Chapter 2

The after-party - or something like that - was in their house and Lisa was not supposed to have been there but her there had been some trouble that she didn't know (all she had heard was Cee screaming on the phone and then declaring someone was fired), so she ended up being staying at the house anyway. She could hear Cee's band playing from three floors up and Johnny singing. She liked to hear him sing. Most of their songs were angry and fast and screaming and heavy, but there were some nicer ones, some slower ones… and some really sad ones as well. She liked them all.

And tonight, they were really going at it. They were happy, Lisa supposed. Both Johnny and her sister had just graduated today. Cee was accepted at Cambridge, she was starting next semester, and was happy about it.

Was Johnny happy too? He never talked about school, all he wanted to do was sing. He was going to do that and he already had a manager and a whole lot of things that Lisa didn't really understand because he had been talking so fast, but it sounded like he had been excited about it.

'Are you going to invite me to your concerts when you're famous?'

'Sure thing Bit. You'll be my number one fan.'

'Yeah.'

They'd just had that conversation some hours ago before she went to bed and even though his eyes were s dark and he looked so tired and almost sick, he had smiled at her anyway. When Lisa had asked him if he wanted to sleep a while, he had laughed, but it hadn't sounded like he was amused at all. It didn't take a genius to know something was wrong with him, and Lisa was a smart girl after all.

But there were so many other things she didn't know.

oooooo

It was almost three a.m. when she woke with a start. She'd had another nightmare and she was on the verge of tears already, but the sounds of the music coming from downstairs were bringing her back to her own room and away from clawing monsters with red noses and colorful hair.

She really hated clowns!

Lisa sniffed and got up to go to the bathroom. She remembered the rules: no going down when big sis is having a party. She knew why the rules were there too. Some of her sisters friends were nice and fun and smiled pretty, like Johnny. And others were not so nice and really rude. So she kept to the rules, because she didn't really want to meet anybody right now. She just wanted to go to the loo and...

Lisa stopped, her hand froze over the light switch that she had just turned on. The glare of the harsh light made spots dance in front of her eyes so it took her some moments to adjust her vision, but that impression of someone's arm reaching just outside the tub had not been her imagination. It was real... and it was right there, limp and boneless as if he was asleep.

Except he wasn't.

"J-Johnny?"

Her voice came in a whisper. She hadn't ever seen anyone looking like he was looking, but it didn't take experience to know that something was terribly wrong with him. He was almost grey, his eyes sunken and dark in their sockets, skin stretched tightly over his bones, his mouth just a little parted, eyes not entirely closed so that a sliver of white showed in the most horrifying way.

A whisper in her chest told her something terrifying, and it was the particular lick of bone chilling terror that that whisper inspired that spurned her into moving. Lisa stepped towards him and reached a shaking hand forward, but didn't have enough courage to touch him. She had wanted to shake him awake... but what if he wasn't just sleeping?

What if he...

"Wake up Johnny."

Please wake up...

But he didn't move a single muscle. Was he ever breathing? He had to be breathing. So she spoke louder.

"Johnny."

Her voice didn't tremble so badly this second time. And when he still didn't move, her fear of him being not-asleep won over the fear of anything else. Because if there was any chance that he would wake up if she shook him, it would be worth it. It would be worth the horror she felt in her small body at the thought of touching someone that didn't breathe anymore.

She caught him by the hand...

He was so cold she whimpered at the contact, and heavy tears fell, making her sight blurry. But she could still see him. It was as if her mind had burned the sight of him behind her eyelids. She'd seen plenty of movies.

Nothing had felt this bloodcurdling, not a thing.

Nothing had been so real before. Or hurt this much. Or been so terrifying that her stomach was touching the floor and she felt her heart in her throat beating a mile a minute.

She squeezed his hand tightly, caught his wrist with her other hand and shook hard, as hard as she could.

"Come on, wake up. You need to move, I have to use the loo Johnny."

It sounded so stupid. But she didn't know what to say. What could you say to someone who was so obviously not going to say anything ever again.

"Please... please..."

And by now she was begging and crying in earnest because the panic was over and he wasn't moving still and she was still touching and it didn't feel terrifying anymore, it just hurt. So bad she could hardly breathe for the strength of it. Nothing had hurt this much, she felt like she was about to be sick.

She sobbed hard, rubbed her eyes with her hand to wipe the tears away, but they would stop.

A sound from outside caught her attention. She shook as if someone had screamed at her, and then all the sounds around her came back all at once and Lisa remembered that she was not alone in the house, there were so many people downstairs.

Cee was downstairs. Cee would know what to do.

So Lisa ran. She ran down the stairs for three flights and almost tripped a couple of times but didn't stop. There were people lying on the couches, on the floor, there were bottles and cups and laughter and so much noise and even though Lisa screamed it felt as if nobody heard her.

Not until she caught sight of Flash - the drummer with the hair of such a bright shade of blue that it was impossible to miss him.

Lisa ran to him.

"Flash, where is Cee?" she sounded so anxious, and she was crying and even though she was so clearly distressed, all the eighteen year old and the unfamiliar girls and boys around him did was laugh at the sight of her and her disheveled hair.

"She's around 'ere somewhere." he said flippantly. "What's got you so riled up then? You had a bad dream?"

His pout was mocking, but instead of blushing, Lisa frowned. After all, her sister was not the only one with the steel backbone in the family...

And her sister was not the one who found Johnny Quid in her bathroom, cold and grey and not breathing.

"Tell me where my sister is, blue-boy." She said, and this time it was an order spoken in a tone that made her sound much more like her sister usually sounded. And because Blue-boy was what Johnny always called him and Lisa had always had the impression that Flash didn't like it. She wasn't even thinking that at the moment, the name just came to her.

"Oooh, kitten got claws..." was his response, and everyone around them laughed – but help was on the way, even though Lisa didn't know it.

"Shut it Flash, or I'll tear you a new one. What's going on here?"

At the sound of her sisters harsh voice, Lisa could almost have cried all over again. She turned and saw the contours of displeasure on her sisters face as she spotted her. And just as Cee was about to open her mouth to demand what the hell Lisa was doing down (in her orange nightgown complete with bunnies-print no less!), she caught the look on her little sister face, the tears in her eyes and the paleness of her skin and that was all it took for the irritation to evaporate. Worry had her kneeling and putting her hands on Lisa's shoulders.

"What's the matter, what's wong?"

And the question spurred her into even heavier sobs and faster tears.

"Johnny is upstairs. In… in the bathroom... He's n-not moving, he is… Cee…"

Lisa had never stuttered a day in her life, but she was stuttering now and Cee had a momentary flush of panic. If that blithering idiot had gone and ODed on her little sister bathroom, Cee was gonna raise the fucker from the grave just os she could kill him again. Johnny fucking Quid, what the fuck have you done now.

But throughout all of this, she had already send Lisa away with Miss Jonson to the back of the house. Tea was in order, a strong one to make Lisa sleep without trouble, and as she gave this instruction, she shouted for everybody to get the fuck out of her house while she dialed for the ambulance, hoping against hope and with trembling hands that Johnny would really die, because come on, he couldn't. Every rock legend that was worth it had made it to at least twenty something before snuffing it.

For Lisa on the other hand, the rest of the night was a blur. She watched the ambulance stop in front of her house, people come in and Johnny come out on a stretcher.

The next day she overheard her sister saying on the phone that he had died on the way to the hospital.

She cried for a whole day and the one after that, before anyone bothered to tell her that yes, Johnny had died for a few minutes, but he had gotten over it right quick, because the doctors had brought him back.

Johnny didn't come around the house on more after that. And not only did Lisa never see him there, but if she wanted to see him at all she had to buy a ticket like everyone else and go to his shows… and though she did go, she never got tot talk to him. Cee went away to uni and Lisa knew that she did meet with him sometimes, but not once did her sister offer to take her along, not even when Lisa asked her to.

Once or twice she thought he caught her eye in one of his shows… but he never spoke to her again. Not once, in years.

And once she grew up, because she never saw him she slowly grew out of her crush for him. but the fondness she had for him stayed, because more than anything he had been familiar in the way people you care about are, in the way those really close to you can be. And that old part of her that remained a child and clung to old affections twitched inside her heart every time she read in the papers about something outrageous he had done or had been done to him.

Strange how human emotions works. You grown and change and leave pieces of yourself behind all the time as you take on new some things stay with you for better or worse, because they remain the only part of something dear you once had and then lost. Like a favorite doll, or an old memory, or a childhood friend.

AN: Sooo... what's the verdidt? am i being too much of a tearjerker? I know i tend towards that, and in the next one, which is gonna be from Johnny's pov, Im gonna try to be a little more bare when i write, to fit it to his character.