Ash DeCosta (245 views)

Ashleigh DeCosta

She goes by Ash

15, sophomore.

Fashion design

She’s a fashion major, though she loves to take classes in the cosmo field when she can because she also likes to study makeup application and hair styling. She’s also decided to declare herself a history major when she reaches college.

Female. To be honest, her gender identity doesn’t matter much to Ash and she would probably consider herself non-binary rather that neutral or fluid, but when it comes to official documents and her parents she just chooses to identify as female for conveniences sake (and because it doesn’t bother her very much regardless). She does enjoy ‘crossdressing’ (though she hates referring to it as that) sometimes and if people ever assume she’s a boy, she just rolls with their assumption.

Lesbian

Part-time at the movie theater in Salem, she needs to work in order to fund her own fashions because all her mother ever buys for here are god-awful dresses and skirts (not even that they’re bad by default – they’re hideous).

Ash is known throughout the school for her heavy devotion to historical fashions and, when it comes to her work, she is not ashamed to show it off. However she is very quiet when not talking about her work and, during projects, she tends to become a dictator (which is surprising to most given her shy/quiet personality). Her sexuality is well-known throughout the school yet somehow rumors she’s dating or interested in Cliff still circulate. She says it’s because everyone hates to think of lesbians.

She is pretty friendly with Cliff Arkwright only because they were in a History class together freshman year and were both quiet in the class/had no friends in the class. They wound up working together for their projects. They’ll see each other outside of class sometimes, and wave, and sometimes if there’s something going on they’ll go together. Cliff has stood up for Ash to Shyanne Volle before, and that’s probably the reason she likes to be around him in the halls and hang out with him when he’s available. There’s a rumor going around that she has a crush on him with how she’ll hide behind him a lot and cling to him when the popular group comes around, though that is very much not the case. Ash and Cliff both laugh at that rumor because she told him within two weeks of knowing him that she’s a lesbian (and is also not in the closet at all at school). She just appreciates being around someone who makes her feel safe from the rumor crowd.

Her brother is who she considers her best friend.

She knows Arthur through work and doesn’t really talk to him much outside of it, but also knows that he knows Cliff so there’s a mutual connection there.

She’s never liked Shyanne much. Because she’s not feminine and openly lesbian Shyanne has picked on her numerous times. Though in the long run, Ash doesn’t fear the rumors or the hatred Shyanne extends her way that much, she does get scared that it’ll turn out like one of those teen bullying movies or something where the girls corner her in the bathroom and stab her with nail files. Robyn, Seamus, Brad, Issy, ect. all make Ash uncomfortable and she would rather just avoid all the sports teams and preppy sort of crowd. She also doesn’t like how Aiden kisses their asses just to get by – not faulting him for that, though. She blames Shyanne and her crowd for treating him that way.

She’d probably say she doesn’t like Logan, only because of what she’s said about Cliff and what Cliff has told her about her.

Single

None

5’7”, she’s very thin and looks androgynous, especially with her hair cut short. She doesn’t mind that much.

Cut very short, almost a buzz cut, with the tips dyed a soft grey/silver color. She likes to dye her hair and had it pink last year, which she dyed as part of a breast cancer awareness event despite her parents’ objections. She decided she liked the style and just changed the color this year.

Brown, and Ash is very skilled with makeup. She usually applies some daily to complete her looks – she likes her makeup heavy and dark.

Grunge/punk/masculine. Her style choices in her art study are completely different than what she winds up wearing herself. She doesn’t mind wearing skirts, but they’re always at least knee length and usually have leggings or tights underneath. She hates dresses, and feels she looks rather awkward on them, especially when their mother tries to force her into dresses. Her style is almost like she just threw something on, except she put in a lot of effort to look purposefully lax.

African-Jamaican-American

Willow Smith

History, studying, reading books, Medieval culture, traveling long distances, Italian dressing, sunflowers, the color yellow, watching TV shows, pokemon,

Wearing heels (though using them for fashion she designs is cool), heavy romance (especially in shows – minor romance is fine and cute but she hates cutesy couples both IRL and fictional), PDA,

Drawing in the margins of her notebooks. It’s therapeutic to her.

Watching TV shows (primarily historical dramas), playing her Nintendo 3DS, reading, and knitting

Intelligent, introverted, nerdy, bookish, ambitious, skilled, confident in her work, unique, creative, understanding, takes no shit, thick-skinned,

Shy/timid, soft-spoken, bossy (when it comes to her designs), closed-off, blunt,

Miami, Florida.

A skateboard she uses to get to and from classes.

Ash grew up smothered in Jamaican culture. Every important holiday, her extended family always made a hefty appearance. That much was fine at first and Ash liked seeing her family. They were all pretty supportive and fun-loving. At home, things were all right. Her parents were heavily Christian and she grew up going to church every Sunday. Ash didn’t mind this, nor did she really enjoy it. She guesses she’s still a catholic, deep down somewhere, but doesn’t think she really has to pray at a church surrounded by people to he heard by God.

When her older brother got cast in a play, Ash wanted to help. She was always very close to her brother and so when he let her help him with his costume she was really excited. While helping him and his friends get ready for the performance Ash found herself glued to the stylist on set, a woman who later became her role model and the reason she applied to Metric. Ash learned the ropes off fashion from her and her input was actually something that the stylist found helpful in determining what to have her cast wear. The stylist, over the course of the days of rehearsal for the cast, gave Ash some old books about fashion and fabric that Ash still has to this day. Ash started to pour over the books and learned all kinds of trivia about fashion and cosmetology. Her mother seemed to like this hobby when Ash told her about it – it was very feminine and from a young age Ash was taught to be as feminine as possible.

In terms of when Ash discovered her sexuality, she couldn’t really say. She just kind of always knew she liked girls. When she was a kid it didn’t matter because all boys were icky, but by the time she got to middle school the girls were starting to notice the boys and Ash didn’t. Last year, Ash came out to her parents at 13.

It didn’t go that well. Her parents didn’t disown her and heard her out but her father had his lips drawn into a thin line and her mother looked like she was going to cry. After she came out her parents asked no questions and didn’t seem to care – until they started subtly making jabs against her sexuality and trying to get her to ‘see sense’. For the most part, her father’s come around about her over the years, but her mother’s just gotten worse. And Ash knows that her brother, Aiden, is under heavy pressure due to their parents reacting so strongly against Ash to be ‘normal’. When Aiden came out to Ash, she was very accepting of him and feels united with him against a common enemy – their parents.

Her brother attended Metric when he was 14, and when Ash was old enough she too applied with the assistance of the stylist she befriended when Aiden was in the play. She got a portfolio together and was accepted into Metric. Ash’s mother, who is so dead-set against her daughter being ‘masculine’ in the slightest, approved of this because cosmetology and fashion design are ‘feminine’ hobbies to her.

When Ash came to Metric it was hard. She didn’t fit in right away and she was quiet. Though confident about her work, Ash barely spoke up when it wasn’t about fashion and became difficult to talk to. She wasn’t closed about her sexuality and when someone asked her if she was a lesbian or something, and answered, yup.

Of course that made her disliked by some popular people – specifically Shyanne. Unfortunately, Ash discovered her brother was kind of like a ‘ghost friend’ to those people who disliked her. She didn’t begrudge her brother for not speaking up against the mean words people said about her and just developed a thick skin. When she was walking in the hall a big group of people came up to her and started ragging on her, with Aiden in the crowd, and Ash couldn’t really get away easily until Cliff Arkwright came to her rescue, and after that the two became friends. Ash introduced Cliff to Aiden when they weren’t around the popular crowd, and she hopes that they can be good friends and not only that, but maybe having another friend can help her brother come to terms with himself. Her relationship with her parents is still strained.

• As I mentioned earlier, Ash goes by both she/her and they/them pronouns. She might come out as gender neutral/nonconforming in the future when she’s not living with her parents, but for now either set of pronouns is fine.
• Ash does have feminine interests and doesn’t mind looking feminine, but especially around her family and mother, she emphasizes her masculine interests and wardrobe.
• The song lyrics are from Elastic Heart by Sia.