Archive of Our Own

The annoying thing about having a full-time summer internship is that it prevents you from doing all the things that high schoolers are supposed to do during the summer. Such as sleeping until noon without missing anything, or being able to forget what day of the week it is, or working at the same summer camp you’ve been a part of since you were twelve where people actually know your name and are willing to talk to you sometimes.

Not that Jared’s bitter about that or anything.

Sure, he’s missing camp for the first time in five years, and pretty much all of his colleagues are grad students who don’t want to talk to a seventeen-year-old intern, but the work isn’t hard and the professor he’s working for says he’s doing a good job and he can spend an hour or two every day winning arguments on r/indieheads without getting in trouble. And he’s getting paid, more than enough to cover gas and car insurance, which is really why he applied for the thing in the first place.

None of that really makes him feel better now, as he drives home, nearly an hour early. Everyone else had decided to go out for an office happy hour, and he (again, seventeen) doesn’t see any point in staying in an empty, overly air-conditioned office any longer than he has to when no one’s even checking to see whether he sticks around until exactly five o’clock.

The soothing sounds of Greetings from Michigan, the Great Lake State (Track 3: “For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti”) currently reverberating through Jared’s minivan — until recently his mom’s minivan — are rudely drowned out by the sound of an incoming text. Huffing in annoyance, he turns into a nearby parking lot — he may occasionally be reckless, sure, but he’s not suicidal or completely stupid — and checks his phone.

Dad

Your mom and I are leaving early for our trip, so we won’t be there when you get home. There’s leftover chicken soup in the fridge. Don’t burn the house down! :)

4:18 PM

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad,” Jared mutters to himself. This would be a dream come true for most seventeen-year-olds, he thinks, going home to an empty house without any restrictions. Just him, Spaghetti (his cat), his laptop, and the leftover chicken soup in the fridge from three days ago. And the liquor cabinet in the kitchen that hasn’t been touched since before he was born.

Maybe he doesn’t want to go home just yet.

Glancing up for the first time, Jared realizes the parking lot he’s in is attached to Ellison State Park. He remembers being here at least once before, in third grade, when his mom insisted that he and Evan play together outside for a change, and he begged to come to the playground in the middle of the park. The summer before his freshman year, she’d invited him to come walking here with her hiking group pretty much every week, but eventually stopped once she figured out that he had no interest in getting up at seven in the morning to spend an hour walking through the forest with a bunch of sixty-year-old women. (He’d been kind of distracted that summer anyway.)

Right now, though, spending an hour walking through the forest sounds like a great idea, even if it’s by himself. So he turns off the car, grabs his keys and phone, checks the time (4:20, heh), gets out, locks the doors, and strolls off to the start of the nearest trail.

A responsible hiker would probably note the name of the trail that they’re on, make an effort to follow the little signposts at every intersection, or maybe try to remember some of the natural landmarks they see along the way. But neither “responsible” nor “hiker” is among Jared’s many qualities, so he just sort of meanders, ignoring all the signs and making turns whenever he feels like it, occasionally looking at all the trees and the nearby creek but mostly not thinking about anything at all. As a result, he has no idea where the fuck he is or why he chose today to actually wear his cheap dress shoes to work instead of sneakers like he’s been doing for weeks when he winds up in a clearing with an old oak tree looming overhead and a still shape lying in the grass.

Not just a shape — a body. A person?

Jared steps a little closer, slowly, tentatively. Yup, that’s definitely a person. (Hopefully a person that’s still alive. He does not want to be that guy that found a dead body in the middle of the woods.) They’re kind of tall, or at least taller than him, and wearing a khaki-colored shirt, pants in a weird shade of greenish-beige, and what look like hiking boots. And their hair, parted on one side, has a few leaves stuck in it, but those do nothing to disguise the shade of brown that he’s known all his life.

“Evan?”

The person shifts slightly at the sound of Jared’s voice — not dead, then — and Jared steps a little closer still, walking around to see their face, and yes, that’s Evan. He looks… well, not great. He’s sort of curled up on his side, one arm tucked close to his body, and his eyes are red, the kind that in someone like Connor Murphy would indicate the recent smoking of a lot of weed but in Evan just shows that he’s been crying, hard. One cheek is smudged with dirt, and overall he just looks confused and lost. That at least isn’t out of character for Evan, but it’s not pleasant to see.

“Jared?” Evan’s voice, out of breath and weirdly hoarse, snaps Jared out of his reverie. Those eyes, unfocused before, are now fixed on Jared.

“Um,” Jared says, desperately searching for something even remotely witty to say and getting only a 404: One-Liner Not Found message in response. “Yeah. Why are you on the ground?”

“Jared,” Evan says again, not a question this time. “What are you doing here?”

If only he knew. “I felt like communing with nature,” Jared declares, flinging his arms out dramatically as if to hug a tree and then promptly shoving his hands back in his pockets. “Also, I asked you first.”

“It’s, uh, it’s kind of a long story.”

“This isn’t the school lunch period. I’ve got time.”

“Well, what happened was…” Evan, who’s actually been maintaining eye contact with Jared for once, now looks away, into the distance. “…I fell.”

“…Over?”

“What — no.” Evan shakes his head and then winces. “The thing is, I’ve been, I have a summer job here, as an apprentice park ranger. I’m kind of a tree expert now. Well, maybe not an expert, but compared to, like, the average person…”

Jared’s not really sure what Evan working here has to do with the story, other than explaining why he’s also in a forest in a state park in the middle of a summer afternoon, but he can’t really bring himself to interrupt.

“…so anyway, I tried to climb that oak tree —” Evan gestures to the oak tree with his right arm, pointing at a thick branch that must be at least thirty feet up — “and then I guess I must have, I don’t know, lost my grip, and I just, I —”

“You fell out of the tree,” Jared finishes.

“Yes,” Evan blurts, sounding almost relieved. “I fell.”

Even still standing, Jared can see that the grass of the clearing is patchy and brown and the dirt is hard and cracked from days without rain, and that the tree branch is awfully far away. “Didn’t that hurt? Like, a lot?”

“Well, uh, yeah.”

The “witty remark” search finally returns a result. He’ll take it. “And now you’re lying on the cold hard ground.”

Evan actually glares at him. “Really?”

Jared responds with a shrug and a smirk, as he generally does whenever he’s worried but doesn’t want anyone to know it, or whenever Evan seems genuinely annoyed by him. Or at moments like this, when both are true. “Couldn’t resist. None of that explains why you’re still there, though. Unless you broke your neck when you hit the ground and now you’re completely paralyzed.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m not paralyzed.”

“Can you be sure? You seem to be having a lot of trouble moving your limbs.”

Evan, still glaring, lifts his right arm and gives him the finger, sending Jared into a fit of helpless laughter. “This limb is working just fine, thanks.”

“Oh my God,” Jared wheezes. “I didn’t think you even knew how to do that.”

“I’m not twelve years old, you know.”

“You’re just as adorably serious as you were then.” He definitely did not mean for that to sound as fond as it did. Time for a new subject. “So you fell out of a tree and decided you just felt like staying where you landed? Becoming one with the earth?”

Evan’s face is faintly pink, and he’s looked away again. “Well, after I, uh, landed, I tried to call my mom.” He fumbles around in his pocket and manages to pull out his weird generic smartphone, like he thinks he needs to provide physical proof that he did in fact try to call his mom. “But the service out here is really bad, so it took a couple tries, and then she didn’t, she’s at work, so she couldn’t pick up…”

“Right, yeah,” Jared cuts in. “And then?”

“It’s kind of funny, actually.” Evan makes a sort of choked noise that could be a laugh or a sob. It’s hard to tell. “After I stopped trying to call her, I thought, maybe I should just, I’ll wait here, and someone will notice that I’m gone, and they’ll come and find me. So I’ve just been lying here, for… ten minutes, I think, telling myself, any second now, they’ll come, they’re coming right now.”

Jesus Christ. “Your sense of humor sucks. There’s nothing funny about that.”

“No, no, there is,” Evan insists. “Because, you see, I was just starting to think, okay, no one’s coming, I should stop hoping, stop expecting to be found, and then…” He sucks in a breath. “And then you said my name. And you were there, somehow.”

Evan is staring at him again, still looking sort of lost and confused but also kind of hopeful, like he can barely believe that Jared’s actually there and not just a falling-out-of-a-tree-induced hallucination. The overall effect is that actually making eye contact with him resembles staring directly into the sun, and it’s Jared who has to look away this time. “Yeah, dude, I sure am. Good timing, I guess.”

A period of awkward silence, overlaid with the distant sounds of leaves rustling and birds making bird noises, follows, about thirty seconds long. Then Jared has a thought (what a change, haha) and breaks it. “Couldn’t you have tried to call someone else? Or yell for help to the general vicinity?”

“I don’t really have a lot of people’s phone numbers.”

“That’s what 911 is for, I’m pretty sure.”

“I don’t like talking to people I don’t know on the phone. Or people I do know.”

“You have my phone number,” Jared points out. “You could’ve called me.”

He hates the smallness of his own voice, but not as much as he hates the tremble in Evan’s when he says, “I didn’t know if you would pick up.”

Another silence.

“I think I might have yelled for help, at first,” Evan says finally. “But it’s all kind of hazy, I don’t really remember, and if I did obviously no one heard anyway, so. If a tree falls in a forest, right?”

Everything about that is concerning, but Jared manages to seize on the most concerning part of it. “You don’t remember? What, did you hit your head when you landed and sustain brain damage?”

“Maybe?” Evan shrugs with one shoulder. “I definitely hit my arm, though.” He nods at his left arm, the one that’s he’s kept close to him this whole time. “I think it might be broken.”

Jared drops to one knee, and from his closer vantage point he can see that Evan’s forearm looks slightly bent in a way that it shouldn’t be. He feels sick. “Oh, shit. I’m not a doctor, but that’s definitely broken.” He swallows, hard. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

“I didn’t really get a chance with you asking me so many questions,” and man, does that sting. There’s really only one thing Jared can do now, if he doesn’t want to hate himself and every choice he’s ever made. (More than usual, anyway.)

He extends a hand. “Come on. I’m taking you to the emergency room.”

Evan stares at the offered hand, lifting his own as if to take it and then pulling back. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. I drove here and I know where the emergency room is. Did you think I was going to leave you lying here with a broken arm?”

Evan doesn’t say anything to that, but he does finally take Jared’s hand, and after a few moments of pulling and jostling, they both manage to get to their feet, Jared brushing the dirt off his slacks (they’re his one nice pair) and Evan still leaning on him. “Alright, apprentice ranger. I have no clue where we are, so you’ll have to lead the way.”

“Didn’t you see all the signs along the trail? How did you even get here?”

“Absolutely no idea.”

“Okay,” Evan says. “But, uh, can we stop by the park office first? My supervisor is there, and she’s probably wondering where I am, so I figure I should tell her ‘hey, I’m going to the emergency room,’ so she wouldn’t think I skipped my shift and decide to, like, fire me, and then there goes my summer job —” 

“Please calm down,” Jared begs, trying very hard not to sound like he’s begging. “Yes, we can talk to your boss if it’ll keep you from dying of dishonor.”

They walk mostly in silence for about fifteen minutes. It had only taken Jared about ten minutes to get there from the parking lot in the first place, but with Evan still using Jared for support (apparently being bruised after falling thirty feet to the ground makes it a little difficult to walk unaided), the going is slower. His right arm is slung around Jared’s shoulders — the angle is awkward, thanks to the height difference, but there’s really no reason for Jared to try to readjust.

When they finally arrive at the park office, Evan’s arm is still there. Jared kind of zones out as Evan explains what happened to his boss, and as he’s reassured that yes, he can go get his arm looked at, and no, he’s not in trouble, and no, he doesn’t need to come back for the rest of his shift, and yes, he can take a few days off to recover. He only snaps back to reality when Evan’s boss asks him to confirm that he is in fact Evan’s friend who will be taking him to the emergency room. As opposed to a complete stranger who will be taking him to a different, scarier portion of the forest to murder him, presumably.

And then they’re making their way through the parking lot and back to Jared’s minivan. After managing to pull out his keys, unlock the doors, and graciously open the passenger door (chivalry is alive and well in his opinion), Jared finally extracts himself from Evan’s grasp so he can actually get in the car. The center console between the driver and front passenger seats seems wider than he remembers.

“Alrighty,” Jared declares, turning the key in the ignition. “Kleinman Emergency Medical Services, on the move. Unfortunately I can’t run the sirens for you, since I don’t have any.”

He turns to Evan, who’s struggling to buckle his seatbelt with one hand. After about ten seconds, he stops trying and just gives Jared his Helplessness Face. “Um…”

“Oh my God,” Jared huffs, reaching over and buckling it for him. Then, almost as an afterthought, he brushes a few of the leaves out of Evan’s hair and wipes the dirt off his cheek. “There. The last thing I need is you flying out my windshield.”

Evan freezes for a moment, staring at him, then turns away as Jared starts the car and pulls out of the parking lot, raising his right hand to his cheek. Clearly he’s been made uncomfortable by Jared invading his personal bubble for no good reason, like the inconsiderate dick he is. Great.

The ride to the emergency room takes about twelve minutes. Jared doesn’t speed, at least not more than usual; it would only make Evan more anxious, which would only be worth the trouble if he were on the verge of actually dying. Despite his best efforts to avoid all the potholes he can remember, he can still see Evan wincing out of the corner of his eye every time the car hits a bump and jostles his arm. He grabs the wheel a little tighter — not a white-knuckle grip, just enough to stop his hands from trembling.

Around five o’clock, not a minute too soon, they roll up to the hospital. Jared neatly pulls through an empty parking space into the one adjacent (yes, he did pass Driver’s Ed with the highest possible grade, thanks very much), parks, gets out, and opens Evan’s door for him again. Fortunately, Evan is at least capable of unbuckling his own seatbelt, and they’re off, moving a little faster on the flat asphalt than they had on the rock- and root-strewn trail. Jared hasn’t ever actually been to a hospital that he can remember, so he doesn’t really know what to expect, but Evan clearly has and does. He heads directly for the sign-in desk at the front of the hospital (with Jared holding doors along the way, of course) and manages to give his name, his birthday, a description of his injury, and some other information that Jared doesn’t bother to pay attention to, all with relatively minimal stammering. It’s almost impressive.

The sign-in desk clerk directs them towards the waiting room. Here Evan falters, slowing almost to a stop just inside the doorway, until a nurse with an undercut waves them over to one side of the room. “I’m gonna need some information about your condition so I can determine how soon to get you treated and what you need.”

“I, uh, I fell and I think I broke my arm?” Evan holds up his arm, and Jared has to avert his eyes again, pretending to take sudden interest in whatever sports thing is playing on one of the TVs in the waiting room. He’s still listening to their conversation, though.

“I think you might be right. What’s your pain level, on this scale, from one to ten?” A rustling of paper, likely the scale she’s referring to.

“Five, I guess.”

“Do you take any medications?”

“Oh, um, I take a, I take Lexapro, daily. For, it’s for anxiety?” Evan laughs, clipped and nervous. “Although I guess you could have guessed that already, it’s kind of obvious…”

“Won’t make any assumptions here. I just need to check your blood pressure and pulse and then you’ll be able to relax for a little while. Here’s a chair.”

A few minutes of shuffling, moving equipment, and quick, quiet breathing follow. Jared finally dares to look back at Evan. The fingers on his right hand are tapping rapidly against the table his right arm’s lying on, but his left arm is safely out of sight.

“All done,” the nurse says, removing the blood pressure cuff thing (Jared can’t remember the name of it, though he’s sure he knew it at some point) from Evan’s arm. “Your numbers are a little elevated, but not enough to be concerning. Go ahead and take a seat anywhere and your name will be called when there’s a doctor available to see you.”

“Thank you. Um, could I have, are there any painkillers I could take? Like, maybe just some ibuprofen…”

The nurse shakes her head. “Sorry, I can’t give you anything. Someone should be —”

“Wait, wait,” Jared cuts in. “Why can’t you give him anything? He has a broken arm, shouldn’t he get something for that?”

“The emergency department’s policy is not to provide painkillers to patients who haven’t been seen by a doctor yet. You’ll have to wait, unfortunately.”

“That’s such bullshit,” Jared says, probably too loudly. “I could go to the Walgreens like five minutes away and buy him fifty dollars of Advil. How is that any different?”

“I really don’t think you should be planning to abandon your friend in the emergency room. Please just have a seat.”

“It’s your job to help people —”

A hand on Jared’s shoulder stops him mid-sentence. “Jared,” Evan says, almost pleading, looking directly at him, and he’s got that feeling of staring into the sun again. “You don’t need to make a big deal about this. I’ll be fine, really.”

With anyone else, Jared’s first instinct would be to draw back, to deliberately make an even bigger deal out of pure spite. But this is Evan, so he just mutters “fine, whatever,” and walks with him to two empty chairs in the corner of the waiting room, sitting at Evan’s right. His phone comes out almost immediately. “Oh, hey, free Wi-Fi!”

Evan rolls his eyes at that but says nothing. Jared opens Twitter and manages to kill about five minutes scrolling through his timeline. Apparently Alana Beck is almost done with her second summer internship and halfway through her third, the group of vaguely popular kids in his grade just got back from their weeklong beach trip, and some White House staffer just got fired for being dumb enough to talk shit about a coworker while being recorded.

Once that gets boring, he closes the app and looks up to see Evan looking at him sideways, rubbing his shoulder. “Uh… do you have any headphones? It’s just…” He gestures to the half-full waiting room, buzzing with little kids whining and people actually using their phones to make calls and overly enthusiastic sports announcers. It only takes a moment for Jared to understand what Evan’s asking for, and soon enough he’s digging around his pocket for his spare earbuds with one hand and pulling up Spotify with the other. Sophomore year he’d created a “calm the fuck down” playlist, just a bunch of slow songs he plays when he can’t sleep and has to wake up early or when Evan’s freaking out over nothing and he’s run out of things to rant about as a distraction. Pretty much all of it is just Sufjan’s chillest lo-fi stuff, excluding the really sad songs, but it’s still at least ninety minutes long. He plugs in the earbuds and hands one to Evan, and soon they’re both listening in silence.

Fifteen minutes have passed since they got to the hospital. Then twenty. Thirty. Forty. Evan’s hardly ever relaxed by any normal definition, but over the past half hour he’s grown more fidgety and tense, shoulders stiff, jaw clenched, and right hand fiddling with the seam on his weirdly colored pants. Just sharing a pair of earbuds with him is making Jared anxious. Soothing music is nice for when your brain isn’t willing to cooperate, but it doesn’t do shit for broken bones.

The problem, Jared thinks, is that Evan is too self-effacing, too willing to be an NPC in his own life. He hates confrontation, hates talking to strangers, hates making a scene. All of these, in Jared’s opinion, are important skills to have generally but would be especially useful for, say, playing up your suffering to the nurse on duty during an emergency room visit so you can get your hands on painkillers within an hour of getting there. But Evan wouldn’t — or more likely, couldn’t — stoop to such underhanded tactics to make his own life a little easier.

Fortunately for the both of them, Jared has no such qualms.

He plucks out his earbud, the soft sounds of acoustic guitars and banjos fading into the background, and presses it into Evan’s hand, then stands up and strides over to the nurse, doing his best to project an air of confidence. She obviously recognizes him, crossing her arms and giving him probably the harshest glare possible that still falls within the bounds of professionalism. “Not still planning to clear out the Walgreens, are you?”

“No, but it would be nice if he could see someone soon,” Jared says. “His pain is getting worse. He won’t say it, because he’s too afraid of being an inconvenience, but I can tell.”

“I’m sorry, but we have patients who are in more urgent need of care, and we only have so many doctors. The way triage works —”

“I know what triage is,” Jared interrupts, and he does, because he may not have been in a hospital before but he did at least do some research for the terrible House, M.D. fanfiction he wrote when he was fifteen. “Did your triaging account for the fact that he broke his arm nearly —” He goes to check his phone for the time and then remembers that Evan still has it. “— an hour and a half ago?”

“He didn’t give me that much information about the circumstances of his injury,” the nurse says, shifting her crossed arms to reveal a rainbow flag pin on her scrubs, and those two pieces of information give Jared an idea about how to adjust his approach.

He leans in a little closer and lowers his voice, confidential, conspiratorial. “He said it was the result of a fall, right?” This would work better if there were a desk for him to prop his arms on, but he’ll make do.

“Yes. Is that not the case?”

“No, it is, but…” A quick, anxious glance off to one side. “Specifically, it was a fall from a tree. I don’t know how high up exactly, but it must’ve been at least thirty feet.” A hand through his hair, intentionally ruffling the careful sleekness, as he does his best to look genuinely distressed. (Dis-tressed?) “He said his memories from right after were all kind of hazy. I think he might’ve hit his head, maybe gotten a concussion or something…” A careful infusion of concern into his voice. “I’m really worried about him.”

The nurse looks slightly more sympathetic now, but she’s still not willing to budge. “Why didn’t he tell me any of this before? And why are you telling me now?”

“Like I said,” Jared insists, “he doesn’t want to be a bother to anyone if he can help it. And he has anxiety, which he did tell you.” Clearly he needs to push a little harder. He twists around to look at Evan, still vibrating in his chair in the corner, for dramatic effect, but Evan has chosen this moment to stop staring at the wall and look in Jared’s direction, and his facial expression asks what the fuck are you doing. Not exactly the effect he’d hoped for.

Jared turns back to the nurse, who’s now looking back and forth between the two of them. “Look, I’m sorry about what I said earlier.” He’s not — he still thinks the “no painkillers in the waiting room” policy sucks — but now is not the time for brutal honesty. “But he’s my…” A deliberate pause. “…my best friend, and I don’t want to see him hurting like this.” Technically true. “Can you try to get someone to treat him soon? Please?”

The way his voice breaks on the last word isn’t exactly what he intended, but it must work, because the nurse stands up, says “I’ll see,” and vanishes into a nearby hallway. Once she’s out of sight, Jared allows himself a small fist pump. Years of acting are finally starting to pay off. He deserves an Oscar. Or a Tony.

Returning to their corner, he drops back into his seat beside Evan, who at this point isn’t even trying not to look confused. “What were you doing up there?”

“Oh, you know, just making conversation.”

Evan groans. “Why is that more worrying than any of the answers I thought you would give?”

“Because you worry too much?” Jared bumps him lightly on his right arm; given the situation, a full-fledged friendly punch seems unwise. “Relax, bro. If everything goes according to plan, which it definitely will, we’ll both be better off. Trust me.”

Evan raises his eyebrows at that and mutters something that sounds pretty distrustful to Jared. But five minutes later, the nurse has returned and is calling Evan’s name. Who said cheaters never prosper anyway?

They’re directed down the same hallway to a treatment room, the nurse smiling slightly at them as they go and Jared mouthing a somewhat exaggerated but not sarcastic thank you to her that he hopes Evan doesn’t notice. When they enter the room, the doctor confirms that Evan is, in fact, Evan, then looks to Jared and asks with skepticism if he’s a family member.

“Well, no, but —”

“He drove me here,” Evan interrupts, looking shocked by his own boldness, but not stopping. “And he’s, uh… he’s… like family?” Jared cringes slightly at the uncertain ending. Maybe he should have filled Evan in on what he was hinting to the nurse after all. Or maybe the doctor will just assume they’re being euphemistic.

The doctor still looks skeptical, but allows Jared to stay as he begins asking Evan about his medical history and the “circumstances of his injury.” (That phrase must be in the Hippocratic Oath with how often it’s getting used.) Evan explains his anxiety and describes his decision to climb the tree pretty much the same way he had to the clerk at the front and to Jared, respectively, still fairly smoothly. Somehow he speaks to medical professionals more calmly than he does to random strangers, or even to classmates — experience, perhaps? Or maybe it’s having a nurse’s aide for a mom.

When he gets to the actual falling part, though, Evan’s voice stutters to a halt and then stops, like his battery has run out of charge. He opens his mouth to resume and then closes it, looking off to one side and picking at the edge of the chair he’s sitting on. Jared could scream in frustration. Not that it would help.

The doctor steps a little closer, says “Evan?” with some concern, and the tone sparks a memory Jared had forgotten he had.

First grade — the first day. They have real desks this year, not seats at round tables or places on the alphabet carpet, and they’re pushed together in groups of four. The teacher told them where to sit — they didn’t get to choose — but Evan and Jared are sitting next to each other anyway.

The teacher says that to get to know each other, they’re all going to say their names and one thing they like to do. There are lots of kids and lots of things they like to do. There’s a boy who likes to tell jokes, and a girl who likes to read. “I read a book that was three hundred pages,” she says happily, and the teacher laughs a little.

When it’s Jared’s turn, he’s sure he has the best answer. “My name is Jared, and I like to help fix computers,” he says, and the class goes “Oooh,” impressed, even though for him fixing computers usually means showing his dad where the power button is or his mom how to open up a tab she just closed.

He looks at Evan to see if he’s impressed too.

But Evan’s not impressed. He’s looking at all the other kids, who are starting to look at him too now that it’s his turn. “I’m… I’m Evan, and I… I like…” he says, slowly, voice getting littler and eyes getting bigger with every word until he’s not saying anything and Jared thinks his eyes might actually pop out of his head like they do in cartoons. Evan’s moving his hands, too, like he wants to grab onto something but doesn’t have anything to grab.

The teacher leans closer. “Evan?” she says, voice soft, and now everyone is definitely looking.

Quickly, Jared sticks one hand out, under their desks, toward Evan, and Evan grabs onto it. He looks surprised for a moment, but he doesn’t let go, and he starts talking again. “…I like to play outside.”

The teacher nods her approval, and the other kids all move on to the next person.

Slowly, Jared extends his left hand, just enough to bump against Evan’s right, still on the edge of his chair. He’s looking at his phone with studied nonchalance, but he doesn’t need to see Evan to feel him jump slightly, or gradually take the offered hand, or to hear him resume speaking, current flowing once again, now that he’s been grounded.

(That’s how electricity works, right? Whatever. He’s not going to be a physics major.)

Evan’s talking about the pain in his arm after he fell, and trying to call his mom, when the doctor interrupts. “Your, ah, friend also mentioned that you experienced some memory loss from a possible head injury, is that correct?”

Looking sideways at Evan, Jared can see a perplexed frown start to form on his face, and yeah, he definitely should have told Evan about that part. “I don’t really —”

Jared squeezes Evan’s hand sharply, once, still without looking up fully.

“— uh, remember whether or not I called for help after, so… yes? What you said.” Wow, impressive recovery.

The scratch of a ballpoint pen on a clipboard, and then, “Alright, if that’s everything, then we’ll go ahead and get started with the physical exam.” Sounds like he’ll have to let go soon.

As it turns out, he’s permitted to keep holding on as the doctor checks Evan’s vitals again (he still can’t remember what the blood pressure thing is called) and examines his arm, poking and prodding at it for a good five minutes as if he’s trying to cause Evan as much pain as he possibly can without being stripped of his medical license. Based on the way Evan is grinding his teeth together, and the gradual tightening of his grip on Jared’s hand like one of those Chinese finger traps on steroids, he’s succeeding.

That gets followed up with another round of questions, this time about if Evan’s had problems with things like memory or coordination or irritability since he landed, that Jared figures are meant to test if he actually does have a concussion. Then Evan has to actually get up out of his chair for balance tests and let go of Jared’s hand, which now has quickly fading white marks on it in the shape of Evan’s fingers and is also weirdly cold. (Is human grip strength enough to cut off someone’s circulation?)

For the next fifteen minutes, Jared alternates between glancing at Instagram, staring at the posters and medical guidelines on the wall of the treatment room, and watching Evan being put through his slow and somewhat lopsided paces. Then he’s asked to leave so that the doctor can ask Evan yet another round of questions, this time “of a private nature.” (He can’t help but think that that sounds like “about his dick,” as unlikely as that is.) When he’s admitted back in after about a minute and a half, Evan’s turned as pale as if he’s seen a ghost and it read his mind and told him his most embarrassing secret, and he’s clutching his left arm with his right hand, which reminds Jared of why he started this whole “we’re Best Friends, wink wink, nudge nudge” charade in the first place.

“Can he get some painkillers now?” he asks, nodding in Evan’s direction. “Before he keels over?”

“Of course.” A few moments of rummaging through cabinets, and the doctor hands Evan two pills and a water bottle. “Once you take those, you’ll be going to the radiology room for a few X-rays, to see what exactly is going on with your arm.”

“I think it’s broken,” Evan says under his breath just before swallowing the pills, too quiet for anyone who doesn’t know him to make out. Jared snorts and earns a confused look from the doctor.

Evan’s barely taken two sips of water when he’s ushered out of the room for his X-rays. Jared tries to follow and is politely informed that the radiology room is for patients only, please, and he can just wait here until Evan comes back.

And he’s alone with his thoughts. Again.

Jared checks his phone again. It’s not even six fifteen.

He opens his call history, because he’s already gone through all his social media and apparently he’s just that desperate for entertainment. Most of it is from either his mom or random spam numbers. None from Evan, since he prefers to use Skype and Snapchat, or just to text.

I didn’t know if you would pick up.

What would Evan have done if Jared hadn’t showed up? Just laid there until another park ranger found him, or a pack of rabid squirrels ate him?

Would anyone have found him?

“— that doesn’t seem to be the case,” the doctor says, re-entering the treatment room with Evan and interrupting Jared’s speculations about what might have been. “It’s difficult to say with complete certainty, but based on your neurological tests, you likely don’t have a concussion. You do have a broken arm, though.” He laughs; Evan doesn’t. “Looks like a fractured ulna, but we’ll need to wait for the X-rays to finish developing to be sure.”

Once developed — it only takes a few minutes — the X-rays reveal that Evan does, in fact, have a fractured ulna. Another medical person, some sort of technician, comes into the treatment room, and Jared gets kicked out again so that they can set Evan’s arm. The doctor and technician claim it’s because the procedure is distressing to watch. They also claim that the sedative they’re using will ensure that Evan doesn’t feel a thing, but given the smothered profanity that Jared hears through the closed door a distressingly high number of times, he’s not inclined to believe them.

On returning, Jared finds the doctor and technician discussing whether to apply a splint or a cast and Evan gritting his teeth and digging his fingernails into his thigh. He’s pretty sure he should refuse if they try to make him leave again. “Are you okay?”

“Great. Just… great.”

Thankfully, by the time they settle on using a splint for now, Evan has relaxed a little. The technician exits and returns with a cart full of what must be splinting supplies, and soon Evan is being draped in a sheet on his left side (“wouldn’t want to get plaster on that uniform of yours!”) and sitting with a mostly bored expression as his arm is first wrapped in layers of fabric and then covered with strips of plaster.

Jared points at the rapidly expanding orthopedic cocoon. “You know what this reminds me of?”

Evan looks up at him. “What?”

“That time I helped you and Heidi make a piñata for your tenth birthday party. Except I doubt there’s any candy in there, which is a real shame.”

“That’s fine with me if it means you’re not going to hit it with a stick,” Evan says, completely flat, and the technician smirks before applying the next strip.

Once the splint has been completely applied, smoothed out, and allowed to set for so long it might as well be the Hoover Dam curing, the doctor presents Evan with an entire tree’s worth of forms and instructions and prescriptions and lectures him about the importance of not fucking around with his splint and keeping his arm elevated and how he’ll need to see a specialist to get an actual cast within a few days. Evan sits and listens and nods and, if Jared knows him, worries about how he’s going to tell his mom and pay for all this.

Then they’re waved out of the treatment room and back through the waiting room, through the throngs of people who are probably bitter that Evan got seen and treated so quickly, at least by ER standards. The same nurse who saw Jared and Evan in is still there, and she smiles and nods in their direction. Jared grins back and gives her a thumbs up, then hastily drops it when Evan notices their exchange. He still doesn’t know how, or if, he’s going to explain all that.

They make it out of the lobby and across the parking lot, finally returning to the minivan around seven o’clock. Evan's clutching the pile of papers in his right hand and just barely holding the water bottle in his left, so Jared pretty much has to get the door for him again, but he manages to get his own seatbelt this time.

“Did you drive to work?” Jared asks, sliding into his seat and shutting the door.

“No, why?”

“If you did, we’d need to go back to Ellison for your car, unless you want to leave it sitting in a state park parking lot overnight. Would be great if you’re angling for your first ticket ever.”

“Well, my mom dropped me off, so.” Evan carefully deposits the pile of papers on the floor of the car. They should have given him a folder. “You know I don’t really drive.”

He’d forgotten that somehow. “You could have started once you got a job. I wouldn’t know. A lot can happen in one summer.”

“I guess.”

Jared doesn’t really feel like putting the music back on, so they’re quiet for a minute, until he remembers something he wondered about earlier. “So what did he ask you?”

Evan jumps a little. “What?”

“The doctor, when he evicted me the first time. What did he ask you about? Because you looked kind of freaked out when I came back.” Evan fiddles with the wrap on the outside of his splint, which Jared distinctly remembers him being told not to do, and says nothing. “I mean, you don’t have to say if it’s super embarrassing, but —”

“It was just, it was a screening. About, like, am I ‘a victim of domestic violence,’ and also, and things like that. Which isn’t the case, obviously, you know my mom, and they said they ask everyone those questions if they’re old enough, but…” He’s still messing with his splint. “It was… unsettling, I guess. So that’s probably why I looked like that, after.”

“Oh.” It makes sense, but it wasn’t what Jared expected. He doesn’t know what he expected.

“Okay, I have a question,” Evan says, before Jared can get caught up in hypotheticals again. “What did you say to that nurse that got us in faster? When I wasn’t next to you, I mean. That was really weird.”

Whoops. “I told her you were in pain and might have a concussion. Figured they wouldn’t want to fuck around with potential brain trauma and you’d get seen sooner, and I was right. You’re welcome, by the way.”

Evan takes a sip from his water bottle, his face dubious. Thank God he was able to get it open with one hand, seeing as Jared can’t exactly unscrew it for him while driving. “That’s all?”

“The major points, yes.”

“But she was so annoyed with you before we went in. Why was she smiling at us when we left? Just because she was glad to see us go?”

Now or never. “Probably because she thinks I’m your boyfriend.”

Evan chokes on his mouthful of water and spends a good ten seconds coughing and making spluttering noises. Jared is partly concerned that he might have inhaled some of it and partly disappointed that he didn’t do a perfect spit take. “What?!” he finally manages to say. “How could she think that?”

Jared drums his fingers on the wheel. “I did imply it to her pretty strongly.”

“You — how — what —” The color is rapidly returning to Evan’s face. “You lied to her and said we were dating?”

“I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true,” Jared protests. “Just implied it. All I said was —” well, now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t want to tell Evan exactly what he said. “— the facts of the situation, with enough dramatic pauses to let her read more into it. Which she did.”

Evan groans and rubs his good hand across his face. “Does the doctor think that too?”

“Well, the nurse definitely talked to him, and you told him I was ‘like family’ and then held my hand in front of him for at least ten minutes, so… yeah.”

“And the one who put my splint on?”

“…definitely thought the piñata thing was cute.”

Evan tips his head back and stares at the ceiling of the car in a familiar gesture of I’m annoyed with Jared but I’m trying not to yell at him because I’m on an utterly futile quest to never say things that aren’t nice. “I can’t believe this.”

“Hey,” Jared says, “if I hadn’t done it, that nurse wouldn’t have been nearly as sympathetic to your plight. We’d still be in that waiting room, and you’d have crushed my hand with your absurdly strong grip trying not to scream. This way we’re both better off.”

“I appreciate it. Really. Just…” Evan frowns, probably overthinking his next words as usual. “If, for some reason, you do that again, at least tell me first. So I know what it is you’re doing.”

“Of course. The next time I pretend to be your secret gay lover to get you quicker access to medical treatment, I’ll make sure to let you in on it beforehand.” The words drip with sarcasm, but Jared’s stomach feels oddly light when he considers the idea of there being a next time all the same. “I mean, what else are friends for?”

Evan’s staring at his splint when he asks, so softly that Jared just barely hears him, “Are we?”

If Jared were drinking from a water bottle of his own, he would have just spit water all over his dashboard, or else dropped the bottle and soaked the floor of his car. As it is, he spits out incoherent fragments of words for a few seconds instead before finally managing to say “Are we dating?”

“No! Oh my God, no, that’s, that’s not what I meant to say at all.” It’s been a while since Jared has seen Evan’s face this red, and he suspects he’s in a similar state. “I swear.”

“Sure sounded like that’s what you meant.” Obviously that’s not what he meant, obviously Evan is offended by the very thought of actually dating Jared. “My deepest apologies for the affront to your heterosexuality.”

“I didn’t say I…” Evan sighs heavily, now looking out the passenger window. “What I meant was, are we… are we friends? For real?”

And isn't that the million dollar question. (Or, as his mom would say, the sixty four thousand dollar question, since she was born in the sixties and inflation is a thing.)

See, most people would assume that someone who voluntarily drove you to the emergency room after finding you with a broken arm in the middle of a forest, let you listen to their music and hold their hand to calm down, and nearly started a fight with a nurse because you were in pain was your friend. But most people aren’t Evan, who apparently doesn’t understand why anyone would ever like him and seems convinced that nobody does, no matter what they might do for him.

Of course, most people also aren’t Jared, who’s spent years now pretending — and claiming — that that’s exactly true, that they aren’t real friends, that every answered text and Skype call and shared homework assignment and word of advice or reassurance is the result of a parentally imposed obligation, rather than — God forbid — because he cares. (He does care.) And sure, he may have a whole tangle of weird emotional reasons for acting like that, which he generally mentally sums up as “fuck vulnerability” before trying to forget about them again, but that wouldn’t be any comfort to Evan if he knew.

Had Evan asked on any other day, Jared would have continued to let “fuck vulnerability” be his guiding philosophy and laughed “no, of course not,” and would have only regretted it a little bit as long as he managed to avoid seeing Evan’s face. But today, specifically, Jared’s already spent several hours trying not to think about how alone he is, followed by spending a few more hours watching his only real friend in pain and distress without being able to do anything substantial about it. And as soon as he drops Evan off, he’ll be going home to an empty house, without anyone or anything else around to prevent all that loneliness and worry and guilt from piling up on his shoulders until it crushes him, a crappy off-brand Atlas.

In short, he can’t bring himself to lie to Evan right now. So he doesn’t.

“Yeah, of course,” he says, as casually as he can. “Obviously. Like, I know I’m a dick about it sometimes, but we are friends.” Maybe even best friends, but Jared doesn’t quite feel up to saying so. And he has no idea why he continues with, “And you’re an asshole sometimes, too, but generally speaking, you existing is a pretty good thing.”

With that, Jared turns resolutely back to the road, wondering if he could have possibly put that any worse. “You existing is a pretty good thing” is the exact intersection of way too sappy and incredibly ineloquent.

He expects that Evan will say “oh, thanks,” because he feels he should, or ask why Jared’s suddenly changed his mind about the state of their relationship, or just mumble “okay” and then let it drop. What he doesn’t expect — and therefore what happens, naturally, because today is all about surprises — is to hear quiet sniffling and look over at Evan to see tears running down his face.

“Are you crying?”

“No!” Evan’s voice cracks in the middle of his denial.

“Oh my God,” Jared says, quickly pulling over to the shoulder of the road and parking. It only took him a few years to work out that as the time Evan spends crying grows increasingly large, the probability of Jared also crying approaches one hundred percent, and uncontrollable weeping tends to hinder safe driving. “Okay. What’s wrong?”

Evan just shakes his head, wiping at his eyes and nose.

Jared grabs some tissues from the box in the center console and pushes them into Evan’s hands. “Was it something I said?”

“Not, um, not really…” Evan’s struggling to breathe evenly enough to be intelligible.

“Is it because I called you an asshole?”

“It’s not — I lied," Evan bursts out, and Jared’s stomach twists painfully with a fun combination of excessive empathy and sudden fear.

“About what?” He can’t even imagine what lie Evan might have told, or why, or what Jared might have said that suddenly made keeping that lie up impossible. “Your arm? Because it’s definitely broken. I saw the X-rays, they were pretty conclusive.”

“Not that.” A tense pause. “When the doctor made you leave. After the thing I said before. He asked me about, if I’d ever felt depressed, if I’d ever thought about, if I’d ever tried to — to —” The same choked noises Evan had made earlier that afternoon, now recognizable as sobs, punctuate his words, and the ends of his phrases don’t make their way out, but Jared has spent long enough finishing Evan’s sentences and filling in the gaps to get the gist of what he’s talking about. “I told him no, but it, it wasn’t true.”

Well. Fuck.

Jared has no idea what he should, or even can, do now.

“Um. Okay.” He places a tentative hand on Evan’s shoulder, just as Evan had done to him, fully aware that Evan definitely needs more comfort (and probably more help) than what amounts to a pat on the back and that he doesn’t know how to provide it. “If you feel shitty, or… depressed, or whatever, you don’t have to just bottle it up.” Like he’s one to talk. “They invented therapists specifically so you could talk about that stuff.”

“I already have a therapist,” Evan snaps, frustration seeping through his outer layer of misery. The only thing that’s really surprising about that fact is that Jared didn’t know it already. “And you don’t understand.” He’s not wrong.

“So can you explain it, then? Maybe starting with why you lied to a medical professional about a medical issue?” Given how Evan retreats from him, just a bit, when Jared asks, it must have come out harsher than he wanted.

“I just thought…” Evan looks down at his left arm, lying in his lap, hand clutching a few shredded tissues, and mumbles something too tearful and not nearly loud enough for even Jared to make out, then manages to say a little more audibly, “I thought that, that no one would care, that no one would notice…”

“Thought no one would notice what? That you broke your arm?” That Evan’s clearly… not okay, as vague as that is? That he’s hiding it from people who are supposed to help him? “Snapping your ulna after accidentally high diving from a tree is pretty conspicuous, I don’t know why you’d think —”

“It wasn’t an accident!”

For a moment, everything stops.

Then the moment passes, and Evan crumples into himself, pulling his knees to his chest and burying his head in his good arm, as if he wants nothing more than to take up so little space that no one can see him. As if he can’t allow Jared to see any part of him, least of all his face, after what he’s said.

“…what?” Jared whispers, after ten long, silent, painful seconds, because surely that can’t mean what he thinks it means. Surely he couldn’t have missed all the signs of something so obvious, so awful, something that he can’t help but think might have been, in some small way, partly his fault.

“It wasn’t an accident,” Evan repeats, voice muffled and thick. “Falling. I was, I thought… I just wanted…” 

He won’t, or can’t, go any further than that. When Jared unbuckles his seatbelt, slides to the edge of the driver’s seat, and cautiously wraps his arm around Evan’s shoulders, half an attempt at comfort and half a desperate effort to keep him from slipping away, Evan collapses against him, crying as hard as Jared can ever remember seeing before, and certainly a lot closer.

“Evan,” Jared says, wishing the name didn’t come out so wobbly and scared. It would be almost too cliché to say that his heart is breaking for Evan, but the sudden physical pain in his chest kind of demands it.

Maybe they should’ve stayed in the emergency room.

“Evan,” he says again. He knows he has to get this absolutely right. “If you… if you were gone. I would notice. I would care.” And there he stops, before he can say I already care about you or I don’t know what I would do if I woke up one day and found out you were dead or sometimes I think you existing is the only good thing or something else equally ill advised and too revealing, because his throat is closing up and whatever mental barrier was holding back his own tears has all but crumbled and he can’t bear to imagine a world, or a life, without Evan in it for even one more second.

They sit there, in an old minivan on the side of the road, for ten minutes, wiping away tears and clinging to one another.

Then Jared’s phone goes off.

Jared swears under his breath and awkwardly digs his phone out of his pocket with his left hand. Evan looks up at him quizzically, eyes still slightly red. “What’s up?”

“Nothing, it’s just —” He clicks it on to see a text. “From my dad.”

Dad

Just arrived safely at our destination, so no need to worry about us. Hope you’re having a good evening! :)

7:18 PM

“That’s one way to put it.” Jared stows his phone away again and reluctantly unwinds his arm from around Evan. “I should take you home. Instead of just sitting here in the dark for an hour.” Not that he would be opposed to that, but this isn’t about him.

“Yeah, that would be, that’s a good idea.”

Jared pulls back onto the road and continues in the direction of their neighborhood. He thinks he sees Evan smile as they pass the Walgreens. It’s been a while since he’s gone to Evan’s house — over two years, if he remembers correctly — but he still remembers the address and doesn’t need the GPS to tell him how to find it.

They arrive, and Jared looks up at Evan’s house, the dark windows, the empty driveway. His own house is definitely bigger, but he can’t help thinking that’s how it’ll look when he gets there.

“Guess my mom’s still at work,” Evan says, unbuckling his seatbelt and brushing torn scraps of tissue off his pants. He picks up the now slightly lopsided pile of paper and drops it on his lap. “Have you seen my —”

“Here.” Jared plucks Evan’s water bottle out of the cup holder in the center console, and Evan takes it, turning to face him fully in the process.

“Thank you,” Evan says. “For finding me, and taking me to the ER, and… and everything.”

“No problem,” Jared says, desperately hoping he won’t start crying again. It’s a distinct and embarrassing possibility. “Anytime.” Anything for him.

“Well, I’m not planning to go back anytime soon.”

“Good, because I don’t know if the dating trick will work more than once.”

Evan laughs softly, then says, “See you,” and opens the door of the car, and Jared says, “Wait.”

He has no idea why he says it. Evan stops with his hand still on the door handle anyway. “What is it?”

What a great question. “My parents are out of town,” Jared begins. “You could come over, stay the night if you wanted. Hang out. Watch bad movies. See Spaghetti — you haven’t seen her in ages, she probably misses you. So you don’t have to be home alone until your mom shows up.” So neither of them have to be alone. “She’d be over the moon about it, I’m sure.”

For a moment, Evan just stares at him, and Jared wonders if he’s overstepped some boundary, if taking someone to the emergency room and finally telling them you do count them as a friend doesn’t mean you have the right to invite them to your house. If Evan thinks this is all some joke.

Then Evan smiles at him — one of those real, bright smiles Jared hardly sees from him anymore — and if looking him in the eyes is like looking directly at the sun, seeing him smile is like stepping out of the shadow of an old oak tree and feeling the light and heat of the sun on his face, brighter and warmer than he thought was possible.

“Yeah,” Evan says, and Jared would bet anything that Evan feels that warmth too. “I’d like that.”