Chapter Text
Evan was having probably the worst possible, most terrible day he’d ever had. It had started bad and had gotten even more horrible. He’d woken up sweaty from a nightmare he couldn’t remember, and the hot water ran out while he was trying shower, leaving him cold and more on edge than normal. And when he finally made it to the kitchen, hoping to see his mom, even if it was to just say hi, she’d already left. But he shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up anyway, he never had good days. He was always on edge, too nervous to do basic functions, and his mom was never home, never stuck around to see him.
And to make it worse, when Evan looks around he finds a note on the counter that she’d left that said, “Be home late, there’s dumplings in the freezer or you can order in, Love Mom”. He hated when she said things about food to him, like he needed a reminder of the many things his mom thought he was incapable of doing. Why couldn’t she just leave him be? He would eat if he was hungry (which he rarely was) and he didn’t need to talk to some random stranger who would probably be mean to him or unnecessarily turn on the stove or oven to do it. There were other ways that were easier for him and his mom just wouldn’t accept that. Wouldn’t accept him.
But that was just at home and those were just the daily things that made his life miserable, his day had continued to get even worse at work. He’d been assigned to tour a group of day campers, which was something he’d managed to avoid all summer. But he’d been too nervous to ask his boss for a different task, worried they’d think he was unfit for his job and fire him on the spot for being whiny and ungrateful. So he’d tried really hard to do the tour, but he started stuttering really badly and fumbling over all his words, and the kids were starting to laugh at him, which made his face turn red and made him even more stressed about the whole thing.
He hated when he started stuttering when he spoke or mumbled or couldn’t get the right words out. It made him feel stupid and people told him he was stupid whenever he did it. But he wasn’t stupid, Evan was really smart. He probably knew more about every tree and every plant in the whole park than anybody else, but whenever he got the chance to show it, he ruined it by sounding so dumb all the time.
And one kid was even throwing pebbles at him when their counselors weren’t watching while he was trying really hard to explain oak growth patterns, and Evan couldn’t say anything to stop it. So it just kept happening and the kid even got more of their friends in on it too, so to everyone who didn’t notice, Evan just looked twitchy and even more unhinged than he did while trying to only talk.
When it was finally over, Evan walked away as fast as he could, avoiding anyone and everything to hide the fact that he’d started crying. He had to spend his whole break in the bathroom, trying to make himself stop. He felt like he couldn’t control a single thing in his life, and he hated it. Why couldn’t he just be normal? Why was he crying at work, alone in the bathroom, when everyone else was eating lunch and looking so, so happy?
And when he just barely manages to stop crying, by downing a whole water bottle, he creeps back out into lunchroom and sits by himself for the few remaining minutes of his lunch break. He was sure his face was blotchy and tear stained, but no one even seems to notice. They don’t seem to notice him at all, let alone that he didn’t seem okay. But even if they did, it’s not like they’d care, so Evan does nothing to change his situation and just sits there, just like he always did.
When lunch is over, Evan still feels like he was on the verge of tears as he slips into the office to see his afternoon task list, and he can’t tell if he was grateful no one said anything to him (or even noticed his presence) or if it was factoring into his terrible day. Probably the second one, because he thinks if someone were to actually stop him and ask him if he was alright, he’d tell them he wasn’t, and he almost never felt like that. His instincts always told him to hide his pain, to lie about it, but for some reason today was a just a tipping point, and he might say something today, if someone would only ask.
But no one was asking because it wasn’t like anyone actually cared about him. No one would probably even notice if he never came back to sign out or came back at all. No one would notice if he just up and disappeared.
Evan thinks about that a lot as he walks from the main center down one of the more secluded trails. He was supposed to be cleaning the trail and picking up anything that was blocking it, but no one ever went this way, so there was rarely anything to do except think about life and talk to the only person who listened, himself. Evan knows there’s not actually anything to do on this trail and that no park-goers would actually come down it, so he decides to just to climb instead.
He climbed a lot and he found it was one of the only things that helped him think clearer. He liked being up high, away from the real world. He could see the birds and feel the sun on his skin, and he always felt like he could just breathe when he was alone in a tree. Things were easier up there. So Evan finds a nice tall oak and starts to make his way up.
He gets almost to the top, where the branches started to thin, and stops to sit and look and around. It’s peaceful for about four seconds until all Evan’s intrusive thoughts from before come flooding back into head without the distraction of climbing.
And he can’t help but agree with all of them. No one cared about Evan Hansen and no one would care if he weren’t there anymore. And there were actually a few good things he could think of if he weren’t around.
It’d probably be easier on his mom if she didn’t have him to worry about. No extra person to pay for, no medication prescriptions to refill, no more heavy sighs when he told her something disappointing. She definitely wouldn’t be so stressed all the time and it’s not like they really did anything together, it’d probably take her a few days to even notice he was gone too, if she even did. And when he really thought about it, his mom only ever really looked at him like an obligation, someone she had to look after, not someone she wanted to look after. So he’d really just be doing her a favor if he never came home.
Evan didn’t have any real friends, nobody followed him on social media, so it’s not like there was a person who’d be concerned if he didn’t text back or didn’t post something, no one would be able to tell he was gone. He only had two numbers in his phone, his mom’s and Jared’s, but the last time Jared had texted him was two weeks before school let out to ask him if he knew what would be on their biology final. He hadn’t texted Evan since. And Jared only talked to him on occasion because his mom made him or he needed something, or when he just wanted to be mean, he never voluntarily sought Evan out. So it wasn’t like Jared, the closest thing he had to a friend, would care either.
And Evan figures no one at school would notice if he didn’t show up for senior year either, not even the teachers. He knows he would be saving the teachers from annoyed glances and impatient foot taps as he tried, but simply couldn’t do what they’d asked of him in class. He was keeping them from looks of pity when they had to be his partner for in class work because no one else would. His teachers would probably rejoice when they didn’t see his name on the roster, glad they didn’t have to deal with him.
But he supposes the thought of not having to go to school was pretty nice, an actual benefit for himself rather than someone else. He wouldn’t have to be paralyzed with fear over having to answer questions in class, or god forbid give a presentation, seeing how he barely recovered from the Daisy Buchanan disaster from English this year. There wouldn’t be anymore late nights trying to make everything in his assignments perfect so the teachers wouldn’t need to talk to him or think he was dumb when he couldn’t answer them in class. If he disappeared, he would never have to think about school again, and that’s actually pretty comforting.
But the eerie wave of relief that washes over him is frightening, once he decides never going back is his best option. And the more he thought about it, there were a lot of good things that would happen if he wasn’t around anymore, and not just for school.
He wouldn’t have to be so nervous about what people thought and if they were watching him, at stores, on the bus, in the park, everywhere he went.
He wouldn’t have to try so hard to fit in, knowing that even though he tried his attempts were futile, that he never would.
He wouldn’t continually be waiting around for Zoe Murphy to notice him, to suddenly announce that she liked him back, without any effort on his part to talk to her. And he wouldn’t work himself up over thinking about if his hands were too sweaty if he ever got the chance to say ‘hi’ to her.
He wouldn’t have to worry about any of Zoe’s friends pointing him out to her and calling him the creepy kid who stared at them. He wouldn’t have to stop by the band door and listen to her play from afar anymore, trying to be discreet but probably looking like a stalker.
He wouldn’t have to deal with Jared teasing him at school, something that made him feel even worse about himself. Right now, he only put up with it so he could tell his mom that he talked to someone at school, so he could get one strained smile from her before she left for work.
But all of these things that haunted Evan could be over. He glances to the ground, forty feet below and he was probably high enough; he could do it. One choice and everything could be over.
He was so tired, and he knows he wouldn’t have to try so hard, only to be such a disappointment to himself and everyone around him. And he just knows, resolute in the fact that everything would just be better if he, Evan Hansen, didn’t exist anymore. And he’s positive no one would disagree.
==
“Larry, get off your phone and be present with the family, we’re trying to have a nice day,” Cynthia Murphy sternly tells her husband for probably the tenth time that day. They’d only been at Ellison for like twenty minutes and Zoe swears it’s the only thing her mom has said. She doesn’t even know why they had to have a “family bonding day” to begin with, but especially not at the state park. She liked nature and she liked being outside, especially when she wrote songs, but she didn’t like being dragged here by her mom.
And it wasn’t like their family was in a terrible place, right now, and her and Connor had actually been getting along recently, well as much as a brother and a litter sister could, considering that Zoe was still a little distrustful of Connor.
They’d had a pretty rough last couple of years and Zoe wasn’t going to lie, she had been really terrified of Connor, afraid of what he might do to her or possibly to himself. He was always high, and she was pretty sure he was doing more than smoking weed. It was scary coming home and not knowing what Connor she was going get, a mellow Connor reading in his room or a violent, angry Connor fighting with their parents and coming for her.
But all had been well over the summer and she really hoped that Connor was sticking to his resolve to stay sober after the incident. She liked having her brother around and she wanted it to stay that way. She’d forgiven him mostly, and just wanted them to be friends, she’d always wanted that.
But her mom forcing them to go out into the woods together as a “family” was probably not the best way to keep all of them sane. Or at least her and Connor sane. And she was going to have to take matters into her own hands to salvage even a little of the afternoon, and that meant ditching her parents as soon as possible.
Zoe sneakily hits Connor’s arm to get his attention and looks over to the trailhead that’s in the opposite direction of her parents, asking him silently if he wanted to go explore with her, while simultaneously escaping their parents together. And she’s not completely sure inviting Connor along was the right move, but it had to be better than listening to their parents argue, right?
Plus, she didn’t want to get lost or be totally by herself, so dragging Connor into her scheme was probably a good call. And then maybe they could actually “bond” or whatever, without the prying, judge-y eyes of their parents watching over them like they had all summer.
Connor nods at her subtly, agreeing to her plan, knowing even if they were bored to death on some other trail, at least they wouldn’t have to hear about ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ or whatever their mom was into these days, or get reprimanded for also being on their phones like their dad.
Zoe meets Connor’s eyeline again and they both slowly start to slow down and walk backwards until there’s a good distance between them and their parents, (who were oblivious to the fact that their children were no longer behind them) and then they turn and jog towards the trail and keep going until they can’t see Cynthia and Larry anymore.
When they’re alone, Zoe looks over to Connor again and both of them just bust up laughing. Their mom was probably going to be so mad when she realized they were gone, but they could deal with that later, for now the thrill of expertly pulling off a ruse was keeping them excited and giggly.
“Oh my god, I thought we’d be trapped there forever. Tell me again why Mom thought this was a good idea for ‘the family’,” Connor laughs, starting down the secluded path, figuring they might as well explore if they were going to be there for a while.
“To bond, don’t you know Connor? To be really present in the moment,” Zoe says emphasizing ‘present’ to really tease her mom even though she wasn’t there. She didn’t know why her mom was just so much sometimes. They didn’t need a day to bond, they all just needed time and patience and the chance to come back together naturally. Force wasn’t going to help. Especially not by doing something none of them liked.
“I could be presently finishing the sketch I was working on, but we’re here instead,” Connor complains, knowing that Zoe would understand, that she probably had other stuff to be doing too. But if they were going to be stuck here, might as well actually walk down the trail, so he starts down the path casually looking around at the trees, not really waiting for Zoe to follow, assuming she would.
“Tell me about it. I need to be practicing non-stop if I want to make first chair this year. It’s never gone to someone who wasn’t a senior and I want that spot, so spending all afternoon in the forest isn’t really helping me,” Zoe says, crouching down to pick up an interesting looking leaf on the path, before setting it down again, and walking a little faster to catch back up with Connor.
“Um, well, what I’ve heard sounds really good. When are tryouts, um, no, um auditions?” Connor asks sincerely, his voice softening from all the complaining from earlier. Zoe gives him a small smile and it makes her feel better to know Connor was trying, that he was doing his best to be supportive. It was a big change for him to be interested in what she was working on without using it to put her down.
“The first week of school, usually on Thursday. Juniors and seniors get to audition during class and freshman and sophomores after school. Speaking of school though, how are you feeling about going back?” Zoe asks him, extending the same support Connor was trying to offer her. School was a sensitive topic for Connor and last year hadn’t been good, so she knew it was risky to bring it up, but she was curious and wanted to know if she could help. She was really hoping their summer wasn’t a one-time thing, that when school started Connor wouldn't go back to using and pushing her away.
“I don’t want to talk about school, god Zoe, way to ruin everything,” Connor huffs, kicking a rock roughly, annoyed with her for asking about it even though it kind of went hand in hand with the topic of band. School didn’t start for another month-ish and Connor didn’t want to think about it until then, he didn’t need Zoe to remind him of the hell that was to come.
“Sorry,” Zoe says quietly, looking away from her brother and at the ground, resigned to not asking anything else, worried she might say the wrong thing again and make him even madder. They’d been having a fun time commiserating about their parents, laughing together but she guesses that was over now.
They continue on the trail silently, and Zoe can’t help but wonder if she should’ve just stayed with her parents.
==
Evan doesn’t know how long he’s just been sitting up in the oak tree, considering what would happen if he just jumped. He thinks it’d be better all around if he just did it, but every time he stands up, he immediately just sits back down again. And it infuriates him.
He couldn’t manage to do a single easy task right. The one thing he’d decided would help him, and he couldn’t even do it. He was a coward and a waste of space and he’d probably mess it up anyway.
But there was probably an easier way to do this. Maybe he could go home get his anxiety meds and come back to Ellison. He doesn’t really know what they’d do, but maybe they’d make him sleepy if he took enough. If he was sleepy then his brain wouldn’t be focusing so hard on making him sit back down, keeping him from letting go.
Yes, yes, this was a better a plan. There was less room for him ruining it by thinking too much. This was what he needed to do. And the park was far from closing, he had plenty of time to sneak away and come back with his meds. He supposes the fact that no one ever noticed him was a good thing because he could be gone and back without drawing any attention to himself.
Evan stands up shakily, feeling okay about his new plan, knowing that it was the only way this would work. He tries to quickly maneuver his way back down the tree, but he’s too busy thinking about where exactly his meds were in his room, wondering if he should bring anything else, like maybe his fast-acting Xanax, that he grossly miscalculates where the next branch should be.
Evan drops all his weight into a branch that doesn’t exist, and he feels himself instinctually grab for the branches above him, clinging on to them as his feet slip out from underneath him. And he just hangs there, his heart racing and his vision starting to blur.
Here he was dangling in a tree, forty feet in the air, but this is what he wanted, right? Had this been a sign from the universe telling him that he shouldn’t wait to go home and come back? That he was making the right decision? That everything would be better if he fell from this tree?
Evan knew he was strong enough to pull himself up or at least swing himself to a different branch, but should he? Even if he made it down the tree uninjured, he knows he’d just go through his plan to come back with his medication, so why should he waste this opportunity? He was making everything better for the people around him. And he briefly thinks about his mom one more time, and she’d probably be sad at first, but that’s just because she was supposed to be sad, eventually she’d realize she was happier without him. He just knows it.
And oddly, he thinks of Zoe Murphy, the girl he thought the world of but who didn’t know him, and he thinks it’s probably better they never met, so she’d never see the sweaty, stutter-y mess he truly was. And it’s comforting to him, that in this last moment he got to remember her and know he’d never somehow ruin her life too. It gives him the courage to move forward with the new plan fate had given him.
Evan takes a deep breath and just lets go.
==
Zoe and Connor had been walking soundlessly down the trail and Zoe had been trying to think of something to say to her brother, to get them back to laughing and having fun again. She hated the silence, hated the unknown that came with it. If people were shouting at her at least she knew they were mad, if they were smiling and laughing, she knew they were happy, but when people weren’t doing anything, she couldn’t tell what was happening and how she could fix it.
Zoe always wanted to fix things, wanted to help. She never wanted to stand idly by and watch bad things happen when she thought she could do something. And right now, she thought if she could just get her and Connor talking again, then she could help them both. She just wanted to show Connor that she was trying too, trying to forgive him.
But everything that crosses her mind sounds dumb to ask. Do you think that tree looks cool Connor? Um, I like that flower, do you? That’s a big rock. A rock, really? That’s all Zoe could come up with to talk to her brother? The pure absurdity of it all would probably make Connor even more annoyed. So she doesn’t ask any of them and she just continues to walk on.
That is until she hears a loud crash coming from somewhere slightly off the trail path next to them, so she immediately stops, turns to Connor, and asks, “Did you hear that? I heard something.”
Connor looks a little frazzled by Zoe suddenly talking after their tense silence and he doesn’t think he heard anything, so he wasn’t sure what she was talking about. But he was glad Zoe was talking to him, he immediately felt bad after he told her she ruined everything, but he didn’t know how to fix it or apologize, he just hadn’t wanted to talk about school, he didn’t want to not talk at all.
“Um, I didn’t hear anything. If you did it was probably just a pinecone falling or something Zo,” Connor tells her, not knowing what else to say. They were out here alone, at least he thought so, he hadn’t seen anyone down this trail since him and Zoe had gotten there. Maybe there were animals or something that were making noise, either way it was probably just nature, nothing that concerned them.
“No way Connor, it couldn’t have been a pinecone. I heard something and I’m going to go look around,” Zoe says determinedly, already walking off the cleared path in the direction of the mysterious noise. And Connor wants to stop her and pull her back knowing she shouldn’t just be wandering the forest alone (he listened to podcasts, he knew the forest was sketch), but she was already too far gone to grab.
Why was his little sister so stubborn? Connor doesn’t know what to do, but he knows he can’t let Zoe be alone, so he starts in the general direction she went and starts to look around for her, hoping he would find some evidence that the alleged sound was nothing, hoping to just find Zoe and turn them both around.
==
Evan wasn’t sure what was going on. He felt confused and just really tired. His head hurt, his body hurt, and he couldn’t even feel his left arm at all. Where was he? What had happened? The last thing he remembered was climbing and thinking about…oh god, was he dead? Was this really what the afterlife was like? Just like real life except more painful?
No, he wasn’t dead, Evan decides when he feels leaves starting to tickle his face and his whole body starts to hurt even more than when he first woke up. This all felt too tangible for it to be anything other than real-life.
He felt like he couldn’t move at all, and every time he tried his body felt like it was on fire, so he just lays there, feeling both the literal pain from his fall and the emotional pain that came with it. He tried to…he had really tried to kill himself, and it hadn’t worked. It should’ve worked, but it didn’t. He was very much alive, and he’d have to live with himself knowing what he’d attempted to do. Why couldn’t he have just died? But it’s just too much to think about right now. He had to figure something out for this moment. What was he going to do since he couldn’t move?
If he felt alone before, he felt even more alone now. The reality was no one knew where he was and if he couldn’t get up, no one would come looking for him. There was no one who could help him, no one who would care that he was injured on the forest floor, just no one. He’d probably die here, slow and alone, as karma for thinking he could do something right. And even though he desperately doesn’t want to, he starts to cry again, letting hot, sad tears of anguish roll down his cheeks and into the soil.
And he knows it’s useless, but all he can think about is how much he just wants someone to find him. Someone, literally anyone to find him and say, “I see you” and “I heard you” and “I’ll help you.” But as it’d already proved once today, the universe didn’t really care what Evan Hansen wanted. The universe just wanted to screw him over.
“Hello? Hello, is anybody there? Is everything okay?”
Evan swears he hears a voice in the distance, and he has no idea if he’s imagining it or it’s real. There’s no way it could be real, right? Nobody went down this path, let alone strayed away from the designated trail. But the voice sounded light and pretty, and it makes him feel the tiniest bit better, even though he was sure it was just his brain making it up in order to make him feel better. There wasn’t a chance that anybody was really calling out for him, looking to help him.
“Hell- oh my god, are you okay?” the voice asks him and Evan thinks he can hear the crunching of leaves around him which makes him think that maybe someone was there, but he can’t sit up and look around, so he thinks his first thought is probably right, it was just his mind playing tricks on him, trying to bring him comfort when every breath he took right now was agonizing.
It isn’t until he feels someone sit down right next to his head, blocking the sun from his barely open eyes, and touches his shoulder that he believes a real person found him. And they ask him again, “Are you okay? What I can I do to help?”
Evan tries really hard to open his eyes more, to see who had found him on the worst day of his life and when he does, he’s pretty sure he was wrong and is actually dead or hallucinating, because there was absolutely no way in hell that Zoe Murphy just found him.