Sunburn

by Chloe Michelle Howarth

friend and I can hardly tell the difference. Perhaps it is her moods, the glows and shadows of them, as though her heart is made of the changing sky. It’s humiliating to wonder if I have ever meant the same things to her as she does to me.

Outwardly, we are all living the same life, but inwardly, I hope, everybody has as many private crises as I do.

Right now it seems as though I only have two options: either I can be who Mother expects me to be, or I can be whoever I want to be.

just need to stop acting my age and grow up.

Really, I don’t even need to be happy, I just need to be the same as everybody else. It’s

Petrified, I do as I am asked and taste the lollipop. The mess of her chewed-up burger has come back to my mind; it is met by her liquid voice, the close weather, the heel of her sock exposed as she leaned over the counter, and the sting of sweetness from the lollipop at my back teeth. It’s her spit in my mouth. It’s her racing through my mind. I don’t mind it. It makes me sick. I like it.

Crossmore, do what we can to stop ourselves from noticing her. These are futile efforts. Does she know the effect she has on people? Does she know that she is this adored?

I will want to do the thing that got Niamh in such trouble. If it can happen to her, it can happen to anybody. Even

More and more, I think that sex may not be the sacred union that I once imagined it to be. Rather, it seems to be a secular thing: condensation on a car window, squeaking skin on rain-soaked bales, a wonderful disgrace. That’s what I have learned from the talk of my friends and from the talk of the older girls.

My fear, shame, and regret are elsewhere; I know them all combined in one sickness when I stare at Susannah, deep and long, and without permission. She

It isn’t that I want him, it’s that he wants somebody else.

‘You sound like one of the lads.’ Such a warm and welcome insult. I feel the most wonderful relief as I devolve from a glimmering image of unknowable beauty to the uninteresting tomboy he once knew. At last, we are going back to ourselves.

There are so many unhappy people, I just don’t want to find out that I am one of them. They walk among us, they touch you, and you become them. Introspection is like cyanide. Life is fine this way, ignorance is easy, I do what is easy.

My heart lurches, as if it wants to leave my awful body and go make a home in her. All I want is to avoid what I feel, yet it seems that all Susannah wants is to bring these feelings to the centre of my attention.

she doesn’t have the things she needs. It is very difficult not to let the heat of her whispering burn up my cheeks, not to let the closeness of our hearts affect me. It means the world to me to be so near to her, and so I don’t let myself be near to her, because I don’t think it means the same thing to her. It is a terrible dynamic, but I don’t know what to replace it with.

For a while, he was so biased toward my opinion that talking to him was like having a conversation with myself. Now that I’m just an ordinary girl, there is less for him to be careful about.

As she begins to roll a joint, I look over to the fuchsia bushes and keep my attention there, not on the imperfect way she wears the bikini. Too big in places, and too small in others, and yet she wears it so defiantly that it suits her, like it’s supposed to fit wrong. Parts of her are burning in the sun; I will not look. The pride, the nonchalance, the honesty of her body. I could never invite imperfection this way. How well she wears it. I

I would drape my own soul over her body to protect her from eyes like mine. Remember that, left alone, Susannah would just be a piece of the earth. She cannot be held responsible for my reaction to her, for the scream of her sun-kissed skin against the blue bikini.

Some parts of her I keep in my memory, others in my heart. This, I keep in my blood. And all night in bed, my blood slowly drags through my veins, bringing that moment to every piece of my body. It is beyond words. This isn’t a feeling, it is a state of being.

What has happened to me that I am suddenly so absorbed by her? Is this healthy? When will I get to go back to how I was before? And do I want to? I get hot, and my mind races, my heart pounds. And then I get a look at her, and it doesn’t matter. She is just so easy to look at. So good to look at. Such a treat to look at. And to listen to. And to speak to. It just doesn’t matter. The panic goes.

I am swallowing a flame. She is so sweet. She looks at me with such an intensity that her eyes could make a diamond of me.

Isn’t she clever? Doesn’t she know me well? Of course I like her. I like her so much sometimes that I wish the other girls wouldn’t talk to her or touch her, and that it was only me and her.

‘Same tomorrow?’ And I always agree to it, and I always feel the surgical wire I have sewn between us ripping through my flesh when I try to leave. Could she not just heal onto me? Could we not prevent the sting of leaving?

The Summer means everything to me. I feel the coolness of the sheets against me as the heat of the day leaves my body. I won’t shower until the morning, I must keep her with me. Susannah was wrong when she said that I like her. I love her.

The quiet of the sunrise, the cool air of the dawn. Being alone with her now, I feel I am the nearest I have ever been to God. It is her, she breathed my soul into me.

The light is yellowing on her jaw, showing me the acne where her makeup has faded. Soon, the dawn will be gone. We must go to bed now, or I will stand here all day, watching as the sun changes on her blessed face. There is no need to talk, the birdsong fills the silence. She knows how I feel about Martin, she understands me. Her bedroom smells of trapped heat and lavender.

My patience for things unsaid has grown very thin, I don’t see the romance in it anymore. There are things I have wanted her to say; maybe she would have said them tonight. Maybe she feels safe with me. In this thin place between sleeping and waking, there is room for honesty.

I must leave now before she rolls over and gives me a reason to stay, before I fall in love with the remains of last night’s eyeliner under her eyes. Her makeup is on the pillowcase, the sweat of her neck is on the sheets, and I wish that a piece of me would be left behind the same way.

Her hands find my back. We are eternal. Oh, at last, her mouth. A cow cries. A pair of song thrushes sing. This is not the explosion I expected it might be. Rather, it is a quiet and soft making of sense.

I have not changed my mind. You seem to think I have all the power here, like I was going to decide not to want you anymore. I’m powerless. If you want me, I’m yours.

That’s it, there is no more wondering. Another girl like me exists, and she is the most perfect girl in the world.

At last, I am defined. All my lonely days were not wasted, they led me to this most perfect union, this weaving of our two souls. The parts of me that were once afraid can no longer be found. Perhaps they will come back to terrify me again, but for now, I can’t feel them. For now, I allow myself to be wanted by her.

but I realise now that places like Crossmore are made for people like me. There is space for me, for us, out on the edges, among the ruins and the hedges and the stone walls. These things are immovable. They belong to the world and cannot be altered.

sophisticated. As long as she is good to them, and a little mean to me, nobody notices. It’s all so subtle that nobody thinks twice when Susannah comes over and spends all day in my bed, playing with my hair. It’s just female adolescence, nothing we do is taken seriously. Halloween

All along I thought Susannah was like a god. Now I kind of feel like a god too. It’s funny that another person could make me feel this good.

And I thought, if Lucy is here with me right now, that’s enough goodness to last when she is gone. A few minutes of you would really be enough to keep me going for years. Thanks for always making me feel like you’re there. Susannah

It’s amazing that we have all these private touches of Heaven and nobody sees a thing.

This is warm. She will look at me for just a second, just long enough to drag the air out of my throat. As her hands take my jaw, her lips take my cheeks. Each touch of her is nicer than the last, each time is different and new. I could touch her forever.

With Susannah, I don’t need to bother acting coy or well-behaved. Sometimes when we make love, we melt out of shape and become one thing. A thing that wants nothing but to touch and be touched, to be real and make noise. We can be heavy against each other, without any need to impress one another. This is so far away from what I ever felt with boys. There is no pressure. I can just exist as a conduit of pleasure and love. I want to always be this way.

Susannah gives me what I want, and more than what I want, and I can’t imagine not coming back. I’d come back on my hands and knees. She bites the fat on my hip, leaving the signature of her teeth on me, and when its red bruise fades away, she does it again. There won’t ever be a time when I have had enough. I will always come back.

Does she like the ugly parts of me? My weak chin can’t be hidden from this angle. My hair is growing out, it is an awkward, unflattering length. Does she worship me the way I worship her?

She looks at me now like I am a thing that she wants, a thing worth having. I have been a wanted thing before, many times – it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t want the person back. Before her, I was only ever preyed upon. Now I feel I am worshipped. I feel chewed up and savoured. Even with her teeth sunk this deep in me, she is not claiming me, she is only showing me that she wants to be a wanted thing too.

It smells of old sweat, from days of not washing it, from walking everywhere, from this, and I love it because she wouldn’t let anybody else smell it on her. She looks at me deeply, to the darkest part of me, a place so deep that my own soul would not even venture there, and she whispers, ‘Oh, Lucifer.’ And with those words, I am prepared to receive the Lord. I

With Susannah, I am constantly surprised that I am good enough for her. With Martin, I never doubt that I am good enough. I don’t know which I should want. Do I want to be safe and secure, or do I want to be happy?

I knew she would be beautiful today, of course I knew, but this is unbelievable. Never in all my years of Christianity has there been talk of an angel like this. My God, she is not even walking, she floats around the room.

And I see now why she has put up with all of this. It’s because we understand each other, it’s because we have this binding sort of love that is rare and good that we don’t get anywhere else. So rare and so good that I cannot even make sense of it, the same way that nobody can make real sense of God or the reasons why we are alive. I think that dancing with her tonight is the reason that I am alive. If it was the other way around, and Susannah was keeping me a secret, I would put up with it too. She could take me and discard me as she pleased, I wouldn’t mind.

Years from now, I will say that tonight was the night I knew that she was the girl I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. This is about more than her body, her tanned skin, her perfect mouth. I am in love with her blood, with her smell, with intangible things that I will never hold – her laugh, her anger, her soul. She kisses me, and she has a thousand reasons to be upset with me, but tonight she is not upset. She just keeps saying, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you, in this life and the next and the last.’

will never be ready. I will keep her waiting forever, and she will wait, because she loves me. I am evil, I have said this. The guilt lies between each of my ribs, it has a tighter hold on me than she does, it grows all over my body like mould. If she leaves it up to me, we won’t ever leave Crossmore. We will die here, shrivelled up by fear, separate

‘If you’d lose them over this, then maybe you never had them at all.’

It isn’t anything like the sex I’ve had before. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just not as enjoyable. It’s more like a favour that I don’t really mind doing for him. It’s complicated. I don’t like it, but it does make me feel close to him. The very first time it happened, he told me,