They're not allowed to have the funeral at the church, because suicide is a sin.
The local priest talks about the reputation of the church, bullshit spewing from his mouth. He's a fucking hypocrite, and Dougie wants to smack his nose in to the back of his holy skull but Harry leads him away.
Suicide is a sin, and Willow is destined for Hell.
That's probably why she's hanging around here, Tom thinks. Because she's scared of whatever's waiting for her. But really, it can't be worse than what she went through up here.
Danny doesn't understand why the police are still here. He sits in front of the T.V at Dougie's house and asks outright, and Dougie enlightens him.
"Willow was breaking laws like a prostitute sucks dicks," He says flatly. Pauses, and smirks slightly. "And she was doing that, too."
They've forgotten how to be shocked at the way he talks about her. It's a coping mechanism, Tom's mum told them, so they bite their lips and listen to the cruel voice coming from kind lips. Dougie looks at Danny. "She was a druggie, she had sex with at least seven guys, she stole shit and she got in fights. The cops are trying to figure out if it was just her, or if the whole family is living on the flipped side."
Jazzie is dancing on the line between sanity and complete craziness.
Seven is a young age to be insane but she's nearly doing it. The line is a razor cut and her dancing shoes are made of the skin she's shedding- all twelve pounds of it.
Dougie's mum doesn't see because she's blinded by grief and Dougie doesn't see because he's too busy looking at his nightmares but Tom sees. Little sister number one was a screw up and her machinery was wired the wrong way so they scrapped her and turned to the back- up. But little sister number two's batteries are running down and she's falling to pieces. Tom stares at her as she sits in the corner of the living room with her colouring book and pencils, tongue sticking out in concentration as she colours within the lines. Her own lines are blurred and shady. She looks up and Tom gets a glimpse of hollow cheeks and wide eyes, dead eyes, before she returns her gaze to the picture she's colouring in.
It's a picture of a balloon, surrounded by clouds and sun. If you turn your head and squint, as Tom does, you can see the girl scrawled in at the bottom, the girl hanging by her neck from the string of the balloon.
Jazzie sees his shock and snaps the book shut. She stands and stalks out, leaving behind her a scent of childhood and crayons and hipbones that should not be that defined
Jazzie is not okay.
The police give up on the Poynter family. This means no more questions and suspicions but it also means no more inquiry in to Willow's death and no culprits.
"There's no question," They said, "Her fingerprints were on the knife, the school tie, the drugs in her room. All evidence points towards a hard life and suicide."
A messy life followed by a messy death. So messy, the blood stains on the carpet won't come out. Dougie wants a new carpet. Sam told him that if blood on the carpet was the only memory she had of her daughter then blood it would be. Dougie told her it was sick. Sam told him to fuck off back to the band house. They cried in each other's arms in the living room as Jazzie sat on the stairs and ran her fingers around the biggest patch of blood, the same size as her hand. She wondered exactly how deep Willow sliced her wrists for it to bleed that much. Closing her eyes, Jazzie returns to the night in the basement, focuses her memory-vision on the thin wrists lying limp against the school skirt.
Very deep- and down her arms, instead of across. Jazzie retains this detail and applies it to her next little session with the knife hidden in her Hello Kitty backpack. She gets blood on Badtzu the Penguin's nose and cries.
She can feel Willow in the cuts on her legs.