CHAPTER ONE
ashes to ashes

THIS IS HOW A PERSON DIES:

Flames dancing over a body in a crematorium. Flames flickering in and out of consciousness, shadows dancing over the people standing around, watching the face of a girl—too young, barely seventeen, too filled with promise, such a pity—streak with black, peel away into ash and bone. So this is what's left of Livvy Horlick, Violet thinks. Once the flesh and fat and organs melt away, there's nothing but ash and bone and memories. So this is what's left of my roommate. It seems so bizarre to think that Livvy had just been joking about dyeing Violet's pubic hair two nights ago, and then the next, Violet had found her hanging from the ceiling fan, no more laugh in her eyes.

Violet Korchak tries not to drown in Livvy's mother's heartbreak, but she's being dragged under by her own riptide of misery. It's getting harder and harder to breathe. Over Livvy's mother's shoulder, she watches as they feed Livvy's body to the flames for the cremation ceremony. As the last of her roommate disappears forever, Violet thinks about the summer day Livvy dumped ice cream down Violet's boy-shorts and, on a vindictive streak of revenge, Violet pushed her into the swimming pool. Now the entire school's at Livvy's funeral. Funny how quickly things can change.

And she grieves for how she'll never hear Livvy's laugh again. How she will never get to see through all those bucket-list plans they'd made for the summer after graduation. When Violet walks out of the crematorium, the world looks all wrong, like a jacket three sizes too small. Inside—in her head, in her heart, in the Livvy-sized hole sucker punched through her chest—is both too much and nothing at all.

All that's left of Livvy now are ashes. Ashes and memories. Memories and pain. Two days ago, she was here. Corporeal and breathing. Today, her corpse bears ligature marks from a rope burn around her broken neck and a deathlike pallor. Livvy is gone.

    "I'm sorry," Livvy's mother sobs, swiping expensive mascara stains from under her eyes. Her chest trembles. Violet looks away. They're standing on the sidewalk now, outside the crematorium with all the others, dressed head-to-toe in black and drenched in melancholy. "I'm so sorry, Violet."

    "It's okay," Violet says, but her voice is tight. "She means too much for both of us."

    "You're always welcome at our house, you know that, right?"

    "Of course," Violet lies, and she wants to tell the woman before her, the woman who was more of a mother to her than her own, I'm leaving. I can't stay in California. For awhile, I thought I could, because I met Livvy, and she made me feel less bent out-of-shape when my father dumped me at the gates of Verity Prep, where I was the only one with a skateboard and scars underneath the sleeves of my uniform in a sea of kids who should be like me. Old money and trust fund babies. Except, they're not, because I was too pale and from middle-of-nowhere Forks and I see a psychotherapist after school thrice a week. Because there's too much death inside my head. First, Luka and, now, Livvy.

I can't stay.

There's that black-out anger again. Pounding into the back of her eyelids, that messianic anger sharpening its pillar of knives in the depths of her soul, that inhuman hatred, flexing its inferno claws. Waiting to turn on the wrong person in the right place. Waiting to kill.

Someone took Livvy away from me. That person must pay.

An iron voice in her head growls.

    —THERE'S ONLY ONE PERSON IN THIS WORLD WHO DESERVES THIS WRATH—

Violet flinches. Ever since Luka died, her mind has become a halfway house to something darker. Something she can't outrun. Even on her skateboard, where she's the fastest. It's sunk its claws into her and refuses to let go. Refuses to stop whispering ugly things into her ear. Sometimes she feels it, pacing like a caged tiger in the back of her mind. She feels it now, wrapping its jaws around her brain. Dark matter with glowing eyes and monster teeth.

    —YOU KNOW WHO IT IS. HE'S SITTING IN HIS FRATHOUSE, LAUGHING WITH HIS BROTHERHOOD ABOUT THE GIRL WHO HE TOUCHED WHILE SHE COULDN'T TELL HIM YES OR NO—

Briefly, Violet wonders: does that make her a monster? How badly she wants to bring him to his knees, rip and rend his world to pieces, tear his life apart just as he tore apart Livvy's? It rots her insides, this question with only an echo for an answer, as it sits in her leaden chest heavy with heartbreak and a pillar of her anger-knives. Already, people are forgetting. Forgetting Livvy's name. Forgetting this injustice wreaked upon her. Somehow, forgetting feels too much like forgiving and Violet would rather slam her toes in a meat grinder than let him off the hook this easy. So she doesn't.

    —ANGER IS A KILLING THING; ARE YOU READY TO BEAR THE AVALANCHE?—

When they ask why she did it, why girls like Violet Korchak couldn't have stayed away from the flames instead of playing in its shadow, she will tell them this:

Olivia Horlick was seventeen years old with so much to hope for and so many plans in her head she never got to check off. All her friends loved her and their parents would've given anything and everything they had to get her back. She was at a college party on a Saturday night, and it didn't matter if she was in jeans or a skirt because she was alone and vulnerable and stumbling with no direction and all her rapist saw was easy prey. That boy sat in his frathouse, untouchable and untouched. That boy walked free with his future and his education and his life intact while Livvy lost the fight and had to give up hers.

That rapist does not have a right to brush this murder off like it's another day or another hook-up gone wrong; like it's a paper-cut accident, a trivial mistake that didn't shake the world. That rapist should not be guiltless. But he was and that is the truth that will always prevail with every rapist who will always sit protected by the law enforcers and expensive attorneys and wouldn't own up to what they did, and what they took and what they will keep taking and taking and taking.

His name, Violet forgets. His deeds, she doesn't. Not ever.

So, later, when everyone's gone home and the light retreats, Violet sets everything he has on fire. It is midnight and the gasoline drenching his house and his car gleams like silver pools under the moonlight cutting into the estate. Light the fire and watch it all burn down.

Because one moment she was looking at the frat house, then everything was RED RED RED—a hot flash surging through her body, boiling her blood, a raging inferno in her veins. One moment she was listening to the roaring of her blood in her ears, a whole ocean of it, a tempestuous storm against her bones, and the next the match was lit, and, like falling dominos, the world kicked into motion the moment the flame stuck the gasoline. One moment the night was quiet, the next the house was on fire, a fire that burns brighter, hotter, hungrier than a normal house fire, and there are people inside screaming.

And so Violet stands, in the hellish midst of it all. She stands and she watches. Watch the flames lick and feel their way around, blind but hungry and unsympathetic. Watch him lose everything in one night, watch him finally feel the pain she felt because this is what he deserves.

    —TELL ME, HOW DOES IT FEEL TO WATCH EVERYTHING YOU LOVE TURN TO ASHES?—

What she feels while watching the tower of flames scorch the walls and collapse the foundation isn't catharsis or satisfaction or remorse. It isn't power or sorrow or grief. Smoke billowing from the windows, pouring into the air in black plumes, incendiary and so thick with the miasma of vengeance she chokes on it. As the screams for help cut through the unforgiving night, the world stands by, stands apart from the suffering inside. Violet feels the heated gaze of the neighbours, one-by-one, the lights flickering on in windows of rooms, surveillance zeroing in on Violet and her destruction. She feels the criminal's chokehold she's put herself in, but she breathes a little better now.

These eyes are in every inch of the neighbourhood. Violet knows they're seeing everything, those blinking eyes of people she had no love for. They've probably already identified her, traced her to her intentions within the five minutes she's been in proximity of the house. But she does not run and hide. You cannot prolong or prevent the inevitable, but you can savour their displeasure, how unsettled they must feel, when you look them directly in the eyes and plant your feet in the ground. Little wreck of rebellion, glowing in the lambent embers, lifting her chin and setting her jaw in vandalist's defiance: he killed her first, now i kill him back because she's not here to do it for herself. herself and all the other girls who might follow. what are you going to do about it?

As the roof collapses with an ancient groan, a loud crack and a thunderous crash, as the windows shatter in an explosion of glass like crystal confetti, tinkering softly on the sidewalk, as, scream by scream, the fire blazes bright as a chaos sun into the night, taking and taking and taking.

In the searing heat, Violet looks down at her hands. Hands that birthed this fire. Hands that are wet with gasoline, with murder, with destruction.

    —THIS IS YOUR FIRE YOU DID THIS YOU MADE THAT THEY CAN'T TAKE IT FROM YOU YOU YOU YOU ARE DIFFERENT YOU AREN'T WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE—

So what am I? Violet asks the iron voice in her head, bewildered. If I am not human, what else can I be?

    —A DISTURBANCE IN THE NATURAL ORDER—

Sweat beads on her forehead, cascades in rivulets crying down her temples, trickling down her neck, streaming down her back, sticking her shirt to her skin, covered in a filthy layer of soot and grime.

In the midnight serenade of police sirens wailing in the distance, the pulsing ringing of the fire alarms, cruisers slicing down the streets like a swarm of sharks closing in on a lone target, Violet pulls the hood of her grey jacket over her bowed head as the smoke smothers her senses and her eyes stream. Coughing, she drops her skateboard down on the ground, puts one foot on and tears off in the other direction. Away from the burning house, now half-eaten by smouldering cinders, crumbling to pieces, a car melting into a puddle liquid metal. Away from the flames swallowing the many lives inside. One life she meant to turn to ash, and the many others who did not deserve the same fate, but were caught in the crossfire. Away from the sirens and the cops and the fire department. Away from the prying eyes watching her book it out of the neighbourhood, cut a corner, and slip into the shadows of an alleyway.

Disappearing forever from sight. Away, away, away.

    —BUT YOU CAN'T RUN FROM THE ANGER, CAN YOU?—

    "I can," Violet murmurs, fervent and desperate under her breath, wind in her face as she zips down the concrete, carrying the words away, away, away. I can, I can, I can. Here come the aftershocks. The rage has worn off. People have died for this. People have lost the fight. Livvy is dead, but so is her rapist.

And so are the many others in the fraternity who weren't at fault.

Nausea washes over her body in waves. Bile surges up her throat. The front trucks of her skateboard catch on a crack in the pavement and her body lurches forward. She hits the ground hard. Instinct takes over from there. Arms wrapped over her head instinctively to shield herself from cracking her skull open, she rolls to absorb the impact of her fall. When she comes to a stop just at the lip of another alleyway, oozing darkness and shadows, she leans to the side and retches. Acid burns her throat, leaves an acrid taste in her mouth. When she's done puking her guts out on the ground, she flips back onto her back and lies there, head spinning a million miles per hour, stomach churning in discomfort.

Dazed, Violet stares up at the sky, at the buildings towering over her limp figure in silent judgement, listening to the sounds of the city against the pounding bass of her fluttering heartbeat under her skin. Trash flutters in the slight breeze. She can still smell the smoke clinging to her clothes, tangled in her dark hair, sticking to her skin in streaks of black grime. Her teeth taste like rot. Although, in the moment, that's not the most disgusting thing about her.

    —WHEN DO YOU THINK YOU'LL KILL NEXT?—

Her stomach twists. Her breath tastes sour. All the energy's been drained from her body and all that'd left is a shell. A girl-nothing.

Some might think it harsh, the unforgivable violence exacted upon those men. But some men deserved to be marked. So the next time someone asked about their missing chunk of skin from their cheekbone, or the puckered scar tissue crippling the cartilage of their ear, they'd have to speak into existence the cold, ugly truth: I tried to rape a girl, roofied her and almost made it behind a bedroom door where nobody would know the truth before someone whacked me in the face with a broken beer bottle. Some men don't deserve mercy.

Burning down that boy's—that rapist's—home, setting his car ablaze, scarring him forever with the prospect of skin grafts and punching that vengeance-sized hole in his life hadn't been Violet's first count of aggression by far.

Seven schools in four years.

Each one she goes through, accumulating tens of hundreds of malevolent troublemaking strikes. Call it a history, even though the menace only truly commenced when her father sent her away to California with no promise of visits during the term breaks, or communication with her friends from Forks. Very quickly, she'd learnt that no matter how much she complained, no matter how well she did at school, no matter how many classes she skipped just to smoke in parking lots with the "bad company" kids, there was no way her father would let her come home. So she began waging her own rebellion. If he was going to prohibit her return to Forks, she was going to make it very difficult for him to let her stay in California.

Seven schools in four years. No matter how prestigious or expensive, Violet saw each prep school an obstacle in her warpath.

In those four years alone, she needed more than her own fingers and toes to count how many detentions, suspensions, counselling sessions (not psychotherapy—yes, there's a difference), Troubled Youth Programmes, and court ordered community service she'd attended. Her father's connections and the recognition of her family's wealth was enough to get her out of most sticky situations with the authorities. But not enough for her to remain in the same school for more than six months at a time.

In most circles, it was common knowledge that Violet Korchak had a problem with controlling her temper. They say she's violent and unpredictable, a ticking time bomb. That was how people at school looked at her when she walked by them in the hallways, when she strode into class half an hour late, when she slumped in seats in the back of class and made no effort to even pretend she wasn't listening. Nobody knew when she would blow up. They said the only thing predictable about her was the inevitability of an explosive episode. So they watch her, measuring the magnitude of every seismic event, every rumbling at her core, the smoke billowing from her mouth. Until one day there comes the unpremeditated eruption. The subsequent destruction. The aftermath of an angry girl's lullaby.

They'd expelled her from St Xavier's Academy—the first school she'd been enrolled in—for pulling a knife on someone and stabbing them through the hand with a pencil on the same day.

In another, she'd put someone in the ER for invading her personal space.

She's burnt down chapels attached to three of the Catholic schools she's attended and subsequently expelled from. Not because she was drunk or reckless, but because she was desperate for her father to see. See this, see her, see the things she would continue to do. The people she would continue to hurt.

People were afraid of her.

    —WHO'S THE MONSTER NOW?—

So this—the house on fire, the too-quiet night punctured by the wailing sirens, the fire trucks thundering up the streets—was nothing new. Well, relatively. She's never murdered anyone before.

But there's no way to know for sure that the boys inside that frat house are dead.

—NOT YET—

Even though she's far away, the smoke still clings to her, the flames still lick at her feet, sweat soaks the back of her neck, plastering her hair to her temples. There's no coming back from this.

What would Luka think if he could see you now? A bitter voice in the back of her head snaps.

The question snags in her heart like a fishhook to the chest, pulling and pulling, digging and ripping apart the muscle with every second that passes in silence. But Luka is dead. Long gone since she was thirteen. Now, she is seventeen and she is different. Gone is the girl who cried herself to sleep because her older brother's room felt too empty. Gone is the girl who felt anything besides the vindictive tempest in her veins. Gone is the girl who cowered under the covers because the shadows grew teeth and every moving shape looked too much like the woman in her dreams.

Gone is weak, vulnerable, helpless. Gone is the girl who let Luka die. In her place, chaos grows. A girl with teeth sharper than the monsters in her head. A girl who punches to damage and not just to disarm, who keeps knives in her pockets, who doesn't let a single person close enough to touch her without permission. A girl who has the power to hurt with no remorse, who sets fire to homes and lights her cigarettes with the flames.

With a renewed energy, Violet flips over and gets back onto her feet. She kicks her skateboard into the right position, and rides it to a nearby park. One close enough to the flames so she can still see the orange glow and the smoke pouring into the sky, painting over the stars. It is there that she watches. Watches and waits. They'll have to expel her now. How many private schools are there left in California? How many will take her in now?

A smirk tugs at her lips.

It will come back to you, the bitter voice in the back of her head says, and Violet has a feeling it's the one that keeps tallies of her malices. Much like the tally marks scarred onto her forearms. How are you better than Luka's murderer?

A police cruiser pulls up the moment she lands a kickflip off the stairs leading up to the slide and the flashing lights paint the night in red and blue. Like Christmas, she thinks.

So, yes, it's true. There's no denying the facts. Everything you tip into the world, the world tips back into you.

This is how you kill someone.

This is how a person dies.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
SO here's the thing: the rest of this story will be in third person pov!