Hello.

The title is a quote from the song that I listened to on repeat while writing this- i heard it and just started writing, and this was made. Go listen to it while you read if you want the full effect (Read Your Book by Soley). I literally have no inspiration for most of my stories right now, I'm sorry I'm so shit.

Dougie was sleeping when the phone rang, on the morning of July the 17th, 2005.

Tom was the one who had to break the news to him. Words were shattered over bed hair and sleep- fogged eyes. Tom told him, in four syllables;

Your sister died

and the silence that followed went on for too long and was too devastating, so he decorated it with two more-

last night-

and then Dougie walked away, and Tom was left sitting on the edge of the bed with the coffee and the phone and the guilt because he had just torn apart his friend with words and things might never be the same.

Willow Marie Poynter was fourteen when she sliced her wrists open with a bread knife.

But the cuts weren't deep enough and it took too long and so Jazzie Grace Poynter was seven when she followed the drops of blood to the basement and found her sister dangling from the metal staircase by her school tie.

Tom didn't tell Dougie this, because he didn't know it himself. None of them knew it until they took him back to the house and the tear stained, shaking woman who was once a mother of three told them.

Danny had watched as all the blood disappeared from Dougie's face, leaving skin so white it seemed impossible, and then gravity came and pulled Dougie down with it and he landed in a heap of long limbs- too long for someone so young, too young for something so awful- and he had stood and started crying himself because since when did fourteen year old girls hang themselves in basements?

They found that out later on that day.

Apparently fourteen year old girls like Willow have hung themselves in basements since they became the centre of a little universe called Depression.

There are a ot of planets in this Universe, and Willow skipped from one to the other on a rocket made of tears and pillows to scream into.

She started at Anorexia, stopped off at Bulimia and ended at Self Harm. Then she returned to Bulimia and joined the three together in a neat little package of self destruction. But she hadn't fully explored the deserts and valleys of Self Harm yet and so she went back on an extended vacation and returned home with souvenirs that decorated her arms and thighs.

Still, she wasn't done.

So she got back in the rocket and zoomed off to Underage Sex and Drugs and Drinking and Abusive Relationships.

Willow couldn't find a planet she liked, so she collected them all then fell in to a black hole and never came out.

Harry called his mother and she came and dragged Dougie's mother and remaining sister back to her house, the house she shared with her husband and Harry's very much alive little sister, Catherine, and the four boys stay in Harry's room. They are a support system and they sit on the bed with him and wait for the storm to pass. But a storm can't pass unless it's arrived and Dougie is in denial.

Tom is taking him through the seven stages of grief, and Dougie is refusing to move past stage one.

Danny chews on his lip as he fiddles with Harry's pillow. Next to him, Dougie is talking too fast about his father and how they need to track him down and tell him that his daughter-

pause

his daughter is lying in a cold, tiled room, with zig zag arms and a crinkly sheet and white white skin with a purple/red/black neck

is dead.

There's a silence almost identical to the one Tom experienced the day before, and suddenly Dougie's face is in his arms and he's sobbing hysterically and the other three cluster even closer together around him and hold him tight, because that's all they can do.

There's no one to hold Jazzie tight.

She hasn't spoken in 27 hours.

She followed the white bunny (it wasn't a white bunny, though, becase it was red and it was a line of little drops punctuated by longer slithers) through the house after getting home from school (she was hungry and Jazzie was supposed to have made the pizza hot and yummy by now) down the stairs, across the hall, through the door, down more stairs- pause to pull the light switch- to the basement floor, cold and lonely and there's no one here

but there is

turn around and there's a girl under the stairs and her school skirt is crumpled and her white shirt is soaked through with the red- bunny drops and her fringe hangs over her eyes but her mough is gaping and her feet aren't supposed to be dangling over the ground like that and why is she spinning around?

Jazzie followed the red- blood bunny down the rabbit hole and found Alice, lost in a Horrorland, and now she can't talk.

Dougie stares at Tom as the older boy talks to Fletch on the phone-

cheers, mate- yeah, could you get us a month? Even longer? That's great. Me and Dan can do the interviews- no, not yet. we need to stay- no, you stay there, we're good-

and then they have a free schedule for two or three or four months (however long it takes, Doug, you take as long as you need for this) apart from the funeral which will be in a week because they need a grave stone.

Dougie watches as his mother starts crying all over again. What kind of a gravestone would a fourteen year old girl want?

Dougie doesn't know. He imagines how cliche this could have been- he could have been the older brother she told everything too and now he could pick out her flowers and her gifts and her dress because they would have been best friends- but it wasn't like that, she was just his sister, and so he stays quiet while his mother pores over dress catalogues for teenagers.

Harry's mum says she should leave it but the comment falls on deaf ears and eventually a list is drawn up that Dougie won't look at because his little sister Willow is dead and why are they thinking about dresses?

It takes two days to reach the newspapers that Dougie Poynter from McFly's little sister is dead.

It takes three days to reach the newspapers that Dougie Poynter from McFly's little sister committed suicide.

she was bullied she was abused she was threatened by fans she was a slut she was an emo she was jealous of the attention her brother got you know that one in McFly he plays bass oh and did you hear about Danny Jones' girlfriend?

she slit her wrists no she hung herself no she overdosed no she threw herself in front of a train/car/off a cliff/off a roof/ no she drowned herself no she electrocuted herself with one of her brother Dougie from McFly's amplifier leads no she was run over by the tour bus they use hey do you think they'll ever go on tour again OhMyGod will the band split up?

Harry's sister Catherine is being tailed by Jazzie and she hides all the tabloids that pass the threshold just in case Jazzie's first encounter with the media is the story of her big sister flinging herself on the freeway.

Dougie dreams of Willow every night, of her body spinning in the basement, and he wakes up sobbing in to Harry's arms.