Stuck on Me Read Online Free

exact moment when I started obsessing about my nose. I’d noticed
it had changed before, of course, but it didn’t start to keep me awake at night until the day my aunties came round for tea, just before I went to Goa . . .
    ‘Goodness, Sky, haven’t you grown!’ declared Auntie Karen, kissing me loudly on both cheeks. I cringed, like I always do. She’s being saying this to me and to my sisters,
Grass and Ocean, at every family get-together since I can remember. I think someone must pay her to embarrass us; she certainly acts like it’s her job.
    She took a step back. ‘You do look ever so grown up.’
    ‘Thanks, Auntie Karen.’ I forced a smile and, when I was sure she wasn’t looking, wiped her wet, peach lipstick imprint from my cheek. Dealing with embarrassing aunties was so not the way I wanted to be spending the last Sunday afternoon before I went away for a month.
    ‘No, I really mean it, dear. Let me look at you.’ She took my face in her hands and squeezed my cheeks, as if they were made out of playdough. ‘You’re different,’
she continued. ‘Still lovely, of course, but your face . . . it’s more defined. No more puppy fat, eh? Those boys will be queuing up.’ She prodded the side of my nose. Her hands
smelled of onions. ‘And you certainly don’t have a little baby nose any more, eh?’
    I did a double take. Did she really just say that aloud? Did Auntie Karen really just tell me – and everyone else – that I have a big nose? Grass giggled; I must have heard right.
Aware that I was glowing bright red, I stepped away from Auntie Karen and went to sit down on the sofa, covering my nose with my palm, protectively.
    So it isn’t just me, then, I thought, mortified. My nose is huge and people can tell!
    ‘You’re right, Karen,’ said Auntie Julie. ‘Sky looks terribly grown up.’ She stared at me too – although, thankfully, she didn’t feel the need to touch
my face. Then she appeared to have a lightbulb moment. ‘I know! I’ve got it! Doesn’t she look like Connor all of a sudden?’
    It took me a second to twig exactly who Connor was. I’ve never called him that. I felt a twinge of nausea rise from my belly.
    ‘I didn’t . . . you know, you might be right,’ said Mum, in a weird voice, peering at me, as if she had never seen me before. I was starting to feel like an exhibit in a
science lab. ‘I hadn’t really noticed the change,’ she continued. ‘I guess you don’t see someone growing when you’re with them every day. But Julie’s spot
on. You’ve gone and got your dad’s nose, Sky. Well, well, well.’
    I looked around the table from my mother to my older sister, Ocean, and then to my younger sister, Grass. It struck me that all three of them have exactly the same slender nose, with slightly
triangular nostrils and a cute little tip. Perfectly proportioned identikit noses, which looked like they’d been made to a pattern in the same factory. Grass could be my mum’s Mini-me,
they’re so similar. Mum often likes to pretend we’re all sisters. She gets a buzz when people say, ‘Oh but you don’t look old enough to be a mother yet, let alone have three
such grown-up teenage daughters!’
    I hadn’t acknowledged it before, but that day it became clear to me that I don’t really look like her, or the others. I’ve got her eyes, maybe, but I’m taller, darker,
flatter chested. And if my nose was made in the same factory, it was in the misshape pile, rejected for being too big and slightly wonky.
    Until that second I had never wanted to look like Mum. In fact, I’ve tried my hardest not to, refusing to wear the hippy-dippy clothes she likes me to dress in, and cutting my hair to
shoulder length, when she’d prefer me to wear it down to my waist. But now I felt like the odd one out. And I didn’t like it.
    ‘You’ve got no reason to feel self-conscious, Sky. It’s a handsome nose,’ said Mum.
    ‘Gee, thanks, just what I’ve always wanted –