When Sarah Merson receives the opportunity of a lifetime to attend the most elite prep school in the country-Sanctuary Bay Academy-it seems almost too good to be true. But, after years of bouncing from foster home to foster home, escaping to its tranquil setting, nestled deep in Swans Island, couldn't sound more appealing. Swiftly thrown into a world of privilege and secrets, Sarah quickly realizes finding herself noticed by class charmer, Nate, as well as her roommate's dangerously attentive boyfriend, Ethan, are the least of her worries. When her roommate suddenly goes missing, she finds herself in a race against time, not only to find her, but to save herself and discover the dark truth behind Sanctuary Bay's glossy reputation.
In this genre-bending YA thriller, Sanctuary Bay by Laura J. Burns and Melinda Metz, Sarah's new school may seem like an idyllic temple of learning, but as she unearths years of terrifying history and manipulation, she discovers this "school" is something much more sinister.
When Sarah Merson receives the opportunity of a lifetime to attend the most elite prep school in the country-Sanctuary Bay Academy-it seems almost too good to be true. But, after years of bouncing from foster home to foster home, escaping to its tranquil setting, nestled deep in Swans Island, couldn't sound more appealing. Swiftly thrown into a world of privilege and secrets, Sarah quickly realizes finding herself noticed by class charmer, Nate, as well as her roommate's dangerously attentive boyfriend, Ethan, are the least of her worries. When her roommate suddenly goes missing, she finds herself in a race against time, not only to find her, but to save herself and discover the dark truth behind Sanctuary Bay's glossy reputation.
In this genre-bending YA thriller, Sanctuary Bay by Laura J. Burns and Melinda Metz, Sarah's new school may seem like an idyllic temple of learning, but as she unearths years of terrifying history and manipulation, she discovers this "school" is something much more sinister.
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Overview
When Sarah Merson receives the opportunity of a lifetime to attend the most elite prep school in the country-Sanctuary Bay Academy-it seems almost too good to be true. But, after years of bouncing from foster home to foster home, escaping to its tranquil setting, nestled deep in Swans Island, couldn't sound more appealing. Swiftly thrown into a world of privilege and secrets, Sarah quickly realizes finding herself noticed by class charmer, Nate, as well as her roommate's dangerously attentive boyfriend, Ethan, are the least of her worries. When her roommate suddenly goes missing, she finds herself in a race against time, not only to find her, but to save herself and discover the dark truth behind Sanctuary Bay's glossy reputation.
In this genre-bending YA thriller, Sanctuary Bay by Laura J. Burns and Melinda Metz, Sarah's new school may seem like an idyllic temple of learning, but as she unearths years of terrifying history and manipulation, she discovers this "school" is something much more sinister.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466869172 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 01/19/2016 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 14 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Laura J. Burns has written more than forty books for kids and teens, touching on topics from imaginary lake monsters to out-of-control Hollywood starlets (they have more in common than you might think). With Melinda Metz, she has also written for the TV shows ROSWELL, 1-800-MISSING, and THE DEAD ZONE. Laura lives in New York with her husband, her kids, and way too many pets.
Melinda Metz is the author of over 75 books for kids and teens, including the Roswell High series, basis of the TV show Roswell. She often teams up with the lovely and talented Laura J. Burns; together they wrote the Edgar Award nominee Wright and Wong: Case of the Nana-Napper, and YA thrillers Sanctuary Bay and The Lost Map of Secrets and Chaos. Melinda's first adult book, Talk to The Paw, launched the series. She lives in North Carolina with her dog, Scully, who isn't as well-behaved as her namesake.
Read an Excerpt
Sanctuary Bay
By Laura J. Burns, Melinda Metz
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2015 St. Martin's Press.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-6917-2
CHAPTER 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.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Sanctuary Bay by Laura J. Burns, Melinda Metz. Copyright © 2015 St. Martin's Press.. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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