Two days later, Sarah woke up on a bright and cheery Sunday morning. She yawned and smacked her lips, grinning as she ran her tongue along her perfect teeth. Less than an hour after Karyn had punched her (punched me in the mouth! what a bitch!) the other night, her mouth had suddenly healed like it had never happened. Her teeth were suddenly whole again and she could no longer taste blood in her mouth. She had been riding in an ambulance, still uncontrollably crying from the pain, her father riding with her, on the phone with his lawyers, half-screaming and plotting out lawsuits against Karyn and everyone else he could potentially imagine... and suddenly, she was no longer in pain and was riding in the passenger seat while her father was driving her home in his car. He didn't think anything was out of the ordinary, and none of the other cheerleaders said anything about it in the group chat, but Sarah remembered exactly what had happened. Could still feel the phantom pain when she thought about it.
Sarah smiled now. Like Karyn magically fixing what had happened would change anything! Sarah would get her back, mark her words.
She went over to her closet and quickly got dressed, buttoning up a simple dress, appropriate enough for a day that she didn't expect to be leaving the house. She sat down at a mirror in her room and applied some light makeup, gave herself a once-over, and sat back, satisfied.
It was then she noticed the envelope addressed to her sitting in front of the mirror.
Her face scrunched up in confusion. Wait, where did that come from? She shrugged, then opened it up to find a handwritten letter.
Sarah,
We're not sorry for punching you in the teeth. We're sorry you were in pain, but we don't regret for a second the punch itself. You would have done the same thing in our position. And also, it felt really good and Karyn would happily do it again.
Anyway, your mouth and face should be all set now, and no one but you and us will remember that it ever happened, although you've probably guessed that by now.
Sarah sneered at that. As if she couldn't figure out some other way to leverage her father's influence to sue Karyn into oblivion!
The bigger problem at hand right now is that we know you won't stop. If you're given another opportunity to be near Jon, you'll start right in on changing him again. Or you'll manipulate him into doing something to Karyn. You'll call it self-defense, but there's a difference between self-defense and actively harming us.
Semantics. Karyn and Jon had probably some idea ready to torture her with using their stupid rock, and she just got to them first. They had it coming, and they'll have it coming again.
Either way, you should know now that we've done two things to fix what you've caused. First, you went to the bank yesterday and withdrew about $1000 in small bills. You put that in an envelope and left it for us in your mailbox. We picked it up yesterday afternoon. Every bit of that money will go towards paying people to get them to say the right set of words so that we can rebuild Jon, as close to Jon as he once was. We figure it might take exactly that much. Anything left over, we'll donate to your cheerleading team. They'll need it without you around all the time to fund everything for them.
Sarah seized up at that. She definitely didn't remember going to the bank yesterday, and there's no way she would have given them any of her family's money. More concerning, what did they mean by her not being around?
You don't remember doing this because we knew you would refuse, so we used the rock to make you do it and blocked your memory of it. It'll all come back to you in a little bit.
The second thing is to make sure that you can't manipulate us again. We could have turned you into a slug, or permanently removed your voice. Those would have been easy. But you didn't give Jon the choice in how you transformed him - how you violated him - and we didn't want to do that to you, because unlike you, we're actually decent people, Sarah.
So from now on, any time you think about how you're going to do something to us, or how you'll get revenge on us, or you actively make any kind of effort to ruin us or impact us or influence us or do anything to us - any time you plot, or scheme, or prepare against us - you're going to be forced to live the rest of the day and the entire next day in your worst nightmare. Your life will be rewritten so Sarah McMillan will not have existed. For that day, you will just be Sarah, the McMillan house maid. You will obey every order and instruction given to you, and will be completely subservient to those around you. You told Jon your biggest fear was to be subservient to everyone, after which you immediately did everything you could to make sure that he had to live through his greatest fear, while you also set it up so he in theory could never escape. Well, we're not you. We haven't left you trapped like this. If you stop working to harm us, then your life will be normal. But we don't think you'll be able to do that. You can look in the mirror now.
Sarah looked up, and nearly fell out of her chair. It was her in the mirror, it was unquestionably Sarah - but the dress she had put on that morning was indeed a maid's uniform. Her makeup was appropriate for her being one of the help. The room that she was in was not her normal room - it was a simple domestic living quarters, like what Mollie normally lived in. And the clock on the wall - it read 6 AM. Earlier than she would ever have normally woken up on the weekend - but just the time she would have expected Mollie to be up to prepare things for her parents. She looked back down at the paper she clutched in her shaking hands.
This is why we don't think you'll be around your cheerleading team all that much anymore.
When you are Sarah the maid, no one will remember Sarah McMillan exists besides you and us. Not your parents, not your team, not anyone else in school.
We thought about just moving you and your family to Alaska and write you out of our lives, but Jon was convinced you'd find a way to still destroy us. He's probably not wrong.
We're really sorry that it came to this. We don't expect you to forgive us. We honestly do hope to see you around school soon enough. If we do it'll mean that neither you nor us need to worry about defending ourselves against the other ever again. We hope that's a reality sometime soon. But it will be up to you.
You've probably noticed by now that it's 6 AM. Time for you to go downstairs and prepare the household. Mollie will tell you what to do if you're ever at a loss.
Goodbye, Sarah.
It was signed Karyn and Jon.
Sarah sat in stunned silence - for no more than ten seconds. Then her face composed itself, entirely against her will. She folded up the letter and put it back in the envelope, and left it neatly in front of the mirror. She stood, straightened her apron and patted out any folds in her dress, and left her room to prepare breakfast for the McMillans. All while pounding on the walls inside her head, cursing out Karyn and Jon repeatedly, and repeatedly failing in trying to get herself to do anything else.
