CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
i hurt myself sometimes,
is that too scary for you?

THERE IS VERY LITTLE ATTENTION paid to girls in skate parks, even when they have a skateboard tucked under their elbows like they know their stuff.

(And in actual fact, Violet does know her stuff. There are little things in life that she isn't certain of—important things, mostly—but when it comes to skating, it's the only thing she knows in its entirety. The only thing that would never abandon her, unless someone forcibly cut her legs off.)

When a girl walks into any skate park, the first thing she'll see is boys cruising in shark packs scratching up the concrete, thundering up and down ramps, wheels screaming with a cruel vengeance against the ground as they fly past on their boards. The first thing she'll smell is the imposing ocean of testosterone, aggressive waves of it surging against her skin. Sometimes, it gets overwhelming. Sometimes, they'll overshoot their landing and shave the pavement a little too close to you and carve a second before your nose hits their shoulders. Sometimes, you'll feel the need to back out and run towards somewhere less populated. Somewhere you're by yourself with nobody else.

But Violet, Sage and Kit barely feel the judgemental looks shot their way when they walk into Tillicum skatepark, throwing their skateboards on the ground to mark out their territory, a fearless sidewalk tribe of bruised knees and undaunted edge and shark-teeth cruising on their skateboards at a speed that should be throwing sparks from under their wheels. Nobody would chase them away. It was just them three and every bruise, every secret whispered into the void, every scratch and tumble, every hard fall and rolled ankle, every memory etched into scar tissue against the world. Until Sage almost fought a guy with her bare fists for cutting into her path while she'd been skating, ruining her line. In any other scenario, Violet would've knifed the guy there and then, or she might've gone the less primitive route and figured out his name, figured out what his father did for a living, ruined his life a little bit, but before she could decide on how best to exploit her father's power or indulge in her own violence, Kit had ushered them out of the park and dragged them both by the scruff of their necks like kittens towards her house.

(On the way, Violet had made up her mind: it wasn't worth it.)

"I don't get it," Sage said, frowning at Violet like she was a half-scrambled and virtually unsolvable thousand-piece puzzle on a coffee table. She sat on the top of the ramp, legs dangling over the edge, as she reviewed the video recordings of Violet and Kit's lines.

"It's not that hard," Violet said, kicking her skateboard back onto its trucks and planting one foot on it. "I mean once you get the angle right—"

"No, no, I don't mean, like, the kick-flip." Sage waved a dismissive hand. "I meant the other thing. Bella. She's kinda hot, just saying."

Even before Sage's clarification, Violet already knew what she was going to bring up. After school, after Violet's weekly therapy session with Dr Josten, and after the entire fiasco at Tillicum, she'd come to Kit's backyard skatepark with the intention of forgetting the entire situation. Just for a moment. Skating was always an in-the-moment thing. In the moment, she could think of nothing else, could do nothing else but let the mechanics of the next trick take over in muscle memory. There was no time to think when skating. Each moment critical to the balance and focus, and nothing else to distract her from perfecting a trick. That's what she needed now. A moment not to think about anything, to leave her own head for a little while. The last thing she wanted to talk about was Bella Swan and her involvement with Victoria.

Earlier, she'd already given the girls a rundown of her entire interaction with Alice in the bathroom, then the lunchtime ordeal with Bella and Edward, in addition to a brief summary of today, when Bella had caught her in the hallway with another attempt at friendship or something akin to that. But it'd been the last class of the day, and all Violet wanted to do was get this afternoon's therapy session over and done with so she could skate with Kit and Sage. What she'd purposefully omitted from the recount, though, was that she'd managed to wrangle Alice Cullen's number out of Bella.

Shielding her eyes with one hand, Violet tipped her head back, letting the warm rays stroke her skin. For once in a long time, the sky wasn't all clouds and ever-present gloom. Just the barest of blue, but it's enough to draw people out of their homes. They'd passed a few kids in bathing suits sunning themselves on their front lawns on the way back to Kit's house.

"Yeah, but she's grossly straight," Violet said, with a derisive flick of her fingers. "She just thinks that just because we're both involved with the Victoria thing means we're gonna be tight. Something to bond over, or whatever."

"Maybe she's lonely," Kit said, swiping the back of her hand over her sweat-slicked forehead. Lying on her back beside Sage, Kit squinted up at Violet. "Jake says she doesn't really have any human friends who understand her position. That must be fucking miserable. Think about it. Sage is just as involved as you are since Victoria saw her too, so at least you've got her. But Bella has no one. She's surrounded by vampires and werewolves, and all her human friends are very removed from the situation. That's gotta suck."

"I mean, yeah, I guess I can understand that." Violet shrugged. "Still, not my problem."

Sage snorted. "Cold-ass bitch."

Lip curling, Violet mimed kicking Sage's head in. Sage ducked, letting out a shrill cackle as she held her arms up to shield her face.

Shaking her head, Kit sighed.

"Man, I need to pee so bad," Violet grunted.

"Paul isn't home," Sage said, smirking a little. "Just thought you should know."

Violet rolled her eyes. "Shut up."

Kit made a face. "I'm just gonna pretend I'm not hearing all this."

A devilish gleam sparked in Sage's eyes, and in that dawning moment, Violet knew deep in her bones that Sage was going to say something that might establish herself as the biggest asshole on the planet. So, before she has the chance to yell something lewd about Paul and Violet, Violet put her hands to her ears, and walked backwards into the house, making a beeline for the guest bathroom.

Before she could shut the door, it was shoved open abruptly as Sage ducked into the tiny space, the sudden intrusion forcing Violet against the sink. In a flash, Sage had the door shut and locked, and as she whipped round to face Violet, who looked at her like she'd grown five extra heads, Sage went to seize Violet's wrist.

"Dude, what the fuck—"

"Quiet," Sage hissed, tightening her grip on Violet's wrist as Violet tried to squirm out of her hold. Somehow, she'd managed to flick the tap on in the midst of the fray.

Panic gripped Violet in a chokehold as the hem of her long-sleeved shirt threatened to slip up her forearm, exposing her scars. She fought Sage, but, like a wolf closing its jaws around the neck of its shaking prey, Sage's fingers only dug deeper into her flesh, determined to prevent Violet from escaping her iron grasp. Sage had already seen Violet's scars once. In the middle of the woods, the day Victoria had shown up. Months went by and the knowledge of Violet's secret sat between them like a smoking shell dropped in an occupied foxhole that they've been hunched over, tense and waiting for it to blow, with every excruciating minute that passed, unable to decide if it were a dud or not, too afraid to move an inch even if their noses itched on the malicious chance that it might take their skin off. Just because Sage had seen her scars already didn't mean that Violet wanted to put them on display a second time.

"Sage, I'm warning you," Violet said, heart pounding, adrenaline burning warpaths through her veins. In a moment of desperation, Violet might've hurt Sage. It didn't matter that she would never intentionally harm any of her friends. It didn't matter that this was Sage Harker, the girl who'd broken noses for Violet before, the girl who'd taught her the art of shoplifting, the girl who'd stuck by her despite the cost of becoming the mad and volatile rich girl's friend. All Violet could think of in the moment was protecting her secret. Fear drove people to do the ugliest things.

"Dammit, Vi," Sage snarled, something wild writhing in her eyes. "Stop thinking about yourself just this once and just listen to me, okay? We don't have much time before Kit comes looking for us."

Violet froze up.

Behind her, the sink gurgled. The problem of Kit's heightened hearing must've been why Sage had turned it on, covering them with a wall of white noise as water gushed from the faucet.

"I can't stop thinking about them," Sage said, her voice weak and small. She eyed Violet's sleeve, but couldn't seem to muster the courage to push it up. "Ever since I saw them, I've... I can't get the picture out of my head."

Violet let out a choked laugh. "Jesus, it's nothing, okay? Don't—"

"It isn't nothing," Sage cut in, swallowing nervously, eyes darting towards the locked door like it could explode in a shower of splinters and broken pieces of wood and Kit would be standing on the other side, demanding why they were taking so long. "You don't think that I should care? You're my best friend, Vi. I should've known something—"

"No." Violet pinned Sage with a piercing stare. "You couldn't have."

A shadow passed over them. Every second that passed buried them in silence until they were standing in the tomb of the moment, and there's Sage, who looked so sad, so shattered, so afraid under all that it almost breaks Violet's heart. In all the years she's known Sage, she'd never seen her look so upset, with the exception of the time Sage's cat died when they were eleven. It broke her heart into smaller pieces knowing that Violet was the reason why she looked like that now.

"Are they because of—"

"They're not because of anyone, alright?" Violet hissed, narrowing her eyes at the door. If they pushed this topic any further, Violet thought she might combust. It was as if her veins had somehow knotted themselves around her organs, tiny nooses for the vitals, and her skin felt a little too tight. "You didn't tell Kit, did you?"

Irritation flickered in Sage's face. "What the fuck? You know I'm not like that. I would never do that to you."

Violet deflated. Relief was a needle snuck between her lungs. She pursed her lips, and her arm went limp in Sage's grip. Sage's eyes haven't left Violet's arm. There are days when Violet thinks she's brave enough to hit a vein, brave enough to cut a little deeper, brave enough to watch herself bleed out on the bathroom floor. Judging by the look on Sage's face, that's what she was afraid of. This lapse in judgement, this severe disconnect between sanity and rationality. A normal person wouldn't think of death like a comfort, or a second option. Wouldn't have given this monstrous affliction an identity, dressed it up in skin and shadows, a chronic virus weighing down on her conscience whispering terrible things in her ears. So close, just so, so close. Imagine the slip, picture the blood, scarlet, agitated, uncontrollable. You know you've fucked up, albeit, you grudgingly welcome the prospect of bleeding out and dying on your bathroom floor because maybe this was meant to be, you know? Maybe you were meant to be found this way—foetal position, strained alabaster skin, a steady affix of emptiness and the bloodied stitches trekking ichorless veins ripped at the seams.

—STUPID LITTLE GIRL. THE ONLY CONTROL YOU HAVE OVER YOUR OWN LIFE, AND YOU LET IT BE TAKEN FROM YOU TOO. YOU ARE WEAK. YOU CAN'T HIDE YOUR VULNERABILITIES FROM THE WORLD. YOU DON'T HAVE ANYTHING. YOU'RE NOTHING BUT THE HATE YOU WERE BORN OUT OF AND THE HATE YOU GIVE—

Unable to hold Sage's gaze any longer, Violet ripped her arm away and shut the tap off.

"We're done here," Violet said, voice flat, stamped with finality. "I won't talk about this anymore."

Sage shut her eyes, but didn't move. Not even when Violet shouldered past her to unlock the door and slip out. Before she left, she paused, the door half-way closed behind her.

"I don't do it anymore," Violet murmured, with her heart in her stomach. "Just so you know."

And then she left Sage alone to deal with the quiet dust of the fallout.

☾

UNDER THE TABLE, HER PHONE BUZZES with a new message: sure, wat time?

Flicking her gaze at her father, who hasn't spoken a word since he'd sat down to eat what the maids have laid out on the table, Violet shoots back a quick response. Tomorrow evening. She turns her phone over and sticks it under her thigh. Her father doesn't even look up. He hasn't broken his silence. She knows doesn't have to hide her phone from her father, who couldn't care less what she brought to the table, but with this matter in her hands, discretion feels like a safety precaution rather than a necessity out of dinner-table etiquette. (Which, of course, she's never cared for.)

The phone buzzes again. im hosting a grad party tmrw evening!!! u shld come we can talk abt ur brother there.

As she composed her response, Violet considered asking how Alice was doing in her English classes, but took the higher road of silence instead.

"I called Wren today," her father said, his voice siphoning through the marble-cold silence. Pocketing her phone, Violet lifts her gaze. Her father doesn't even bother to meet her eyes, mildly focused on his jimmying steak knife, the blade like a silver dolphin slicing through a medium rare cut. "She says she misses you."

Not a message passed on. Violet read the subtle warning in his calm tone. In her first day back in Forks, her father had set a few ground rules. She was to speak to Wren on the regular. Violet couldn't remember the last time she spoke to her little sister. It felt like ages ago, but in reality, it could've only been last month since she heard her voice.

"I told her that you'd call," her father added.

Jealousy pinched her chest. Even when she was in California, bouncing around from school to school, her father never called. Not voluntarily, at least. She had always been the one to initiate any conversation. All of them tended to centre around her felonies, her little desperate attempts to gain his attention, all the little fires she'd set to bend his fingers backward bit by bit until he was forced to send her back home. None of it had been remotely concerning her welfare, even if that'd been the primary reason why he'd sent her away in the first place. Her grip on her fork tightened. Her skin blazed with rage.

What was it about Wren? What was it about Violet that made her so unloveable? What did Wren have that Violet didn't? There was no way her father could've favoured her little sister over her. Not when Violet was made in his image. Not when Wren bowed to compassion like their mother, unable to stand up for herself when someone else forced her hand.

But Violet swallowed down the questions on her tongue. Her father would not take her seriously if she lashed out like a child. Whatever Wren had done to earn his affection, Violet would find out eventually. She had to trust her own abilities. After all, she was Violet Korchak. Where most people had to sweat the shirts off their backs and strong-arm their way into places, Violet already had one foot in every door.

"I will," Violet says, coolly, a dark hatred leaking through her veins. And stabs her fork into a sliced carrot.

☾

WHEN PAUL'S SHADOW FALLS OVER HER BEDROOM FLOOR as he clambers over her window sill, Violet lets her guard down.

She knows she shouldn't, but given that today has worked a number under her skin, every single resolve just crumbles when she meets him in the middle, between their knocking hips and searing skin, hands tangled in his hair, his fingers bruising against her waist, gathering her into his arms, lifting her clear off the ground. It barely registers when he's kicking off his shoes, backing them towards her bed, or that he's pressing her into the sheets as his mouth leaves a trail of fire as he moves down her neck and back to her jaw. It doesn't matter that they haven't said two words to each other.

Maybe it's the haze in her brain, clogging up all rationale, or the ungodly impulsive decisions transpired from the ungodly hours, or the pure need for a distraction because she can't sleep at night until she's ran slow. All she hears is the roaring of her own heartbeat as he's hastily lifting her onto his lap, her thighs bracketing his sharp hips and the friction between their clothes. He grins against her mouth and he's all impulse and heat and deft touches. Fingers tangling in the strands of his hair, Violet pulls him closer, closer, closer, the fine line between want and need distorting as Paul leaves feverish open-mouthed kisses down her jaw and it feels like a forest fire blazing under her skin. His shirt goes first, a pool of black on the floor.

He tugs at the hem of her sweater and it isn't so much as a voluntary action than a reaction when she shrugs it off.

And then his body goes rigid and she's asking, what? what is it? as he's pulling back, taking these staggering steps backwards, horror etched on his face and Violet knows. She messed up.

Her blood turns to slush.

"What is this?" Paul demands, unable to tear his eyes from her arm. Her arm, and the rootlike patchwork threads of tally-marks etched like graves in her flesh, each one counting out every affliction, one for every time she has to explain that she isn't sad because what she really means is black hole inside filled with nails and broken glass and all the words she doesn't know how to say because she's never been held accountable for her actions a single day in her life. Paul's eyes are fixated on the tally marks stretching from her wrist to her elbow. Sometimes she can see the old scars underneath the new ones, when she's run out of room and all she does is retrace the fading ones, dig new trenches to let the blood through, like a beaver putting more sticks over the old ones in the dam.

That look on his face, she can't scrub it from her eyelids. Not even when he's gone. Heart lodged in her throat, Violet snatches her sweater off the ground with mechanical movements of a motorised corpse. All this, while her mind should be screaming. Paul saw, and now there's no going back. Violet knew that look. He's going to leave. He'll leave her because she's complicated, she's messed up, she's exactly what other people say she is. Insane. And the last thing Paul needs is more shit on top of the shit he's being put through.

His chest heaves, like he's on the verge of a meltdown. His face is dangerously blank, and his eyes are dead and it kills her to know that she's the one who put that expression there.

"It's nothing," she tells him, just as she told Sage. Lying to two people who matter should hurt, but it doesn't.

"It doesn't look like nothing to me," Paul says, a muscle in his jaw ticking.

Violet lets out a sharp laugh. "Oh my God, why're you making such a big deal out of it?"

Anger flashes across his face. Sucking in a sharp inhale, Paul rakes both hands through his hair, like he's about to tear chunks of it out, and he's looking at her like he doesn't know who she is, like she's the one losing her mind while he's trying to piece together the splintering scene before him. "You're hurting yourself, Violet!"

"So?" Violet scoffs, a sharp pain stabbing into her thigh as she digs her thumb into her flesh, hard enough to break skin, a warning to herself: don't you dare cry. Don't you fucking dare.

Paul looks like he's about to lose it. "Why do I—" he lets out a humourless laugh— "do you even hear yourself right now?"

Violet's eyes are cold. Twin sheets of ice staking through his skin, pushing him out, out out.

Paul heaves a shaky sigh. Violet can't get her lungs to unfold. She knows she should probably get up, kick Paul out before he leaves voluntarily and this entire fever dream gets too real, do something. Anything. But she can't find the energy in her to do anything but stare and stare and stare.

There comes a time of revelation, of relief, before the back end of the hurricane hits. Some call this the eye, some call this the calm before the storm. Violet don't know what else to call this period in time besides the What The Fuck moment. A moment—a lapse, really—in reality where your limbs are slowly dissociating from your body and your brain can't recognise your reflection and you are dissolving into the background as you do nothing—can do nothing but—watch life pass by like a blur in periphery. All is silent inside and you are no-gravity in the most horrible way.

Time to process.

Front end of the hurricane: Luka died, Dad doesn't know how to deal with you anymore, he doesn't want you in the house, you're alone and you're everywhere but where you should be, by his side, making him realise that you're not just some dysfunctional daughter who isn't put her mania down. Dad, who stopped caring a decade ago, who spent all of your teenage life pushing you away, bribing expensive schools to take you in, showering you with whatever you wanted, yet couldn't even make the time to come down to see how you're holding up. It takes a burning house and charges pressed for attempted murder for him to come get you. On top of that, there are monsters everywhere you step. In the woods, in your smokestack bleeding memories, in your head, and in your veins. There's one in your bed right now, but the way he's looking at you, all scarred-up and something ripped from a nightmare... It's like you're the monster in the room.

The eye: now, the silence pounding against your ears, echoing in the four-walled mausoleum of everything that could've been buried six feet under the avalanche set off by your carelessness, the static in your brain, feeling numb all over, watching your life go by as time runs forward, incomprehensible, catatonic, unreactive. No, not unreactive, you can speak, but you can't feel your lips moving or your tongue reaching for all the right words. You don't know how to process this. You don't know how to feel. You are fine. You are not fine. Paul knows. There's something fundamentally wrong with you. Luka's dead. The back end of the hurricane's coming.

Scrubbing a hand down his face, Paul shakes his head. "I need a minute," he mutters, pulling his shirt back on.

Before she can say anything, he vaults over her window sill and disappears into the dark. And she's alone again. Shivering and alone and unwanted. For the first time in years, Violet lets out the sob lodged in her throat. She feels the tide swell in her chest. There are holes in her head and a crumpled part of her brain she can't shake because she can't bear to look back upon the reflected memories of a time once passed and buried under layers and layers of highs from blue pills, red pills, pink pills, of the anti-psychotics variety. She can never be whole again. And then it crashes down all at once. The silence is overwhelming. She is lonely. She is alone. This is why you don't let anyone close, an ugly voice in the back of her head nags, when you have marks like these, you put a barrier between you and everyone else. Nobody wants to see self-inflicted scars. Nobody wants to see what madness can do.

So Violet lies there, curled up in herself against the headboard.

Shit, she thinks, too drained to be angry, just fucking shit.

—YOU'VE DONE IT NOW—

Time stretches into nothing, the minutes run until the seconds become meaningless and Violet waits. She doesn't know how long she sits there, crumpled up in a pathetic ball of nothing. Emptiness caved her chest in, a starless universe, the drifting vacuum of nothing before the noisy everything. A small part of her holds onto the naive hope that Paul would come back. But a minute turns into ten. and then an hour passes. And then another. And soon the tears have dried and crusted but she has no energy to put the pieces back together and she's left feeling stupid for daring to hope.

—YOU CANNOT AFFORD TO MAKE THAT MISTAKE AGAIN—

With her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms encircling her legs, she presses her temple against the cool surface of her wall. From this perspective, it's here, Violet thinks, that she finally notices the jarring nakedness of her room. Clothes that were strewn carelessly on the ground before every shower were gone, folded away neatly in her closet, lacklustre shadows like oil spills seeped into her carpet, skateboard decks and broken trucks that she'd dumped on the ground had been cleaned up, either stacked in a corner of her room or thrown out, her bed was unmade in its dismal sheets tracing little cities and ridges in the evening gloom and a shallow depression of her body in the mattress. In the morning, however, she knew that it'd be straightened out. The maids always came and went, and what little Violet saw of them, she never quite thought about the service they were doing for her. Nor has she once thanked them for resetting the entropy in her room. She's never known a silence that aches so horribly.

There was something demoralising in the way her room, with its door shut, seemed to be a subfusc projection of herself. She couldn't remember the last time she'd gotten down to cleaning up anything at all. Or the last time she'd picked up after herself without expecting someone else to do it for her.

Things fall apart and Violet thinks: What's so good about picking up the pieces?

What if she doesn't even want to?

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
sorry it was getting too romantic so i had to ruin it a little

also i know paul's reaction is very awful and i'm not tryna justify it (ok maybe a little bit, but i'm like rationalising) but like just imagine yourself in his position... guy's got a fuckton of stress on his plate with the whole vampire patrol thing happening... + buddy doesn't know how to properly regulate his own emotions bc he's just That emotionally stunted... and seeing someone else's self-harm scars is extremely upsetting idk bout you but even i (and this is coming from someone with a history of self-harm) wouldn't know how to react especially when vi's scars are really scary to look at.