Unreal City Read Online Free

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.”