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Sasha never considered herself a good person. She was mean. She was manipulative. She was spiteful. She was controlling. All around, no one wanted to be with her unless she changed almost everything about herself and learned how to use those traits to get what she wanted. So she did. She learned the way the popular kids acted, so she copied them tenfold. She learned how to manipulate adults into doing what she wanted. She learned how to get into people’s heads. And when all else failed, she learned how to dig deep into a person’s psyche and take control. These tactics helped her survive living with her parents, who were the only people as bad as she was, and they made it so that she was never alone. She always had friends around her, or at least, people who feared her enough to try to establish a good relationship with her. She knew that none of them really knew her, but she allowed them in anyway. After all, company is company, right? Anything to distract her from her home life or her spiraling self image, or the growing feelings she had towards her best friend. Sasha Waybright did not date and she certainly wasn’t in love with Anne.
That’s what she told herself every time Anne told her about a new crush that she had on a boy and she made it a point to track him down and threaten him, telling him exactly what she would do if she saw him near Anne, and then while comforting her as she cried over another failed romance.
That’s what she told herself every time she felt a jolt of panic when she saw Anne and Marcy making plans to hang out together without her. Even if she was busy or didn’t like whatever activity they were planning (god knows she didn’t care about creatures and caverns), she would guilt trip them into inviting her and planning around her schedule.
That’s what she told herself as she clung on to her fading friendship with Anne, forcing her to ditch school on her birthday so that she could prove what a good friend she was.
That’s what she told herself when she let go of Anne’s hand at toad tower. When the only thought going through her mind was “I’m going to die before I tell her I love her”
That’s what she told herself when Anne ended their friendship, telling her she was a horrible person before Andrias’s betrayal. The words hurt, but they were nothing compared to what went through her head on a daily basis. She knew that. She wanted to tell Anne that she had known that her entire life. But she didn’t. Instead, she watched her best friend get stabbed and the girl she was maybe a little bit in love with disappear through the portal.
She didn’t feel much of anything anymore after she got to Wartwood. It was like the part of her brain that controlled her emotions just died. If Marcy were here, she would know the scientific term for that. She would offer how to help, and Anne would give her a hug to help her feel better while Marcy rambled. God, she missed them so much. Except Marcy wouldn’t be rambling about psychology and Anne wouldn’t be hugging her if they were there. They both hated her. She lay in bed that second night, mulling over the day before. She had done something so… un-Sasha like. The old her would have never risked her life to save those frogs. The old her would have left them to die and went on with Grime to find safety. But after seeing Anne’s journal and seeing just how much she still cared about her, despite everything, it made it so that she couldn’t go on anymore like she had been. At a certain point of feeling miserable your entire life, you realize that you’ll either burn yourself into the ground and take everyone down with you or change as a person. She had told Anne that she liked who she was but out of all the lies she had ever told, which was a lot, that one was by far the worst one and the hardest to spit out and sound genuine. She needed to change. Something had to change, she couldn’t keep going on like this.
She lay in Anne’s room in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, and had an idea. Changing yourself takes a lot of time, it’s a process, but she could at the very least take a step forward. Make a solid, visual change.
She sat up abruptly, feeling like this was one of the few things she got right. She knew Grime was sleeping upstairs, so she picked up her dagger he had given her and crept to the mirror in the corner of the room as quietly as possible. She stared at her reflection. Her eyes were puffy and red even though she didn’t remember crying. Her face looked pale, and she had bags under her eyes. When was the last time she had eaten? Or had water? Or slept? And her roots had grown out. Her mother always made her dye her hair blonde to match her and her father’s, disappointed at her natural light brown color. But the shade that poked out was definitely her natural color. Her hair was greasy and unkempt, but that one inch of dark hair was HERS and hers alone. She took a deep breath and raised her dagger to her head, very carefully cutting through the piece of hair right in front of her face. It was an awkward angle, and it was hard to position the dagger so she didn’t cut off any facial features, but she was rewarded with the sight of a lock of fake blonde hair falling to the basement floor.
She smiled a genuine smile. It felt unnatural, but she met her eyes in the mirror once again and saw something new. Hope. Hope that she could be a better person and fix things. Hope that she could build instead of destroy. With each piece of hair that fell to the floor, it felt like she could breathe easier, and she felt lighter. She cut through strand after strand until there was a pile of hair on the floor and a wider smile on her face. She ran her fingers through her hair that stopped at the base of her neck. It was different. It would take some getting used to, but as most change, it felt like a step in the right direction.
She pulled out her photograph of her, Anne, and Marcy and lightly touched each of their faces.
“I can be better” She whispered in the dark. “I promise.”