Kids are scared of shadows because they don’t know what’s making them. Turn on the light and ask.

Fear lives mostly in the gap where information should be. A shape on the wall is frightening for exactly as long as its cause is unknown, and the grown-up versions work the same way: the unanswered message, the result you have not opened, the thing somebody said that you decided was about you. Checking is unpleasant for ten seconds and usually ends it.

Pick what you have been avoiding finding out and find it out this week. Open the grade, ask the direct question, read the message. Whatever is there will be easier to handle than the shape it has taken in the dark.