Throat Read Online Free PDF Page B

a pained expression. I didn’t like this. I was starting to get pictures in my head of me stuck in front of hundreds of eye freaks in white coats shining things in my eyes, lecturing. Stretching my eyelids back while I sat on a cold steel table in nothing but one of those backwards hospital gowns.
    “Let’s go,” I said to Mom. “I want to go.”
    Mom looked embarrassed. “But the doctor—he’s not finished, Emma. He wants to run more tests.…”
    The specialist started to speak, but I was already up and moving to the door. I left without ever looking at his face again.
    *    *    *
    “Why do you always have to be so much trouble about things like this? I get so tired of it,” Mom said.
    I tore into another slice of pepperoni. God, I was so hungry these days. We were sitting at one end of the food court surrounded by moms who were hustling their kids around the play equipment. The tables were about half full. I liked the feeling of anonymity my sunglasses gave me. I could stare at people without them knowing.
    “You think this is my fault, don’t you,” I said, tearing off another bite.
    “Well, I wonder why? It was you who lost your temper. It was you who stole the car. Crashed it in a ditch.” Her voice started to break. “What do you want me to say? And now this.” She waved her arms around. “You’re going blind.”
    “I’m not going blind, Mom. How good can a specialist be who has an office at the mall? It’ll be okay. I bet it’s already starting to go away.”
    “You’re lying. You know I can always tell when you’re lying.”
    “Not possible. I don’t lie.”
    “So why did you just say that?”
    I sighed. “Because I know this is scaring you. I don’t want you to be scared. I’m not scared. I just want my shorts back.” I was tired of wearing jeans. I would wear shorts year-round if I could get away with it. But nobody was seeing that bandage on my leg until the stitches were out. I turned my head away, indicating the conversation was over.
    I never held things back. But I was holding something back now. Something I had seen when the lights were off and I was watching my mother’s face.
Blue
. She had been giving off a faint bluish glow in the dark. So had the specialist.
    *    *    *
    “You’re doing it again,” Manda said, yanking on my arm. “Hey. Emma. Stop, wake up!” She snapped her fingers.
    I was looking at something outside the window, a tree framed by the light. Only I didn’t see it as a tree anymore. It had gone out of focus. Now I saw it as a shape. Saw a light inside it. My mouth was hanging open. My eyes had this comfortable feeling. It felt as if they were getting rounder and rounder, wider and wider, expanding. And the longer I stared, the more comfortable my eyes felt, until that feeling of complete and total comfort spread through my whole body. As if what I was seeing was going so deep inside me, made me feel so good, I could look at that tree that was no longer a tree the rest of my life.
    “Emma!” Manda screamed.
    “Huh?” I blinked. Shook my head. The comfortableness of the tree and the light was gone.
    “You were doing it again.”
    She meant I had had a seizure. If I lost consciousness for a brief little moment of time, say thirty seconds, it was an absence seizure. What doctors used to call a
petit mal
. Otherwise, it was a simple partial, which is similar, but you’re aware the whole time. Sometimes it was a little hard to tell them apart.
    What I thought of as my “small” seizures were generally pretty mild. When I came out of one, it was like my life had jumped over a minute of time, completely skipped it, before settling back into its groove. Those little blips of time were lost forever.
    Sometimes I had several small seizures a day. Other times I didn’t have any for a week or more. Most of the time I wasn’t aware I was going through it, unless Mom or Manda or somebody else brought it to my attention.
    I took Dilantin,