53. Evie
Evie
Ishould be happy right now.
I should feel elation, joy, but it’s buried beneath a suffocating blanket of dread.
I don’t think I even feel sad, I just feel tired.
So endlessly tired. And no matter how hard I try to shake it off, it continues to smother me, pinning me down like he did and refusing to retract its claws of horror.
Everything feels tainted.
Matteo and I had the most magical time the other night. I have a group of friends that adore me, a job I love, and yet waking up today, I feel so deeply unhappy I’m ashamed to not be more grateful.
Ashamed that with everything going right in my life I keep allowing something that happened over a decade ago to slowly kill me. Ashamed that I can’t get over it, ashamed that my mind seems to be stuck on an endless loop, repeating the memories like a TV show rerun.
It’s my birthday today. I woke up healthy and breathing soundly while another didn’t wake from their sleep, while another got terrible news, while another lost their loved one.
There are people that are experiencing the worst day of their lives and here I am with a beautiful one that I can’t seem to fully enjoy because my mind won’t let me move on.
I’ve been lying in bed with tears streaming down my cheeks for what feels like hours but I know is only minutes. Matteo, my sweet, kindhearted, caring, and loving boyfriend, is downstairs, the sound of him likely tinkering with a birthday surprise drifting up to his bedroom where I lie.
And yet I can’t move.
I’m utterly incapacitated by the memory I can’t forget.
My body is locked, frozen, as if I’m eight years old again, lying in that bed…
The tears won’t stop coming.
Because the memory won’t stop playing.
THEN - AGE EIGHT
Abubble of laughter floats up my throat and I quickly cup my hand around my mouth to try and silence the sound. My best friend Sarah makes the universal shh motion, her finger over her lip, but even her eyes are dancing with humor, her lips wobbling as she tries not to laugh.
Maddie fell asleep the second the movie started playing even though she said she wasn’t tired. Sarah said we should draw flowers on her cheeks but I thought that was a little mean.
I don’t like making anyone feel bad so I came up with a different idea.
Maddie is going to wake up in a pillow fort. That is, if we don’t wake her up with our giggles.
We’re so close. We’ve managed to put chairs and pillows around her inflatable mattress, and now we’re just trying to lay down the sheet over the chairs to make the roof. Sarah quickly lays the sheet over her corner chair, leaving just one more to cover—mine.
I’m tiptoeing, holding my breath as I make it to the chair and slowly slide it over, using one of our shoes to hold it down.
Stepping back, my and Sarah’s eyes lock across the fort, waiting to see if it will hold. When it does, I jump in the air and pump my fist while Sarah hops up and down, doing a shimmy dance. Flopping onto our mattresses beside Maddie, we high five, smiling.
This is my first birthday that I’ve been happy.
Sarah and Maddie don’t even realize how big of a deal this is to me, don’t realize that by having a sleepover with me on my birthday, they’re keeping the monster away, even if it is just for one night.
I can’t stop smiling. My cheeks hurt, aching from how wide my lips stretch. Turning my head, I’m about to suggest that we should watch another Barbie movie but I find Sarah somehow already sleeping, her mouth open, snoring softly.
Guess I get to pick the movie now.
Halfway through Wild Child I keep licking my dry lips to wet my mouth. I need water so bad. I go in search of water around the room, only to come up with three empty bottles.
It’s past midnight. No one will be awake. I’ll just quickly grab water and then run back.
Moving toward the den door, I slowly lower the handle, trying my hardest to be as quiet as possible before tiptoeing out of the room and silently up the stairs. Once I peek my head over the top of the landing to find the kitchen and living room empty, I breathe a sigh of relief.
I’m halfway through the kitchen, my hands reaching to grab the fridge door when the lights flicker on. I freeze, my hand pausing midair, my breath getting caught in my lungs.
“Evie.”
That voice sends a type of coldness through my entire body that shouldn’t happen when you’re alive. It’s the type of cold that makes me think I’m dying.
“What are you doing?”
His words are slurred, that telltale smell of whiskey drifting toward me even from across the kitchen.
No, no, no.
I was so close, so close to having a birthday without him in it.
What is he even doing here this late?
“Evie!” he barks, making me jump out of my skin. “Don’t ignore me, young woman.”
Bile rushes for my throat. I’m not a woman, I want to scream, I’m a little girl.
“Evie, answer me!”
I can’t speak.
My mouth won’t move. The only thing that does is my body, shaking so much it’s like I’m vibrating.
His hand smacks down on my shoulder, making me cry out, but that’s the wrong thing to do.
Spinning me, he towers above me, his beady eyes narrowing to little slits as he threatens, “I warned you what would happen if you stopped loving me. You should be a good girl, especially tonight, Evie. Our time is running out.”
What does he even mean we’re running out of time?
Good! I want to say. I hate his touches, I hate his voice, I hate him.
Especially today. I was having so much fun with Maddie and Sarah. I felt normal. I felt like every other little girl who has sleepovers and doesn’t have bad monsters sneak into their room.
I just want one birthday…one birthday where he doesn’t come for me.
What did I ever do to deserve this?
Did I do something so awful that as punishment I have to suffer through his body pinning mine down?
I wish I knew what I did. I wish I knew why I deserved it. I wish I knew because I’d do anything to reverse it.
Without another word the hand on my shoulder begins to steer me toward the stairs leading up to the bedrooms. My knees give way as he pushes me forward, tears spilling down my cheeks as true terror clutches me. I know what’s about to happen, know what I’m going to be forced to do, and I hate it.
I hate it!
Please, no. Please, no.
Please, someone stop—
“Evie?”
The monster and I freeze. Matteo is at the top of the stairs, blinking down at me.
Relief floods my body so much the monster behind me has to stop me from falling to my knees.
“Go to bed,” the monster snaps.
But Matteo—oh my Matteo—he just looks at me, and I beg for help. Not with my words, I could never, but I beg him with my eyes, plead with him to stop this in any way.
Matteo looks from me to the monster as he walks down the stairs, perplexed. “What’s going on?”
“None of your business, boy. Go back to bed.”
Matteo flinches at his tone. No one hears it except for me. To everyone else he’s an angel, but really, he’s the devil in disguise.
“B-but she’s crying.”
The monster must see the worry in his eyes, must hear the concern in his voice, because he softens into that buttery-sweet person he reserves for everyone except me.
“It’s okay, Matteo. One of the girls hurt her feelings, I’m just sorting it out. She’s all right, see?” He cups my chin and tilts my head to look up at him, and I get a flash of his tight smile and gritted teeth as he says, “Isn’t that right, Evie?”
A fresh wave of tears fills my eyes. I know what that look means.
A memory resurfaces. The night I tried to run, the night I tried to scream—the night I tried to tell my mom. He dragged me by my neck back to my room, threw me clear across the room, and promised to slit her throat from ear to ear if I ever told her.
Dead girls can’t help you, can they, Evie? he said.
Swallowing thickly, I turn to Matteo, hating with every fiber of my being as I nod.
I can’t lie to him, still can’t speak even if I wanted to. I’m too scared.
Even as I beg with my eyes for him not to leave me alone.
“Go to bed, Matteo,” the monster pleads.
He takes one step toward me before I’m jumping out of my skin a second time as the monster barks behind me, “Go to bed, boy!”
Matteo’s eyes fill with silver as they snap to the monster’s face, his bottom lip wobbling as he murmurs, “Please don’t make me leave her when she’s upset. Maybe I can calm her—”
“I won’t ask again.”
The first tear drops down his cheek as he takes a step backward up the stairs.
I’m sorry, Dove, he mouths.
The monster and I don’t move. I don’t breathe until we hear the click of Caleb’s door shutting. He spins me the second the sound rings out, so quickly my head snaps back. His hand smacks down on my mouth as he drops his lips to my ear. “You’re my whore, not his, understand me?”
When I say nothing, he squeezes my arms so hard I yelp out in pain, spitting out, “I understand!”
His hold loosens, but not nearly enough.
“Good.” He turns me again, dragging me into the living room until he shoves me down to the floor, pushing me so hard the wind is knocked from my lungs.
I barely have time to catch my breath again before his front is plastered to my back, the sound of his belt unbuckling accompanying the rip of my Hello Pony pajama pants as he whispers in my ear, “Now be a good girl and show me how much you love me.”
Ifloat away for the entirety of it again, my body walking around the kitchen aimlessly, looping the kitchen island as the sound of his muffled grunts and my silenced cries behind his hand fill the living room.
Just below, my friends are sound asleep. Above, Matteo and my family.
And yet, no one saves me.
No one ever saves me.
He takes my bloodied shorts away, wipes my tears, and sends me back down to the den, expecting me to act normal and be a little girl but he robbed me of a childhood the first day he snuck into my room when I was three years old.
I wish I had died that day.
When I sit down on the blow-up mattress, wincing as fire burns between my legs, I wish that I had never woke up today, either. That I had stopped aging, stopped breathing. He can’t hurt me if I’m dead.
To my surprise, Matteo comes into the room, whispering my name into the dark, worry in his voice…but he’s too late. I don’t want to talk. There’s nothing left to soothe or save.
Eventually, he closes the door, thinking I’m asleep, and I do manage to fall asleep, but it’s with tears streaming down my cheeks as I dream about not waking up in the morning.