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.
