A/N: Response time!
Gs33022, great work spotting all of those! I did in fact make all of those references intentionally, even the "second helpings on Sundays" one. One of my general ideas when writing for an adaptation is, if the specific adaptation never says outright that a detail has been changed from the original work (for example, Mrs. Bucket being a widow), then the detail may as well still be in there, even if the adaptation doesn't show it. When I realized that the chapter took place on a Sunday, I jumped at the chance to insert that bit.
Before too long, the fall evenings just made things worse and worse. Violet was starting to see Mr. Wilkinson as more of a lifesaver than a nuisance within a week of his beginning the task. She was planning originally to go see Mr. Wonka when he was somewhere other than his office or a production room in order to complain about someone coming into the lodging unexpectedly and uninvited and to demand an explanation, but the general helplessness that started to plague her killed off such plans.
The evening of the same day that Violet had called her parents to bring up this new reality, her blueberry transformation started as she was getting a pair of pajamas on, which she still had to get used to doing so ridiculously early. She had managed almost to complete doing so in time, but she could get her pajama shirt buttoned only halfway before the juice showed up. When Mr. Wilkinson arrived after what seemed like forever, he had to button the bottom half, which made Violet think of a parent still in the "bundle up" phase getting their little child into a parka.
The next day, Violet wised up and got changed immediately after school, but she got a little too relaxed on the sofa for a while after her homework was finished. She jumped up immediately upon feeling her body starting to inflate, but she was trapped standing between the sofa and the coffee table. Her increasing width soon tipped over the coffee table, scattering everything that had been on it, with the overturned legs blocking her way out. Mr. Wilkinson had to pull the table back so that Violet could waddle out, and then he proceeded to tip it upright again, push it back into position, and get all of the books, papers, and everything else placed back on it.
By Wednesday evening, Violet became increasingly desperate to get out of this dilemma. She was studying a textbook chapter for a test the next morning when she morphed. Being completely unable to turn the pages once the transformation was through, she had to rely on Mr. Wilkinson to hold up the book and turn each page at her prompting so that she could finish studying, and she later had to dictate an entire essay for him to type out.
This particular incident got her attention big-time. The sun set no later than about 4:45 that afternoon. Violet began to realize that her academics were going to be impacted, and if she got in trouble for that, then Mr. Wonka definitely was not going to thank her.
Worse from her perspective, she had a bone to pick with Mr. Wilkinson, despite how helpful he had become otherwise. At some point after all three of these incidents, when he took her gum out of her mouth, he tried to throw it away. He complied and stored it grudgingly when Violet demanded that the gum be saved on Monday, but on Tuesday, he noted how gross and old it was looking and tossed it with the trash that was to go out of the factory. Violet became incredibly annoyed and had mixed feelings when he helped with the studying conundrum on Wednesday, but as the brand-new gum that day was just thrown away in the kitchen instead of in the community garbage, she figured that she could solve this problem the same way that she had done already—by fishing it out in the morning. On second thought, maybe she would make it a priority to report this to Mr. Wonka. No, scratch that—he would take his friend's side and insist that Violet should chew less anyway. This was a big, depressing hurdle of mental gymnastics, without any seemingly probable solution—well, besides just simply not chewing any gum after school, but that was just as ridiculous to her as asking an anaphylactic to live with a roommate who ate a lot of peanut butter. She needed that gum when at all possible!
While lying in bed on Wednesday evening, immobile except for her hands, she reflected on all of the issues from that week and started to think over how she could pull off impressing someone so that they would make it mutual and get rid of this problem once and for all.
...
After school let out the following day, Violet hustled out in front, reinserted the wad of gum that she had stashed so cleverly behind her ear during part of last period so as not to get caught, and practically ambushed the first crush she could find. He was standing by himself near an oak tree, seemingly in the perfect spot for the chance.
"Tony!" she called out, loudly enough to startle him. He was a rather timid little chap with buck teeth, and his voice always gave the impression of nervousness. When he yelped in surprise and turned around to face the voice, it was only to be met by another outburst.
"Do you like me? Please say yes! I just need it!"
Tony was stunned for a moment. He finally answered, uncertainly, "In what way?"
"You know…like that! I just need to know if it goes both ways!"
"Violet…" He trailed off for a moment. "…we're too young to date!"
"I don't care!" Violet replied with an I-know-best tone. "Even if we are, you can still feel it!"
"Okay, you're coming off as a creep," Tony replied bluntly.
"Just answer me!"
"Violet…no. There, I answered you."
"Why not?" Violet made an annoyed snap with her gum.
"Do you want me to answer that?" There was a long, cynical pause from Violet, so Tony continued rather nervously, clear that he didn't want to break this. "It's because your social skills are atrocious. If I had a pound for every time that I overheard you telling people to shut up or to go away, I would raise enough money to bribe Mr. Wonka to come out of his factory."
Violet wanted so badly to correct him on Mr. Wonka's staying out of everybody's view, but she knew that there was no way that more details wouldn't be needed if she did so. She still had every chance, however, to object to Tony's main point, so she replied simply, "They are NOT!"
"Well, what do you think 'can it' means?" Tony shrugged.
"Hey, that's different!" Violet defended herself. She paused for a split second to roll her eyes at this crush's supposed naïvety, then continued. "Those are people who annoy me all the time. You don't. Therefore, I would have no reason to say it to you."
"It doesn't matter. It's still rude."
Trying to think of something to say quickly to impress him, Violet pointed out, "Hey, I think you'll like this, though! I've been trying for a long time to break a world record for the longest time a piece of gum has been chewed." She pointed to her mouth. "I started this piece yesterday, but I got several weeks out of my last one, and over a month with my first try!"
"You mean the one that got you the cane? My best friend is in that class with you, and he told me everything. Do you mean to tell me that you've been chewing two other pieces almost nonstop since? I'm surprised I haven't heard about more strokes."
The news stunned Violet. Suspiciously, she asked, "What's your best friend's name?"
"Nigel Flannery."
Violet took a moment to remember the name. Suddenly, it came to her. Nigel Flannery was the classmate who had told on her that day!
"That's it. This conversation is over." She hustled away from Tony quickly and looked for another schoolmate on whom she had a crush.
...
Violet tried asking three other boys in the schoolyard, with no luck. All of them made the first point that they were too young to go on dates, adding that Violet sounded like a stalker for suggesting it, and then they were quick to get to the main point of her being hard to like as a crush because of how poor her manners were. It didn't help that one of them wasn't attracted to her physically anyway. All of the analyses of her manners were the same: she called select people nitwits, told them to shut up, and became impatient. Her last resort was always to impress them with the chewing length status of her gum, and when that didn't work, she tried to impress the boys by showing them how long she could stretch the piece before letting it go to bounce back. This attempt did nothing but gross them out.
Annoyed, Violet hustled back to Mr. Wonka's factory before she wasted too much time. How could they all possibly have been turned away? She certainly never had noticed whenever she made her impatience visible, and besides, dedication to the feat of how long she tried to chew her gum without discarding it was impressive to her. Why weren't they all proud? The only one outside of school (and everyone else at school probably would say the same things) whom she thought was cute was Charlie, but she saw no reason to want anything to do with him anymore. Besides, much like any possible crush being overshadowed from those boys' perspectives of her, she had her crush on him overshadowed from day one by her inference of his social standing, and now she knew for sure. No, there was no way that she would attempt to ask him.
...
Late that afternoon, as Violet was almost finished with her homework, she paused for a moment and reached over to adjust the position of a textbook. When she picked up the pencil afterwards to continue, she saw that her hand had turned blue.
"Dang it!" she exclaimed to herself. She looked at the wall clock that was mounted over the dresser. 4:49. This was by far the biggest inconvenience she ever had faced in the whole week. While everything else had required merely physical assistance, tonight was different. Violet was maneuvering a pencil instead of typewriter keys like last night. There would have been no way that Mr. Wilkinson would have been able to copy Violet's handwriting for the rest of the sheet.
There was a more important matter needing her attention, though, and time was of the essence to attend to it. Quickly, Violet jumped up and rushed to the bookshelf next to her bed, sticking her gum onto the shelf once she got there. Her belly had started to bulge mid-run, so she had to fight the bit of instantaneous extra weight during her mission. After the gum was stored safely, Violet had blown up enough to have to stand in place to maintain balance, but at least now her gum was out of her mouth and away from where she had been sitting. Now there was no way that Mr. Wilkinson could attempt to throw out the gum after dinner was ready.
Violet waddled as far from the bookshelf as she could, once she stopped filling. She wasn't aiming to head back to the desk—goodness, she wouldn't be able to get back in her chair if she tried—just far enough away so that Mr. Wilkinson wouldn't see her gum and throw it out when he came in.
She waddled just past the window and almost through the midpoint of the room, about a three-minute trip, before she got pooped. Having nothing to do in the meantime, she rested and waited patiently for Mr. Wilkinson to arrive, staring in a peeved manner at her work desk at intervals.
...
Fortunately for her, Mr. Wilkinson arrived in less than ten minutes, not enough time for Violet to start gnawing on her tongue. Unlike other trips, this time, when he called out her name, she called out her location enthusiastically, raising her voice to be heard through the door.
When he arrived, she told him about the handwritten homework assignment that was at hand, and he offered quite the radical solution: he would hold out a book, with the sheet propped on it, and Violet would try to maneuver the pencil while the assignment was being supported in midair. Seeing no other possible solution, Violet agreed to give it a try.
The attempt did not work too well. While Violet was able to move her wrists outward and sideways, the inward motion required of holding a pencil was impeded by the circumference of her torso. Not to mention, she also couldn't flip the pencil to use its eraser.
"Aargh!" she groused early on, during an attempt at a wrist position. She looked Mr. Wilkinson in the eyes. "Could you step just a little further back?"
Mr. Wilkinson nodded and did so. Violet could see more of the worksheet now, but she still had no extra space as far as her hand was concerned. Upon an attempt to write a lowercase j, the total inflexibility of the swollen but firm skin near her wrists made it impossible even to get her hand in that position, resulting in her accidentally poking herself with the graphite. It didn't hurt, but she still could feel it. She let go of the pencil in frustration, letting it roll to the ground.
"I give up!" she said angrily. "I may as well just get up earlier to finish this!"
"If you do, then you'll have to be fast," declared Mr. Wilkinson. "Sunrise is slightly later now, too, but not as noticeably. When do you usually get up for school?"
"Around seven-fifteen, same for home. I usually revert to normal while I'm still asleep."
"You'll need to get up at seven, then. I can reset your alarm."
Seven o'clock? Only fifteen minutes? What sort of a time-boost help was that?
"Fine. Go do that," Violet grumbled. She started to move her mouth and gnaw on her tongue. Had she been able, she would have facepalmed.
Mr. Wilkinson acknowledged her, kneeled down to pick up the pencil, and put it and the homework and textbook back on the desk. "I will be getting dinner prepared afterwards."
After he left the room, Violet officially made another addition to her list of ways that her spell was making everything worse this week. Thank goodness tomorrow was not a school night, or she'd have her homework interfered with then, too. It was bad enough that she had to get up slightly earlier now to finish the last part of the assignment in a hurry, lest she possibly get corporal punishment again for it, and then Mr. Wonka would notify her parents about it, just as he had warned. True, this wasn't exactly her fault, but tick marks never knew the difference, and besides, while gum-chewing at school didn't bother her parents too much, signs of slacking most definitely did. Her father always had reminded her that if he slacked off on his schedule, he would lose profit. While Violet had been quick to point out one time that much of what he sold were actually lemons, he had dismissed this point and emphasized that the overall job of selling, not repairing, the cars was the important thing.
Tomorrow was Friday. Violet was going to seize her chance to ask a few more crushes in the courtyard after school tomorrow if they were mutual, and darn the likelihood that they would call her too rude! She didn't see it in herself, so they all were just babblers, right? She had a nagging train of thought suggesting to look further into what exactly they were saying, but she shrugged it off. She had a mission tomorrow, and she was going to attempt it.
