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CHAPTER THREE ʀᴏsᴀʟɪᴇ
☾
An extra shift was never a bad thing for Violet. The garage had slow business, fixing up cars from out of town or going out to fix those of the town out on the roads. Februaries were slow altogether, with the weather somehow dry despite the winter frost still nipping the air. The heaters were on full blast, a constant, grating sound that overpowered the music that played from the old stereo speakers on the office desk, battling against the icy layers that threatened to paint the line of cars. Darkness spread early afternoon, stretching across the skies and winding roads like a sheltering blanket, decorated with specks of stars; a sight of which was probably one of the few advantages of being in Forks.
Violet stood by the front of the workshop, the old metal shutters not yet pulled down to lock them in. Even at six o'clock, the moonlight barely lit the road enough for her to see past the driveway that curved around the cluster of trees, parting from the main road into a wide dust track, lined with dense bush rows. Tyler Crowley's van was still parked along the edge, freshly bruised from the accident that morning in the school car park, of which Violet had only heard about from Celia's shocked gossip. On the side, there was an almost perfect concave, splitting through the fresh paint like a lightning strike, mottling the surface, and further along, was what Violet could swear was the shape of a handprint. It was still there when Violet glanced to it again, prying her eyes away from the block of nothingness that devoured the edge of the road whole, only the marks and ruins were disguised beneath the shadows, like everything else.
From behind, in the back of the garage, the music crinkled as the radio went in and out of service, casting the vast rooms into periodic silence, of which from the last, came a long string of violent curses. Violet froze, her body going rigid and shoulders stiffening. The hisses continued, sharp and twisted, and falling from an experienced mouth. Her hand reached for the bat that hid behind the locker, its handle scraped, chipped and more likely to impale her with spelks that to injure a threat, and held it over her shoulder as she edged forward, keeping close to the side of the benches, hips scraping against the side, the touch a welcoming thing that kept her panic from wandering.
The car, as much as she worshipped it in her thoughts, was a machine and nothing more, incapable of matching her level of control and precision in her movements. It didn't matter that it was a BMW M3, that it was her favourite out of her boastful collection. Rosalie was too ambitious, her anger fuelling the need to go faster and sharper across each thin stretch of road and tight, wrapping corners.
It was destined to happen, that single moment in which her inhuman arrogance grew to its strongest.
A shout of fury left Rosalie's lips as the car screeched and cried, tires burning against the worn tarmac, ripping in two, finally crumbling beneath the prolonged, high-speed torture, snapping and whirling beneath the weight of the car like a starved snake. As she twisted her hands around the steering wheel, fighting to stay in control, as she used each inch of her impeccable senses and driving expertise, the car spun and squealed, bursting against a tree at the side of the road.
