TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
Back Matter
ONE
You know it’s going to be a bad day when you wake and feel pavement against your face.
My first thought: Oh, no, not again.
Then, context: Hi, I’m Kyle. I’m seventeen. I have epilepsy. This happens to me a lot.
I’m lying face down, twisted like a fifty-storey splat, the pavement wet and cold and gritty beneath me, the dampness of this morning’s rain shower spreading through the leg of my jeans. There’s a moment when I think I must have fallen asleep, because why else would I be lying down with my eyes closed? But then the world settles into place around me and I realize it’s happened again.
I’m on the high street in town. Grey concrete, leaden sky. Shoes and legs crossing indifferently across my field of vision. In the spaces behind them, I catch glimpses of familiar shop fronts, built like nuclear fallout shelters: Poundland, Specsavers, Boots, Timpson.
I hate this bit.
Coming back from a seizure makes you feel a special kind of rubbish. Hot and cold at the same time; my throat tastes like burnt pennies; my eyes feel like somebody took them out and put them in the wrong way round. I wait for the rest of my memory to come back. It always takes a few minutes, it’s the familiarity of the routine that keeps me from panicking. They call it postictal confusion. I call it sulky-brain-syndrome. Epilepsy is like a loose wire fritzing in your skull. You get a spark and that spark sets off other sparks and then the whole thing blows a fuse. All I can do now is sit tight and wait for the BIOS to reboot.
I roll on to my back and haul myself up until I’m sitting against the wall of the WHSmith. Pins and needles start up immediately in the arm that’s been crushed beneath me so I know I was out for a few minutes at least. I feel a tiny pinch of indignation that nobody checked in on me in all that time. They just went right on with their shopping.
I groan, maybe a little theatrically, maybe for effect. Is it wrong that I pretend I’m the action hero in an old war movie when I’m coming back from a seizure?
Go on without me. I’ll hold them off as long as I can.
It’s been a couple of months since my last seizure and I’d started to think I might actually have things under control this time. But I guess not.
I do my checks.
Have I wet myself?
No.
