her expression vague. “I don't think I talked to her, though.”

“Me either.” Logan suddenly seemed interested the assignment, flipping intently through the paintings of landscapes.

Am I losing my mind?
Sarah wondered. The rain. She had to remember the rain. That was a fact. Not what she believed. Not what anyone else believed. A fact. It did not rain last night.

And that meant they were lying to her. They were both lying to her.

Could this be some elaborate prank? Some other part of her initiation? Maybe that was the theory she'd been looking for. Nate could have ordered everyone in the pack to tell the same lie. He could have staged a murder, then made everyone pretend they'd spent the night watching a movie. Sarah felt a jolt of raw hope.

The rain detail was weird, but she pushed it out of her mind. It was one of the Wolfpack pranks. For the first time, she began to feel calmer.

After English—and her, Logan, and Kayla making fools of themselves trying to recap their “discussion” of the essay and painting—she checked her cell. Nate was at the Sports Center. Sarah caught up to him just as he was heading inside.

“Sarah, hey!” He smiled, his brown eyes fixing on her like she was the only person in the world. “What are you doing here?”

“I'm, um…” As usual, Nate's unwavering gaze unsettled her, got her heart beating a little harder. “I was looking for you.”

“Good,” he said, his smile growing wider. He reached out and slipped his arm around her waist, pulling her in for a quick, body-tingling kiss. Sarah stiffened. Was he going to act like everything was normal too? Didn't he get how twisted this prank was, how watching Izzy “kill” Karina had nearly destroyed her?

“You're freezing,” Nate murmured, his lips brushing against hers as he spoke. “Come inside.” Wrapping his arms around her shoulders, he guided her into the marble lobby of the Sports Center. It was warm inside, but he kept holding her anyway. She ignored how good it felt, how comforting, to soak in his closeness, and gently extracted herself.

“Nate, listen. I need to talk about last night,” Sarah said. “I can't stop thinking about what we did, and I have to know…” She let her words trail off.

“It was phenomenal,” he murmured. “I'm going to have to watch that movie again though. You had me way too distracted.”

Distracted. The same word Kayla and Logan had used. He was keeping the sick joke going, telling her the same story.

Like an alibi.

The thought slammed into her.

This morning she'd thought maybe Izzy was trying to get away with Karina's murder by pretending it never happened. What if that's what the whole pack was doing? Not pulling a prank on Sarah, but creating a group alibi.

Sarah felt like she'd been shoved into the icy ocean. She'd been trying so hard to come up with a way that Karina could still be alive, to convince herself that she hadn't seen what she knew she had.

“I can't stop thinking about it either,” Nate added earnestly. His smile was gone, but he still stared at her intensely, his eyes doing that thing where they rapidly flicked back and forth in tiny motions, like whatever she was going to say or do deserved every ounce of his focus and concentration.

It would make sense for Nate to handle the cleanup in the woods, she realized now. That's what he did. Take charge. She could picture him getting rid of the evidence, creating a cover story. But that didn't mean he should be lying to her.

“Nate, be serious for a minute. We should we tell somebody,” she said. “Maybe you can keep things quiet for a little while, but that can't last. We'll be in even more trouble if we're not the ones to admit it.”

Nate looked surprised. Then he threw back his head and laughed. “I don't think we'll be in too much trouble,” he said. “And everyone probably saw us, so there's nobody to tell.” He leaned in for another kiss, but Sarah shoved him away.

“How can you laugh?” she cried, baffled.

“Oh. Sorry.” He stopped and put on a serious expression again, but within a few seconds his trademark grin was back. “I can't help it, Sarah, I had fun. I don't care if people know that I like you.”

“What are you talking about?” Sarah practically screamed. She couldn't take one more insane conversation.

“Last night,” he said. “Down in the den? The whole pack was there. Did you think nobody would notice us kissing?”

Sarah stared at him, not saying a word. His arms had found their way around her again, and she could smell his soap—a heady, musky scent. “Kissing?” she finally asked.

“Among other things.” He moved closer, pressing her against his chest.

“I, um, my memory is a little hazy,” Sarah lied. “We were watching one of the
Saw
movies, right?”

“You remember even less of the movie than I do.” He nuzzled her neck. “We were watching the
The Conjuring
. Or not watching.” Nate pulled his head back and looked down at her, his eyes penetrating. “That's what happened, Sarah. We all watched a movie in the den.”

His voice was so firm, so sure, so confident. He seemed so much more certain of his memories than she was of hers.

Slowly, Sarah nodded. She could picture the den, its walls draped with Oriental carpets and its floor covered with cushions. She could picture the huge TV on one wall, and the Wolfpack scattered around the room, laughing and talking back to the movie. She could feel Nate's lips on hers, his hands moving over her body as they lay on a pile of pillows in the dark corner.

But Karina's dead eyes didn't fit into that memory. Had her special snowflake of a brain short-circuited? Izzy had been so normal this morning. Logan and Kayla too. And Nate was a hundred percent regular Nate, intense, but he was always intense. Karina
could
have stayed over at Ethan's …

“I thought we were supposed to do a mission with the pack, though,” Sarah said, backing away enough to make him stop touching her. How was she supposed to think with Nate touching her? “For Halloween, remember?”

“Is that what's bothering you?” Nate shook his head, leaning close again, sliding one hand from the base of her neck to the small of her back, creating a hot shiver in its wake. “Sarah, we did the opening ritual. Nobody was into going outside last night, it was raining. It wasn't your fault for keeping the Jager too busy.”

The tingling heat he'd started up in her body suddenly cooled. He was lying to her. She'd let herself get sucked into the fantasy that the night before had been spent making out with him in the den.

“I have to go,” she blurted out, jerking away from Nate's embrace.

“Come find me at dinner!” he called after her.

Sarah waved without looking back. She couldn't risk getting drawn back into Nate's orbit right now.

She pulled out her cell. “Locate Karina.”

“Student offline,” it announced.

She wrapped her arms tightly around herself. What did
that
mean? Dead? Or actually offline? Or maybe down in the den where there was no signal? If she'd been right, and the rest of the Wolfpack was pranking her, then Karina would have to stay out of sight. She would be hiding somewhere.

But Karina's dead eyes. Her slack body. Could that really have been faked?

“Locate Izzy,” she said.

“Student offline,” the cell replied.

Alibi or mind game? Karina alive or dead?

If the story was an alibi, why had Nate and the pack left her out? She was part of the family, why didn't they tell her what to say?

But she hadn't been with the rest of the pack after Karina's murder. She hadn't been there when Nate gave out the instructions. She'd freaked out and run off on her own and outed the Wolfpack to Dr. Diaz. She'd broken her vow to her family, and now they were all in on a plan that didn't include her. Did they know she'd told Dr. Diaz? Would she be branded just like Grayson?

How could she have been so dumb? It had never even occurred to her to go looking for the rest of the Wolfpack after they took off. But if she was committed to the group, really committed like she vowed to be, wouldn't that have been her first instinct? Wouldn't she have gone to them instead of Dr. Diaz?

All morning they've been trying to give me our alibi,
Sarah realized.
Nate and everyone else, they came up with a cover story for us, and they've all been telling it to me. They've been showing me what to do. I'm supposed to say the same thing. If anyone asks, we were all watching that movie in the den, and I was making out with Nate.