I have had headaches before. Everyone has had a headache. This is not just a headache, though: a throbbing or a tightening in my head. This is something else: an agony that starts at the back of my head and seems to extend in waves across the top and sides of my skull, meeting above my eyes where the pain intensifies.

If pain has a sound, then this is like a knife being scraped on a plate.

If pain has a color, then this manages—somehow—to be vivid acid-yellow (kind of like Dr. Pretorius’s swimsuit, though that may be a coincidence).

And then the taste: a sour, metallic flavor on the back of my tongue, like rusty vinegar.

But above it all, worse than any of the other sensations, is the pain above my eyes, which has been getting worse and worse, and which makes me curl into a ball, clutching at my temples, moaning loudly.

I look at my phone and see that it’s 8:00 a.m., so I must have fallen asleep at some point.

Dad will be in the workshop with Clem. Jessica’s already at work (her second Saturday in a row). I am up in my room, writhing on my bed, when I call Dad, and I can barely speak. He and Clem both run back up the lane and burst into the house.

I hear him saying, “Georgie, Georgie? Are you OK?” but it sounds like he’s shouting from miles away.

And Clem is saying, “Obviously, she’s not—look at her! Call a doctor! Get an ambulance!”

And then I hear him on his phone to someone, saying, “She’s having some sort of…I dunno, seizure. Oh my God! Georgie!”

As if from a long way away, there’s a voice—a small voice—saying, “It’s all right. It’s all right. I think it’s getting better.” And I realize that it’s my voice.

And it is getting better. The high-pitched, searing pain is diminishing, like a howling storm becomes a rain shower, then drizzle.

The lights that had been popping like fireworks behind my screwed-up eyes slowly stop; I take my balled fists away from the sides of my head. I lie on the floor of my bedroom, my face against the carpet, soaked in sweat, and start to cry. Dad holds me nervously, like I’m a wild animal, while I sob at the memory of the pain, and with relief that it has passed.

Finally, after what seems like several minutes (but probably isn’t), I take a deep breath, and a long, satisfying sniff, and sit upright.

And then I pass out and everything starts to unravel.