Chapter Text
Evan shuts his laptop and re-notices Connor's name on his cast. It's like he's taunting Evan in his absence, considering he hasn’t shown up to school yesterday or today. He tries to scratch the letters away with his nails, which is obviously useless.
His mind is stuck on the paper, the paper from three days ago he had to write for his therapist because ‘Evan, you need to learn how to express your feelings. This will help.’
His mind is stuck on the paper, the paper Connor found and stole from him.
The paper that will certainly ruin his life.
What will Connor do with it? Evan considers the notion that Connor plans to — if he hasn’t already — share it to social media, but the idea is gone as quickly as it came by. Connor likely wouldn’t torment Evan so blandly, right?
Maybe he would copy the paper a hundred times and throw it all over the halls of the school for everyone to see. Actually, that idea might just be copied from a movie Evan watched a while ago, although he can’t recall what it was.
Maybe he would show it to Evan’s mom, somehow, so she can finally know what a burden her son is. She would get fed up with how high maintenance he is, and leave like she should have done long ago. Like she probably would have, had Evan’s father not been the first to walk out.
He steps over to his window. It's pitch dark outside. He notices something out there: a shape. What is that?
What he originally assumes is his neighbor's bush now resembles a figure. The figure just stands there, turned away from him. He switches off his lamp to see more clearly, but when he turns back to the window he still struggles to make out any details of the figure.
It could be a robber, coming to break into his house and kill him, stealing all his valuables so that when his mother returns she will be both traumatized and broke because of Evan.
Or it could be a hitman, hired by Connor to amplify the uselessness he’ll feel when he watches from the afterlife his paper being spread around.
Okay, maybe not that. Connor wouldn’t kill Evan over a stupid piece of paper. He probably isn’t even thinking about the paper. His plan this entire time must have been to do nothing at all — that might be worse than him spreading it. Evan would have to sit with the trepidation for the rest of his life, awaiting and preparing for humiliation that might not even occur. And just when Evan starts to forget about the letter, Connor will finally publicize it, maximizing the efficiency of his plan to humiliate Evan.
Evan is brought back to reality at the sight of the figure turning around to face him, and they seem to lock eyes for a long moment. Something about it feels familiar, sending an uncomfortable sense of deja vu down his spine, crawling through his skin coldly and making him shiver. His heart picks up, and his hand shakes slightly.
The figure disappears. It doesn’t walk away, or blend into the dark night; it just disappears without a trace, like it wasn’t even there to begin with. Evan sighs and sits back down on his bed, pops an Ativan into his mouth — he knows he’d freak out an unhealthy amount over the unusual figure otherwise — and takes a sip of water that’s warm enough to make it feel disgustingly thick as he swallows.
***
“Sorry, um, they said on the loudspeaker for me to come here…?” Evan awkwardly says, standing in the corner of the principal’s office and shrinking in on himself as if it will turn him invisible. He feels like he’s being analyzed by this couple. Who are they? Where’s Principal Howard?
“You’re Evan,” the man seated in front of him states.
Evan nods, confused. The man gestures for Evan to sit down, so he does.
“We’re Connor’s parents,” he starts. Immediately, Evan’s perpetual nerves are strengthened. This has to be about his note, and whatever’s about to happen will easily be remembered as one of the most humiliating moments of Evan’s life. This is it for him.
“Go ahead, honey,” Mr. Murphy tells his wife, who is searching through her purse.
She hisses, “I’m going as fast as I can.” Then she passes a crumpled piece of paper to Evan. “Connor wanted you to have this.”
Evan doesn’t need to look at it to know what it is. His letter, that Connor’s parents must have read, that Connor too had read. The letter that could have already been spread for anyone to read. The letter that has been the cause of unrelenting dread for the past few days.
“We had never heard your name before,” Mr. Murphy says. “He never mentioned you. But then we saw ‘Dear Evan Hansen.’”
“We didn’t know that you two were friends,” Mr. Murphy says. What? “We didn’t think he had any friends.” Now, that’s a more accurate observation.
“Go ahead, Evan, read it. He wrote it to you.”
Confusion returns, then realization washes over Evan. “You think Connor…” he trails off, words caught in his throat. The mere thought of explaining that Evan wrote a note addressed to himself made him feel extraordinarily pathetic. “No, you don’t- you don’t understand.”
“These are the words he wanted to share with you,” Mrs. Murphy insists, finally looking at Evan.
“His last words,” Mr. Murphy adds.
Evan freezes up again, taking a moment to process the words.
“I’m sorry, what? What do you mean, last words?”
“Connor… took his own life.” Mr. Murphy explains, jaw clenched. “This was all that was found on him.”
“He- what? But I just saw him last night.” Evan argues weakly.
“What do you mean?” Mrs. Murphy asks, devastating hopefulness in her tone. She dabs at her eyes before tears can shed.
“I don’t know. It was- it was dark. I thought it was him, maybe.”
“It happened two nights ago,” Mr. Murphy clarifies, the reminder sucking Mrs. Murphy’s weak hope away.
Then what did Evan see outside his window? The only potential suspect was Connor.
“I know it’s a lot to take in.”
Evan knows what he saw, he’s sure. Sort of. Well, he didn’t really see Connor, actually, but still. If it wasn’t Connor, then who — or what — was outside his window last night? What was the moving, humanlike figure that he knows he saw? It had to have been Connor; he doesn’t want to have to consider the idea that the figure was something else, someone else, maybe worse. Maybe Evan just mixed up the days. Maybe Connor had visited the night before Evan remembered.
Connor’s parents urge Evan to read his own letter, and Evan stares blankly at the paper without really looking at it. Evan finally, somehow, finds his voice to argue. “Connor… He didn’t- he didn’t write this.”
“What does he mean, Larry?”
“He’s obviously in shock.”
“No, I- he didn’t. He didn’t write this.” Evan insists, struggling to elaborate. He is an overheated computer, malfunctioning from the overwhelming load of information.
“It’s right here,” Mrs. Murphy says, pointing to the letter. Evan feels sick.
“…I’m sorry, but I should probably—”
Mrs. Murphy cuts him off, holding Evan’s shaking hands tighter than intended. “If Connor didn’t write this…” she trails off quietly. ‘Then we have nothing left from him,’ goes unsaid, hanging thickly in the air. Evan struggles to swallow, to move, to speak.
Mr. Murphy places a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Cynthia, please. Relax.”
“I should go… Class. I have class. Literature. That I should get to. Or I’ll be- I’ll be late for class, which I have.” It’s his lunch period.
Mrs. Murphy starts to let go of Evan’s hand, when she notices the cast on his arm; ‘CONNOR’ is written largely in sharpie. The sight haunts him perpetually, but it’s particularly worse now.
“Larry, look,” she exclaims with a bittersweet smile, “his cast.”
He glances at the gauze around Evan’s arm, his son’s name proudly presented.
“You should get to your class. You don’t want to be late.” Mr. Murphy states after a moment of awkward silence.
Evan nods and stiffly, swiftly exits the room. Everything is spinning and his movements feel almost automatic. The world feels so far from him, like there’s a thick fog between him and all that surrounds him.
He enters a bathroom stall and vomits hunched over the toilet. Despite it, he doesn’t feel like the nausea lessened any bit.
***
Connor’s dead. He’s dead, like actually dead, like never-waking-up-again dead. Death has always been difficult for Evan to really grasp, and now isn’t any different. It’s hard to process that someone he had spoken to only three days ago had died hours after their conversation.
Evan isn’t entirely sure whether or not this is his fault, but he feels guilty all the same. As Evan had found out earlier that day, Connor died with only Evan’s paper on him. His death had at least something to do with him.
One of the only things on Evan’s mind is Connor, Connor, Connor. Connor, who doesn’t get the privilege of having anything at all on his mind anymore. Connor, who killed himself two nights ago but visited Evan last night. Except Connor didn’t visit Evan, obviously, now that Evan knows what happened. He knows now that Connor was dead before the shadow had visited, so whatever Evan saw must have just been a trick of the light. Or something.
And that’s the second-only-thing on Evan’s mind: If it wasn’t Connor that visited, then who was it? It was vaguely human shaped, so that rules out the likelihood of it just being a shadow of the bushes. And it couldn’t be a shadow, anyway; upon closer inspection, it seemed three dimensional. Well, Evan thinks it was. It was too foggy to see well.
Evan brushes off the thoughts, knowing that trying to make sense of this all would only make him more uneasy. That’s the last thing Evan needs in his life. There’s probably a perfectly reasonable explanation as to what was outside Evan’s house last night. He just… doesn’t know the reason. But it exists, and it probably makes sense, and what he saw wasn’t Connor.
Pretending everything makes perfect sense doesn’t actually help ease his anxieties. His room, which is usually a sanctuary for him, now feels suffocating and claustrophobic. He needs air, he needs silence — the kind of silence that is the sound of leaves shuffling and wind whistling, rather than the buzzing light and low humming of his heater. It’s late at night, and his mom is working late, (“It’s just that there wasn’t anyone else to pick up the shift, but there’s leftovers in the fridge if you get hungry!”) and he really just needs to get out.
Evan shrugs on a hoodie and slips on his shoes, locking the front door behind him. He doesn’t have any destination in mind, feeling like he’s not really in control of anything he’s doing. His steps are automated, and he doesn’t focus on where he walks. He just walks. He tends to shut the world out when he gets fixated on things, and in a corner of Evan’s mind, he is vaguely aware that he’s doing that right now. He can’t help it, not really. Everything just gets so overwhelming, and he can’t stop thinking, and he inadvertently distances his consciousness from his surroundings.
It isn’t a surprise when Evan walks straight into someone as a result, but it catches him off guard nonetheless. He’s pulled out of his thoughts, has to let the world back in, and finally looks up from the ground.
When he opens his mouth to apologize, he finds that there isn’t anyone there.
He glances around, expecting to see the person already walking away, but there’s no one around. The park is empty.
Oh. Evan’s in the park. That’s a bit of a long distance from home. How long has he been walking?
He should get back.
When he turns to leave, he hears an achingly loud voice in his head telling him that you have to stay, you have to, just for a bit longer, don’t leave please.
Maybe he can just stay for half an hour or so. It wouldn’t hurt.