Skin Deep - Laura Jarratt

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      She stopped about halfway, shouting ‘Raggs!’ again, not that it did any good. Her voice hitched on the name like she was close to crying and guilt pricked at me. Maybe she was a stupid up-herself bitch, but she was a girl on a deserted canal bank with a stranger . . . I didn’t like the idea I scared her.

      ‘Nice dog,’ I called out.

      She didn’t come any closer.

      ‘He just wants to play,’ I shouted, but she still stayed close to the treeline. I gave up and pushed the dog down. ‘Go on, go back.’ He paid as much attention to me as he did to her, jumping straight back on to my legs. I nearly picked him up and took him over to her, but I reckoned I was less threatening crouched down. She started towards us again.

      ‘Raggs, come here!’

      ‘Who trained him?’ I said, grinning. ‘Cos you should ask for your money back.’

      ‘Raggs! Now.’

      ‘I think you’ll have to come and get him.’

      ‘I’m sorry he bothered you,’ she muttered when she got close enough for me to hear. I opened my mouth to say, ‘It’s all right, no worries,’ but the words choked in my throat when I saw the face behind the curtain of hair.

       Jesus, her face . . .

      The right side was chewed up by a wide scar running across her cheek, down her jaw and neck and disappearing into the collar of her T-shirt. Fuck, that was a mess. Not an old scar – still purple-red angry. But not brand new either as it was all healed up. The skin there wasn’t smooth like it should be, but rippled and puckered, especially on her neck.

      What in hell had happened to her?

      I didn’t see the rest of her face at first. The scar was all I could see, my eyes drawn to it like a driver rubbernecking at a crash scene.

      She bent down and snatched the dog from me. That broke my trance and I caught a flash of her eyes springing tears before she turned away with the dog under her arm and hurried off.

      I scrambled up. ‘Hey, no harm done. He was only playing . . .’

      She all but ran down the path away from me.

      No wonder she didn’t want to come over and get the dog. She must get that all the time – idiots staring at her with their gobs open, like Frankenstein’s monster had just lumbered into view.

       You utter, utter dick! Why did you have to stare like that?’

      Should I run after her and apologise? But what would I say . . . ‘Hey, I’m sorry I stared at your face’ . . . Hardly.

      She disappeared into the trees.

      I felt like shit. She only looked about fourteen and I’d made her cry. I should be ashamed of myself.

      And I was.

      I fished the bucket out of the canal. She’d gone and there was no way of making it right even if I had a clue where to start.

      ‘Ryan, I’ve got some tea for you here. Take a break,’ Mum called.

      I went inside and Mum handed me tea in an enamel mug. I examined it. ‘What is it?’

      ‘Nettle.’ She beamed at me. ‘Very cleansing.’

      Urgh! Gross. Reminded me of green piss. Not that I’d ever tasted green piss, but I reckoned nettle tea was how it would taste.

      ‘Did you finish the windows?’

      ‘No, I knocked the bucket over. I’ll go back out and do it.’

      ‘Drink your tea first. And you can tell me what you think of some of my new designs.’ Jewellery kit was spread across the table: stones, beads, silver wires and torcs and catches, leather cords.

      I sat down on a floor cushion. No chance of chucking the tea in the canal then. Mum held up a silver torc with a jade stone carved into the shape of a dragon.

      ‘It’s great, Mum. You should make more of those. They’ll sell for sure.’

      ‘Good. It took me ages to get that right. Very delicate job, especially the tail. What’s wrong with your face?’

      ‘Nothing. Why?’

      ‘You keep rubbing it.’ She put her fingers on her right cheek. ‘Here.’

      I flushed hot. ‘I do?’

      She poked her tongue between her teeth in concentration as she threaded red beads on to a leather thong. ‘Mmm.’ Her hair was piled up in a scrunchie on top of her head. She looked like a pineapple.

      ‘Mum, if you get injured, like an accident, they can do plastic surgery to take the scars away, can’t they?’

      ‘Yes, but I don’t think they can make them disappear. Sometimes perhaps, but not always.’

      ‘What would give you really bad scars?’

      ‘I’ve no idea. I once saw a child with a terrible scar from pulling a hot pan off the cooker. Why?’

      ‘Just wondered. I’ll go and finish the windows.’

      I filled the bucket again at the sink and managed to chuck the nettle tea away at the same time.

      As I scrubbed the rest of the insect debris off the windows, I couldn’t get the puckered skin on the girl’s face out of my head, or the look in her eyes when she’d turned away. She’d have been pretty before that. Nothing incredible, just normal average pretty like a lot of girls are. Kind of cute in a quiet way. If I ran into her again, I wouldn’t stare. After all, I used to hate it when kids stared at me and Mum.

      I towed Raggs down the lane away from the canal and we looped through the village so I didn’t have to go near that boat again. The stupid dog kept pausing to look anxiously at me and I tried to stop the tears rolling down my cheeks.

      Even before the accident, that boy would be out of my league. I guessed he was a few years older than me and he was tall, around six foot, but he didn’t have that stretched-out look boys have when they’ve grown too fast. His shoulders were too broad for that and he had a whippy muscled thing going on that made me wonder if he worked out. The honey-coloured hair was streaked blonder on top and his nose had a touch of sunburn as if he spent a lot of time outside. He wasn’t boy-band pretty, but nobody would’ve thought him anything other than good-looking. Especially without a shirt.

      If my feelings had gone away when I became ugly, life would be easier, but the wobble in my tummy when I saw a boy like that was still there. Even though he looked at me like I was a monster.

      The tears fell faster, blurring the road ahead. ‘It’s all your fault, you useless dog! I told you to come back. I hate you!’

      Raggs pulled out of the clump of brambles he was nosing in and ran towards me, his tail wagging.

      ‘Come on, you. We’re going home.’ Forget the weekend stretching ahead of me. I wanted to go home and crawl under my duvet and hide. Forever.

      We passed Charlie in the garden where he was kicking a football around on the lawn. ‘Want to be in goal?’ he yelled as he dribbled the ball along on spindly ten-year-old legs.

      ‘No!’

      He stopped and stared at me in surprise as I hurried into the house, leaving Raggs behind with him. ‘Jen, what’s up?’

      I slammed the back door and ran upstairs.

      In the bottom of my wardrobe, right at the back and wrapped in a towel, I’d hidden a make-up mirror, the only mirror I still had. I knelt down and unwrapped it with shaking hands. A wave of nausea rose up when I looked in it. It was as bad as ever. Like a horror film. The ugliest thing I’d seen outside the movies. No wonder that

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