At the time my mum was only 7months into her pregnancy, with me. If only I knew what awaited me out there, I would have waved a white flag. But. What does a fetus know? I was coming with or without the "virus". I am said to be one of the two affected by this virus, but nobody knows in what way it affected me. In elementary school I wasn't the smartest. I came last in almost all my exams. If I was lucky, I came second to last, and that was only because the last person was new at school and didn't do the exam, which ruled out "being smart" as a side effect. All this however changed when I got to the 8th grade (final year to graduate into high school). I got a rare disease that paralyzes the nerves from waist down. During their scan to determine the cause of the paralysis, the doctors discovered what the radiation did to the unborn child. They found some sort of fluid between the brain and the cerebral spinal fluid as thick as mercury and about 0.1mm thin. They said, whenever my brain started processing data, it would send some mild electric shocks (harmless) that would dial down my brain to a normal working state. It acted as a dampener of some sort. Partly this was the cause of my paralysis (I know I said harmless, but… you get the point…) and so theoretically, if the fluid is drained, the disease will automatically dissolve…or so they thought. This was very risky. My body was not fully matured to handle the full potential of my brain, and if they happened to remove the fluid I would automatically die. The fluid therefore balanced my bodies' maturity to the brains insanity. This suck. That was my one shot at being smart. For this reason, I got a whopping 276/600marks in my end exams. I didn't get to go to my dream school.
CHAPTER 3
It is in high school that my story really begins. I joined Greenside mixed high school, form 1 on 18th February. I went to school the exact same day my uniform was bought. My parents never wasted time when it came to maters to do with school. My dad says, that every fabric from each clothe must serve its time, so I have to go to school the same day not waste clothes. And to make matters worse, he would buy oversized clothes and shoes so that they don't have to worry about buying uniforms in the near future, which made me look like a giant clown, all I needed was a red nose and kids in the neighborhood get a free birthday entertainer.
I went to school 30 minutes before school closed for the day. I know, I didn't get it either. But, this is my dad were talking about. I walked into class during Swahili lesson (last lesson of the day before we go home), which happened to be one of my least favorite subjects. Standing in front of me was a handsome guy in his early 30's, light skinned shorter than I by about an inch, he had a soothing tone which made me feel welcome, till he decided to comment on my height in front of a class of at least 54 students. In the front row desk was a dark, short boy dressed in a maroon tracksuit, behind him were two beautiful girls, one was dark, the other light skinned with dark eyes and a pleasing smile that would make any gloomy day seem great… and in the middle sat a boy whom am pretty sure they bullied, he looked humble and with his short brown hair, he also looked vulnerable. I picked up my locker and set it next to the boy with the track suit. Since I wasted the first 15minutes studying people and being asked questions by the teacher, the lesson didn't last long.
'Hi.' a girl's voice from behind said, 'My name is Grace.'
I turned and nervously I said. 'H-Hi, I am Benjamin'. She was so beautiful and I probably would have kept staring, if not for the girl next to the simple guy introducing herself. 'I am Mary and this is Humphrey'.
'So where are you from', Grace asked
'Like where I grew up or…'
'Noo, like which school are you from.' How she knew I was an exchanged student, I don't know.
'Oh, right… Am from Clover boys high school.' I said. I am not good at small talk and I overthink everything so I said the next best thing that came to mind. 'What about you guys, did you start in this school?'
Mary answered, 'Yea but not at the same time, Grace was first then I then Humphrey'.
We talked for a while, even my desk mate joined in eventually. His name was Cepha and as it turned out he was among the first people to be admitted.
As days went by Grace and I grew closer and closer, and every day the dampener wore of. At the time I didn't know many people in our class apart from those I sat close to in class. That is Cepha to my right, Grace to my southeast, Mary to my southwest and Humphrey to the south, it was perfect, but what I didn't realize was, the higher my Intelligence Quotient (IQ) the lower my Emotional Quotient (EQ) got. In the first few months of my high school life I had a major crush on Grace. Which I don't think she realized, but we were so close that people thought we were, what kids call these days, "A thing". And it was perfect. For me.
We were walking home from school like we always did, talking and making fun of whatever popped up on either one of our brains.
'Ben (This is what my friends called me at school and at home.) I will be going back to Mombasa in second term.' She said. I never actually imagined it being true since she said it jokily, and she talked a lot about going back but it never actually happened, so I figured it was probably not true.
'Okay.' I said smiling dismissively.
'It's for real this time. I won't be coming back for second term.'
'Until that time comes, I am still on. Okay.'
'Alright don't believe me' she said.
We both smiled and kept walking. Grace lived with her brother in a two bed roomed apartment, which was about 100 meters from our home so I dropped her off after school and walked home.
The following day I was in hospital, not feeling my legs. Just laid there looking at the ceiling my parents outside talking to the doctors. I couldn't hear exactly what they were saying, but it had something to do with my current situation. 'His illness will be over soon. The dampener is wearing of and as soon as it completely disintegrates he will return to normal. All we can do now is preventing the further loss of muscle function. We will use immunoglobulin. It's meant to remove pathogens from foreign antigens.'