Evan’s World: Episode 17 – A Madison’s World Side Story

The quiet was a strange companion. 

Evan’s room sat in soft, suburban stillness, light pouring through the window in muted gold, the ceiling fan humming gently above, stirring the faint scent of bubblegum body spray and clean laundry. Evan’s posters, her pastel clutter, her lived-in chaos remained untouched. And amid it all, Charity sat alone. 

Not in her habitat. 

On the desk. 

A controlled risk. But a calculated one. Evan wouldn’t be home for at least two hours. she had gone out with Madison and Brooklyn for frozen yogurt and mall selfies. Charity had heard the click of the door, the overlapping teen chatter fading like birds taking flight. 

Now it was just her. A five-and-a-half-inch girl perched beside a closed notebook, the pen beside it longer than her torso. 

Her legs dangled over the edge. She didn’t move them. 

She sat very still. 

Think, Charity. 

That had been her mantra once, back in the first days after the shrink, when every moment was unfamiliar and terrifying. Before Evan had learned the cues from Sara. Before the schedules. Before the feeding rituals, the clothing, the scenting, the praise. 

Before she had begun to respond. 

That’s what she hated most. 

How her body reacted now, on instinct. How her knees bent when Evan used that voice. How her head leaned into strokes she didn’t want. How she could feel her stomach tighten with pride when Evan called her “good.” 

Like a bell chiming before she’d even chosen to ring it. 

Her hand clenched on the desk’s laminate surface. 

Not tightly. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to remember it was her hand. 

She breathed slowly, eyes scanning the familiar room, walls covered in fairy lights and glossy stickers, a shoebox full of Littles’ accessories in the corner, her own habitat softly glowing with its artificial sunrise setting. 

She had once screamed at being locked in that thing. 

Now, she went in without protest. 

Not because she wanted to. 

Because it made things easier and while she would never admit i outloud. It felt like home now. 

And that’s the trap, she told herself. Easier is not better. Familiar is not freedom. 

Still, there were moments, quiet, creeping ones, when she didn’t even realize she had submitted until it was too late. Like last night, when Evan had patted her head absentmindedly while watching TikToks. Charity had leaned into it, like a cat seeking affection. 

She’d only realized it five minutes later. 

And when she had, she didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. She’d just… stared at the ceiling. 

Because it was happening. Evan’s methods, her little games, her structured kindness, her soft enforcement, were working. 

Charity could feel the rewiring. Not overt. Not breaking. Smoothing. 

But that wasn’t the same as defeat. 

I’m still here, she reminded herself. I am still Charity Stevens. 

She still counted days. 

She still observed. Memorized Evan’s schedules. Noted her moods. Tracked when she was soft and when she hardened into that trainer voice. 

She hadn’t stopped thinking. She hadn’t stopped being. 

She remembered Kira’s laugh. The scent of her own perfume, not cherry vanilla, not what Brie lathered into her now, but bergamot and sandalwood and citrus. 

She remembered her old phone, its weight, the buzz of respect in every ping of a message, how people would wait on her word. 

She remembered herself. 

Even if her body sometimes forgot. 

Charity moved from the desk, landing on the warm bed with a practiced crouch. She crossed the room quietly, bare feet brushing crumbs from Evan’s dropped cereal earlier that morning. 

She didn’t head to the habitat. 

She moved instead to Evan’s sneakers. 

She stared at them. 

The instinct was to sit beside them. To polish the scuff marks, to busy her hands so she’d be rewarded later. 

She stayed standing. 

Because today, no one was here to praise her. No one to see. No points to earn. 

Just her. 

And she needed to remember what that felt like. 

The collar around her neck didn’t jingle as much anymore. Evan had swapped it out for a “quieter one,” she’d said sweetly. “More discreet. But still cute.” 

Still there. 

Charity reached up and touched it. 

She hated how soft it felt. How used to it her skin was. 

But she didn’t take her hand away. 

She stood there, touching the collar, staring at the shoes. 

It’s not gone. It’s not over. I am not broken. 

She repeated it until the words felt like armor. 

And when she finally did sit, it wasn’t in submission. It was in defiance. 

Because if she was going to survive this, truly survive it, it wouldn’t be through rebellion that would only get her punished. It would be through memory. Through thought. Through strategy. 

Evan was winning, yes. 

But she hadn’t won. 

Not yet. 

The soft whir of the ceiling fan was all that filled the room. 

Charity sat beside the sneaker, not touching it. Her collar lay quiet against her throat, her body still, her mind alight with a rare, fragile clarity. 

She had just begun to sketch out a plan, nothing grand, nothing heroic. Just… a plan to remain intact. A way to keep herself from disappearing completely. 

Then the lock turned. 

The front door opened. 

Charity’s stomach clenched. 

No. No, Evan wasn’t supposed to be home yet. The yogurt run. The mall. That stupid sticker booth they always posed in. There should have been time. 

But no, footsteps. Rapid. Familiar. 

And then the unmistakable creak of Evan’s bedroom door. 

“Charizard?” Evan’s voice floated in like sunshine filtered through blinds, light, easy, bright. 

Charity’s heart flipped. 

The distance between herself and the habitat was ten full paces. The toothbrush she used for cleaning still lay near the desk. She hadn’t even staged the sneakers. No gloss, no polish, no obedient posture. 

She was simply sitting. 

Doing nothing. 

God, move. MOVE. 

Charity surged to her feet, stumbling on the laces, scrambling to align herself with the sneaker in a way that looked intentional. 

She ducked her head. Folded her hands. Let her knees settle on the floor. 

The transformation was nearly complete by the time Evan’s face appeared in the doorway. 

“There you are!” Evan beamed, cheeks pink from the breeze outside. She dropped a shopping bag on her bed, tossing her jacket to the floor in a way that made Charity wince internally. “I told the girls I forgot my power bank, so I ran back. You weren’t in your habitat! I guess you liked the ladder i put in there” 

She approached quickly, shoes still on, breeze still clinging to her hoodie, and crouched beside Charity. 

“You missed me, huh?” 

Charity smiled. Just enough. Not too big. Just the version Evan liked. 

Evan reached out and ran a finger along the back of Charity’s head. “I hope you weren’t just sitting here doing nothing,” she said lightly. “Did you do your floor stretches?” 

Charity nodded, heart still racing. Her voice, raw with adrenaline, barely came out. “Y-yes, Evan.” 

“Good girl.” The praise came like a sedative, sweet and slow. Evan bent down and planted a small kiss to the top of Charity’s head. “I brought you something.” 

From the bag, she pulled out a scrap of fabric—pink with embroidered strawberries. 

A hoodie. Little sized. 

“Brooklyn picked it,” Evan said, unfolding it like a gift. “She said it looks like your vibe. Well, your new vibe.” 

Charity touched the fabric. 

Soft. Expensive. Infantilizing. 

But she nodded. She even smiled again. 

“That’s my girl,” Evan murmured. 

And just like that, “Charizard” clicked back into place. 

Inside, Charity burned. 

Because she had tasted stillness just minutes before. Had remembered what it felt like to be alone with her own thoughts. Not prepped, not trained, not staged. Just human. 

Now that version of her was gone again. Flattened under pink fleece and praise. 

She looked up at Evan, eyes clear. 

One day, she thought. You won’t know when it happens. But one day, I won’t smile back. 

And then she whispered the line Evan wanted to hear: 

“Thank you.” 

Later, long after Evan had skipped out again with hoodie tied around her waist, earbuds in, excited to rejoin her friends, Charity sat alone in her habitat. 

The silence pressed around her, heavy and soft, like the fleece walls of a pastel coffin. 

The hoodie lay folded in the corner. She hadn’t put it on. 

Not yet. 

She didn’t want it touching her skin. Not until she had to. 

She sat cross legged on her cushion, hands on her knees, trying to breathe normally. But the air felt thick with something she couldn’t name. Something heavier than grief. More suffocating than rage. 

Forever. 

That was the word clawing at her chest. Not tomorrow. Not this week. 

Forever. 

What if this is it? 

What if Evan’s room, its LED fairy lights and strawberry scented laundry sheets, was the final landscape of her life? What if there would be no apartment in Manhattan someday, no late night debates over politics or art with Kira, no espresso over breakfast before she changed the world? 

What if this was her world now? 

Her eyes drifted to the pink hoodie again. 

A gift. A trap. A uniform. 

She thought of the way Evan had smiled when she accepted it. That radiant, innocent pride. 

And worst of all, she’d meant it. Evan wasn’t lying. She wasn’t acting. 

She truly believed she was being kind.  Just a few days ago she even heard a talk between Evan and her parents about her voice and surgery. Evan was asking about the cost. 

Charity dug her nails into the soft floor, trying to feel something, anything real beneath the plush surface. But the carpet gave way like always. No friction. No ground to anchor herself. 

She’d smiled today. 

She’d said “Thank you.” 

She had performed obedience like a well rehearsed role in a play she never auditioned for. 

And the applause came in coos and strokes and glittery pink hoodies. 

You’re mine now, Evan had said. 

And Evan was right. 

Because it wasn’t just the cage. Or the pellets. Or the nickname. 

It was the part of her that moved when Evan raised her hand. The part that wanted the treat. The part that flinched from disapproval more than pain. 

The part that was starting to adapt. 

Her body had changed first, couldn’t eat real food anymore, couldn’t speak with volume or edge of her old voice. 

Now her mind was trying to catch up. And she was fighting it.  

But she couldn’t deny what she was beginning to see: 

You could resist all you wanted. 

You could hold onto who you were like a shipwrecked girl clinging to driftwood in a vast, pastel ocean. 

But time still passed. 

Praise still softened the edges. 

And cages, even invisible ones, still closed around you. 

She laid back, staring at the faux “sky” of her habitat ceiling, light blue with glow-in-the-dark stars. She hadn’t asked for those either. 

Will I be here next year? Five years? 

Will I be here forever? 

A thought crawled up from the hollowed center of her chest: 

If I have to live here forever… do I want Evan to love me? 

It made her nauseous. But it was real. 

Because if she was going to be trapped, maybe it would be easier if Evan stayed kind. If Evan kept cooing. If the pellets stayed tasty. If the outfits were soft. If the hand that stroked her hair wasn’t cruel. 

Maybe it was okay to be a pet… 

If the owner loved you. 

Charity curled tighter on the cushion. 

She didn’t cry. 

She just lay there. 

Very, very still. 

Trying to remember what her voice used to sound like when she said her name out loud. 

Trying not to say Charizard. 

The hum of Evan’s fan filled the room, a low constant buzz that blurred the edges of silence. Charity sat on the fleece blanket inside her habitat, knees drawn to her chest, arms wrapped around them. She wasn’t crying. Not yet. But her face felt tight, like it might happen if she moved the wrong way. 

She stared at the edge of Evan’s nightstand, where the projection from the tablet had vanished long ago. Just pixels now. Just light and code. 

But the words stayed. 

“I forgive you, Charity.” 

It hadn’t felt like freedom. It had felt like a verdict. 

Forgiveness. Not begged for. Not deserved. Just… given. Like a weight dropped at her feet that she now had to carry. 

And then,  

“Forgiveness isn’t always for the forgiven… It’s how we close a chapter without letting it rot the rest of the story.” 

That part kept looping in her mind. Rot. Sara had said it without anger. Without the venom Charity had braced herself for. And that made it worse. Charity had expected rage. She was prepared for fury. But calm? That steady voice, stripped of streamer cadence or performative flair? 

It had hollowed her out. 

She pressed her forehead to her knees and tried to breathe. 

What did it mean to be remembered, but not erased? To be forgiven, but not absolved? 

Sara still remembered everything. 

“I moved on… with Chloe, with Jordy, with a life that’s full.” 

That line cut too. The way Sara said “full,” like it had weight. Like it meant something Charity might never have again. Her world was measured now in square inches. In assigned pellets. In the proximity of Evan’s fingers. 

Full. 

What would that even feel like anymore? 

Charity tilted her face slightly, eyes open, gazing through the mesh at the wide ceiling overhead. She hadn’t thought much about the future lately, because it always stopped at Evan. Her rebellion, her conditioning, her numb routines… they all existed within the boundaries of this room. This girl. This structure. 

But what if it never changed? 

What if this was the rest of her life? 

“Even if it’s not absolution. Even if it’s just… surrender.” 

The word clung to her ribs. 

Surrender. 

Not as a defeat. Not as submission to Evan. But surrendering the lie that she could go back. That somewhere out there, Charity Stevens still existed, waiting to be found like a lost scarf in the back of a closet. 

No. That Charity was gone. 

And yet, something still beat inside her. Some tiny pulse that flared every time she moved slower than Evan wanted. Every time she craved a pellet but refused to eat it righ away. It was microscopic. But it was hers.

Was that enough? 

“And if you can’t forgive yourself…” 

Charity closed her eyes. 

She couldn’t. 

She hadn’t even tried. 

Not for what she did to Sara. Not for what she didn’t do when others were hurt by her words or actions. Not for the way she’d spoken about Littles. Not for the way she’d whispered along to Cindy’s podcast and nodded like it was common sense. 

“I pray you meet a grace bigger than your guilt.” 

A single tear slid down her temple, soaking into the fleece. Her arms tightened around her legs. 

Was there such a thing? 

Something bigger than this? 

Bigger than what she had done? 

What she had become? 

Charity didn’t know. But for the first time, she wasn’t pushing the thought away. 

She let it sit with her, quiet and close. Like a prayer whispered by someone else, too sacred to claim but too soft to ignore. 

Maybe that was enough. Charity thought. Maybe that could be enough. As she walked across her habitat. Evan had left her a tiny pen and paper. She laughed at it at first. Wondering when and why she would ever use it.  

Evan had told her that sometimes you might just want to collect your thoughts. It was silly, she thought. As she sat down with the pen and paper.  What could she even write? What does she have to say? Its not like anyone would see it.  Charity thought before closing her eyes and letting her feelings take her.  
 
 

Dear Sara, 

I don’t know why I’m writing this. 
I don’t even know if you’ll ever read it. 
Maybe I’m writing it for me. 

Maybe that’s what you meant. 

You said forgiveness isn’t always for the forgiven. 
That it’s how you close a chapter without letting it rot. 

But I am the rot, Sara. 
I was the mold spreading over everything we touched. 
I see it now. In the way people looked at you. In the way I looked through you. 
I thought power made me bigger. 
All it did was make me hollow. 

I used to think I was above all of this. 
Above you. 
And now I clean shoes with a toothbrush while girls younger than me decide if I deserve dessert. 

But that’s not why I’m writing. 
I’m not asking for pity. 
I know I don’t deserve your grace. 
That’s the part that kills me, Sara. 
You gave it anyway. 

You remembered everything and forgave me anyway. 
That’s worse than hate. 
Because hate, I could fight. 
Forgiveness? It leaves me nothing to push against. 

I don’t know how to carry that. 

I don’t know how to look at what I was… and live with it. 

I miss being someone. I miss being seen. 
But I didn’t see you. 
Not until it was too late. 

I hope Chloe brings you joy. 
I hope Jordy makes you laugh. 

I hope, someday, I become someone you wouldn’t flinch to remember. 

I won’t ask you to respond. 
You already said what mattered. 

But if you ever think of me,  
not the girl in the collar, not the brand, 
but the wreck underneath,  

just know that she thinks of you, too. 

And she’s sorry. 

— Charity 

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