There was still a little scar on the back of her hand, cradled by porcelain skin and pale fawn freckles. It was the size of the cherry on a cigarette, shiny in the sunlight and dabbled with pink. Her brothers thought she'd done it to herself, the same way they thought she'd put the crisscrossing red spider webs down her thighs. All her friends thought Harry did it by accident when he was drunk, because that's what she told them when they asked. Sometimes Christie had a look in her eye, a look that said I know where that's really from, but they didn't talk about it.

But he knew. He'd whisper it in her ear while she tried to sleep. It had been a rough time for all of them but he'd handled it worse than anyone. People gossiped afterwards that maybe he and Johnny had been in love secretly, the way he was taking it so goddamn hard like that. The way he turned cold and angry and was either blowing up or locking himself in a bathroom to cry and dope up. In reality, Johnny was just the last piece of hope he'd been hanging onto that everyone could be okay, that they would make it out of that neighbourhood scarred but safe.

Then Johnny was just dead.

It had sizzled when it touched her skin. He held her twelve year old hand tight. Told her calmly, "it's fine. Don't worry. I love you." The room was lit by candles and it was hot; her skin glistened with sweat even though it was December, and his cold grey eyes were all that she could focus on – until he pressed the lit cigarette down right between the tendons of her first and second fingers.

He let go of her hand fast so he could clap his over her mouth. "Don't scream, little baby," he breathed. "Don't scream 'cause people will come an' then you're gonna have to tell them that you did it again."

Two months before that he hanged himself from the rafters in one of the abandoned warehouses by the train yard, so she didn't see anything in telling anyone the truth about it. You couldn't blame a ghost for hurting you. And you couldn't blame him for why you couldn't sleep in the dark anymore.