Laethanta Saoire holiday-themed reads: Green, by John Patrick McHugh 

In the latest instalment of our summer series, John Patrick McHugh unveils a tale of formative years and the trials of young love 

John Patrick McHugh is he author of the Pure Gold collection of stories. 

It is the end of the summer but the beginning of the year. Your first full week back and already the shadow of the Junior Cert distorts everything. Terms such as higher and lower are bleeding into the daily vocabulary. Fresh worries are flowering in that gloomy corner of your mind that is already jampacked with concerns about girls, about how you look and smell and sound. Now you also dread the consequence of failure on a national governmental scale, now you also dread not being able to handle the rigours of algebra and skinny triangles in Higher Maths.

Life, you are beginning to understand, is not fun and games.