Sunburn

1

June 1989

Now is the time between birth and slaughter. Another Summer has arrived. I spend my days waiting for something to happen. Something glorious, even something tragic. Nothing ever happens.

It's hard in the countryside, when there is nothing to do and nowhere to go. Life in the Summer goes slow, like one long, drawn-out fade of the sun. Doesn't every day in Crossmore feel that way, at this tricky age? Without the structure of school, and without any amenities in the town, there isn't much to do but hang around the village. Mother calls this loitering. She seems to take a stricter dislike to me in the Summer. I can understand that. Between my newfound admiration for drinking, the threat of a blundered attempt at sex, and the incurable frustration I feel, I wouldn't expect her to like me very much. Often, I am just as annoyed with myself as she is. Yes, I am at a very tricky age.

Perhaps when Mother was my age, she was like me. Once she might have felt the same thrill that I do when sharing a cigarette with the girls or coming home late. Perhaps she has forgotten what it is to only get glimpses of independence. Those glimpses are everything to me. Feeling adult is everything to me. It gives me a sense of self, which is important, I think. Recently, I have really wanted to figure out who I am. There must be more to me than being Martin Burke's best friend or one of the girls or the Nolans' daughter. I'm just not sure what that is.

Today Martin and I walked the long and bumpy road into the village together. There is a lot of talk about Martin and me. We are only friends. Although I presume we will end up as something more than that eventually. Truthfully, I don't like thinking about it. I just enjoy his company, that's all. I function far better with him than without. When we were eight, the Burkes withdrew Martin from St Anne's National School to go instead to St Andrew's, twenty minutes away. There was some trouble with his older brother and a teacher which his parents didn't want repeated. Off he went. I didn't think I would even notice his absence. Besides one feverish breakout of kiss chase in the yard, we never really played together in school. I didn't expect there would be anything to miss. But then he was gone, and I missed him every day. I felt so outside of things. It took me a long while to look around and not expect to see Martin smiling back at me. But it's easy to adjust to things when you're young. I got used to the void, it was fine. I was one of the girls after all, even without any girl friends.

On long school days, when I was missing him, I used to daydream that he and I could be married on our Communion Day. His and my school always joined up for the day, as well as the Gaelscoil, and still with the three classes there were only ever thirty of us. I knew that Martin would be at the altar in his suit, and I would be there in my white dress, and so it would just look right. I used to plan it so that when he said 'Amen', I would kiss him, and then we would be married. My most plain and easy dream; I don't even think anybody would have been too upset with me if I had kissed him. It would probably have been funny and well-remembered.

He takes me as far as the chipper, where the girls are all waiting for me. He will bring the boys in later. Our groups were never really separate like this before. But around the time that Maria Kealy became aware of the boys as boys, we split in two. Maria's interests very much influence the interests of the group, and so everybody became somewhat obsessed with the boys. If Martin and I were not magnets to each other, the girls might never speak to them. I am still waiting to find the boys intimidating. Often, I find my own girls more intimidating than them. Until I became the bridge between us all, I thought that I was a shy person, a sort of trembling leaf. Now I know that I am not a leaf, but a strong branch. I connect the blossom to the bark. Thanks to the girls' weak hearts, I have realised my own bravery. Perhaps it's just that I don't give to swooning as easily as the others. 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. I can't stand being on the outside of what everyone else is feeling.

The windows of the chipper reach from the ceiling to the floor, and they play the same Eurodance CD on loop. I can see the girls inside now. There is Maria. Endlessly lovely Maria, with her tightly curled hair, her pointed nose, her long and straight torso. And there is bright yellow-blonde Eimear, and flaxen lesser-blonde Joan. Bernadette, and her teeth which so desperately need braces, and Patricia, barely visible behind her camouflage of freckles. And Susannah, beautiful sunbeam Susannah, with her coat folded up on the seat that she is saving for me. The walls are lined with white tiles, and there are strips of fluorescent lights in the ceiling which put shadows on their young faces. The bell above the door chimes, announcing me, and they all turn to look. How would they describe me now? Susannah lifts up her coat for me, camel-brown suede, and before I can even say anything about it, she says,

'Vintage.'

I could have guessed. A lot of my clothes could be considered vintage. They have been given to me by older cousins, some even saved from Mother's youth. Somehow my sort of vintage isn't as cool as Susannah's. She is miles ahead of the rest of us, with double ear piercings, her own hi-fi, and a hefty inheritance coming her way.

This food gives us acne, and yet we eat it all the time. Bernadette is not eating because she doesn't want to be seen with a mouth full of chips when the boys arrive. Bernadette doesn't eat around people, I think we were in primary school the last time I saw her put anything in her mouth. She is perched on the end of her seat, sucking her teeth like she thinks they are dirty. Joan, with her oval face having perhaps the worst reaction to puberty of us all, asks a plain question, which starts a fire among us.

'Any news about the Debs?'

This Summer, the Debs has been a greater concern to us than breathing. Before, we would have been interested on the day, with pieces of gossip about dates and dresses leading up to it, but this year it's all we talk about. I really don't know why. Perhaps because it's only a few weeks away, so it's in the air. Perhaps because going to the Debs is becoming less of a fantasy and more of a tangible reality. As girls only approaching Fourth Year, we would never get asked to go, but a girl in Fifth Year could be, and we know plenty of those. Perhaps it's just because we like talking about other people.

With Maria's sister Sorcha now a popular Fifth Year, we have access to an artery of information on the Debs, on the older girls and all their exploits. Gossip just comes out. Even when I don't want to hear it, I hear it, and so I know about the older girls - about who is failing which class, and who has been cheated on, and who is on drugs. Sorcha provides details so secret that we have been told Laragh Donnolley wears a red bra for PE, and she lets the straps fall off her shoulders, hoping someone will notice. My bras are all white and come in a box. They seem both juvenile and geriatric compared to what Laragh is wearing. 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. A nun would send one of them around to our little yard to do a job, and we would crowd around them like insects surrounding a spill of honey.

There are plenty of other things that we could talk about, but we talk about things like bras, and boys, and the Debs. Even when we have feelings that eat us alive, and which desperately need to be talked about, we talk about things like this. Nobody wants to bring the mood down. Imagining Debs dresses is nicer than airing out our emotions. Those awful, shiny satin dresses in their gaudy colours, the sort of things that keep us from thinking of our troubles, whether that is good or bad. Our dream dresses, and the dresses we would choose for everyone else, and past dresses we have hated. We have pooled the information we have about existing couples, and we dole out the remaining Sixth Year boys among ourselves, as though we have a chance with them. It should be embarrassing to have these fantasies at our big age, but this is a private game for us, so it's sort of alright.

Dates are always the worst part of this collective daydream, because all the good boys are already taken. All it takes is one wrong suggestion to be stuck with a boy forever. Eimear once flippantly said that Bernadette would look nice with Danny O'Neill in the year above us, only because they both have curly hair and freckles. Perhaps what she meant was that they look alike, not that they would look good together. These theoretical couplings can haunt a girl for life. Since Eimear said that, anytime Bernadette mentions a boy, somebody will turn around and say,

'But what about poor Danny?'

And lately, she has started to say,

'Well, yes, obviously there's also Danny.'

She has never liked him, but we all know, and she knows, and he has started to suspect, that when...