CHAPTER FOUR
who is in control?
PAIN EXPLODES IN her shoulder as Violet hits the ground hard with a grunt. Her skateboard clatters to the ground somewhere to her left. Tears spring to her eyes and her vision goes blurry. All the wind's knocked out of her lungs and she lays crumpled on the concrete for a couple seconds, concentrating on forcing air back into her body.
"Close," Sage hums, standing over Violet, a dark silhouette eclipsing the silver sky. She waves her video camera around. "Wanna see the playback?"
Like a camera lens shifting into focus, the world becomes clear again as Violet's eyes recalibrate. Pulling herself upright, she rolls her shoulder a few times, grimacing. With a smile, Kit offers her a hand up and Violet takes it, straightening to her feet. She brushes off the dirt from her clothes, shaking off the electrifying impact of the fall from her body. They huddle around Sage as she rewinds the recording and presses play.
"That was a little ambitious," Violet mutters, pursing her lips and eyeing the video capturing every moment of her failure right down to the moment she's attempted to do a flip off one of the wooden ramps in Kit's backyard with a critical eye.
One summer, back when they were twelve and made of matchsticks for bones and gasoline for blood and Kit had been grounded for something entirely her fault, Violet had pitched the idea to build a mini skate park in Kit's backyard. That way, they could still hang out and skate without leaving the perimeters of the Lahote residence and, thus, without violating the strict guidelines of Kit's punishment. Violet's father had been more than content to fund the entire operation. Paving concrete over a large patch of the grass that Kit's mother was more than happy to shed responsibility of mowing so often, adding a few ramps here and there, installing some sturdy ledges and benches, and Kit's backyard had been turned into a playground for the three of them. When they didn't feel like making the long trip to Tillicum skatepark, this was where they hung around.
Right after lunch, wherein—true to Sage's word—Paul and his friends had to be forcibly pried off the pasta to let the girls get in a plateful, the three girls, still buzzing from their impromptu reunion, were lounging around Kit's backyard, rocking back and forth on their skateboards to wait out the lethargy from a big meal. Sage had dug up a slightly crushed-up carton of cigarettes from her pocket and passed them around. Kit had refused, because Kit never liked smoking, but Violet had taken one—much to Sage's evident surprise.
While Paul and his friends had vanished off to make trouble elsewhere, Sage and Kit had caught Violet up with the latest news in town first. About the people at school, and the cute girl in their Physics class Sage supposedly had an eye on for a few weeks until she figured out that girl was devastatingly straight and not privy to experimenting anytime soon. Neither of them were included in much of the pointless melodramatics of petty high school scandals, since they preferred keeping to themselves, maintaining their impersonal exclusivity towards most of the high school population. In their eyes, the only friends that mattered, the only friends they would ever need were within their tribe of three.
"But Kit sort of disappeared on me a couple months back for, like, maybe three days," Sage told Violet, slanting Kit an accusatory glare and prodding her with a playful shove that barely made Kit budge. "Started getting real chummy with Paul and his weird crew about then, too—"
"They're not that bad," Kit muttered, dropping her eyes to the ground, rubbing her elbow apprehensively.
Sage scoffed. "Yeah, right. That's why you all got matching cult tattoos."
A lightning bolt of shock strikes down Violet's spine. Eyes narrowing, honing in on the strange mark branded in dark blue ink resting just above the defined muscle of the top of Kit's arm, Violet plucks the cigarette out of her mouth, flicking cherry ash onto the ground. Little embers glowered back at her. Before, she'd noticed the same tattoo on the other boys, since all of them were half-naked with only a pair of black sweatpants on. Other than that, she didn't think much of it, too caught up in the reunion with her old friends to question the strange markings.
"It's not a cult tattoo," Kit groaned.
Violet raised a brow. "Explain."
Kit lets out a nervous laugh. "It's really not a big deal. I mean—"
"That's exactly what someone engaging in cult activity would say!" Sage sneered.
"Oh my God, no, I swear, it's, like, a Quileute tribe thing," Kit cried, rubbing her tattoo in discomfort.
Lips pursed into a flat line, Violet's silent, evaluative gaze was unwavering, shards of ice into the girl's skull, but Kit couldn't meet her eyes. A nagging feeling scratched at the back of her mind. Something in the air didn't settle right. Kit wasn't telling them everything, that was for sure. For the first time in the history of their friendship, Violet thought that it could be possible that one of them wasn't telling the whole truth, that they were keeping secrets from each other now. But who was she to call Kit out when she was doing exactly the same? Who was she to judge Kit for harbouring something she wasn't ready to shed light on when Violet had her own locked-up darkness festering inside, when she had already decided, resolutely, that she wasn't going to tell Sage or Kit about the fire, about the boys she'd almost killed and the people she'd endangered in the last four years?
—THEY'D LOOK AT YOU DIFFERENT IF THEY KNEW WHAT YOU'D DONE—
"Tell me about the boys," Violet mouthed around her cigarette. She tips her head back and lets the vindictive wind dig its talons into her cheek. Smoke billows from her lips, emptying into the grey sky. "Why'd you start hanging with them in the first place?"
From the neck up, Kit flushed beet red.
"It's that Jared kid," Sage mused, taking a drag of her cigarette. Smoke poured from her mouth and nose in messy plumes as she spoke. "He started paying more and more attention to her when he started hanging with her brother earlier this summer."
"And you like him," Violet said, smirking at Kit.
"Jared's nice," Kit said, a soft smile touching her lips, rocking side-to-side on her skateboard, fingers lacing and unlacing and lacing and unlacing. "He listens when I talk about the stuff I like that most people usually get tired of hearing be talk about again and again. Plus, he acts like he's genuinely interested—"
"Because he is," Sage interjected a smug grin eating her features.
"—in hearing about dinosaurs and stars and skateboarding. And, I mean, I like hanging around him. But he gets a little annoying, though, sometimes," Kit said, hurriedly. "Like, he'll say things that make me think he knows that I like him like that—which is totally impossible because I've never said or done anything—but then he'll act like it's no biggie—"
"And I keep telling you to shoot your shot," Sage said, exasperated. "He obviously likes you."
Kit chewed on her bottom lip, a troubled expression creasing her features, like she'd rather be anywhere else but here, in the moment, talking about Jared. "He's just being nice."
"Anything new in town?" Violet asked, steering the conversation somewhere more useful. "Besides me, of course."
Kit shrugged. "Nothing, really."
Sage's smile was bored. "Your turn. Tell us about California."
—LIE THEY MUST NOT KNOW YOU MUST LIE—
Plucking the cigarette from between her teeth, Violet shrugged, though her skin felt all of a sudden three sizes too small for her bones. "I got kicked out of seven schools for misconduct. My father thought it'd be easier to keep an eye on me here. You know how it is."
Sage and Kit exchanged surreptitious glances. Violet picked at her filthy skateboard trucks, dislodging flattened leaves and specks of dirt. As far as they're aware, Violet had left because she couldn't stand to stay in Forks after Luka died. Grieving period.
For a split second, she contemplated telling them the truth. Not the trimmed truth she'd sold to the public about why she left, but the whole, undiluted truth stripped down to the scar tissue-flecked flesh. About the real reason why her father sent her away and refused to let her come home for years, even during holidays, when she'd had to stay with her relatives. But the iron voice grew iron claws and dug them into the back of her spine, a warning pinch. Lie. So she left that afterthought to wither and die in the back of her throat—of monsters coming after her at night, of strangers' faces morphing into sharp teeth and red eyes, of that vampire who killed Luka, that enormous wolf knocking said vampire out of the way, of Luka, gone, gone, gone. That part died and her voice came unstuck again.
"Seven schools," Kit repeated, disbelief colouring her tone. "Damn. What'd you do?"
A humourless smile ghosted her lips. One that spoke of power, of pulling strings and cornering her opponents. Like father, like daughter.
"Many things," Violet said, nonchalance dripping from her tone despite the many cruelties she'd subjected her pawns to just to get what she wanted. Drawing blood, stabbings, threats, swift revenge, assault, arson, property destruction—and not a sliver of guilt. All compassion died with her thirteen year old body. In her defence, none of these would've happened had her father heeded her first warning—a knife to someone's throat, not a killing blow but the cautionary tale of a tiny nick and a psychotic glint in her eyes like, go ahead, test me, see how far I'll go, just enough to be the source of nightmares for weeks. "But none of them were undeserved."
—EXCEPT YOUR LAST—
"Eye for an eye," Sage snorted, raising her cigarette in a mocking toast, "you feral bitch."
Kit pursed her lips. In all the years Violet had known Kit, she'd never been one for violence. Always a gentle soul, always the last one to throw the punch, always disapproving of Violet and Sage's fists-first-talk-later rhetoric. In actuality, Violet doesn't think she's ever seen Kit lose her temper or resort to her fists to solve her problems. Mostly because Kit dealt with her problems passively enough to be considered avoidant.
Violet tapped her cigarette against Sage's. She had no plans to tell either of them about the fire, about a house turned to ashes, about the too many lives that'd almost paid the price. At least she hadn't killed those boys. Last she'd heard, they were tucked away in the hospital for treatment, with wounds that would take a long time to heal but could be fixed with enough intensive care. Plus, all their bills had been covered by her father's generous "anonymous" donation. Fate treated wicked men with more sympathy than they deserved. Livvy's rapist had sustained serious burns and issues with his lungs, but he wasn't dead, and Violet didn't know what surprised her more: that he wasn't dead, or that she was almost disappointed that he wasn't. Still, she hadn't killed them. At least that was off her record.
—YOU ARE INHERENTLY A KILLER, YOU MAY NOT HAVE COMPLETED THE ACT, BUT YOU HAD THE INTENTIONS OF ONE—
With titanium will, Violet suppressed the instinctive flinch.
—AND YOU WILL DO SO AGAIN—
"Was it hard to make friends, though?" Kit asked, concern lacing her tone. "I mean, seven schools in four years. That must've sucked, being the new kid in school seven times. If I were you, I wouldn't have been able to make it out in one piece. I'd rather die."
But if Kit were Violet, she would never have even been taken out of her first school and put in the second. She would never have gotten herself expelled in the first place. Kit might've been on all kinds of anxiety medications since she was a child, but she wasn't batshit insane like the doctors thought Violet was.
"It's not that bad, honestly." Violet took a drag and held the smoke in her mouth, and in it, in the split second of slow breaths and nicotine numbing her veins, the taste of Livvy and nights spent laying in the dark, not alone for the first time in four years, in shadows that stayed shadows and shapes that didn't grow teeth. That's how Livvy set the world right, made it feel safe for five months of companionship. And when she'd died, the world spun off-axis again. Went full tilt and snatched the ground out from under Violet's feet. "I never tried making friends because I never planned on staying long anyway. But I did find one friend in my last school."
"Oh?" Sage raised a brow. "She cute?"
Violet exhaled sharply, a laugh, dried of amusement. "Yeah. Yeah, she is."
—'WAS' NOT 'IS' NEVER 'IS' NEVER GOING TO BE 'IS' AGAIN—
Kit laid a hand on Violet's knee.
—YOU COULDN'T SAVE HER YOU COULDN'T PROTECT HER IN TIME—
"I don't know how," Violet begun, grief tightening around her neck like a noose —SHE NEEDED YOU AND YOU WEREN'T THERE— "I mean, I wasn't planning on staying more than a month in that school, and I didn't even try. But, somehow, she just found her way into my life. Like, at first I thought she was kind of annoying because she kept getting in the way, kept trying to get to know me, but then, slowly, day-by-day, she started growing on me. One moment I was trying to shake this irritatingly disruptive roommate, the next she was my best friend. For five months."
"What's her name?"
"Livvy."
Livvy. It comes out in a broken whisper, a shard of glass shoved down her throat, slashing up her insides. Six months spent with Livvy felt more like six years. Agony swells like a tide, washing over the shore of her nerves, met by the silence before an atom bomb strikes the ground. A heart-stopping silence filled with memory by memory of the past six months playing one after the other like a broken projector on the screen of her mind.
Seeing Livvy for the first time in the principal's office on the first day at school, all pearls and mouth and dark, dark hair and darker eyes.
Livvy introducing herself with not a handshake, but a hug that Violet hadn't reciprocated.
Livvy arguing, tongue made of fire lashing relentlessly against Violet's mercilessly icy exterior.
Livvy offering her a cigarette on the way back to their shared dorm room. Adjusting each other's starchy school uniforms before class. Violet teaching Livvy how to properly do up her tie. Every shared cigarette on rooftops, in parking lots, and behind the art supply shed. Every traded kiss clouded by smoke and euphoria on rooftops, in parking lots, and behind the art supply shed.
Taking cheap shots at passing strangers. Cruel queens ruling ivory halls of marble and affectations and prestige. Livvy in her pink bathing suit in the summer. Livvy sun tanning on her patio while Violet curled up in the shade. Lipgloss-stained peach-bruise mouths and skin and skin and skin. Violet pushing Livvy into the pool. Livvy shoving ice cream down Violet's pants. Livvy riding her blue bike downhill with no hands on the handlebars with Violet cruising right next to her on her skateboard. Livvy in that little black dress looking gorgeous and expensive in body glitter and channel no. 5 perfume. Livvy's husky voice in an echoey bathroom stall.
Livvy's phone going to voicemail: hey, it's Olivia, if I'm not picking up, it's because you're not important. Livvy in hysterics, stumbling back to their dorm after sneaking into a college party, little black dress in tatters and no laugh in her bloodshot eyes and angry red scratches raked all over her milky skin.
Until, lastly—Livvy, swaying from the ceiling fan, a necklace of rope, a broken neck and too many unfinished dreams. Livvy, dead. Livvy, burnt to ashes.
Livvy, gone forever.
"She's dead now, though," Violet said, her voice flatlined. "It would've been nice if you guys met. I mean, she was smart and funny and she rolled her joints like a professional. You would've really liked her."
She toyed listlessly with her cigarette, watching as it burnt to the filter, scorching her fingers, but not feeling a single flicker of pain. Why was she so numb? How much would it take to feel?
—YOU KNOW. YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO. ONE FOR EVERY MEMORY. ONE MORE UNTIL YOU CAN STAND TO PRESS THE BLADE DOWN A LITTLE HARDER, DIG A LITTLE DEEPER, UNTIL YOU HIT A VEIN, UNTIL YOU GO PLACES YOU CAN'T COME BACK FROM—
As if on cue, her fingers tingled, itching with the need to seize something sharp enough to cut deep, deeper, deepest.
—HOW FAR WILL YOU GO THIS TIME?—
But before she could complete the thought with action, before she could've given into the iron voice's taunting, the weakness in her otherwise impenetrable mind, Sage and Kit bombarded her with more questions.
They steered clear of Livvy. At the end of the hour, all they'd pressed out of Violet was that she had been sent away because she couldn't handle Luka's death. She'd come back because she felt better. Because she didn't like that staying out of Forks for too long implied that she was running away—this, the only truth amongst the fabricated lies she'd fed her friends to keep them closer. If they knew the unembellished truth, they would split and then where would she be?
—ALONE ALONE ALONE, LIKE YOU SHOULD BE. GIRL-MONSTERS NEED TO BE CONTAINED, NEED TO BE KEPT IN CAGES. ALONE ALONE ALONE—
☾
7:01PM.
One minute late.
But nothing Violet does anymore serves no purpose.
Yellow backpack slung over one shoulder and her skateboard clutched loosely to her chest, Violet throws the front door open without much ceremony. It shudders on its hinges, and she strides into the foyer with her head held high and her shoulders rolled back. Even though she'd spotted her father's car out in the garage, an indication that he was already home, the house still feels empty, but the solitude is welcome. (She can't remember when insulation became isolation.) As much as she loved her friends and would—without hesitation—drop everything to spend every second of her last day on earth with them for company, she needed to breathe in air uncontaminated by her own lies. She needed to be alone. People were exhausting. Keeping up pretences, even more so.
"You're late."
Elijah Korchak is sitting at the head of the dining table when she enters, dropping her backpack onto the ground and throwing her skateboard on top of it. From periphery, his disapproving gaze sears into the side of her face, and she spies the stern lines of his sharp features twist ever so slightly, critical eyes zeroing in on and meticulously picking out her million and one infractions of the day. She flops onto the seat adjacent to his and meets her father's cool gaze with a defiant smile.
In truth, she'd been in the neighbourhood half-past six. She'd been skating with her friends, gathering more bruises and old jokes, and almost lost track of time (the ever-gloomy, ever-overcast sky had been no help at all), but by five in the evening, she'd bid her goodbyes, made promises to meet up tomorrow, and sped home.) Some petty side of her made sure she loitered outside just long enough to piss her father off. It seems purposeless and childish now, but that didn't mean it didn't feel good to get under his skin, dig below the stone surface.
"So you wanted to discuss conditions," Violet says, in a voice made of nails, folding her arms atop the table.
"First condition," Elijah says, cutting up his steak with sharp, precise movements. "When I say be home by seven, you will be home at seven on the dot."
"Fair," Violet says, picking at her dinner, laid out before her by one of the housemaids, with her fork.
"Second..."
And in-between the silence-splitting screech of cutlery scraping against porcelain plates, the unbearable tension, the ice in her veins and the stone in his voice, the conditions come pouring forth. A contract of immovable iron. Compromise for compromise. All throughout the onslaught of agreements, of a military voice that read terms and conditions, she listened, one hand kept under the table in a tight fist, fingers digging into the heel of her palm, hard enough to draw blood. Hard enough to hurt and feel it. She should've known.
Like father, like daughter. Elijah Korchak wanted control, and if he had to fight to put up a fight against his own daughter, he'd put her in contractual shackles first. And, like a submissive fool no better than her spineless mother, she'd let him. Just so she could have her feet planted in the ground here in Forks. She should've known that no dinner with her father could ever be the same, like it used to be before Luka died and Violet's mind came unravelled. All that warmth of the past had seeped out through the icy marble tiles. Put in a grave just like Luka. She'd gone into tonight knowing full well that no number of good deeds would earn back her father's trust. Too much damage had been caused. She deserved this.
Though, some part of Violet can't help but wither from the pinch of disappointment.
But that part—that thirteen year old self that'd resurfaced again, that foolish naivety that'd been her weakness back then as it will be now—she swiftly crushes under her thumb.
☾
THE CONDITIONS ARE THIS:
1. If Violet gets expelled again, she'll be sent away for good. No amount of begging or acting out would grant her second return. She would be cut off from her trust fund. She would not be known as his daughter again.
2. She will continue with her psychotherapy sessions once a week on Thursdays immediately after school.
3. She will be back home by 8PM sharp, unless she is sleeping over at Kit's.
4. In the above case, Kit's mother would have to give Violet's father a call to verify that she is nowhere else but where she says she will be.
5. Any more infractions, any sign of trouble, and Violet would either be grounded for two weeks with no exceptions, or she would be sent to London to live with her mother, depending on the severity of the situation. This includes: detentions, arrests, old habits, etc.
6. At any point in time, if she feels that psychotherapy isn't working, she will report to him, and the appropriate arrangements will be made.
7. She will not shut her sister out any longer. Wren is very upset. Correspondence is compulsory.
☾
Dear Wren,
I'm home in Forks again. I haven't been responding to your letters because I haven't been in the right headspace to formulate an appropriate reply to all your questions and concerns. I understand that you're busy with school, piano lessons, and ballet classes and might not wish to speak with me after four years of radio silence, but I want to set things right again. If it helps, I still keep your letters and I've read every single one of them. Luka is gone. I've come to terms with that. But you're still alive. Even if you're miles away with our mother in London while I'm al the way across the ocean, you're all I have. You and Sage and Kit. Elijah has gone cold on me because I've twisted his arm behind his back too many times (all incidents of which I will fill you in on at a later time), and I can only hope that you haven't done the same too.
I apologise for not being the older sister you should've had all those years ago. Hope to hear back from you soon. Good luck with the new puppy.
P.S., Please name it something better than 'Chucky'. Anything other than that freaky midget. Thank me later.
P.P.S, I know you want to come home too. And you should. You should be here with me instead of with mom, like you've said you never wanted. Don't worry about that, though. I'll work something out. Write me back if you want to plan something.
Regards,
Violet
AUTHOR'S NOTE.
it has to be said: the only part where i refuse to follow the movies is the factor that the werewolves wear JORTS. everyone who knows me knows that i LOATHE jorts with a passion. HENCE,,, the werewolves will wear SWEATPANTS like god INTENDED.
anywho... sorry bout the lack of paul again.... i feel like i have to say it again to justify myself but this is a Slowburn. Very Intense Slowburn. We'll get what we deserve at the end :)
also.... everyone go listen to I Think I'm OKAY by Machine Gun Kelly, Yungblud and Travis Barker!!!!! it's such a Violet song and i love it so much
anyway, thanks for reading, tell me your thoughts! have a great day/night/evening and go drink some water