Sunburn: Exclusive American Edition with Additional Material

by Chloe Michelle Howarth

If 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. This admiration is the natural order, I’m sure. It has been this way since we were in primary school.

My cheeks redden, but I make no moves to conceal this, and in a wild moment of abandonment – something I have never known before – I think, I would be the microbes in the beef that her body seeks and destroys if it meant she would be paying me even the slightest bit of attention. The warmth and the wet of her mouth.

I hate the quiet of the sleeping house, especially after a day out with my friends. The silence rings. It makes me feel so much more isolated than I really am. I ought to go to bed before I have a chance to do too much thinking.

There are times when it becomes so much that I can’t stand to be around her. But there is something in her attitude that I am drawn to. Perhaps it is the way that she hardly notices my admiration. Or the way that she can bully me or be my best 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.

Everybody is frustrated when they are fifteen, I know, but knowing this doesn’t ease my frustration.

He is a good father; we just seem to drift past each other.

I will like somebody soon, when I find the right person. A sensitive boy, with long hair and nice bone structure and a soft voice, I’m sure.

Oh honey

The girls take the opportunity she has given them to fill their coat pockets with sweets, a cue that I miss entirely. Instead, I am watching as her heel rises out of her worn-out shoe, his throat bounces, and his eyes widen, as Susannah welcomes him into the world of her beauty. Now he is seeing in colour, now he knows light, and all she is doing is describing the weather.

There are so many unhappy people, I just don’t want to find out that I am one of them.

Our backs are straight, our heads are down at our bowls, I don’t need to look at her to know that she is scowling at me. It’s nice to have her staring at me for a change, even if she is cross. Although I can’t talk to her on the phone, I am still here for her. I want her to know that I would always be here to disappoint her, if she would only give me the chance.

I am not afraid of the nuns anymore. I have been in Eden all Summer long, I know divinity better than they ever will.

Aoife’s

Eye-fah

Eimear’s

Ee-mer

I hope that I am a better admirer than Martin. I hope I am kinder and more considerate, or at least more subtle than he is. I hope my feelings haven’t made her as confused as his have made me.

It is simple. It is natural. I move, I kiss her. This instant is eternal. My hand on her cheek, her lips against mine, her perfect and glorious mouth. The nervous breath stammers out her nose and onto my cheek, one she has been holding in all her life. Her hands find my back. We are eternal. Oh, at last, her mouth.

#lovewins

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. S x

She puts her arms around me without hesitating, and because we are girls and we are blessed with an anticipated level of intimacy, I can do the same. Nobody notices as her hands fall on my back again, nobody cares how tightly I squeeze her. If even one of us was a boy, we couldn’t do this.

I’ll marry you if you get past all the shame of being with me. Susannah x

</3

She has given up on my curfew, on my laundry, on my meals. I am thinning and unclean, and she is unbothered. At last, we have reached the long-anticipated limit to Mother’s love. What I wouldn’t give to be punished.

I know who he wants me to be. Who she needs me to be. A different Lucy. A better Lucy. Who is wonderful. Who is good. Whose life is so easy. With their eyes on me, and their breathing so loud, with that version of Lucy before me, it is so easy to forget about the happiness I found in the greenhouse.

The Leaving Cert has been completely forgotten in our house. It’s all about Martin Burke and the stupid Debs. In a way, I am glad, because my studying has been so rushed and halfhearted that I will never succeed in the exams. 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. Nobody cares about the outcome of my exams. It makes me feel like a very inconsequential thing.

‘I had my first kiss when I was six. Big lunch, Senior Infants, in the bike sheds.’ Her face is so smug; my skin heats, and I laugh, because I can’t believe she’s going to expose this. I can’t believe she considers me her first kiss. What adrenaline.

It appears that when Catríona left home, she took Susannah’s pulse with her. I wouldn’t have expected this. I always thought that she would function fine without her mother. She and I both need our mothers, it seems. I wonder if she understands my position a little better now.

If everybody loved me as much as they claim to, I don’t think I would be in this position, back and forth between them like a pendulum, always stuck between her and everything else in the world. I am so sick I could scream.

Expecting I would challenge her, Mother said, ‘You might as well go with him, Lucy. There’s nothing here for you anymore.’

Damn

It’s been so long since I’ve heard anyone call your name. It’s been so long since you were mine, I feel I don’t have any claim to you anymore. The curve of your shoulders, the colour of your eyes, the sound of your sighing. These are distant things I have remembered and misremembered so many times that I no longer have a truth for them. It has been so long, and still I could have died today when that woman said your name.

If I could only write back to her and tell her that I have given up on God too, and on Mother, and Crossmore, and everything that kept us apart. As much as I have given up on those things, I haven’t let them go, because for every way they are deplorable there is a way they are beautiful. I have an unshakeable faith in them all. I don’t know if there is anything to be done about it.

I could withhold my body forever, and still I don’t think he would leave. It’s as though he has an unshakeable faith in me.

‘You’ll break your mother’s heart if I go down and you don’t.’ He told me. How little he knows. I have already broken Mother’s heart, we got over it.

Look at the colours of her. Look at all the colours of her world. There is not one shade of me. She looks so happy.

Don’t contact me again, or you’ll shatter me beyond repair.

He pulls the blanket over us and takes his last chance at holding me before I am gone forever.

You could live a thousand lifetimes and never deserve that boy

I was born perfect, and every step I took brought me further from that. Now every day I am closer to being that girl again.

‘Lucy.’ She says softly. I have to squint to see her. ‘You’re back.’