"Emma hurry up honey we want to beat traffic if we are going to go to the zoo" I heard my mom yell from the other side of my door. I peered over at my clock, 8:15. I leaped from bed realizing my alarm never went off and I only had seconds to prepare. I ran into the bathroom and grabbed the green brush that was laying on the counter and started to rapidly brush my hair, the brush every so often getting trapped in the twists and tangles of my curls. When my curls had been reduced to a frizzy poof I ran downstairs. In the kitchen there was a hot bowl of oat meal out and ready for me. My dad was pouring orange juice for himself while simultaneously talking into his blackberry closing a business deal. I gulped up my soggy oatmeal and waited anxiously in the car for my mom dad and siblings. As everyone slowly began to piled in I pulled out my library book on animals in the oceans that I had been obsessing over for the past couple of weeks and flipped to page 23. On the page there was a picture of a hammerhead shark swimming amongst a sea of fish. The binding in middle of the page was starting to rip due to the excessive amounts that I had opened the book to that exact page.
    After sixty minutes of consecutive driving we approached a huge water tower that had “DETROIT ZOO" written on it. We got out of the car and galloped through the long black gate overhead. When you first entered the zoo there was a grey gravel road that had a 4-way path. The sign pointing south said “aquatic display”, that’s where I needed to be. The sky was grey but the sun was still beaming. We reached the display.The tanks were so clear it gave off the illusion that there was just floating water filled with fish. It was an aura of colors cascading over one another. Different species altogether in one tank. I looked frantically for the enormous hammer head shark that was supposedly lurking in the depths of the tank that weren’t inhabited with artificial light; you couldn’t see anything but it’s tail through the murky waters but you could feel it staring back at you. This was the first time I saw the images from my books come to life. To my 9 year old self this was pure magic.

   Almost seven years later when I was at the library reading up on study strategies for the ACT trying to get a score that would live up to my sisters 29. I went to put the book I was using back when I saw it. The book on ocean life that I had cherished so much, still there after so many years. Although I still had about three more hours to do my practice testing, I left the library and started driving to Detroit.  My dad and my mom didn’t know where I was, but that didn’t matter because after my dad got his big promotion his traveling time doubled. And my mom was preoccupied  trying to get ready to send my eldest sister phoebe off to college while making sure my 2 younger siblings stayed out of trouble. I took my eyes off the road for a minute and saw the water tower that was once a beacon of hope to the arrival of the zoo, the blue dome was rusting at the bottom and the color was draining. when I pulled into the zoo parking lot I was greeted by the same long black gate guarding the outskirts of the property. In the zoo the once glorious sign reading "aquatic display" paint was chipping off of it, completely unattended and forgotten. I walked the grey path that now had chunks of gravel missing from it making it like a canyon to the bugs crawling around on the floor. As I entered the “aquatic display" I touched the clear tank that I once thought was nonexistent only to find that I left my smudged hand print along with dozens of others looking. I was about to leave when I saw it, the same mysterious animal that I had wanted to see so many years before only this time it approached the handprint stained glass. I opened my old book to page 23 and stared. I thought that the book must have gotten something wrong, these two sharks could not be of the same species. When I saw the eyes of the shark in the tank it lacked the life that the eyes of the shark had in the picture. The mysterious creature was looking back observing me. When you looked into the sharks eyes all you could see was your own reflection, it was as if it was dead behind the eyes. They were empty voids taking up space. I had finally seen the shark I had been waiting so long to see, only it was completely not what I had expected. When I was 9 I was I thought as the sharks in my book as just beautiful pictures. This year made me realize that sometimes you build up unrealistic expectations in your head that can never be met because you let your imagination manipulate the reality.