The Sunburn

By Natalie Osborne

I felt the ripple of the water as my hands moved around me in a circling motion. I looked past the crowd of people in the water and up the cliff, where my cousin and uncle were climbing.

As I was looking up I felt a sudden sting, as if two jellyfish were attached to my shoulders. My shoulders were as pink as a cherry blossom in Spring. And no, it wasn’t a good thing. I remembered that the last time I had applied sunscreen was hours ago.

I swam through the salty water trying not to get any of it in my mouth. I rose to the top to take a breath, blinking in the sudden sunlight. I felt as if the sun was only a foot away so I dived back down in the turquoise water. I quickly darted through the ocean until I was at the point where I couldn’t swim.

I trudged out of the water, which tried to pull me back in. I spotted where our things were and hurried there with my shoulders still aching. I rushed to my dad and said “Dad, I have a really bad sunburn on my shoulders.” I turned to show him. He looked at me then the sunburn.

“Ooooh” he said reacting to the sunburn and shook his head. “We’re leaving anyway, everyone’s tired.” I looked around, he was right everyone was packing. My mom was organizing her purse, my aunts were getting my cousins out of the water, my cousin and uncle had climbed back down already, and my grandparents were picking up all the garbage.

I waited under the umbrella for a couple of minutes, but after awhile I got very uncomfortable because the sand on my body was rubbing against my sunburn and the heat became more and more intense than before, my sunburn became to painful to bear. I ran to my mom, I told her “I need a shower now!”

She nodded and turned and told my dad to meet us at the benches by the parking lot. As soon she was finished talking she almost pulled me up the hill to the showers. I was feeling worse and worse by the second. The sun was taunting me with the heat. Could this day get any worse? I thought to myself. And this all happened because I didn’t put on any sunblock.