A/N: Response time!

Gs33022, Violet's help with her improvement actually will be quite complex. Yes, people will be involved (whether directly or indirectly), but ultimately, it will be a case of specific factors and forces that...now that would be telling! ;-) Will she even improve at all? "The suspense is terrible...I hope it will last!"

Mr. Wilkinson came back to the factory and arrived into the lodging shortly around half past five, as it had been arranged. He wandered around, taking notice of the wide spaces and other unusual accommodations, searching for the girl he had to assist tonight. He hated to be a privacy invader, but if she was totally helpless in some ways and needed a second hand, then there was no working around it.

He finally saw her emerge from a room near the common lounge. She took no notice of him for a moment, but when she spotted him out of the corner of her eye, she made a startled face and flapped her hands defensively. "Who are you?" she demanded in a slight panic.

Mr. Wilkinson approached Violet calmly. "Relax, Violet, there's nothing to be afraid of. Allow me to introduce myself. Jacob Wilkinson, longtime assistant of Mr. Wonka's. He told me about your little issue you had last night with the early sunset and asked that I provide a bit for you. Before you ask, I know your name because Mr. Wonka told it to me while we were discussing this."

"I didn't know that Mr. Wonka had a non-Oompa-Loompa assistant," Violet remarked.

Having remembered the early dusk from last night, Violet had prepared herself a bit already beforehand. She already had removed the clip holding her hair in a partial ponytail, so her hair was down, and she had changed into what had been, in its normal shape, a forest green pair of pajamas with white polka dots. Mr. Wilkinson thought that the pattern made her look more like an Easter egg than like a blueberry, despite the blue skin of her head, hands, and bare feet showing. He quite clearly could smell the blueberry juice scent that she was emitting. It was far too strong to be coming from her gum (which had the wrong color anyway), so he deduced that the smell must have been coming from the juice inside her body, not that the aroma was unpleasant or anything.

"Well, he does, but I'm the only one," Mr. Wilkinson answered. "He called on me today and asked that I help you out for evening tasks now that we're getting into shorter periods of daylight. I presume that this means helping you out physically with routines and anything that you might like to be doing to pass the time. Did Mr. Wonka do anything with you last night?"

"Not much. He just fed me and got me into bed."

"If you'd like, though, Violet, I could help with any forms of evening entertainment that you might want. You have a few hours, after all."

"I just wish that dusk stayed at its normal time and never came this early."

"I'm sure you do, but unfortunately, you don't have that luxury," Mr. Wilkinson stated.

Violet pivoted to change direction, gripped the T-bar attached to her door, and waddled into her room, sticking out her closer hand to flick up the light switch. "In the meantime, I wouldn't mind listening to some music." She pointed to a neat stack of cassettes near a bulky cassette deck.

"Okay. Do you have any album in mind specifically?" Mr. Wilkinson started to look at the names on the sides of the cases.

"Charley Pride had a new one out lately. I think it's called 'I'm Just Me'."

Mr. Wilkinson found the tape and pulled it out very carefully, holding it up for Violet to see the cover art for confirmation. "Is it this one?"

Violet waddled up to it a bit for a closer look. "Yes. That's it."

Mr. Wilkinson took the cassette out of its case and inserted the A-side into the deck, hitting the play button immediately afterwards. "I didn't know that you were into him."

"Well, I'm not particularly, but being from Montana, he got pretty big back at home. I was too curious to ignore all of those albums."

"You're from Montana? Interesting."

"Yes. Miles City, in fact. It's about two hours away from Billings."

"I'm heading to the living room. If there is anything you'll need between now and dinnertime, just holler. I will be able to hear it." Mr. Wilkinson's saying this happened at about the same time that the music started to play, so his words overlapped a bit.

"Well, duh, I'll need the tape flipped over in a little while! Now would you can it so I can listen?!" Violet barked. It took Mr. Wilkinson partway by surprise.

Oh, my, he thought unpleasantly, this kid. I can't say that Willy didn't warn me, though. He gave Violet a thumbs up silently and left the room.

...

At Violet's alert, Mr. Wilkinson was back in about twenty minutes to flip the cassette to the B-side and play it. He told her that dinner would be ready as soon as the whole album was over, so while the last song was playing, Violet took it as a cue to spit out her gum somewhere that would be accessible in the morning. She waddled over to the bookshelf beside her bed and attempted to spit the gum onto the top or edge. Unfortunately for her, she missed. The gum slid out of her mouth and landed next to the placket of her pajama top, about a third of the way down.

The gum was just barely in her line of vision as she looked down, but she still could see it adequately. Great. Now how was she going to get it off? She couldn't ask Mr. Wilkinson; he would just peel off the gum and stick it in the trash. Even if she told him that she was keeping this piece for a world record attempt, he still would throw it away, just as Mr. Wonka had done. Heck, the two of them were direct allies; for all she knew, Mr. Wonka had told Mr. Wilkinson to pay no mind to the gum's storage.

Violet noticed a bare wall directly next to the bookshelf. Seeing that the path was clear and accessible, she waddled to the wall and faced it. To make sure that she wasn't so far back as to wind up accidentally stuck on her stomach again, she inched her way further forward, just centimeters away, before tipping her feet to hit the wall. When she pulled back via the balls of her feet after the tilt, she saw that the gum had peeled itself off successfully, with no little pieces left behind. There was a bit of clothing fiber stuck to it, and there was likely a bit of plaster on the other side now, but Violet paid this no mind. The gum had been fished out of the trash just that morning; what was a bit of fiber and plaster?

It took a good few, tiresome minutes for Violet to turn all the way around and waddle a sufficient distance from the unconventionally stored gum, but she managed. By this point, the album had finished entirely, and she could hear the blank end of the tape turning in the reels. Any moment now, Mr. Wilkinson would show up to tell her to get to supper.

Finally, a click was heard as the cassette's reel stopped spinning and the play button on the tape deck snapped back up. Within a minute, this was followed by footsteps, and soon enough, Mr. Wilkinson creaked open the door to the room.

"Supper is ready," he said. "I suppose you will want to eat it while it's still warm."

Violet turned her head to look at him and then pivot-waddled about twenty degrees in rotation. As she currently had no shoulders to shrug, she rotated her hands so that the palms faced the ceiling at acute angles, the way some people's hands move when shrugging their shoulders. "Yeah. So what?"

Mr. Wilkinson looked Violet up and down with his eyes, his head staying in position. "Well, given your predicament...it would seem to me that you might find it helpful to be taken over there."

"Taken over there?" Violet asked. She frowned a little and raised an eyebrow. "Do you mean rolling me?"

"Precisely," Mr. Wilkinson said flatly.

Violet tried to resist by waddling forwards for a few seconds, but then she stopped herself. Her bedroom, in contrast to some of the other rooms in the hallway, was a bit distant from the kitchen (at least, it was to a human blueberry who couldn't walk at normal speed), and, factoring in the needed physical rests in between carrying multiple gallons of juice at a slow pace, her supper almost certainly would be rendered cold by the time she got there.

"Okay, then do it," she grumbled.

Mr. Wilkinson gave her a short nod. He walked towards Violet, clutched her body on either side above the hands, and slowly tilted her until she was lying on her side. Before he could make the first hand-over-hand motion, though, he was very abruptly intruded upon by a snappy question from Violet.

"Do you know what you're doing?" she interrogated.

"Believe it or not, this is not the first time that I've done this, Violet," Mr. Wilkinson said. He kept his calm demeanor despite having just been snapped at. "A few Oompa-Loompas have had this very thing happen to them via testing a faulty candy, and Mr. Wonka and I had to roll each of them to get treatment. Given the uncannily identical situation, I would be surprised if he never mentioned it to you."

"That didn't really answer my question. How hard of a rolling are you going to do here?"

"Not that hard," Mr. Wilkinson began. "Just a series of—"

"For Pete's sake, I'm telling you, don't give me any hard shoves or spins! I'm going to be nauseous from them!" Violet snapped this very accusingly, taking very few breaths in saying it. She used a tone that implicitly portrayed her thinking of Mr. Wilkinson as a mindless imbecile.

Mr. Wilkinson flinched and blinked a few times. Mr. Wonka really was not kidding when he had warned him about Violet's habitual attitude. "Well, to be fair, I was going to tell you that I would give you only soft, hand-over-hand rolls anyway. The kitchen table really is not far enough to justify anything else."

Violet let out a relieved sigh, although Mr. Wilkinson could only hear it instead of see it because of her head facing away from him. "It's just that I've heard about how people move large, empty barrels. I could not handle that happening to me."

"I understand. Next time, please let me finish first," Mr. Wilkinson responded. Violet gave no answer.

Mr. Wilkinson proceeded to give Violet only the soft, hand-over-hand rolls that he had promised, pausing only to open the bedroom door. Violet kept her eyes closed the entire time so as not to focus on a spinning room, however mildly and gently it was spinning. The blueberry and her aide successfully made it to the kitchen while supper was still warm.

When they got there, Mr. Wilkinson noticed that Violet had spat out her gum. Not knowing Violet's current gum passion quite like Mr. Wonka did, Mr. Wilkinson just assumed that she had disposed of the gum somewhere. He had no idea that it was stuck to a wall in the bedroom, waiting to be chewed again come the following morning.

Everything else pretty much happened the same way as when Mr. Wonka had provided Violet with dinner and physical assistance. As Mr. Wilkinson left the factory at nine o'clock to head home, he reflected on the task so far. Only two episodes of snapping had occurred. He didn't know how frequently she did it—heck, he had just now met her; he didn't even know what she looked like as a normal human—but everything seemed to be going okay. There had been some noise disruption with the constant chewing, sure, but that was small potatoes compared to some other habits that people picked up. He hoped that every night from this point on would go somewhat well, too.

Violet, on the other hand, was lying awake with insomnia, her mind full of the unwelcome surprise guest. Can't Mr. Wonka tell that this problem wasn't supposed to be disclosed to anyone? Just how many people will this Wilkinson guy tell? Will he be back at some point? The whole purpose of moving out here was to make me less helpless, after all, so why is this reversing itself? Okay, she knew the answer to that last question; it was purely a rhetorical gripe. Well, the next time she got ahold of her parents, she knew exactly what she would be reporting.

...

The following afternoon, Violet decided to head out in town again. Seeing as she was going to have less time in the evenings for now, she figured that she may as well make good use of it while she could. She got her homework all finished throughout that morning, so her afternoon was completely free. She tried not to walk too far in fear of getting lost, but she knew the entire span from the alleyway to the school (although not most of the city, of course) by heart now, so there was no need to worry about that. Her staying in the area also served as a contingency for spotting dusk, as she could rush back to the chocolate factory while having time to spare.

She hardly got any further than an outdoor produce stand nearby before she crossed paths with Charlie again. Violet was confused. It was barely after noon on a Sunday; why was he out and about now? His paper route never was this early, was it?

"Hi, Violet!" he greeted to her immediately.

"What are you doing out here? I thought that your paper route was in the late afternoons."

"It is, but I had nothing to do today otherwise, so I thought that I'd head to Mr. Wonka's factory for a glimpse. I love the visuals and smells that it emits."

"So, is that why you're around it frequently? You like his candy?"

"Well, it's also because I live in these parts. I'm sure I would like his candy if I could have it more often, but I sure do love some of his chocolate bars whenever I get the chance to eat them."

Okay, thought Violet, maybe this kid isn't as embarrassing as I thought. We have this in common. He's kind of cute, too. But why does he rarely have them?

Charlie pointed to Violet's mouth. "Is that Wonka gum? You know, the kind that never goes stale? I've always been interested to try it out, but I've never been able."

"It's not," Violet answered. "It's a regular piece, but I've had Wonka's, too."

Charlie started to wonder if Violet finally would be the friend not to shun him for once. After all, they both were seemingly interested in Willy Wonka's candy, so maybe she could relate more to him? She had said that she was a transfer student, after all, so she might take his experience as a cultural lesson, despite the fact that there was nothing specifically cultural about his economic situation at all.

"Are you doing anything at all today?" he finally thought to ask.

"No. Why do you ask?"

"Well, if you're interested, we could go to my house. You might need to prepare yourself, though; it likely won't be what you're expecting."

Violet remembered watching Charlie rush into the alleyway slum last week. Of course, this didn't prove anything; he could have needed to go there for an unrelated reason.

"Can't you think of something out here to do instead?" Violet asked carefully, just in case.

"I wish I could, but I can't afford most of them," he answered.

Violet's striking suspicion of Charlie being poor came back. Then she remembered that she had gotten low on money, too, so maybe he was referring to himself and not his whole family.

"Well, okay, I'll go with you," Violet answered nervously, quite unsure.

"Great! It's easily within walking distance."

The two of them walked past the factory, down the street, and turned a corner. Upon sight of that same tunnel where Violet had seen the run-down area beyond it weeks back, Violet stopped.

"Um…you don't live in this area, do you?"

"My house is just past this tunnel. It's not long now."

"This is the slums part of town! I saw it myself while I was exploring!"

"Oh," Charlie giggled nervously. "Actually, if you're referring to the famed 'slums of London', that's around here but further inward. It's the part where crime is rampant, and some people don't even have homes. I'm close to that point economically, but at least we don't have to lock the door."

Violet took notice of the fact that Charlie had used the word "door"—singular—and started having severe second thoughts. Charlie started walking again, though, so she followed him.

Finally, they arrived at his place. Violet stared at it in surprise, recognizing it all too well. It was the same run-down little cottage that she had glimpsed when she had stumbled into this area before. No, no—this couldn't possibly have been his house! What was everyone in Miles City going to think if they found out that she had gotten acquainted with a poor kid—a completely voluntary act on her part, no less? Upon sight of Charlie opening the only door, her fear was confirmed.

Violet followed Charlie into the cottage anyway. Before she could get a good look at the inside, she heard him call out a greeting. "Hello, Mom! Hello, Grandpa Joe, Grandma Josephine, Grandpa George, and Grandma Georgina!" She stepped in to follow him afterwards.

The cottage was so tiny on the inside that it would have been more appropriate to call it a shack. The first thing that Violet spotted was a small room with a four-poster bed slapped haphazardly into the center. Four elderly people were crowded into it. Charlie made rounds around the bed, giving each occupant a hug in turn, during which time Violet looked around the place. This room not only was tiny, but it also had a tiny kitchen area crammed into the corner, not far from the bed, with no kitchen table in sight anywhere. An ancient TV was just beyond the bed. Violet recognized the TV as being a black-and-white set; the Beauregardes used to have one of a much more recent design, but they had replaced it with a color set when Violet was eleven, donating their black-and-white TV to a charity shop afterwards. The fact of this shack having a TV that was even older than the black-and-white one her family used to have gave Violet the impression that it was all Charlie's family could afford. To top it all off, the only source of light in the entire room was a solitary lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, near the bed. There wasn't even a proper shade over the bulb, or anything hiding the wiring. Flabbergasted, Violet turned to her left to glance through the doorway that was all the way on the other end of the room. She could make out what looked to be two small bedrooms that were barely furnished. She came to realize after a moment of staring at them that this was the whole cottage. She had lived in a one-story house her entire life, as most of Miles City was set up, but this was a whole new level of tiny, practically unsustainable. She couldn't even see a bathroom in here.

"I said, would you like to stay for lunch?" Violet heard from Charlie abruptly, snapping her out of her investigation. She had been so focused on how poverty-ridden the place looked that she had completely tuned out Charlie introducing her to his family, his mother announcing that she had gotten the cabbage rinsed and prepared, and Charlie asking Violet about lunch the first time.

"Oh, uh…" Violet tried to get her train of thought back. "I'm sorry, but this is your house?!"

Charlie's mother and the four elderly people in the bed gave Violet gasping, mouth-agape looks. The old woman in the frilly nightcap, on the back right side of the bed from the entrance's perspective, told her sternly, "We've called it home for years."

"Grandma Georgina, I get that all the time at school. This is nothing new."

Okay, so I'm not the first one to be shocked, Violet thought. Who wouldn't be?

Charlie pulled up a chair and gestured Violet to sit on it, having gotten his mother and himself chairs already. Charlie's mother gave Violet a bowl of ground-up cabbage soaked in water, accompanied by a small, faux-silver spoon.

Violet pulled out her gum and stuck it behind her ear before she noticed just what was balancing in her lap. "What's this?" she asked.

"Cabbage soup. I hope you like it; it always takes me at least an hour to soak," Charlie's mother, who was sitting two seats down, next to Charlie, explained.

"Allow me to introduce myself," she went on. "Mary Bucket. I'm Charlie's mother. You can call me Mrs. Bucket. I'm a widow, but I still prefer to use the 'Mrs.' title." She stood up, walked a few steps towards Violet's chair, and held out her hand for Violet to shake in greeting.

Violet accepted the handshake on peer pressure. When finished, she looked back down at the bowl. "I don't like cabbages. Do you have anything else?"

"No, we don't," the elderly man with a silver mustache told her. His voice was unexpectedly gruffly-sounding. "It's the best we can do most of the time, and besides, Mary went to the trouble to make it for the rest of us earlier today. Take it or leave it."

Violet had failed to notice that her bowl was a portion that Charlie had opted to give Violet from his soup, since she was an unexpected guest. She had less than everybody else. "It's the best you can do most of the time?" she asked, disgusted. "What other meals can you have?"

The Buckets, Charlie included, were stunned at just how rude Charlie's new acquaintance was being. Charlie was raised better than to fight fire with fire, though, so he simply answered, "Well, we get boiled potatoes quite frequently. When I got my first payday from my newspaper route, I used the money to buy a loaf of bread, and we've gotten a few more loaves on occasion."

"So, the obsession you have with Wonka-brand candy…what was that about?"

Oh, please don't shun me like my classmates, Charlie fretted. Please, please don't! In a moment, still worried, he answered, "I actually can't get it but once a year, normally, and it's a single product of Wonka chocolate. Remember when I told you that I just had my twelfth birthday this past August? My only presents were a Wonka fudge cookie and a scarf that Mom and Grandma Josephine knitted." He pointed to a coat, hat, and scarf that had been draped near a wash bin, indicating specifically the red scarf that was set atop the pile. "I never have enjoyed any non-chocolate candies because my family can't afford much other than cabbage soup and potatoes. In fact, just that piece of gum I always see you chewing would be a luxury for me!" He prayed for a bit that Violet would be at least understanding of this situation. They couldn't help being poor.

Violet connected the dots mentally. Suddenly, it all made sense. Charlie always stared into the shop and into the factory's courtyard because he wanted to partake in the sweets he couldn't buy. While many people would have been sympathetic to the situation, Violet's ego was so inflated that she couldn't bear the humiliation of her surroundings any longer. True, she had a bad problem afflicting her herself, but she would be ashamed of someone with it. After all, why else would there be a need for her to keep it a secret? Given the fact of Charlie admitting a week ago to his peers wanting little to do with him quite frequently, Violet figured that they all thought the same way about him.

"I can see that you don't own a table," Violet went on. She did not realize that she was babbling too far for her own good. "How do you even go to the bathroom? I couldn't find a toilet."

"We have no water closet or even plumbing; we have a chamber pot," answered the elderly woman with a ponytail. "It is of no concern to you anyway."

This was the last straw. Violet set the bowl of cabbage soup down on the floor, placed her gum back into her mouth, and approached and opened the door of the shack to leave.

"Goodbye. I hope you have a nice rest of your day." The door closed, and she was off.

All of the Buckets were left speechless. Charlie looked amongst his relatives, nearly on the verge of tears, but not quite. "She wasn't like this when I met her in town all those weeks ago!" he confirmed to them, his voice almost breaking. "She was a bit frumpy, but not like that! I should have trusted my instincts and kept our poverty just as confidential as with everyone at school!"

Mrs. Bucket gave Charlie a comforting hug, the four grandparents giving similarly sympathetic looks. "Things will get better in time, Charlie," Grandpa Joe assured. "Someone out there ought to be accepting. It might not be anybody at school or in this part of town, but someone."

Meanwhile, Violet was dashing through the alleyway that led away from this slummy area and towards the proper, more affluent parts. Wanting desperately to get the cabbage water out of her mind, she headed back to the factory earlier than planned to get a luncheon of, in her viewpoint, normal food. She knew that she probably would see Charlie out again the next time she was at Bill's Candy Store, but she would cross that bridge when she came to it.

She just didn't realize how abruptly she actually would come to it.