Throat (2 page)

The ball bounced thirty yards in front of me, bounding so high, the keeper was backpedaling, only now realizing it was going over her head. That’s what I was counting on. I barreled past her and caught the ball coming out of its hop, pounded it straight into the net: 1–0 good guys.

The rest of the half wasn’t much different. The Georgia girls were shell-shocked, 3–0. I had one yellow card pulled for trucking a forward who completely deserved it. The Georgia kids were finding out what my own league already knew: Emma Cooper will push it right up to the edge … and sometimes beyond. I could see them over there at halftime, muttering through their orange slices, talking and pointing. They hated me already.
Good
.

We played three games that day, dominating our way through the tournament. So far none of the other teams had come within four points of us. By late in the evening, our last game, the Georgia players were so focused on me, the rest of my team was able to keep the ball on offense most of the time.

This seemed to be okay with the Georgia kids. They crowded me, rushed me even when I didn’t have the ball, making me furious, and that’s what I wanted too. The angrier I got, the more aggressively I played. And then it happened.

Gretchen nutmegged one of their defenders, kicking the ball between the other girl’s legs, and looped a shot at the goal. I rushed the keeper, saw the ball ricochet off the post, and sprang in the air leading with my skull. At the last possible moment, Gretchen cut across me. My head collided with her shoulder.
Whack
.

It was already dark, but I saw the sun. Then nothing.

*    *    *

The first time it happened, I was in the eighth grade. His name was Lane Garner. He was standing across a volleyball net from me in his parents’ backyard. The afternoon sun blazed behind his head, framing his face with fire. I fell in love without even knowing the color of his eyes.

Lane Garner slammed the ball off the top of my head. I blocked a couple of his spikes. By the end of the day we were sitting on the back porch chopping ice with an ice pick and trading turns cranking an old-fashioned wooden ice cream maker between our knees.

After that he came over to my house every day. Shot basketball with me in my driveway. I couldn’t sleep for thinking about him … his long, muscular legs, lanky arms, the way the collar of his T-shirt always shifted toward his left shoulder. Lane Garner was the most beautiful human being I had ever seen.

I have never taken drugs, other than prescription stuff, but those months must’ve been what an addict feels like. I wanted to be with Lane every second. Hold his hand for the rest of my life. More than that, I wanted to absorb him. Be absorbed.

I covered my notebooks with his name. He gave me a fake gold necklace that said
LANE
. One night I rolled over and nearly choked to death in my sleep, but still I wore it.

I was wearing the necklace in the Explorer Middle School gym one morning when a sick odor of overripe oranges came up into my nose and the world flashed off. When I woke up, everything was strangely round, as if I were looking at a reflection in a Christmas ornament. My nose was snuffling in a puddle of warm urine. A hundred of my not-so-closest friends were watching, including my soon-to-be-former BFF Gretchen Roberts … and Lane Garner.

I never held his hand again. Never kissed him. Never got to watch him grow from a tiny dot at the end of my street into a boy
who was the whole wide world to me. Game over. The curse was upon me.

What they don’t tell you about epilepsy: there’s much more to it than the flopping and flailing stuff. The curse messes you up in all sorts of secret ways too. Especially girls. My metabolism was off the charts, but I still had to watch my weight. The only reason Mom let me play sports was so people would call me voluptuous rather than voluminous.

Epilepsy can also wreck your period and give you a tendency to hirsutism. Wikipedia explains: “From Latin
hirsutus
= increased hair growth in women in locations where the occurrence of hair normally is minimal or absent.”

Sweet
.

But yes, the worst is the tonic-clonic. A tonic-clonic is not a mixed drink you order at the Star Wars bar; it’s a kind of seizure my old-school neurologist, Dr. Peters, called a
grand mal
. An electrical storm in the brain.

Sometimes you get a warning a big TC is coming on, called an
aura
. White spots. Numbness. A sense of dread. Unexpected smells. Tonic-clonics can be brought on by lots of things: chemical imbalances, malnutrition, lack of sleep, flashing lights, patterns, anxiety, antihistamines, etc. Or, as in my case that day on the Georgia soccer field, a violent blow to the skull.

After the sun exploded inside my head, I disappeared inside myself for a little while. How long? I could never tell. Experiencing a tonic-clonic is not like dreaming. I never saw any images at all. There was no sense of the passage of time. I was just there and then I wasn’t. Then I was back again. I had to rely on what others said about what I did.

Waking up from a big seizure is awful. They tell you a lot of mumbo jumbo about neurotransmitter depletion, postictal states, general amnesia. None of that describes just how disorienting it is to wake up from a storm inside your brain.

When I came to that evening in Georgia, the ground curved upward to meet the bluish black of the twilight sky. Everything else in my field of view was curved too: lights, goalposts, legs, cleats, the clipped grass, trees against the darkening horizon. I didn’t know where I was or what had happened.

The first thing I saw was a curved face with a mustache that hooked around both sides of a gourdlike nose. It was the ref in the yellow shorts. His mouth opened wide, becoming a gaping hole followed by a sound I can only describe as coffee-shaped, slow and sludgy. I couldn’t recognize the words.

More faces and legs appeared. It took some time before all the parts of my body felt connected again. Then my mother was there, and when I saw Manda, saw her eyes, I finally understood and began to cry.

At least twenty players from both teams were grouped around me by then. I finally was able to get to a sitting position. Several people were speaking at once. Someone brought water. They forced me to sip it while I tried to get hold of myself.

Manda threw her arms around my neck and tried to coax me to my feet. Her hands were still sticky with blue shave ice.

“Emma, Emma, Emma.”

I mumbled a bunch of slurry words, head spinning. I dropped the water and went down on all fours. This seemed to help as I slowly padded back and forth on the grass on my hands and knees. I came to a soccer cleat and looked up.

Everything began to flood back in as soon as I saw her face. Gretchen Roberts.

My license
. The license I had been cheated out of for nearly two years. There it went. Floating away on little electroencephalographic wings.
Because of her
.

A hot stream of volcanic bile pulsed through me. I got to my knees wobbling, looking into Gretchen’s face. She had done it. It was all her fault. Somehow I was sure of that.

“Oo,” I said, trying to jab my finger into her chest. “Oo. Oo.”

The volcano gushed up to my head, filling my eyeballs with molten magma. She grinned at me.
Grinned
. I hit her. Hit Gretchen as hard as I could in the face. Felt something crack. She tumbled at my feet. I stood there swaying over her, a drunken, enraged monkey.

Hands grabbed me from all sides and they led me away, stumbling, to a little bench behind the sign-in tent. I cried explosively. The only time I ever cried was right after a bad tonic-clonic. It was as if my head were full of pipes and some powerful force had blown the gunk out.

Manda was clinging to my leg, crying too. My mother wouldn’t touch me but instead settled in front of me, legs crossed, like a model for a painting titled
The Last Straw
.

“You. Broke. Her. Nose,” she said. “Her nose, Emma. The league … I don’t know what they’re going to do. This is the last time. You’re out of second chances, you know that.”

The world was fuzzy through my tears. I didn’t know what to say.

“Emma …,” Manda said.

“Be quiet,” I said. “Please be quiet.”

“Please don’t cry, Emma. It’s all right.”

That made me cry harder. I couldn’t look at her. I pulled up my jersey to wipe my eyes, exposing my sports bra.

The first thing I saw as my vision cleared was two tournament
officials sitting with Gretchen at the first aid table, blood spurting from her nose down the front of her shirt, her dark eyes smoldering. Ms. Roberts stalked up to me. She was one of those people who were polite on the surface, but anything nice about her was just that, surface, and the cracks were constantly showing.

“That’s the last time—so help me—the last time—you, you—!” She jabbed a fat finger in my face and dragged one of the officials over.

“I want her off this team, I want her out of this league, and if you don’t do it immediately, I will press charges for assault. And I will hold you personally responsible. I’ll sue you! Do you hear me? I’ll sue you for all you’re worth. What has to happen to get you people to wake up? Maybe the next time, she’ll kill someone. Did you think of that? She’s a danger to the other players on the field.”

“Now wait a minute,” my mom said. “Let’s calm down here. You’re getting a little out of control. My daughter—”

“Your daughter,” Ms. Roberts said, sputtering now, “has gotten away with murder all year, because of her, because of her …”

Say it
, I thought.
Because of my seizure disorder. Say it and I’ll break your nose too
.

She turned to the official, face pale with frustration, unable to complete her thought.

“This is serious,” the official said. “There will have to be … a board hearing … to see … what they decide from there. We will see—”

“Did you see my daughter? She will never look the same again, do you hear me! That’s it. If you won’t do anything, I’m filing charges for assault.” Ms. Roberts turned to her son. “Give me your cell, Trevor. I’m calling 911.”

My mother was screaming at her now. Manda was screaming in general. I saw Mom’s car keys dangling from the side pocket of
her big floppy purse. I don’t know why I did it. I reached and grabbed the keys while they were all still screaming and ran for the parking lot. I got the door opened before anyone noticed it, shoved the keys in the ignition. Put my foot on the gas and roared out of the parking lot, no idea where I was going.

Night had fallen. I turned out onto the country highway and floored it, feeling the Kia complain but noticing it only with my bones. No streetlights and I didn’t even have the headlights on. I fumbled, looking for the switch, tears streaming down my face, my hands slick on the wheel.

So far nothing in my rearview mirror. Guess they didn’t care what happened to me. Soon the brightness of the soccer field lights was only a glow above the trees swallowed up by the hungry dark of the woods. I sped on, chasing the cone of my headlights.

I turned at the first side road I saw, gunning the engine and making the car fishtail. I was ready to point the wheel in any direction, let it carry me.

The level ground fell away; almost before I knew it, I was plunging down the plateau. The tires squealed as I slid into the curves like a motorcycle racer, foot barely letting up on the gas. I jounced over a series of rough bumps that made the beam of the headlights jitter and leap. At times I was bouncing so hard, the headlights weren’t even shining on the road but instead up into the endless mass of trees and vines.

I didn’t care. I pushed harder on the gas, and when I didn’t see the curve, I felt the car go suddenly airborne, sailing off the shoulder and down into the woods. I screamed and came to earth hard with a big banging crash that threw me toward the dash, then back against the seat.

Dirt fell on the hood like rain. I sat there breathing a moment.
Held my hands up stupidly, feeling my fingers shake. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. Somehow the air bag hadn’t gone off. I sat there listening to the engine tick and feeling my heart gallop.

The forest was bone white in the headlights. The engine was still running, but I was stuck. Mom’s car was resting on a downslope that was covered with skinny saplings. I had rammed into a muddy bank above a small spring.

When I could find my voice again, I swore. My cell phone was in my athletic bag back at the field.

I pounded my fists on the steering wheel, cursing again and then jerking at the wheel as if I could tear it out by the roots. I couldn’t get the driver’s-side door open; it was lodged against something. So I climbed over and tried the latch on the passenger side, then kicked the door open with my cleats.

I tore off my shin guards and threw them in the backseat. Rolled my sweaty socks down and loosened my cleats; Coach Kline always made us lace them really tight to get more toe into the ball. Mom kept a flashlight in the glove box for emergencies. I got it and slid out into the stream. The water was shockingly cold on my legs. The ground was tilted and I had trouble standing, but I didn’t seem to be hurt. I had to put my back against the car and move along the bank like a crab, then used saplings to haul myself uphill to look around.

I couldn’t even see the road, which was still farther above me, but by swinging the flashlight beam around, I could make out the black-gray shape of some kind of structure in the woods.

I pointed the light in front of me, beating back the vines with the handle. Maybe someone would be there and I could use their phone.
Stupid. You are so stupid
. I had stopped crying and the
terrible anger was starting to fall away, leaving me feeling flat and empty and embarrassed.
What is wrong with me? Why do I do things like this?

It was harder to get to the little house in the woods than I thought. The ground was so unlevel, I kept slipping and sliding. The flashlight beam glinted off some windows, but there were no lights on in the house. I wondered how it even got there. I couldn’t see any road or driveway or even a path. It was as if it had grown up out of the ground.