Piano Girl ❊ {Paul Lahote}

Chapter Eight - Moonlight Sonata 1st Movement - Beethoven

❊Violet❊

As I drove down the road, snow falling heavily and blanketing the scenery that was fading rapidly into the gathering darkness, my mind was scattered all over the place. I hadn't expected Billy Black to be on the side of whatever type of gang was forming in La Push.

The Quileute were, according to our traditional history, descended from wolves, but that didn't mean an elite "pack" forming on the reservation would be a good thing for the community. The kids here didn't need another avenue towards potential violence and danger, they needed a safe space to complete their education and figure out what they wanted to do with their lives. They deserved that.

The fact that a community elder was favoring a gang was definitely not going to help kids stay in school. I was determined to try to talk Paul out of whatever was going on with him. Maybe we weren't exactly good friends, but we were peers and partners on this project, so I felt that I had to at least understand his point of view concerning what was going on. If I could get him to leave this gang and come back to school? Even better. 

The snow began to fall even faster as I pulled into the Lahote driveway, and it rose above my ankle when I got out of my car and stepped into the snow. Wrapping my arms around myself and hunching over to bury my face inside my coat, I marched up towards the front door of the residence.

The porch wasn't sheltered, so I waited after knocking, shivering on the spot as snow covered my head and shoulders. The wind whistled through the trees, but everything else was quiet. The snow had muffled everything.

After what seemed like an eternity but what was probably about 2 minutes, the inside door swung open.

"Violet?" Paul's voice sounded, incredulous. I was almost unable to make him out through the icy screen door and the gloom of the house around him. I looked down at my feet. "Uh, yeah. Can I talk to you for a second?" The Paul silhouette pushed open the screen door. "Sure, come in."

I knocked my boots on the wall outside and stepped into the entrance hallway. It was warm, and smelled like baking bannock. I crossed my arms, and, raising my gaze, finally was able to get a good look at him. My jaw almost dropped.

He had grown even taller. He had somehow developed what looked like rock hard muscles and an athlete's body in a few weeks. Not even the strictest training regimen, as far as I knew, could do something like this to someone's body. I had seen him from afar, but I hadn't seen this. I hadn't seen anything like it anywhere...except that I had. Jared had gone through the same type of transformation after he had joined Sam's "cult".

I hadn't realized the silence had been stretching on for at least a minute until Paul spoke up. "You like what you see, Vi?" He said in a snarky tone, a smirk on his face. I clenched my fists, wishing desperately that my thoughts would stop swirling around in my head so that I could figure out where to start. I took a deep breath, and I saw him step back as I raised my head slowly.

"What the hell is going on, Paul Lahote?" I questioned firmly, meeting his eyes fully for the first time since stepping foot inside his door. His own dark brown eyes widened, and his smirk faded rapidly from his face. I took this as a sign that he was listening and taking me seriously, and drew myself to my full height.

"First, you get angry at Sam when you could've just walked away, and then you run off into the woods and disappear for weeks, leaving me to do this project on my own. The next time I see you, you're jumping off a cliff with Sam and Jared, like you weren't ready to murder them three weeks earlier!!" Paul had fallen back against the wall, his wide eyes still fixed on mine. At least he's finally listening.

Stepping towards him, I continued, my voice getting louder as my rant went on. "Also, you still don't come back to school, instead running around with your new gang buddies, pretending that you have some sort of policing power over La Push, and the work for the project keeps piling up! So I come over here, and it turns out that you're apparently doing steroids or something, because that kind of body growth is not natural!! I paused, breathing heavily.