Watch Me Disappear by Janelle Brown

Author:Janelle Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2017-07-11T04:00:00+00:00

“SEE THIS DARK MASS HERE? It’s possible that you have some sort of contusion on your right inferotemporal cortex, some gliosis. It might be from your fall on Monday, but it could also signal a previous minor brain injury of some sort that’s causing your visual anomalies.” The neurologist taps at Olive’s MRI scan with the end of his pen. Tick tick tick. “On the plus side, there’s no sign of edema.”

Olive and Jonathan stand in the dark in the neurology clinic’s exam room, staring at the slices of Olive’s brain hanging on the wall. Jonathan steps up close to peer at the nebulous dark cloud, his face illuminated by the glow from the light-box. He nods as if everything the doctor has said is acutely clear, although Olive, looking at the same scan, sees nothing obvious at all. Gazing at a cross section of her own head, all she sees is a blobby pattern of grays and blacks, like a bloated branch of coral.

It’s weird to see the inside of your own body, not at all what she expected. You’d think a glimpse of your own gray matter would be mysterious and magical, but instead it feels like Olive is looking at a bowl of meaningless cottage cheese. Even the shape of her head looks unfamiliar, more round than oval, slightly misshapen rather than perfectly symmetrical. Lumpen. Distressingly organic. Is this what makes her who she is? How can an MRI machine possibly capture anything truly interesting about a unique human existence?

The technician warned her that the MRI would be unpleasant, but she still hadn’t expected it to be quite so awful and claustrophobic, all that science fiction buzzing and banging and grinding just inches away from her face, which was immobilized in some sort of sadistic metal bracket. Trapped in the tube, her eyes winched closed, she tried to imagine the hydrogen protons in her body obediently turning in unison, spinning like tops in response to the giant magnets surrounding her. Mostly, though, she felt like a hot dog in a movie theater’s warming tray.

She doesn’t understand it: Why does she even have to be here? Yes, she collapsed in front of the whole school; an ambulance was summoned as Mr. Heron stood watch over her, keeping the pack of girls at bay. Of course they had to go see a doctor. But she thought she’d get her routine checkup and then leave; she didn’t expect her dad to take all this so seriously, to make the follow-up appointment with the neurologist and then to tell him about her visions.

She thinks of what she saw right before she collapsed and feels her heart pick up its pace, thumping nervously in her chest.

“Olive?”

She realizes that her father and Dr. Fishbein are both looking at her expectantly. “What?”

Dr. Fishbein repeats his question: “Any recent accidents that might have caused this? Car collision, sports injury, particularly bad trip-and-fall? Remember anything like that?”

Her father studies her, his expression masked by the ghoulish shadows from the light-box.

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