Skin Deep. Laura Jarratt

thing that lived inside me since the accident woke again. The thing that chewed me with grinding teeth. I wanted to hurl the mirror across the room. Scream. Break everything in sight. Rip the curtains down. Smash the window. Let the animal thing out.

      But good girls don’t do that, don’t make a fuss, don’t upset parents. And I was a good girl so I curled up on the floor and sobbed silently instead.

      When they took the bandages off in hospital for the first time, my dad had looked at me and cried. In fourteen years I’d never seen my dad cry, but he sat there and wept as if something inside him had broken. Mum tried to make him to stop, but he couldn’t so a nurse came and led him away gently. They weren’t sure they should give me the mirror after that. Mum and Dad were supposed to support me, but that wasn’t going quite to plan. I had to look in the end though. It couldn’t be put off forever. I told them that.

      ‘Now remember, you’ve still got a lot of healing left to do. This graft needs to take and it’ll be a while before the colour fades. The mask will reduce the scarring as long as you wear it properly. In a year’s time, it’ll look very different,’ the nurse said.

      Mum’s hands trembled as the nurse raised the mirror to my face.

      I looked in it and any shred of hope I had was butchered.

      They gave me a jab to calm me down and the counsellor came later. Her face swam woozily in front of me. ‘Jenna, I need to check first that you understand what the doctors have told you about your burns.’

       Yes, I’m not stupid. Third degree. Full thickness burns. They’ve been through all this with me when they harvested my skin for the grafts, and then again afterwards.

       It means the burns are skin deep.

       And beauty’s skin deep.

      Mum knocked on the door. ‘Jenna, I’m going to the library. Do you want to come?’

      No, I never wanted to leave the house again.

      But that wouldn’t do. I’d promised I’d go out when the mask came off after those six long months. They’d been patient and hadn’t hassled me before that, but now they took every opportunity to get me out of the house. Refusing would lead to one of those conversations I didn’t have the strength for.

      We got into Mum’s red Corsa and she drove carefully into town, making a fifteen-minute journey last twenty. She always expected me to be nervous in cars now, but I wasn’t. How much worse could it get?

      Once we were in the library, she left me alone in the Fantasy section while she headed for the Crime and Thriller shelves. I found something I liked the look of and settled into a comfy chair to check it out. I hated taking a book home only to find it was unreadable so I always flicked through the first chapter before deciding.

      I heard a voice at the desk counter next to me. ‘Is the craft shop closed?’

      I looked up sharply. The boy from the canal . . . He was still in the shorts, but he had a white T-shirt on now.

      ‘Yes, the lady who runs it has gone for lunch,’ the librarian replied. ‘Can I help?’

      ‘My mum makes jewellery. I was going to ask if you’d be interested in a sample,’ he said, pulling a pouch out of his pocket. I wondered if I could slip away out of sight or if moving would make him notice me.

      ‘You’ll have to talk to Clare about that. She’ll be back in twenty minutes if you want to wait. Feel free to browse.’

      Urgh! Now I had to move. I got up as stealthily as I could and ducked into an aisle. I sat down close to the shelf and let my hair fall over my face as I pretended to read.

      Footsteps sounded on the cord carpet, the soft pad of trainers coming closer. And then . . .

      ‘Oh!’ He walked into me as he came round the corner and knocked the book from my hands. It skidded under the shelf.

      ‘Oh, sorry!’ He crouched down to fish the book out. ‘Didn’t see you there. Are you . . .’ He tailed off and I waited for the shudder.

      He grinned at me.

       What?

      ‘Hi again!’ He pulled my book out and handed it back to me. ‘I’m glad I’ve bumped into you . . . well, fallen over you! I wanted to say this morning, only you ran off . . . that . . . your dog . . . it’s fine. Dead friendly, isn’t he? I like dogs. Sorry if I came over as rude.’

      I was too shocked to move away or speak. And . . . and he was looking me full in the face . . .

      He had nice eyes – a sort of brown colour, warm and smiley. He’d looked at Raggs that way too.

      He went on. ‘You surprised me, that’s all. The scar’ – he touched his face – ‘took me by surprise. I didn’t mean to be rude, honest.’

      I gaped at him. Nobody ever, ever mentioned the scars. Their eyes slid away or they turned aside or they pretended they couldn’t see them at all. But nobody ever acknowledged them directly. Even my own family avoided talking about them in front of me, apart from those humiliating and painful times when Mum felt it was necessary for a serious chat about my progress. But in the way that he’d just done? So blunt? So matter-of-fact? No, nobody did that.

      He scratched at his neck. His grin was sort of lopsided this time. ‘What I mean is, sorry if I screwed up.’

      Screwed up? Oh yeah, you did that. For a few minutes in eight horrible months, I’d forgotten my face and enjoyed something as basic as taking the dog out. And then he’d made me feel like an ugly freak. Which I was, but I didn’t want to be reminded of it . . .

      I blinked hard and opened my book, hoping he’d go away.

      ‘Good book? You read any of his before?’

      I shrugged, unable to get words out, not knowing what to say if I could. Charlie aside, this was the first boy to talk to me since the accident. I avoided them at school and I’d have been shy of this one even before the accident. Close up, he was even cuter – the kind of boy girls would be drawn to like a magnet. My skin felt scratchy with nerves at having him so close, and having his eyes on my face.

      ‘I’ve read a couple. Not bad. He goes on a bit though.’ The boy chuckled. ‘So, do you come here often?’

      Oh, I got it. That’s why he was talking to me. I was a joke. One big bloody joke. Talk to the freak and laugh behind her back about it later.

      I scrambled up. ‘Fuck off!’

      ‘Hey, what’s wrong? I was –’

      ‘Fuck off!’

      People turned to look at us and the shameful tears came again as they stared. As he stared.

      I ran to find Mum.

      She hurried towards me as I burst into the aisle. ‘Jenna, was that you shouting? What on earth is wrong?’

      ‘I want to go home! I want to go home now!’

      ‘Calm down. What’s happened?’

      ‘Now!’

      From the corner of my eye, I could see the boy watching us, but he melted away when Mum stuffed her books on to a shelf and shepherded me to the door.

      When we reached the car, she hesitated. ‘Are you sure you want to go home?’ she asked. ‘Only . . . well, Dad’s having one of his meetings.’

      ‘Oh, so that’s why you wanted me out of the house. I should’ve guessed.’

      ‘Darling, I know it upsets you and –’

      ‘I want to go home!’

      She winced and put the car in reverse. I stared out of the window as we drove home in silence.

      Dad’s meetings. His campaign