Sunburn

by Chloe Michelle Howarth

Life in the Summer goes slow, like one long, drawn-out fade of the sun.

me. But it’s easy to adjust to things when you’re young.

These days the girls let themselves crumble when the boys come around. I’m hoping that I’m just late developing, and in a month or two, I’ll start to crumble as well.

Bernadette doesn’t eat around people, I think we were in primary school the last time I saw her put anything in her mouth.

the older girls knew how we idolise them, if they knew all the intimate things we have been told about them, I would be so embarrassed I’d have to change schools. But they must expect it, when they see us with our jaws on the floor and our pupils fat in awe as they pass us by.

I only go to school so that I might get another moment of her.

It’s humiliating to wonder if I have ever meant the same things to her as she does to me.

What is worse, to be remarkable or unremarkable?

we girls replace the women, that the boys seamlessly replace the men, and that we all follow a pattern.

A place where my insignificance would not hurt, because everybody would be insignificant.

It feels as though I am an island, apart from everybody else.

Mother is not the sort of person to be honest when she could be ideal.

can’t help but wonder about her experience as a mother, and as a woman, and how different her life might have been without children or with different children or at least without a daughter. Who would she be with one less child standing between her and freedom? Would she be an entirely different person?

Perhaps I will forget the effect that homemaking has had on Mother, with her bright eyes now dull as old dish rags, her spark extinguished by my father and the house and all of us tireless children.

And I thought, if Lucy is here with me right now, that’s enough goodness to last when she is gone.

She has been made needy and dependent and sometimes very angry, but not bitter.

Why do I allow my greatest pleasure to be my greatest panic?

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.

There is an unwritten rule with boys, Sorcha explained to me, that you can’t go all the way with them. She said that they use you, and they don’t come back. I was told to give them little tastes, but never the whole thing.

Perhaps if I had a little more self-worth, I would understand that Mother’s love is too conditional to want.

All I’ve done is fall for Susannah. It is not shameful or radical or wild. Anybody would fall for Susannah. I never meant to upset anybody.

How could they not love me, when there is nothing left of me but love?

Objectively, he is very good looking, I know, I can see that just as well as anybody. That doesn’t mean I want him on my back step, night-drenched and staring at me. Let him stare in the mirror, let him stare at another girl, stop all this.

How could I ever hope to be authentic when I am a constant lie? How deceitful I am. This isn’t who I want to be. But how easy life would be if I just stayed low down and out of sight, with only my thoughts of her, forever.

Was I not born to disappoint her?

It’s still sad, but it’s better.

In another bigger, private way, I am very disappointed, because nobody cared enough to try to make me study. I suppose I didn’t care enough about myself, either.

In fact, she has started to serve the healthiest food she can manage, because before my education, my looks are her new priority. I need to be as pretty as possible for Martin. Perhaps she knows that looks are all I can offer him.

It isn’t that I’m too immature or lazy to think about the future; maybe it’s just that I don’t have the confidence to plan one for myself.

Wouldn’t it be nice if I could be a person on my own?

I looked fine at home, but now under the white shop lights, I feel I’m just exposing all my physical failings to the girls and waiting to hear why each dress looks bad on me.

And again I think, maybe if I never knew how interesting Susannah was, I would think Martin’s car was fascinating. Maybe the problem is not that I want her, maybe it’s that she is in Crossmore, wanting to be wanted by me.

Although I don’t want her gone, I wonder who I would be if she wasn’t around.

How simple it would be, to be one in a herd.

don’t know which I should want. Do I want to be safe and secure, or do I want to be happy?

I don’t even have plans for tomorrow, never mind September, never mind the rest of my life.

Autumn is looming, the pressure is mounting, and I draw closer to breaking every day. And so I ignore the Autumn and the questions and reality. And for a short while, my life is an endless Summer night.

To be with her is a sin, to be without her is a tragedy.