Tom is watching the way Harry holds Dougie.
Just because he has muscles, Tom reckons, that doesn't mean he's strong enough to hold Dougie together. It's not strength Dougie needs, it's precision and patience, and Harry doesn't own either. Instead, he's pushing himself closer to Dougie and waving his arms around in the younger boy's face in an attempt to wake him up.
Dougie doesn't want to wake up.
He's wandering around in a permanant state of slumber, caught up in his own nightmares. Tom wonders what he sees in the corners he stares at and avoids. Is it Willow? Can he see her there? Watching him, wanting him? He squints at the shadows his friend refuses to go near and tries to make out her figure, but finds nothing. Then again, you can't find something if you don't know what it looks like.
Willow's pale body is sleeping in a morgue, and it's the ugly insides that are hovering over them now. Unsaid words float through the air, secrets chew furiously at the edges of the room. Nobody speaks it aloud but they're all thinking the same questions.
Why was she like it? How long was she like it for? How did she hide it?
'It' varies depending on the day/question/person asking. Sometimes it's the fact that she didn't really eat as much as she should have
'The autopsy shows that she had been starving herself of food for at least three days before the suicide, probably more...'
sometimes it's the vomiting
'Tearing of the throat and scars on her knuckles confirm suspicions of bulimia...'
sometimes it's the drugs
'Not only were the signs of drug use and abuse all over her body but various items ranging fom cocaine to tobacco were found in her school bag.'
and sometimes it's the self harm
'... burn marks on her arms, scars from razors, knives and her nails on her arms, thighs and stomach, bruises that seem to be self inflicted covering her body... Mrs Poynter, are you aware of the fact that your daughter used household medication as a way to cope with the pain she created?'
but it doesn't really matter what 'It' is concerning, because 'It' is all- encompassing, suffocating. How did she go to sleep at night, knowing what she was doing to herself?
She didn't, she was an insomniac.
How did she drag herself out of bed in the morning?
She didn't drag herself out, the need/want to be perfect did.
Dougie listens to the policemen and reads the autopsy and smashes up Harry's old bedroom.
Danny sits and watches and he's scared because if Willow is that good at hiding things, who's to say Dougie isn't better?
Danny isn't the only one with this fear. A week and four days after they begin the stay in Essex, the three bring Dougie in to Harry's bedroom and ask to see his arms.
'Just a check,' They say, 'Because we're scared for you. We care for you.'
Dougie complies, but Harry is more thorough than the other two; he checks Dougie's stomach for claw maks, his legs for cuts, his arms for bruises, his neck for cigarette burns, until Dougie looks him in the eye and says 'Harry, I'm not Willow,' and Harry stops and hugs Dougie and apologizes and they're all content that he's not ripping himself to shreds.
Just in case, Tom bins all the medication Hary's parent's own.
They don't question it.
Meanwhile, Jazzie's got a knife in her Hello Kitty backpack.
Dougie's mum's house is given the all clear and a new question is formed.
'Are we going back?'
Harry's mum says wait a while. Dougie's mum says but I want to go now. Tom says let the ground settle. Dougie says it was a suicide, not a war. Jazzie says I want my night light. Dougie's mum says we're going back tomorrow. Harry's mum says a week. Dougie's mum says three days. They make a deal and seal it with tea and rich tea biscuits, and Dougie doesn't know where he's supposed to be going or what he's supposed to be doing.
Three days pass and they're standing outside the house- Harry's mum, Dougie's mum, Dougie, the three bandmates who haven't left his side thus far, and Jazzie. Harry's dad is bringing the bags up the path.
It's a ghost house.
There's a fourteen year old crazygirl waiting with a knife on the other side of the door. But then Danny goes in and nothing bad happens (apart from him kicking over the shoe stand by accident but that's Danny) and everything's fine.
Nobody touches the basement door.
It's eventually decided that Danny and Tom will go back to the band house, Harry will go back to his parents', and Dougie will stay in the ghost house. Just for a while, they agree. Long enough so that
they can ascertain that Dougie hasn't crossed to the crazy side
Dougie can be with his family and get through the trauma, and short enough so that
he doesn't go mad in that fucking house and kill himself just like she did
he doesn't miss his friends too much.
Dougie's mother doesn't sleep the first night back.
She walks down the stairs that Willow walked there's blood stains on the carpet and across the hall were her wrists hurting her too much and stands by the basment door this was the last door she walked though and opens it what was she thinking when she walked through here and down the stairs did she have second thoughts and stands in the middle of the cold room was she scared and turns
and screams
and doesn't stop
because they didn't take away the school tie, and it's still hanging there, grey-and-blue-and-death, and if she squints she can see a girl hangingturningstrugglingdying
Jazzie is a little girl with little girl strawberry shampoo and little girl soft skin and echoes of little girl baby fat and little girl cuts on her legs.
