Chapter 11 Dodge This
Dodge This
Mark and Dana are going out for a date night at The Sizzler, leaving me at home. Dana fretted over and over, asking if thirteen was too young to leave a child alone. Mark and I assured her I’d be fine, until he finally bum-rushed her out of the house.
The door clicks shut behind them, and it’s as if the entire weight of the world crashes down on my shoulders. My breath catches, shallow and quick, like even the air doesn't want to be near me now that I’m truly alone.
I crumble, the emotional pain flooding over me like a torrential downpour. My knees give way and I slide down against the door, as sobs burst out of me in gut-wrenching spasms. I dig my fingers into the carpet, desperate to anchor myself to something—anything—real.
I’m glad they’re gone for this. It’s how it should be. Some ugliness is best kept private, like the way you cover a bruise instead of explaining how it got there.
I’ve been strong for so long, wearing the armor that gets me from classroom to classroom and back to Mark and Dana’s house.
That strength was strung together by a single thread of willpower—and tonight, it finally snapped. The hot rush of emotional pain engulfs me and it almost feels good after keeping it shoved inside for so long… almost.
For weeks now, the torment at school has struck me in my most vulnerable parts, hammering into me with merciless force.
At the beginning of the year, it started as whispers behind my back, subtle enough that I could pretend not to hear.
Then it escalated, the whispers turning into words, words turning into taunting shouts.
Today, I walked into class and found my desk covered with crude drawings and cutouts—pictures of families laughing, parents holding their children, images that served as a cruel contrast to my own life.
"Guess you can’t relate," someone snickered as I sat down. My cheeks burned, and I felt a lump forming in my throat. But I pushed it down, forcing myself to maintain composure.
Lunch was even worse. I found a note tucked under my food tray, written in mocking cursive. If you feel so lonely, why not just end it?
My hands shook as I crumpled up the paper, my appetite vanishing. Each letter of that note feels like a weight, dragging me further into a dark abyss.
Gym class was no better. When I was hit with the dodgeball, someone shouted, "Her parents dodged her, but she can’t even dodge a ball?" Laughter erupted around the room, each chuckle landing like a punch to my gut.
By the end of the day, I could barely hold it together. When I got to my last class, someone had scrawled on the board, "Nobody wants you, Evie. Why are you still here?"
I heard giggles and snickers from the back of the room, and the teacher erased it without a comment, as though erasing the words could erase the pain they caused.
Every comment, every snicker, every mocking is a knife slicing into the raw wound of my soul. They’ve been attacking my deepest fear—that maybe I am as alone and worthless as they say, that maybe life would be better off without me in it.
When I shut my bedroom door, the walls close in around me. The chorus of their jabs echo around me, as I feel the weight of their eyeballs even in this room.
My dam doesn’t just crack, it shatters. The sound that leaves me isn’t human. It’s raw and feral, the kind of sound that should only be heard in the dark.
Tears I’ve been holding back pour out, each one imprinted with the pain I’ve tried so hard to contain. I can’t go on like this, bearing the weight of loneliness and worthlessness. It’s too much.
I’m so consumed by my own misery that I don’t even notice the shift in the room, the slight drop in temperature, the entrance of another presence.
"What happened?" Shadow's voice is a dark cloak that wraps around me. Even in this form—indistinct, elusive—he has more substance than anything in my life.
My back stiffens. How long has it been night?
"Why do you care?" I hadn’t seen him for a month. He’d left me too.
Shadow seems to waver, his form a swirling vortex of darkness. "Tell me," he insists, his voice now a growl that resonates deep within me.
I hesitate, trembling. "Today was—" I whisper, feeling utterly vulnerable but unable to finish that sentence. "The notes, the things they say—it’s eating me alive. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t pretend it doesn’t kill me every day."
His shadowy form expands, filling the room with palpable tension. "Who?"
I shake my head. If I say their names, it makes them real. It makes me a victim instead of someone who survived the day.
"Who did this to you?" Danger and violence vibrate in his tone. Anyone else would fall to the ground in a boneless, shaking heap at his feet from the force of those words.
"It doesn’t matter."
"It matters to me."
A sob catches in my throat. "Why? Why would it matter to you? You’re just... just—"
"A monster? Yes. But even monsters have things they value, things they’d kill for." His voice softens as he says this last part, and for the first time, I glimpse a shred of vulnerability in him.
"I can’t do this anymore, Shadow," I confess. "I’m broken. I’m so tired."
He doesn’t speak for a moment, the weight of my admission hanging in the air between us like a dark cloud. And then, slowly, tendrils of darkness reach out, wrapping around me in a spectral embrace.
"Then let me be your strength. Let me be the dark corner where you hide, the shadow that stands beside you. You’re not alone, Evie. You’ve never been alone."
My tears spill over, but for the first time in forever, they carry something besides pain—solace. And as I lay there, wrapped in the tendrils of Shadow’s embrace, I understand that for better or worse, he is my sanctuary. My monster. My Shadow.
He stays with me until dawn, then dissipates, leaving a piece of himself behind, a dark comfort wedged inside the jagged breaks of my heart.
It’s another day of torment at school, but Shadow’s visit buoyed me. I can endure the thinly veiled suggestions that I off myself when I know someone wants me, needs me around.
My heart soars when Shadow slides out from under my bed for the second night in a row.
Quietly settling in next to where I’m reading under the covers, he simply sits with me.
It means the world to me, his presence. More of the shattered pieces of my heart are fused together in his darkness, until I start to feel like myself again.
I don’t realize I drifted off until Shadow’s movements wake me.
"Where are you going?" I ask, a note of panic entering my voice. I hadn’t expected him to leave before dawn.
"Sleep. I’ll be back soon," he replies. Then, instead of retreating under the bed, I watch as his form dissolves into a vortex of shadows, funneling out through the partially open window. He’s gone, leaving me alone once more.
The house is silent, almost eerily so, when I hear it—a soft rustle, the turning of pages.
I glance at my bedside table and there it is, my diary, open with its pages fluttering from the breeze through the window.
Had I left it there? No, I hide it under a loose floorboard, always careful to put it back there.
I don’t need Dana or Mark snooping into my private thoughts.
A sinking feeling overwhelms me as I realize how Shadow knew what I'd hidden, how he always knows.
I flip through the pages quickly, my heart pounding as I confirm my suspicions. Names. Dates. Incidents. They’re all there, written down in the ink of my despair.
I struggle to fall asleep again, wondering where he went, but I know exactly where he’s gone.
When Shadow returns, he simply slides next to me in bed and holds me. It’s less than thirty minutes until dawn—until he has to go.
"What did you do?" I ask, my heart pounding in my chest. From anticipation? Fear?
"You are more important than you could ever know," Shadow says instead of answering my question. "Never forget that. I need you. I want you in this world. If you did anything to yourself, you would be doing it to both of us."
Tears choke off any words I could think of saying. Each statement lands like the blow of a massive gong, vibrating through the marrow of my bones. I believe him. I wonder if he could know what it really means to me.
Snarp levitates from my desk and flies into my arms, where he nestles in for a hug, until I’m actively cuddling my stuffed parrot and loving my monster more than life itself.
Velvet shadow tendrils caress my hair and back before he slips away beneath the bed.
I go to school the next day bracing myself for the usual torment, but it never comes.
Instead, there’s a strange tension in the air, a buzz of unease that seems to cling to those who have made my life miserable.
They avoid my gaze, keep their distance, and for the first time, their silence speaks volumes.
Something has changed, and I don’t need to ask to know what—or who—has made the difference.
Days pass into weeks, and the tormentors of my past become phantoms. It’s as if they’ve been spooked by something that keeps them far from me.
I never ask Shadow what he did, and he never volunteers the information, but the next time our eyes meet—no words are needed.
He’ll always protect me when I need it.
On a night we spend reading again—he likes when I read A Wrinkle in Time out loud—I can’t take it anymore.
Pausing the story, I set the book down. "Thank you."
I don’t say for what, and I don’t have to.
Something in the shift of his shadows tells me he knows that I know. The monster under my bed traveled to the bedrooms of my enemies to promise hellfire and blood or whatever if they didn’t stop.
My guardian, my protector, my dark knight.
And as I drift off to sleep, I realize that while I may be broken, with Shadow by my side, I’ll never be alone.