Sarah Maas
- "Why do I always do that? Why do I always get nervous and start off on the wrong foot with people?"
The protagonist of The Curse of Camp Cold Lake. An exceedingly awkward girl who tries to fake drowning after making a bad start at camp, this ultimately results in having a ghost girl insisting she wants Sarah to die for real so they can be friends forever.
- All of the Other Reindeer: She struggled to make friends even before arriving at Camp Cold Lake. At camp, she's shunned and ostracized by the other campers to the point where she eats breakfast alone and no one is willing to be her canoeing partner.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: She desperately wants friends and pretends to drown to gain them. This results in her getting constantly stalked by a murderous ghost who wants nothing more than to be her friend.
- Butt-Monkey: Mainly because she's so awkward that it's hard for her not to get the short end of the stick. She quickly becomes the camp laughingstock.
- Cassandra Truth: The counselors assume she's imagining things due to shock when she keeps insisting she saw a ghost.
- Death by Irony: She pretends to drown herself in order to make friends. It's heavily implied at the end that she's going to die for real, at the hands of a ghost who wants to be friends with her.
- Didn't Think This Through: Pretending to drown was a cry for attention, which didn't make Sarah any more popular at first. Plus she didn't think about the very much real possibility that she could stay down too long and actually drown.
- Disappointing Older Sibling: At least that's what she sees herself as. She dislikes the fact that her younger brother is the more sensible one of the two, because in her mind, it makes him seem as if he's the older sibling.
- The Dog Bites Back: When she puts spiders in Meg and Briana's beds to get back at them for their pranks.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: She has this reaction to her brother's attempts to help her.
- Easily Forgiven: When her bunkmates decide to give Sarah a second chance, she is absolutely fine with making a fresh start, despite her bunkmates having pretended to do that before in order to stick a snake down her back. She also agrees to go canoeing with Jan even though last time she did so, Jan tipped the canoe over.
- Eating Lunch Alone: Right after she puts spiders in Meg and Briana's beds, she's promptly shunned and sits at the table eating breakfast alone.
- The Eeyore: She is usually depressed and pessimistic throughout the book.
- Fish out of Water: Her parents force her to attend a water sports camp, where most of the activities don't appeal to her due to disliking sports and being a weak swimmer.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Sarah is the Foolish to her brother Aaron's Responsible, if only because despite being younger, he is far more mature and social than she is.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Implied, since her ungrateful attitude towards her brother is less out of malice and possibly more out of envy of the fact that he's far more social and level-headed, which causes her insecurity to get the better of her.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Aside from pretending to drown to win sympathy and gain friends, she's so happy to finally have friends that she immediately forgives her bunkmates when her plan works and they offer her a fresh start, even though last time they apologized, it was a trick to put a snake down her back. Ironically, Della wants Sarah to be her friend, but even when Sarah thinks she's died and there's nothing to stop her from befriending a ghost, she refuses.
- Innocently Insensitive: When she accidentally insults Meg's height due to speaking without thinking.
- Ironic Name: Her name, Sarah, means "joy" or "delight". Sarah Maas, on the other hand, is depressed and angsty throughout the book.
- I See Dead People: After her near-death experience, she frequently sees Della around her camp. She tries telling various people about it, but almost none of them believe her.
- Jerkass Ball: While she's nice for most of the book, she becomes a massive jerk towards her brother every time he tries to help her out.
- Killed Offscreen: The book ends with Briana about to kill her with a snake, with her seemingly having no way to escape.
- Ms. Vice Girl: She's an overall nice person whose awkwardness sometimes makes her act selfishly and stupidly.
- Nice Girl: Aside from her awkwardness, she's rather nice and forgiving.
- No Social Skills: Within the first few chapters, Sarah's selfishness and awkwardness has alienated her bunkmates - taking the bed Briana had already claimed, unintentionally insulting Meg's height and accidentally revealing Jan's asthma to the camp.
- Shrinking Violet: Her shyness combined with No Social Skills makes her hopeless at making friends.
- Too Dumb to Live: Her attempt to make friends by guilt tripping the campers by pretending to drown – you can guess how that turned out.
- Ungrateful Bitch: She is rather mean to her brother when he's just trying to help her, but her frustration at how much more sensible and good at making friends than her he is despite being younger is understandable.
Briana, Jan, and Meg
Sarah's bunkmates. When she accidentally offends each of them, they ensure that her camp experience is as miserable as possible.
- Barred from the Afterlife: Like Della, Briana can't proceed to the afterlife without a buddy, and disagreed with being Della's buddy simply because she didn't like her, probably because she killed her.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Zigzagged with Briana. She starts off being cruel to Sarah, and later makes friends with her and saves her from Della only to try to kill Sarah with a snake after revealing she also needs a buddy as she turned into a ghost when Della killed her last year. It's likely she only apologized to Sarah so she'd be more willing to be her buddy.
- Dead All Along: Briana when it's revealed that she's a ghost.
- Disproportionate Retribution: While Sarah may have gotten off to a bad start with them, the girls drastically overreact to her minor and inconsequential mistakes. They team up to bully her in ways like pretending to be nice just to put a snake down her back, and at one point, Jan even tips the canoe she and Sarah are in over and leaves the latter to drown while knowing she's bad swimmer, just because Sarah accidentally revealed she had asthma (which in a way was kind of doing Jan a favor, since keeping her condition a secret could've easily put her health at risk).
- Gang of Bullies: They relentlessly bully Sarah together after she accidentally offends each of them.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While their treatment of Sarah and overreaction to her minor misdeeds was cruel and uncalled for, she did do things like force Briana to switch bunks with her and ruin her and Meg's plan of sleeping close to each other, kind of insult Meg's height and reveal Jan has asthma, which prevented her from going on the canoeing trip she was looking forward to.
- Laser-Guided Karma: When Sarah puts spiders in Meg and Briana's beds after they pretend to befriend her as a ploy to put a snake down her back.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: From Briana: "You'll be my buddy forever..."
- Token Minority: Briana is African American and wears cornrows.
- Took a Level in Kindness: They feel bad about the way they've treated Sarah and offer her a genuine fresh start after she pretends to drown.
Della
- "I need a buddy. Everyone at Camp Cold Lake needs a buddy."
Once a normal young girl staying at Camp Cold Lake, Della grew tired of the constant safety rules and became homesick. She attempted to swim across the lake to leave camp, but she drowned. Now her lonely spirit roams the camp, desperate for a buddy to take her to the afterlife. She actually tried to leave by going through the woods, but was bitten by a rattlesnake. She made Sarah Maas think she drowned as part of a ploy to lure her into the woods and kill her there.
- Affably Evil: She's rather friendly and welcoming when she first meets Sarah and is really just a relatively normal girl who desperately wants a friend.
- All for Nothing: Probably the most tragic part of Della's situation: killing someone to get a new "buddy" does not free her. And even then, her two victims want nothing to do with her, even if one is a ghost. In the end, she's as lonely and restless as ever, with no end to her misery in sight.
- And I Must Scream: Her ghost spent years wandering the camp, unable to leave the mortal plane.
- Anti-Villain: A little girl who is willing to do anything to make a friend, even murder.
- Ax-Crazy: Veers more and more into this after Sarah rejects her, even trying at one point to decapitate her with the propellers of a motorboat.
- Barred from the Afterlife: She's unable to proceed to the afterlife without a buddy.
- Big Bad: Of The Curse Of Camp Cold Lake.
- Broken Bird: Being trapped for years in a place you hate and getting rejected by those you want as friends will really do that.
- Creepy Child: From the way she stalks Sarah everywhere and constantly cajoles her to be her buddy for life, calling her this is a massive understatement.
- Cute and Psycho: When she's not trying to stalk and kill you, she's actually rather friendly, giving Sarah a coat when she was cold.
- Cute Ghost Girl: She's just an awkward, friendly ghost girl looking for a new buddy, even if it means resorting to murder.
- Despair Event Horizon: After Sarah makes her refusal clear, Della wails in misery and sinks into the ground.
- Distaff Counterpart: She could be considered this to Keith from I Live In Your Basement since both are Creepy Children who stalk the main protagonists who each got over a near-death experience at an attempt to befriend them.
- Exact Words: Della never actually said she drowned. She implied it several times by attacking Sarah at the lake and Sarah assumes that her drowning is the reason there are so many water safety rules, but at the end, Della points out she never actually explained how she died.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: That nightmarish lake ghost on the cover? Used to be just a bored young camper who got into a terrible accident. However, as Della is described as looking like a normal girl, just transparent, it's more possible that the rotten corpse on the cover is the remains of Sarah's body after being killed by Briana.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: The years spent wandering the campgrounds with little to no human contact haven't done any favors for her sanity.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: More specifically, she wants a "buddy" to join her in the afterlife.
- Manipulative Bitch: Pulls off a vicious gambit where she makes Sarah terrified of the water by pretending to have drowned, so that she can find her when she least suspects it.
- Tragic Villain: Unlike many other antagonists, Della clearly resents being a monster and will do anything to escape it.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: She was an utterly normal young girl who perished in a tragic accident. The years spent stuck haunting the campgrounds where she died have done a number on her sanity, though.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Arguably the most clear cut example in the entire franchise.
- Yandere: Brushing off her affections is a very bad idea.
