Chapter Text
When Jeremy was six years old and Evan was seven years old, their parents divorced.
Their lives up until that point were reasonably normal, two brothers that got along famously well, a solid group of friends between them, and parents that loved them.
The announcement was not completely unexpected to everybody but Jeremy and Evan, who ended up being caught up in the crossroads of their parent’s hate for each other and love for the two of them. Their parents gave the boys the option of choosing who to live with, but what was meant to be a calm discussion that resulted in a well-thought-out decision quickly became an argument with names and curses being thrown around. Their father ended up storming out of the house in rage, and Jeremy ran after him. In that moment, the choice was made.
Evan remembered watching Jeremy, so much smaller than him despite their only slight age difference, disappear for the final time out the door. He still remembered the way his mother had looked at Evan, wide-eyed and the unspoken, “are you going to leave too?” that rang between them. He remembered his mother getting up and slamming the door shut behind him, then promptly bursting into tears. He remembered his mother throwing out all his father’s things, and when they started celebrating Christian holidays instead of Jewish ones. He remembered his mother taking down Jeremy’s photographs and drawings and replacing them with Evan’s. In Heidi’s mind, in her current state, she had concluded that both Paul and Jeremy had abandoned them and worked her best to erase any proof of their existence from the house.
Of course, that didn’t last forever. Heidi eventually came to terms with her actions and the loss of one of her children, but it was too late. She could not take back the way she slammed the door after Jeremy, who would probably grow up with the memory of the mother who did not chase after him, and instead immediately shut him out. Jeremy never tried to contact them, and after their move halfway across the country, would probably never be able to. His father never reached out to Evan either, which was probably his own way of jabbing at the fact that Evan had not run after him as well.
Evan went along with his mother in his own state of grief at losing his closest friend and his father, and eventually asked to take her last name instead.
When Evan was twelve years old, he found himself in a new place with new people. He met Jared Kleinman, started going to a different school, and slowly became more and more closed off from the world around him. He wouldn’t say that his family situation was the exact cause of his social anxiety, but it definitely didn’t help that all his old friends had dropped him as soon as Jeremy left because Evan wasn’t as ‘interesting’ as Jeremy (he was seven years old, no one had been interesting), or that he didn’t have Jeremy to persuade him to go outside and socialise with people. For Evan, his anxiety was such a fundamental part of his being, as unwanted as it was, that he can’t bring himself to blame Jeremy, or his father, for his mental state. It was probably just embedded in his DNA.
As Evan matured, he realised that it was not the fault of his seven-year-old self, nor was it the fault of six-year-old Jeremy for what happened. He realised, although he would never tell his mother, that it was the fault of their parents, for being too angry over their separation to calmly and logically think out a reasonable custody plan that would allow both boys to remain in contact with both of their parents. Instead, both parents carelessly ruined any chance of Evan and Jeremy being together as children the moment Paul stood up to leave. Or maybe it was the words Heidi had uttered that caused such a reaction (quote: “get out of my fucking house”. Even after all these years, that was the first time Evan had ever heard her swear), or it could have even been something before that.
He realised that, even if he had been the one to run out that door, Jeremy wouldn’t have followed, just like Evan didn’t follow him. He would have been stopped by his mother, either by force or by the icky sad feeling he felt as seeing his mother’s face at that moment Jeremy had ran out. No, Jeremy would have done the same thing he had, at least the Jeremy that he knew back then would have.
Evan just hoped that, wherever he was, that he knew that too and that he still remembered Evan.
Despite that, the ugly feelings of betrayal still tugged at his gut whenever he thought about his two missing family members, and he didn’t bother trying to reach out to Jeremy. He knew that Jeremy probably had a Facebook and the opportunity was there, but he blamed it on his anxiety and doesn’t create an account. He blamed a lot on anxiety these days, and that included not emailing Jeremy’s old email address, or looking for his name in the phone book because he didn’t want to talk on the phone, and who even knew what state he lived in now? Because he knew that Jeremy had probably flourished without him, that he was never dependent on Evan the way that Evan had been dependent on him, and Jeremy had probably established a great life for himself. An irrational part of himself always niggled at the thought that perhaps Jeremy had been waiting for an opportunity to get away for him all along, but a six-year-old wouldn’t think that about his brother, would he?
As the years wear on, the aching, longing feeling he gets whenever he thinks about Jeremy starts to dull, and even though he doesn’t make friends to fill in the gaps, he distracts himself with school and trees and therapy, pretending that he didn’t mind the fact that no one talks to him or that his mum is never home, pretending that he didn’t have a panic attack whenever something mildly out of the ordinary happens (if that), pretending that he didn’t jump out of a tree, pretending that he was Connor’s friend –
Of course, all that pretending, all that lying and nervously faking his way through life came to a close when it all came crashing down on him and now he was the kid that lied about being friends with the boy who killed himself. It was times like these that, despite so many years it had been, he wished that things had been different.
These feelings escalated when he arrived at a house where his mother was already home (because in what universe did that ever happen?) and he found his mother sobbing in the kitchen. Her keys and her phone were on the counter top, and Evan could see from where he was standing that there’s someone on the line whose number wasn’t saved into her phone. Heidi looked up at him, blinking through tears, and Evan’s heart stopped for a moment because there is no other explanation his mind can come to that the fact that he must be the cause of this, that he’d done something horrible again.
But then, she wordlessly handed him the phone, and there was a faintly familiar voice that almost sounded like – oh.
And Evan understood the situation now with crystal clarity, as he listened to his estranged father’s words. The brother that he had been longing to see again for so long was now forever out of his reach, and for some reason the only thing that he could think of was that maybe he and Jeremy weren’t so different after all, despite all this time.
Evan and his mother flew all the way to New Jersey, and Evan saw his father for the first time in twelve years. Evan Hansen did not remember much at all about Paul Heere, and only had the knowledge that forever ago he had chosen not to take his side for whatever reason. He wasn’t sure what to expect when he arrived, couldn’t even remember his father’s face clearly, but he found himself being wrapped in a larger-than-life hug the moment his father laid eyes on him.
“Dad,” is all he managed to choke out, and his father pulled back, eyes red.
The details surrounding what happened are unclear. Nobody seemed to know exactly what occurred, although Evan knew that there were likely missing puzzle pieces that someone had to put together if they felt so inclined (and he did). Evan’s dad had raised Jeremy, grown up with him, and he was lost for words when Evan and his mother had asked for a possible explanation. Nobody knew why Jeremy had, one day, chosen not to attend school, and had instead stayed home for several hours before It Happened.
Jeremy had not left a note or anything that gave closure. He had been found at approximately 6:00 P.M. by Paul Heere, fully clothed in a bathtub of cold water and his own blood. The coroner determined that he had drowned after losing consciousness from excessive blood loss and that he had been dead for less than an hour when discovered. The autopsy also showed that he had taken half a bottle of prescription antidepressants, although his father hadn’t made it clear if they were Jeremy’s or his own. His father had relayed the details of his youngest son’s death with the accuracy of someone who had had the same thing on their mind for days, and the devastation on his face was clear to even someone as socially inept as Evan.
Jeremy’s manner of death was almost eerily similar to that of Connor Murphy, the boy Evan also did not know. It was a carefully thought-out death, almost excessive. If only Evan had been so thorough. Maybe it would have been Jeremy and his father that would have had to travel to his state, would have had to watch his mother sob and tell them the story of how Evan took his own life. Evan knew it was selfish to think about, but. It almost had happened. If Jeremy would have even wanted to catch a three-hour flight to attend his funeral. Evan didn’t really know him, clearly.
The sorrow of losing a brother didn’t quite catch up to Evan until Jeremy’s funeral, and he mostly blamed it on the open casket. For some inexplicable reason, he had expected Jeremy to look the exact same as he had at six (despite seeing photographs of him around Paul’s house), and the appearance of Jeremy had shocked and unsettled Evan. He looked so different, so unlike the fake Jeremy that Evan had pictured in his head, and he also looked nothing like Evan. They never really had, not really, but the difference in their outer appearance felt like just another glaring reminded of their distance.
There was also the fact that it was a corpse, and that on its own made Evan queasy, and god, he could see slash marks on Jeremy’s arms through the thin fabric of his shirt that Jeremy didn’t need because he was dead, he hadn’t dressed himself, and the marks on his arms would never, ever heal. Evan would never get to see what Jeremy looked like when he talked, or when he smiled or when he cried. He would never know Jeremy.
He wept throughout the whole ceremony, and felt horrendously guilty about it. He was mourning the life that he could have had, not the loss of his brother.
There were a lot of people in attendance, but Evan’s father and a boy with glasses and dark skin were the only ones who gave a eulogy. Evan couldn’t place the boy’s name, but he did remember one thing that the boy had said that stood out in particular. He had been Jeremy’s friend for twelve years. Following the timeline, that meant that he had known Jeremy the moment their family had fallen apart, and he had known Jeremy for the whole time that Evan had not, filling in the gaps.
(Would he had been Evan’s friend if Evan had followed his father to New Jersey? Stop thinking about the what if’s, Evan.)
Evan almost envied the boy but couldn’t bring himself to do so since it was so clear that the boy was completely wrecked over Jeremy’s death.
It became apparent during the wake, after Jeremy’s body was safely in the ground, that no one knew that Jeremy had had an old brother. Heidi introduced herself to a few people as Jeremy’s mother, and Evan could see a few people around his age giving her hard looks, including the boy with glasses. A few people tried to talk to Evan as well, and in a weird way, it was like the Connor Murphy situation all over again. People kept talking to him and asking questions about somebody that he didn’t even know.
When Jeremy was eighteen years old and Evan was nineteen years old, Jeremy killed himself.