Content warning: strongly implied suicide.
“That girl Amber has changed her hair color again”, you people said. “Goes against her name. Now it’s green, looks rotten. I can’t understand it.”
Well, I can’t understand it either, but either way I’m not asking anything of her. She has beautiful green hair, it’s her hair, and I wouldn’t let anyone change her for the world. I can see you getting to her, and it makes me sad. You’re the green ones, stupid, petty, and envious. You only started saying her old hair was nice when it was changed; that’s the kind of people you are.
You want her to change. Well, I’m not going to have it. I don’t care what I have to do, but I’m not letting you do a single thing more to Amber. Every time you twist her into a new shape it wrings another tear from her poor body. It hurts her, and you can’t see that. I’m never going to let her get hurt again.
People said she looked drowned, like some sort of bedraggled pond-witch, all pale with the green hair hanging limp, which is rude. I think she’s beautiful, and if she has green hair now then it’s an expression of her beautiful self. It’s not rotten at all, and barely smells of ammonia anymore. It reminds me of a tree in leaf, if anything; green leaves growing from brown roots.
She likes bugs. I don’t know why she does, but having looked into them I have to say they’re neat. She has a lot of them preserved forever in her room, pinned onto corkboards or, rarely, floating in alcohol stained brown, preserved like ancient arthropods. People wonder why she likes dead things, but the beauty is in preserving them, or so I think, at least. She liked them all so much; beetles, spiders (which digest things from the inside out), and flies; she loves flies, for some reason. They’re cool, of course; I don’t think I would have said that before I met her. She’s left an impression on me, I must say.
It’s kind of sad what happened the other day. She got a tattoo; no, not a real one, she’s still too young, but a little skull tattoo, one of the kinds that wash away, on her cheek.
She lied and said it was a real one, which… I don’t know how I feel about it, but people got angry, and then when she started crying and it turned out that it was a fake one people started mocking her. It was pathetic, they said, and silly, but all it was was sad, and if it was silly it was all the sadder for it. The skull was already half gone from saltwater by the time she washed the rest of it away.
The hair, the bugs, the sad little tattoos, and you want to throw it away. Maybe not really, but you expect it to change, and maybe it would but I’m not letting you change it. You’re digesting her from the inside out. You rot her like ethylene, and gnaw away at her like beetles until nothing is left of her but bones. You want to clean her with a hydrogen peroxide bath.
And now she wants it too. Look what you’ve done! She’s not getting another tattoo, she’s getting ready to get rid of most of her preservative chemicals, she’s not going to dye her hair again. She had it marked on her calendar for tomorrow, but last time I checked she wasn’t planning on dyeing. You’re changing her, and I’m not going to let it happen. I’m going to talk with her.
She’s taking a break from school, to recover. She needs it. We’ve worked it out. She really does need it. She’s staying at my place; all the plans have been made; I handled most of it. She handled the hard part. It was hard for both of us, but in the end it’s going to be better, because there doesn’t have to be an end, now.
She is sleeping, resting, as I prepare everything. She needs the rest; it isn’t peaceful at all at her house.
It looks like a fishtank; that’s because that’s what it once was. It’s an old one of hers, a big one; fifty gallons, I think, big enough that she used to joke about living in it. It’s empty now, except for a few strings of dried green seaweed stuck to the side of the glass. The fishtank is a kind of golden brown, stained yellowish by age and dirty water.
She is curled up, snug as a bug, looking peaceful. Her green hair is no longer limp, and strands of it float around like they are alive. Everything is alright. She’s never going to change again. I feel lightheaded with joy.
The green of her hair was being leached out by the formaldehyde, so in a panic I added a bunch of green dye to the tank. I think it looks nice, almost like a pond, but at this point I’m in a bit of a pickle; the preservation process isn’t working like I thought it would. I don’t think the chemicals she had were as high-quality as I thought. This room smells full of fumes and vapors, and the level in the tank seems lower each day.
It has started to smell like ammonia in here; even more of ammonia, I mean. I think she has started to rot.
All this effort to preserve her and what has happened? I think you’ve finally gotten to her. It was too late by the time I tried to save her, and she’s been eaten inside-out by you people.
A spidery web of black rot mars her cheek. Flies buzz about and land on her arm, which has floated up to the top. I should have paid more attention. I’ve bought some more formaldehyde; I’m going to top up the tank.
I guess she’s bound to change, but for now I’m going to preserve my Amber.