Unreal City (16 page)

I took another long drink of water. “I’m not sick, I promise. I’m just…emotionally overdrawn. I haven’t been able to get to sleep, that’s why I look like this,” I explained, but she wasn’t convinced.

“I’m not leaving here until I’m sure you’re okay or you’ve agreed to come with me to the Health Center. You understand that?”

I sighed, but inwardly, I was glad. I wanted someone to stay by my side. I wanted something to comfort me through the storms that would no doubt come again soon.

With Joy around, I was soon steadied and grew drowsy. I lay down and as I started to toss and turn in a state of half-sleep, I felt her fingers touch my neck. My eyes snapped open and I grabbed her wrist.

“I’m sorry, I thought you fell asleep! Your necklace was getting all tangled up around your neck, and I was afraid you might choke, so I was just trying to take it off,” she explained, removing her wrist from my grasp.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know what you were doing,” I stammered as I straightened my necklace. “I never take this off, though.” I held onto the little heart with a firm grip, disturbed at how easily Joy might’ve separated it from me.

Joy looked down at it. “Is it special to you?” she asked and I nodded, considering my next words.

“It’s all I have left of her. They scattered the rest,” I said under my breath. It took her a moment to understand.

“Your sister’s ashes are inside there?” she guessed, and I turned my head away before nodding. I imagined Joy making a disgusted or scandalized face. I felt strange about it myself, but I couldn’t bear to let all of Lea go. I wanted to keep her near to me, always. I didn’t expect anyone else to understand this, but I didn’t really care what they thought at this point.

“I see. I might’ve done the same, if I’d had the chance,” was all Joy said, nothing scathing or disgusted in her tone, though I almost wished there was. I felt like she should’ve hated me, left me by myself, or been angry with me. I’d only ever been a poor friend to her; there was no reason for her to be so liberal with her kindness, but it seemed to come naturally to Joy to be endlessly tolerant. She gave freely of her affection and expected nothing in return. I thought I might start to cry again.

“Thank you, Joy. For staying. For everything,” I croaked, wanting to tell her more. “I just…I had no idea how much a part of me she was. It’s so easy to take people for granted when you think you’ll always have them. And it’s so much harder when you realize that you’ll never get to tell them how much they meant to you until they’re already gone.” This life had become such a nightmare. I wanted to go back to the time when I didn’t have any concept that a human heart could ever feel this much pain. Escaping back into the blissful dreams of Unreal City seemed like the only spot of light in my future now, but even that had been poisoned by the realization that by going there, I was in danger of getting destroyed by my own psyche.

“Tell me more about her,” Joy encouraged, and took a seat at the bedside.

In a dreamy, murmuring voice often broken by tremors of grief, I found myself relaying memories of my sister to Joy. How we’d grown up, the games we used to play at the seaside, the trips we went on together, and the silly things we fought about. I told her about how Lea was always looking out for people that needed a friend, and how much of a love-struck teenage girl she’d been. I told her how the summer before she died, she spent almost every day going out to have adventures with Stephen.

Joy seemed interested and shared stories with me, too. She told me about her elementary school days. She’d liked a type of crunchy sugar-crystal candy dyed with bright colors called
Konpeito
that her aunt and uncle would give her every day after she finished her homework. Joy liked antique stores, old things and preserved things. She was captivated by anything retro, nostalgic, forgotten, or obscure. She told me how as a child she’d loved to listen to the Enka and Jazz vinyl records her aunt collected, and how she’d try to draw pictures of the singers’ faces the way she imagined them. Listening to her was soothing, and I soon dozed off, caught up musing about her inner world of dusty, precious things.

At some point during my shallow slumber, I felt her climb into the bed beside me and with her warmth there, I was able to sleep the way I used to—deeply and without interruption from the capricious force of dreams. We woke up when light streamed in through the window, and feeling much better I agreed to go get breakfast. After a huge meal and shower, my mood had greatly improved. Joy and I parted ways, agreeing that on Saturday we would go together to the city and get Halloween costumes. She and Kyle had plans to drive down to another university in central California. The town outside that college always threw a raucous Halloween celebration and the rowdy youth came from everywhere to join in the revelry. This didn’t seem like my kind of party, or Joy’s even, but she was so insistent that I join her I couldn’t refuse. I didn’t feel like facing Halloween night alone in my room with Felix, anyway.

As soon as Joy left me, the bleed-throughs came back. Back in my dorm, looking at the corner that Felix often stared at, I could feel a force stuck there. There was something trapped in the wall that wanted to leave, but couldn’t. I slumped downward with my face in my hands.

“What have I done to myself?” I shuddered. This was going to be my life now. It would never stop, unless…unless I bid Felix leave me forever. I got up, my knees feeling like they might buckle at any moment, and opened the wardrobe doors wide. A weary Felix was sitting on his haunches. “You can come out now.”

He silently padded down from his prison, bringing a few curls of wood with him. I knew what he wanted before he even had to ask. I lifted my fingers to my mouth and bit off the tip of one of my nails. Reluctantly I offered it to him, and he licked it right off my fingertip with his sandpaper tongue. Felix looked so bedraggled and abused that I methodically did the same with each finger until he seemed a bit more alive. I had intended to tell him to go away, but seeing him so meek and grateful for what I’d given him, I didn’t think I had it in me just yet.

“Felix, come here,” I said, patting my legs. He leapt onto my lap and curled his tail around himself.

“The other night, when that force came here. That—
thing
—” I began, stroking his spine, “it told me to come back to Unreal City. What is it, Felix? What does it want?”

“It felt like another familiar, but I couldn’t tell who. Its energy had been warped—twisted. It’s like something I’ve known forever, but it’s been altered. It might have been diseased with insanity,” Felix told me. “That happened often before, many years ago. Back when mankind was much cruder.”

“Why did it want me to come back? If it is a familiar, could it be the one that killed that boy…and Lea?
Could it have killed Lea?
” I said it for the first time, though I’d been thinking it for a while. I had no idea how Lea or the other boy could have been involved with Unreal City, but I couldn’t rule out the possibility. Lea had been so wrapped up with her social life in the months before she died, I’d never had time to notice whether or not strange things had been happening around her.

“It’s possible. If one of the Cunning Folk had ordered their familiar to do it, it might’ve happened…or if they ordered it to find you in this world, it could also happen. The best you can do is talk to the person whom you suspect to be at fault,” Felix told me.

The person whom I suspected was obvious. Angus and Arthur had both mentioned him: the man they called Poe. Perhaps if I could only gather the willpower to go and confront him, this all might be solved. But for now I was tired—I was weak. I’d have to hold off from trying to walk unscathed through the kingdom of a madman until I felt I could safely set foot in my own garden.

“Don’t go, Felix. Don’t go just yet.”

“I’m yours, Sarah,” he purred, shutting his lamp-like eyes. “I’m not going anywhere.”

THE STREETS OF
Santa Cruz were fervid with that special feeling of excitement that only comes the week before Halloween. Grinning skulls leered from every shop front, fake purple bats twisted and swung in the wind, and cottony spider webs adorned the walls of every boutique. The air was crisp and the damp, smoky scent of autumn floated into our noses with every blast of wind.

Joy and I meandered through the chattering crowd, our hair thoroughly fluffed by the October gales. Things didn’t seem so dismal in the daytime, especially when I was with her. We passed a shop and I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the window. Large bags had formed under my eyes and I’d lost at least ten pounds since I got to college. It startled me. I looked too much like the artificial Lea that had wasted away before she was reduced to mere bones.

“Here we are!” Joy pulled open the door to one of the Halloween stores that sprung up like weeds before the holiday and were swept away express in order to prepare for Christmas two months early. Blinking lights embedded in the heads of plastic ghouls greeted us as we entered, as did the electronic cackle of some unseen toy. “I’m still not sure which form of ‘sexy such-and-such’ I’d like to be this year. Let’s see what they’ve got left,” Joy said.

She led me through aisles stuffed with decorations, party supplies, and faux weapons. When we reached the row of ladies’ costumes, we set ourselves to digging through the disorganized heaps.

“Skanky cop, slutty kitty, risqué pirate wench…” Joy said with an air of boredom as she moved each costume aside. “Oh boy, here’s a new one: sexy
Big Bird
. There’s something I didn’t need to see. What are you thinking, Sarah?”

“Hmmm…” I ran my fingers over the options, not really wanting to walk around in any of them. At the end of the aisle, I saw a fallen hat with a pointy tip.

Of course,
I thought as I pulled it off the floor, gave it a quick swat, and placed it atop my head.
I feel almost obligated at this point.
I turned to face Joy.

“I think I’ll go with the ol’ failsafe this time around,” I said. At that moment I began to own the circumstances that had come into my life with a bit of wry humor.

“Somehow that looks really good on you,” Joy agreed.

Please don’t say that,
I thought as I went to pick out a costume to match the hat. Joy settled on a nurse’s outfit and we left the store, abuzz with plans for our Halloween night. Back in Joy’s dorm we tried on the costumes, and modeling our new personas, I found I liked the way the cheap witch’s garb looked on me. It gave me a weird feeling of warranted pride.

While Joy sketched figures at her desk, I lay on the floor, catching up on Sociology. If I did well enough on the midterm I might still pass the class, in spite of my zero on the project. As I tried to focus on the textbooks, I felt a wave of guilt hit me again.

“Joy,” I began quietly, setting down my pencil down. “I never really got to apologize for the project. I didn’t mean to hang you out to dry like that.”

“Please stop beating yourself up over that,” she said without looking up from her sketch. “My grade wasn’t affected, anyway, so don’t get all gloomy over it.” She smiled, squinting at the paper.

“I know, but I hate the idea of you just standing up there alone,” I admitted. “It’s been bugging me.”

“You’re fine, Sarah. It’s not like you blew me off. You were—having a really bad day,” Joy said delicately. Her indomitable kindness made me furious on her behalf. I wanted her to value her time, effort, and love more. I wanted her to see how rare it was in this world full of uncaring, selfish people.

“I don’t deserve to have you giving me so many chances and so much of your time,” I grumbled to myself, still ashamed of my poor contribution to our friendship.

“Please. Enough with the pity party. I like hanging out with you. You’re interesting. You sort of inspire me, too, with your strength. You’re not afraid to show what’s really inside of you, even if the world won’t like it. I want to be that—I want to capture that feeling. It’s like when I have a picture in my head, and I think how great it’ll look on the paper, but when I actually draw it it’s nothing like what I imagined. It lacks that sort of raw energy. You do that
effortlessly
,” Joy said, still focusing on her drawings, but I felt now it was more to avoid my gaze.