CHAPTER TWO
homecoming

PRIVILEGE LENDS itself well to Violet Korchak.

First off, it helps that she is white from skin to the bone to her self-assured gait when moving in a crowd. Coupled with the fact that her family had a surplus of oil wealth and generations upon generations of old money, aided by powerful lawyers at their disposal, she was untouchable. Plus, Violet's father is one of the head doctors in Forks' only hospital. The family finances are more than comfortable, as well as Violet's free reign to do whatever she wants. Including, but not limited to: escaping trial for property destruction, arson, attempted murder, and more charges the judge had read aloud to the courtroom as the words flew over Violet's head after she'd heard that Livvy's rapist was in the hospital awaiting skin grafts.

Still, even as she had her sentence read out to her, before her lawyers stepped in to extricate her from the precarious situation, she'd felt not an ounce of remorse. No guilt. Only that justice had been served. Only the iron voice in her head, the mean part of her brain drenched in rot and a seething darkness that'd evolved into insanity, spreading outward like an oil spill, cell-by-cell, inch-by-inch, stain-by-stain:

—HE GOT WHAT HE DESERVED. ASHES TO ASHES—

Effectively, that meant an expulsion from Verity Prep, and a phone call to her father which went a little something like this:

Protocol dictated her arrest and immediate captivity in custody of the LAPD at least until someone could get ahold of her father. They'd confiscated her skateboard, cellphone, the three switchblades and butterfly knife she never went anywhere without. None of which she'd been happy to part with, but gave up voluntarily, knowing that any more resistance would slow down her progress. With her cuffed hands lying in her lap, Violet waited in confinement, taking her time in studying the room they'd left her in with detached interest. It was like any other interrogation room. Squarish, dusty linoleum floor tiles, with a locked door on one side and a metal table with two chairs on either end, on elf which she occupied. Nothing special, unnervingly plain and boring. White walls sentenced her to staring at her own reflection in a large mirror—a one-way mirror, really—built into one of the walls. Stale air sifted in the silence, the smell of rust and bleach stung her nostrils.

They let her stew for an hour.

Throughout that hour, the subliminal worry that he might send her even further than California lingered. Worry that her plan to burn through as many private schools as possible, as many acts of rebellion as she could risk, would backfire. With the resources they were armed with, her father could do anything. Rationality and prior experience guaranteed that no school was forgiving enough to take back a criminal—especially one who'd been charged for arson and attempted murder, etcetera. Still, the paranoia persisted. But Violet Korchak was nothing if not her father's daughter. While Luka had her mother's soft touch and sensitive soul, Violet was every inch of her father, made of stone and storms and smiles made for war.

(Violet's little sister, Wren, was somewhere in-between. A cowardly spirit with a petal-soft spine but a sharp tongue. While Violet's temper was measured in hurricanes and seismic events with the aim of maximum collateral damage, Wren's cruelties came in small, impish doses. Harmless cruelties that made you bleed, but left flesh wounds no deeper than the bite of a thorn in your side. A strange chemical mix of her father and her mother no one knew what to make of.)

Patience and perseverance would whittle away at the unrelenting deflection her father threw at her. He was every majestic cliff-face, silent and resilient. But she could be the ocean, ceaseless waves lapping away at the immovable rocks. They were both stubborn forces. For now, it was just a contest to see which one of them would crumble first. And Violet was only seventeen, a student on summer break tethered to no responsibilities and no regard for keeping up an image. While she had nothing to lose, her father—a busy man he was—had limited time as well as the family reputation to uphold.

Surely he wouldn't let her continue dragging the Korchak name in the mud.

True to expectation, the officer who'd left her in the interrogation room came back with a phone in hand and immense reluctance scrawled across his weary features. He was young, mid-twenties at most, not particularly remarkable and incredibly forgettable. Probably his first night shift, Violet noted, from the way he kept fidgeting like he thought he could do more, quite unlike the more jaded, dead-eyed officers who would've racked up some form of conversation about going home early to their kids. This officer met Violet's molten eyes with a disdainful scowl. She didn't have to be a telepath to know what he was thinking. Rich kids like Violet—made of old money and bottomless trust funds—got away with everything. Her name had been cleared.

Skin crawling in anticipation, Violet cocked her head, smirking in triumph. She held her hand out expectantly, and the chains of the handcuffs clattered sharply against the edge of the table. Lip curling, the officer pressed the phone into Violet's hands.

"It's your father," the officer said, curtly, moving back to station himself by the door. Constant vigilance wired across his rigid stance. "He wants to speak with you."

But before she brought the phone to her ear, Violet snapped her fingers at the officer, whose shot her a withering look. Arching a brow, she extended her wrists. The chain dangled between her cuffed hands, glinting like fangs in the fluorescent light. A muscle in the officer's jaw ticked as he obediently fished out a set of keys and unlocked the cuffs, complying with her wordless command. Good dog, she almost said, shedding her shackles and flexing her wrists. Her lips pull into a smile—smug and no teeth, not a happy smile, but a victorious one. Then, before she could back out, she put the phone to her ear.

"It's me," Violet drawled, leaning back in her chair.

"Violet. Noelle. Korchak."

Scorched with fury, her father's growl crackled through the receiver. Low and thunderous, earth rumbling, but not loud. An involuntary shiver ran down her spine, and her guts iced over. Elijah Korchak didn't need to raise his voice to be terrifying. Powerful people didn't have to shout to command a room. Just his presence alone could silence crowds. Could silence the iron voice inside her head, the one constantly whispering horrible, wicked things in her ears. She could feel its palpable absence now. The hollow wasteland it's carved out in her brain, where nothing grows anymore.

All her life, Violet had spent years trying to achieve the same thing, cultivating presence, sharpening her claws to the same clinical cruelty, with less than satisfactory results. They were more afraid of her many hidden blades and her uppercuts than they were of her as a person.

"Yes?" Careful to keep her voice steady, Violet flicked her gaze to the one-way mirror. She couldn't see out of it, but they could see in. They could see that she was on the phone with her father, and the call was no doubt being recorded at the moment. In the purgatorial tension, she kept her unfaltering stare on her reflection in the mirror. Not a trace of the fear that'd lanced through her chest at the sound of her father's voice was evident on her sharp features. She just looked bored.

Good.

"Seven schools. In four years."

"That's gotta be a record or something, right?" She props her feet up on the table and flashes the scowling officer—who was still hovering by the door—a predatory grin, as though she could rip his throat out with her teeth alone. Her sneakers weren't soiled, but the blue canvas was fading and they were considerably ratty from the number of times she's stepped in puddles and abrasive rough-handling she'd put them through time and time again. The aglets from her left sneaker had snapped off from being scraped against the coarse sandpaper material of her skateboard's grip-tape. She hadn't had time to order new sneakers. Although, she could see why he worried they might leave filth on the table.

"Are you proud of what you've become?"

Her blood turned to slush. She hadn't heard that iron voice in her head since she'd picked up her father's call. Because it wasn't in her head anymore. Not for the duration of this call, at least.

It was coming from the other end of the line.

"Please," she sneered, inspecting her nails, ignoring the fissures in her soul, one tap away from shattering. "That boy deserved what he got. You've heard about it, I assume? Surely you're not going to defend a rapist. The guy who raped my dead best friend, by the way."

"Enough, Violet," her father snarled. Her pulse roared like a renegade freight train against the skin of her neck, echoing in the hollow tunnel of her ears.

"No school in California would take me in with the record I currently have," Violet prompted. Keeping a watchful eye on her reflection, on the easy twist of her lips, the piercing frost in her eyes, the impenetrable marble mask she's learnt to school her features into. Control. That's what all this was about. Power equals control. Every powerful person knows that the first thing one must be able to master is themselves. The next thing was gaining control of the situation. Being able to manipulate another's weaknesses, marking multiple targets and pulling on all the strings until they collapsed. So Violet drew a circle around her father's defenceless spots. And pulled. "Plus all these stunts are getting more and more expensive to cover up, aren't they? How much more damage can our family funds take before the reservoir runs dry? How many hits to your reputation can you afford?"

A beat of silence pounded into the receiver. Pounded in her skull. Inside, the darkness flexed its claws. Violet tilts her head, awaiting her father's response. In the one-way mirror, her reflection smirks back coolly.

"You've always been a difficult child," her father sighed, solemn and distant and tinged with disgust. Tinged with the condescending manner one might address a petulant toddler with.

"I know," Violet said, suppressing the urge to hurl the phone into the glass, just to watch the shards explode like lethal confetti. That would be too childish of her, and she knew that her father had more connections further than America. The last thing she needed was to be excised from California only to end up being dumped in Europe, with her mother's relatives. So she fights to hold onto her strings. Fights to be the Violet her father needed to hear from. Not the pathetic, snivelling little girl crumpled in that parking lot. Not the vulnerable, helpless weakling the monsters had reduced her to. Not the girl who cried herself to sleep for a brother who would never come home. That girl had died four years ago. This Violet had killed her, unable to stand the sight of such a cowardly thing, and taken her place. This Violet spoke in storms, made puppets of people, ruthless and void of mercy just like her father. This Violet didn't need saving. This Violet was the monster. "I know. But you know what you can do."

She could hear her father's controlled breathing on the other end of the line. For a moment, she feared he might hang up on her. Leave her stranded in California, cut off from her trust fund, lost and forever wandering and reduced to nothing. The mere thought drained the energy from her body. Left her with the cracks in her reflection, made of broken parts and pyrrhic victories. Every monstrous deed she had committed for nothing. In the silence, the ticking of the clock in the corner of the room hammered against her eardrums, in tandem with her heartbeat. Each tick, each second that slipped by ricocheting against the four walls of the room.

"What do you want from me, Violet?"

Blood rushed back into her head. All the tension dissolved from her muscles, the ice slid out of her spine.

"You know what I want," she told him. In the glass, her reflection seemed backlit, something crawled out the deths of Hell, a red tint flickering against her pale complexion. As though she was still standing before the burning frat house, watching it burn to ashes. Watching as people choked on the smoke billowing out through the windows. Watching as the flames swallowed the entire building, left it a scorched husk. Watched as the monsters seething in the shadows slithered under her nail beds and into her skin. Hallucinations conjured from memory.

"I want to come home."

☾

TIME PASSES IN an unmemorable blur and before Violet knows it, she's sitting in her driver's car and suppressing the urge to vomit from the pervasive motion sickness that'd germinated from a mildly irritating headache in the beginning of the trip.

As the car—a black sedan, sleek and positively gleaming, just like she remembered from her childhood—skids down the highways, the journey from the airport is quiet, laden with a tar-thick silence that drowns out the rain and the iron voice inside her head. With California left in the dust, there is only a couple miles left between now and Forks. Riding out another wave of nausea that'd risen from the depths of her violently lurching guts, Violet rests her temple against the glass, sighing as the cold seeps into her skin, icing over her skull. This was why she didn't drive. Never bothered to get her license, even though she could have any selection of cars she wanted. Plus, she wasn't all that interested in cars, anyway. She has her skateboard and that is more than enough.

Lounging with leonine arrogance in the backseat, Violet gazes out the window at the world that streaks by, all the colours of the road and the lush greenery on the cusp of her hometown running together in a drenched watercolour painting. Outside, a storm charges over the road that stretches for miles as the rain pummels the car with the messianic vehemence of a million minute missiles. At one point, Violet was convinced the windshield might shatter under the torrential downpour.

In the rearview mirror, she meets her driver's unnerved eyes, notices the unsettled discomfort in them as they dart away furtively. She smirks.

"Are we there yet?" Violet pipes, propping her feet up against the back of the passenger's seat. Her driver doesn't comment about the dirt stains the bottom of her sneakers leave on the grey leather. Though, Violet notices the little irritated crease between his brows and pointedly ignores it. It's not her problem, anyway.

"Five minutes, ma'am."

Bouncing her knee in agitation, Violet spreads her skeletal fingers across the window, palm flat against the glass, watching the streaking raindrops race each other down to annihilation at the bottom. In the glass, her own pallid face, washed down by the rain, obscures the view. For a minute, she's forced to confront the stranger in the glass, the light smatter of freckles on her cheekbones from sunbathing on the rooftop with Livvy and the other stoner kids back at Verity Prep, the bleach-blonde hair cropped to her shoulders.

Reflection-Violet stares back, with shadows in place of eyes, a darkness wicking off her tapered edges, sharp jaw and sharper teeth. Reflection-Violet smiles. Violet clenches her jaw. It's all in your head. It's all in your head, becomes the mantra that anchors her to the ground. Stops her from drifting too far. Keeping her feet on the ground and her head screwed on right is crucial before she meets her father again, for the first time in four years. So she recoils from the glass, casts her eyes to anywhere else. Anywhere else would be safer than herself. Her eyes land on her skateboard and her yellow backpack, lying beside her in a heap on the rear seat.

Quickly, all too quickly, the roads diverge and begins to thin out and so does the rain, which lets up into the lightest of showers. Outside, the world is a smudge, a ghost shell of a ghost town. There are people milling about with their umbrellas, swallowed by dull parkas and raincoats, but they trudge along like motorised corpses.

Forks is nothing like she remembers. Perhaps it's because she's gotten used to the warm air, the blue Californian skies, a sun that doesn't hide behind a perpetual blanket of omen-stuffed clouds, and the sprawling streets that aren't too cramped or shining with murky puddles from light drizzles. Perhaps she's grown acclimated to the smoother roads, bright days that don't look like shadowy evenings, the lack of green and this ever-present, clammy dampness clinging nefariously to the air. Perhaps it only looks different because she knows that Luka's not here anymore and her mother took Wren with her to London.

Home. Such a foreign concept. This Earth hasn't felt anywhere close in four years. Strange how most people she knew regarded Forks as a place for leaving. Stranger so to think how she used to be the same, before Luka died and her father sent her away. When they were younger, she'd make all these budget-less travel plans with Luka. A one-way ticket out of Forks and another going all over the world. Luka wanted to see penguins. At the memory, faded like an old photograph, Violet's heart clenches. She banishes all thought of her dead brother from her head. Now the roles are reversed, and Forks was the only place she wanted to be. Leaving Forks felt more like running away. And the cowardly concept never sat right with her. This was what her father never understood. Facing her demons in a head-on collision adhered more truthfully to her intrinsic nature.

Eventually, the car rolls to a stop before a gated complex, a private cul-de-sac at the end of a distinguishable street lined neatly with opulent houses belonging to the more affluent side of Forks. Her driver rolls down his window and speaks into an intercom by the iron gates, which open with a mechanical groan. The window rolls back up. The car noses forward into the driveway.

"Welcome home, Miss Korchak," the driver murmurs, killing the engine and climbing out of the car. He rounds the front and opens her door. A languid smirk slips onto her lips as she straightens, skateboard in hand and her yellow backpack slung over one shoulder. The door shuts behind her and her driver pops the boot open to drag out her two white luggages.

          Violet glances up at the sky. It's stopped raining. (For now.) Though the clouds still glower down upon the small, cowering town with promise of more.

"Is my father here?"

"He's at work, ma'am." Despite her luggages weighing at least sixty kilos each, the driver didn't sound the least bit winded as he set them on the ground, shut the boot, and tugged them on their wheels towards the front door. "He'd be back for dinner at eight, but if you have anything you need, just let me know. Until then, you're free to settle in and reacquaint yourself with Forks. But he might call in every now and then to check in on you."

Violet grunts. "Figured he'd be around to see me arrive instead of dumping me with a baby-sitter."

"Your father is a very busy man—"

"Yeah, I know," Violet cut him off, waving a hand nonchalantly. Really, she isn't hurt. Not one bit. There are perks to having a father who saw more patients than the inside of his own house or the face of his own daughter. Like the fact that she has free reign to do whatever she wants, which she's down to do, always. With a devilish glint in her eyes, she regards the driver. "Well, it's only ten in the morning. Did he say anything about me leaving the house?"

Amusement sparks in her driver's expression. It's only once they step over the threshold of the house that she remembers his name. A vague echo down memory lane. Adam, she thinks. Or was it Allen? Anyhow, it was something entirely nondescript that began with an 'A'. He'd been working for her family since she was seven.

When they pass through the foyer, Violet notes how nothing's changed—still marble and minimalist, of pristine tiles and stylish edges, still a house not truly lived-in but ornamental enough to impress guests—besides the blatant lack of flowers in the empty vases and anything flamboyantly feminine. Even though the pictures are still hanging along the walls, it's clear that her mother's fingerprints seemed to have grown cold, if not almost non-existent since her parents' divorce a couple years back. The death of a child and the insanity of another might do that to an already strained marriage.

Violet makes a mental note to write her younger sister later. Wren's written her hundreds of letters—one every single day—in the past four years and not one of them had been answered. Now that she's home, she's ready to pick up where she's left off.

"I figured you'd find your way out of the estate anyway, with or without permission." Like a cat, really, her father would've described. If she didn't want to do anything, she couldn't be forced to. If she wanted something, she couldn't be stopped.

"Smart guy," Violet hums.

"I'll leave you to it then," Adam or Allen muses, leaves her luggages by the stairs for the maids to do away with, and slips into the kitchen.

☾

BEFORE HEADING UP to her room, Violet kicks both luggages over so they lie flat on the ground instead of standing erect, and sifts through her clean clothes for a new pair of mustard yellow Vans, a fresh set of underwear, a pair of black jeans and a long-sleeved Thrasher tee. Then, with the bundle of apparel tucked under one arm and her skateboard in another, she takes the stairs two at a time and emerges on the third floor, panting hard from the physical exertion. Chest heaving, lungs seizing, but more awake than she'd been since stepping onto the plane. Awake and pulse-jerkingly alive as she pretends she doesn't see the endarkened door to Luka's room opposite hers, a door that won't ever open again, and flings the door to her old room open.

Everything is just as she'd left it. From the white sheets of her bed, to the vacant desk she never once used in all the time it's been there, to the barren floor disturbed by only a few old, and worn-down skateboard decks stacked neatly against the side of her emptied-out dresser, all the way down to the sting of carbolic from the hardwood floors in her nostrils. The white walls are still covered in old indie-rock band posters that Luka introduced to her, indie-rock bands she can't listen to anymore. In the flesh-eating heartache, she contemplates tearing them down. She's acquired a new music taste, after all, new posters to tack up in place of these painful reminders. Music of the angry girl persuasion, the Riot Grrrl era that Luka never really understood the appeal of.

Aside from the posters, her room is, essentially, a hollow cavity picked straight out of an IKEA catalogue. There are the bare bones of a bedroom—bed, dresser, desk, closet—but not much personality to flesh it out, marking it as Violet's only. Spotless enough to pass a military inspection, obviously maintained by the cleaners, since there's not even a speck of dust left on the windows. Just like the other parts of the house, her room didn't look lived-in at all.

Most of Violet's time had been spent with her friends, Sage and Kit—her old, unbreakably exclusive sidewalk tribe—which meant the more sentimental items had remained in Kit's room, where the three of them would hang around and (on rare occasions) do their homework together.

For a heart-wrenching moment, Violet wonders if Kit had gotten rid of all her old things. Or if both Sage and Kit might ever forgive Violet for losing contact with them within minutes of surpassing the border that marked Forks. Perhaps they'd forgotten.

—FORGOTTEN IS BETTER YOU'LL DIE WITHOUT A TRACE LIKE YOU NEVER EXISTED AT ALL—

Less pain, less mess, less loose ends.

Clenching her jaw, she dumps her backpack and her skateboard at the foot of her bed, and heads to the bathroom for a quick shower. As she peels off her clothes, she ignores the scars on her forearms. A hundred little tally marks clustered at her wrists—tally marks she'd etched onto herself with the razor blades sitting like tiny bombs in a small container in her backpack. Older marks that were faded and silver with time, spreading upward to her elbows, where the newer ones glared back, angry pink scar tissue and freshly puckered with older infections. She'd thrown away all her short sleeved shirts. With the nightmare scrawled into her skin, when visible, her forearms seemed to attract just as much pity and horror as her rebellious antics were a magnet for scorn.

By the time she gets out, it's almost eleven, and she's got her entire day planned out in her head.

Sort of.

Nobody interrupts her as she rushes down the stairs—skateboard in hand and backpack strapped to her shoulders—through the foyer, only pausing to poke her head into the kitchen to check on Adam (or Allen?), who was still leaning against the minibar nursing a drink with the house cook, Pauline. Without a goodbye or a word of where she'd be headed, Violet hurricanes out the front door and lets the slamming of the front door give indication of her ensuing absence.

Once she's got both feet planted on the tarmac, Violet throws her skateboard on the ground, steps on, and tears off through the gates that automatically part for her, through the streets, plunging into the suburban wild.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
we got some paul in the next chapter!!!!!!!
how do we feel about violet abusing her privilege? i tried making her kinda unlikeable so i get it if she puts you all off now LOL