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Dear Kate,
I am so sick and tired of you and Dad looking me in the eyes and telling me that I am dead.
You all think that Alice is "the evil alter ego" of Beth, and that Beth is the kind, sweet, innocent little girl who's been buried underneath Alice's insanity.
You don't get it.
I am Beth. I am finally Beth after years of being Alice.
I know Sophie must have told you about how the Caterpillar taught me how to sew human faces out of dead flesh… on the same day he showed me the newspaper article about Dad's remarriage.
The pain and anger and despair it caused me was unsurvivable for a little girl. There was no way I could accept the reality that my life was over and my family didn't love me anymore.
So, I became someone who could.
Alice wasn't flamboyant, wasn't needy, and certainly wasn't violent. She was a servant and caretaker of the Cartwright family. Nothing more.
Alice didn't even remember where she came from. She wasn't angry… well, except at her own torture and imprisonment, but it was the only life she ever knew. She didn't know what she had lost, never asked, and no one ever brought it up. She just wanted to survive and, one day, run away with her little Mouse.
When I saw those earrings and remembered everything, in that instant, Alice and I became one. I was still as I was at 14–sad, angry, hopeless–and I remembered everything I went through as Alice.
To say it was overwhelming to be forced to process over a decade of abuse in an instant would be an understatement. And Alice, or the part of me that was Alice, didn't take the harsh truth about her life any better, either.
So do you get it now, dear sister? I am Beth! And I have every reason to want revenge without having to be someone else. I was betrayed. I was abandoned to unimaginable horrors because it was easier for my family to forget about me!
If August had let me go the very day he showed me that article, I wouldn't have come back home. Not right away, at least. From that moment on, I hated you and Dad.
But as Alice, I learned many things. How to hurt people, generally. My desire to enact revenge along with my knowledge of how combined into an ambition.
I'm your sister, Kate. I'm the one you left to die, and replaced so easily. Sorry. This isn't some fairytale where pain doesn't change people. You have to blame my "alter ego" because you can't admit to the crucial role you played in the creation of the monster I am today.
So why do I call myself "Alice", you're probably wondering. Well, why not name myself after my hero? The girl who rescued me and protected me from that hell until she literally couldn't anymore. The girl who gave me the strength to endure my pain, and the knowledge to dish it out tenfold.
Face it, Kate. Whatever it is that makes me capable of murder runs through your veins too. And now that you've tasted blood, there's no going back. First you forget about the ones you love, which you already did. Then you take a life. Then… down, down, down the rabbit hole you go.
I'll see you at the bottom.
Love,
Elizabeth