Penance

by Eliza Clark

Even short lives are complex and rich. Even dead children are full of contradictions and flaws and mysteries that will never be fully understood or solved. Even a writer as well versed in this genre as I could never create a perfect photograph of my subject. I could create a beautiful, accurate sketch of Joni, but a sketch from a skilled artist is still a sketch.

Dawn took her to a GP and was told that some babies simply did not like to be babies. And that was that. No rash, no toothache, no terrible but identifiable internal problem; just some vague existential dread. She did not like being a baby. She was so distressed by being a baby that she screamed with the horror of it. She hated being a baby so much she couldn’t sleep. Dawn told me that she felt cruel for bringing the child into the world; she resented the baby for resenting being alive so much.

Faiza, charismatic, outgoing and light-skinned, also sunk more easily into the social fabric of their almost-all-white school – though she went through a phase of telling people she was Italian. Speaking as someone who is actually of Italian extraction, I found this surprising and sad. ‘I sometimes used to get picked on for being Italian,’ I confided. ‘You know, for being swarthy.’ ‘It’s not quite the same,’ said Farrah. When I explained that this was a private boys’ school in the seventies, Farrah seemed to accept that the situations were more similar than she’d initially thought.

Get off your high horse bitch youre literally reading school shooter fanfic.