Unreal City (3 page)

I’d always heard of these things happening, like in those crime shows on TV where they expound upon the heinous acts of some psychopath. That kind of show just seems like a horror movie when you’ve lived a life untouched by evil. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt Lea. I’ve never met anyone who loved people more unconditionally than she did. That kind of stain inside of my mind—just knowing that somewhere in my hometown there had walked a person so cruel—a person that had taken my sister from me—that sort of feeling doesn’t dissipate with time. Once you find out just how real it is, you’re never the same again.

But we’d never know what really happened until Stephen woke up. He’d seen it all; he must have. He’d know why there were no signs of a struggle. He’d know why they couldn’t find a trace of any drug in any of their bodies during the autopsy.

The autopsy. Strangers had cut her up, butchered her, mutilated my sister with a scalpel, probing for the method used to strangle the life out of her and—

“Sarah, are you there?” My mother’s voice fanned away the dark cloud that had been forming in my mind.

“Yeah, yeah…I’m just thinking about—I’m fine.”

“Sarah, I was wondering…You know, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea if, well, the school’s got these great trained professionals, people that can help with—” Mom ventured, but I cut her off, anger rising into my throat.

“I’m not going to see a shrink. I’m not crazy, and I’m not going to pay anybody to be my friend and listen to me boohoo about how shitty my life is!”

“Baby, we’re worried about you. You don’t need to be crazy to see a counselor, and many of them don’t even charge. Maybe you can just check out the options and—”

“Mom, I’ve got to go. I just remembered I have a homework thing due tomorrow and I have to get working on it now. Sorry.” I pulled the phone away from my ear, ignoring my mother’s protests that tomorrow was Saturday, and ended the call. Knowing she would try to call back, I shut my phone off and grabbed my shower caddy and flip-flops.

The hot water did its job of easing the ache inside of me. I liked the feeling of making it just a little too hot, of feeling it burn my skin, all the while imagining it might be able to burn away some of the grief inside me. Cook it out, or something.

As I blow-dried my hair and stared at my reflection in the steamy mirror, I thought of mornings when Lea and I did this together. When we were little girls, my dad told us that when we took showers, if we wrote a wish of what we hoped would happen that day in the moisture on the glass and watch it as it disappeared, it had a pretty good chance of coming true. There were rules, of course—we couldn’t wish for anything too big or use it too often, because it might screw with the signals or dry up the well, he claimed.

For years, Lea and I kept up that tradition. Many a math test was passed that way; many a secretly coveted Christmas gift obtained. As we got older, we did it less and less, or we did it with only humor in mind…but one day back in May, as we’d waited for our acceptance letters to come—God, she’d been alive then—Lea had gotten quiet just as the fog started to fade. She’d walked right up to the glass like it had only been yesterday that we believed in this, and wrote
I want to go to college with my sister
with her index finger. I smiled, almost walked out with a half-hearted laugh in my throat, then decided to wait and watch it fade. We got the emails that afternoon, but her wish had never come true.

The pain burst out from inside me like a train rampaging out of a tunnel. I crumpled to my knees, making a sound like an animal as the hairdryer clattered to the ground. I didn’t care that I was in a public shower. I didn’t care how filthy the ground was. The monstrosity that was my grief had risen up out of the cave it hid in to assail me again. It constricted my shoulders and ribs, forcing me to breathe in little wounded gasps as my face burned and tears flowed down my cheeks.

Give her back, give her back, please God, please…please let me have her back. I don’t want to go through this life without her.

I sobbed on the grimy, watery ground, curling into a fetal position and shivering there until I heard the door open. Not wanting to see who’d come in, I staggered to my feet, arms clutching my sides as I bolted from the bathroom with my head down. Back in my room, I climbed into my bed. Still choking back sobs, I took a firm grip on the pendant of my necklace, dug deep under the covers, and concealed myself within the safety of sleep.

I awoke almost thirteen hours later, feeling dizzy and unfocused. It was still early—a little after eight, and I was due to meet my partner for the group project at noon outside her dorm at Porter College. I decided I’d skip the unappetizing breakfast they offered at the dining hall, and in a last-ditch effort to get myself feeling better, I got my tennis stuff out of my closet, pulled my hair back into a messy ponytail, and made for the court.

There’s nothing like hurling balls at the wall and smacking the living daylights out of them to relieve a little frustration. It was one of those chilly, dewy mornings that set the ferns and redwoods glimmering with moisture in the weak yellow glow. The air bit at me, raising gooseflesh on my arms and numbing the tip of my nose, but I liked it. I liked anything that got my blood flowing. The walk to the courts was a long one, and it gave me some time to clear my head. By the time I was swinging my racket with all my might and getting a few good volleys going, I was almost feeling like my old self. It was those kinds of instances that I lived for now: the rare hours of my day that felt like intermittent gasps of fresh air while being trapped in a stuffy cupboard. It didn’t last long.

My flow was disrupted when one of my tennis balls shot off the board in a neon streak and bounced right over the fence and into the woods beyond. I made a frustrated clicking noise with my tongue and stared in the direction it had launched, wondering whether it was worth the effort to go hunting after it or just let it be taken by the woods. Deciding I was too caught up in my exercise to stop, I had fished another ball out of the tube and was preparing to lob it when a flash of fluorescent yellow came into my peripheral vision. My heart kicked up a little as I turned to see the lost ball bouncing toward me in little skips. It had come back to me.

Confused, I gazed into the trees bordering the court. No one was there. I picked up the ball and was surprised to feel warm dampness. My nose wrinkled and I dropped it, wiping the slime onto my shorts. The courts were deserted, and the only people in sight were running around the jogging track, farther than the average arm could throw. Taking a cautionary step forward, I felt my pulse rising as I peered further into the trees.

“Is…is someone there?” I called, my voice trembling despite how hard I tried to sound calm. Silence. I took a few more steps toward the fence and squinted to see if I could spot anything.

A foreboding feeling hit me in an instant. There was something threatening in those trees, something that
really
wanted me to come curiously peeking in. There was no reason for that thought, but it snuck up on me all the same and my chest tightened. The hairs on the back of my neck prickling, I retreated a few feet without really meaning to move. I told myself I was being stupid, but all the same there was an alarm going off in my head that was too loud to ignore.

Get outta here, Sarah. Now.

I’ve never been one for believing in premonitions or superstitions or dark intuitions of any kind, but that morning I listened to my gut. I left before I’d even gotten my blood running warm enough to negate the chill in the air. The dining hall with all its safety in numbers seemed pretty attractive all of a sudden. Seated at a table, I mechanically chewed an apple down to the core and waited for noon to come.

ON THE WINDING
walk to Porter college I encountered a rusted metal merry-go-round for students. That was this university in a nutshell—a worn-out, rusted, lonely playground amid towers erected in the name of higher learning. It was still early, so I got on it and spun for a minute, watching three big words someone had painted on the inside canopy whirl by over and over again as my stomach fluttered pleasantly:
Seek your bliss. Seek your bliss. Seek your bliss.

I made it to Porter and found my partner, Joy Sasaki, waiting outside her dorm for me. My nerves made me jumpy as I approached. Joy was a freshman like me. I’d liked her from the moment the teacher had briefly entwined our destinies together for the project. She had smiled warmly and approached without shyness. Her manner showed none of the dismal, eye-averting, forced politeness that I expected from classmates. She was a plain girl made beautiful by the kindness and warmth that shone on her face. Spotting me now she broke into a trademark, ear-to-ear smile. Her eyes were as dark as ink and lit up when she looked at people.

Joy welcomed me and led me inside to her dorm room, offering me a seat near her bed as her long hair rustled around her round face. On the other end of the room, her roommate sat on a bed with headphones on, engrossed in a laptop. I didn’t bother to wave hello. The wall beside Joy’s bed was covered with pencil sketches: figure drawings, still life, and detailed landscapes, all creating a little window into the imagination of an artist.

“Did you draw all of these?” I asked, admiring a beautiful rendition of a woman’s back next to a bowl of fruit.

Joy’s cheeks tinged with a rosy color and her smile broadened. “Yeah,” she said, watching me scrutinizing her work anxiously.

The brilliance of the drawings was certainly in the precision and excellent proportions, but something in them lacked spirit, or life. I couldn’t imagine anyone being unimpressed with her work, though, and I told her so. Joy appeared delighted by my little throwaway compliment and bounced into her computer chair. Her computer was covered in cute little stickers of cartoon animals, strawberries, and cupcakes. I grinned in spite of myself.

“Okay, so do you have any ideas for the project?” she asked and before I could even finish shrugging, piped up again, “‘Cause I think I have a pretty good one. You know how society has had this shift where instead of avoiding things that make us afraid, we’ve produced an industry centered on them? Think about it: billion dollar horror movies, Halloween scare mazes, television shows designed to terrify us about the end of the world. The list goes on. What has changed in our world that has made us crave fear? Why do we spend so much effort and money looking for something to scare us? Does that sound like a good springboard topic?”

Her enthusiasm was obvious and since I couldn’t care less, I nodded. Joy was pleased—it didn’t seem to take much to achieve that with her—and we got to work on our Internet research. She was a good person to work with, and she made conversation easy, which relieved me.

These days, communicating with people seemed more like a battle than it ever had. I found it hard to think of things to say, and found it even harder to care about what others had to say. But something about Joy’s charisma made it hard to react to anything she said with disdain. These past few months, I had grown used to feeling like I was constantly walking around with a huge, heavy sign around my neck that read:
My sister is dead. Please, for the love of God, will somebody feel sorry for me?

I felt like everyone could read it, like they all instantly knew it just by glancing at me as I walked by. And I always felt like people would pointedly ignore the plea written on it. But it seemed that Joy could see it too, and instead of ignoring it she tried to help in her own way. Gently, of course. None of those precise yet meaningless platitudes that constantly pester those who have been stricken by grief. She spoke softly, paid careful attention when I said things, and seemed to genuinely care what I had to say. Her sensitivity was refreshing. We took a break from research and made small talk, and of course my favorite question came around.

“So, what’s your major?”

“Photography.” Lying came so easily when I wanted to avoid things. I didn’t expect her to pursue it, but she did.

“Ooh, that’s really cool. Got any pictures you’ve taken on your laptop? I’d like to see some, if you don’t mind,” she requested with those dark, bright eyes fixed on me.

I stared at her, wanting to refuse but feeling unable to quash her kindness. “Sure,” I acquiesced after a moment, opening up a folder and turning my computer around for her to consider. I clicked through some pictures I’d taken in Monterey of the beach and various images of sea life, swimsuit-clad vacationers, and sunsets. A sick feeling washed over me as a photo I had taken of Lea and Stephen at prom filled the screen.