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Right before the end of the school year, Connor crashes his car into a light pole. No one gets hurt, the car is totalled, but the damage to city property is minimal. He gets charged with a DUI and it’s only thanks to his dad’s influence that he comes out of it with just a suspended license, a fine, and some community service. He could have gone to jail.
Connor would never admit to how grateful he is for his dad. Especially when Larry continues to use his influence to get Connor’s community service transferred from roadside clean-up to working in the state park. Because that was less for Connor and more for Larry himself. Because if someone saw Larry Murphy’s son picking up trash off the side of the highway or scrubbing graffiti, the Murphy Family Image would take a hit and Connor has no delusions that his own well-being is more important than the Family Image.
So, Connor starts community service at Ellison State Park on the first day of summer vacation and he’s ready to hate every second of it. And he does. Mostly. He hates being made to work. He hates not being able to spend his summer the way he wants. And he hates the knowledge that if he doesn’t complete these community service hours by the end of vacation, he’ll be locked up. But it’s not all bad. It has it’s up sides.
The work itself isn’t hard. And he’s out of the house and away from his family, which is a big plus in his book. He gets a lot of time to nap under trees or smoke behind a bush, because no one is really supervising him. And Evan Hansen is there.
He knows Evan from school. Well not really. He recognizes Evan from school, but he doesn’t really know him.
No, that’s not true either.
He knows Evan Hansen.
He’s been watching him for years.
He’s been in love with him for years.
But Evan doesn’t know him.
They’ve never spoken. Connor had thought they never would.
Evan Hansen, to Connor, is an impossible idea.
Evan is Connor, if Connor was stronger. He’s got a fuck ton of problems of his own and Connor used to pity him. Because it was plain to see how desperate Evan was to fit in, to be different than who he is, to be someone better, someone who had friends, someone who wasn’t shackled by the monster in his mind.
It was pitiful, because how could someone be so unaware of their own limitations. Why couldn’t Evan see there was no use wishing to be someone else? Why couldn’t he just accept his lot in life like Connor did?
Connor had accepted that he was irredeemably an outcast a long time ago. He’d accepted that no one would ever look at him and see anything other than the kid who’d thrown a printer at a teacher. The kid who didn’t know how to deal with emotions in ways other than just exploding or imploding. The fag who’d tried to kiss a boy on his little league team. The loner. The stoner. The loser. The freak.
That is all Connor would ever be, and he accepted that, he played it up. He never dreamed of being any different. He wasn’t desperate to fit in like Evan, and that made him better than Evan.
Except, the more he’d watched Evan, the more he’d realized he was wrong. Evan’s desire to be better didn’t make him weak, it made him strong. Strong in a way Connor could never be.
Evan didn’t let anything break him. He fought the monster in his mind and sometimes he’d lose, but he would never give up. That wasn’t pitiful, it was enviable.
Connor fell in love with Evan’s strength. But he was half sure he was only in love with the idea of him. He didn’t really know him after all. Could never know him. As much as he wanted to. There was no way he could approach Evan without freaking him out. Connor was doomed to be just a nobody, barely in the background of Evan’s life.
Until Ellison State Park brought them together.
Connor had thought actually getting to know Evan would remove the rose tinted glasses and bring him back to reality, but he was wrong. Spending time with Evan just makes him love him more. Evan Hansen is amazing.
Evan had actually volunteered to be at the park that summe, a Junior Park Ranger and proud of it. But he didn’t judge Connor for being forced to be there. At school, Evan is this shy person with a nervous stutter that never knows what to say, but he’s completely different in the park.
Evan loves trees. It’s weird as hell and Connor doesn’t really get it, but Evan loves trees and once he gets started talking about them, he doesn’t stop. You can hear his passion in every word, see the joy on his face, and it’s so fucking beautiful, it makes Connor weak. But when he realizes how much he’s been talking, he goes back to being nervous and apologizes for boring Connor and Connor just wants to grab him and demand he take it back, because he does not need to apologize for being passionate.
They get paired up and sent off on their own a lot by the senior park ranger and it gives them time to get comfortable with each other, become something like friends. They talk less about trees and more about things that regular people talk about. They talk about their favorite bands and they make up dumb jokes, and they talk about what they’d like to do when they get out of school. Evan does most of the talking, and Connor gets that it’s because continued silence makes him uneasy, but Connor doesn't mind.
Evan asks him if there’s a girl he likes and then rambles on about the girl he has a crush on before Connor has a chance to reply. Evan never says her name, but Connor knows the “perfect and wonderful” girl he’s talking about is Zoe. And Connor doesn’t blame him. If he had the choice between which of the Murphy kids he’d fall in love with, he wouldn’t choose himself either.
On Connor’s last day of community service, he and Evan are walking through the park not doing anything specific, just wandering the trails side by side. Evan is talking about the future, but not in the same way he’d done before. There’s a very familiar pain in his voice, the pain of someone who doesn’t believe they have a future.
Connor grabs hand and stops him in his track. He looks Evan in the eyes and says, “there is no future. There is no past. There’s nothing but this moment right here. And, I don’t know about you,” he gestures around to the quiet forest and the forty-feet-tall oak tree not far from them, “ but there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
Evan looks back at him and for a second Connor believes that his love had been heard when Evan says “me too.”
Connor goes home that night without telling Evan it’s his last day at the park.
He won’t see Evan again until the first day of school.
On the first day of senior year, Jared reminds Evan that they are not actually friends right before making a distasteful joke as the expense of the one person that Evan had thought (hoped really) might actually want to be his friend. He and Connor has spent enough time together that summer that Evan had been considering maybe attempting to start up a conversation with him this school year and see if they could possibly fall back into the comfortable familiarity they’d had before…
Before Connor had left without saying goodbye, leaving Evan looking forward to seeing him again the next day only for him to not see him again at all for the rest of the summer. He’d convinced himself that Connor has just lost track of how many community service hours he’d completed and hadn’t realized he didn’t need to come back to the park until after he was already gone and that if he’d known it was his last day, he definitely would have told Evan.
But Jared makes his tastless joke and Connor pushes Evan to the ground and calls him a freak. And Evan thinks that maybe there’s really no chance of him ever making any friends.
Later that day, Connor finds him in the computer lab and apologizes. Well, what counts as apologizing for Connor anyway. He offers to sign Evan’s cast and Evan thinks maybe there is a chance for them to be friends after all.
But then Connor takes his letter from the printer. He reads it before Evan can stop him. Connor looks from the paper to Evan and back again, then without saying anything, he crushes the page in his fist and throws it in Evan’s face.
The crumpled paper falls to the ground and Connor storms out of the computer lab without a word and Evan is left alone, unsure of what just happened.
On the second day of senior year, Evan is called to the principal’s office. Being called over the loudspeaker is never a good thing, but Evan wasn’t expecting this. He has no clue what to do in this situation.
“We didn’t think Connor had any friends. And then we see this note…”
“His last words."
"This is what he wanted you to have."
“I'm sorry. What do you mean, last words?”
“Connor… uh… Connor took his own life.”
Evan looked down at the letter Mrs. Murphy had given him not sure of what else he should do.
Dear Evan Hansen,
I wish I could say that today will be as good a day for you as it will be for me. I’m sorry for the pain I’m going to cause you with this letter. Or maybe you won’t feel any pain at all. Before this summer, I was nobody to you. Maybe I’ll just go back to being nobody.
But you are everything to me. You’ve been everything to me for a long time now.
I know you think you’re just a nobody that no one ever even notices, but that’s not true. I noticed you. And, yeah, I’ll admit that at first it wasn’t for the right reasons. At first I looked at you and saw the one kid in the entire school more fucked up than me and I thought “at least I’m not like him” and I used that to push me forward. I needed that false superiority. It was the only reason I made it through the day sometimes.
But I kept noticing you. And I started to think, if you’re really more fucked up than me, then you’re really fucking strong. Because I’ve been killing myself in little ways for years, unable to handle just how fucked up I am. But you never let it get to you. I mean, obviously it got to you, but you never let it get this bad.
Pity turned to envy. Turned to admiration. Turned to begrudging affection. Turned to love.
I love you, Evan Hansen. Like in a totally gay way, just to be clear, because you’re totally the type to try to “no homo” this and I need to you know that this is full homo. You asked me if there was a girl a liked and I was almost glad you didn’t give me the chance to answer, but I probably would have said something ridiculous about how I have a big gay crush on you. I used to daydream about stupid shit like holding your hand or making you laugh or just gazing into your eyes until we were both grinning like idiots.
(I also thought about shit like kissing you breathless and having you naked in my bed, but it was mostly the mushy crap.)
I wanted to make you happy.
I wanted to make you better.
I wanted to make me better.
And that’s why I could never tell you. Because I wanted it for the wrong reasons. What I wanted was that stupid romanticized idea that love can cure anything. Like a kiss would magic away my depression and your anxiety and we’ll live happily ever after. Fucking fairytale ending.
This summer was the best days of my life. Every second I spent with you made me believe in that fairytale. I wanted to badly to tell you how I feel.
But, telling you wouldn’t have made either of us better. In fact, it probably would have fucked us both up even more.
Besides, I know how you feel about Zoe.
Yeah, I know the girl you wax poetic about all summer long was Zoe. I’ve watched you long enough to see how you watching her. I hope I never looked as lovestruck and dumb looking at you as you do looking at her.
I wanted to warn you off her. Not just as a protective big brother defending his baby sister’s virtue (I have no right to try to play that role in Zoe’s life after the shit I’ve put her through.) I’m not even warning you away because I’m jealous and want you for myself (I’m no good for you, you deserve better.) I’m warning away from Zoe, because she’s going to break your heart.
Zoe is amazing and wonderful and as close to perfect as anyone can fucking get and I don’t blame you for loving her. But love her from a distance. For the sake of your sanity, love her from a fucking distance. Because you will get swept up in how amazing and wonderful she is and you’ll think there’s no way you’re good enough for someone as near perfect her. There’s no way you deserve to have her in your life.
And you will break yourself trying to measure up to her.
And that will break her.
She won’t be the one holding you to those high standards. She would never ask that of you. If she loves you, she’ll love you as you are, there would be no hoops for you the jump through, and she’ll tell you a thousand times that you don’t have to change for her. But you’ll never feel good enough.
And that’s going to break your heart.
And if I could save you one heartbreak, let it be this one. Let me save you both this pain.
But enough about you and Zoe, for now that is, I do have to say on that subject but that’s for later. Back to the reason I’m writing this letter.
Evan, I made a mistake.
When I stopped pitying you and started to love you, I pinned all my hope on you.
I’ve been thinking about killing myself for a long time now. But I’ve always been too scared and I looked for reasons not to do it. Not like “reasons I should keep living” but more along the line of “reasons I shouldn’t do it today.” For a while now, that reason has been you.
It used to be “flip a coin, if heads, I’ll off myself, if tails, I’ll do it tomorrow… best 2 out of 3, no take-backs.” (Yes, that is actually a conversation I’ve had with myself on multiple occasions. The odds just happened to be in my favor.)
But now, instead of coin flips it’s been “if I see Evan today, then I have to stay alive.” And sometimes it was less of a game and more of “I hate everything and I want to die, but I bet Evan feels that way sometimes too, but he doesn’t do it. As long as Evan can find the strength to keep going, then so can I. Evan has strength enough for both of us.”
You were my strength, Evan.
Now, before I say the next part I need you to understand, this was inevitable and not your fault.
I know how you broke your arm.
I mean, not every detail. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it. And god, if you want to talk about regrets, there’s a big one. I should not have left without telling you. I should not have left you thinking you were alone. I should have done more for you. I’m sorry.
Anyway, I’m just guessing about how you broke your arm. I could be completely wrong and just using this as an excuse to finally do it myself.
But, I think you didn’t fall out of that tree. I think everything finally got to be too much and you couldn’t hold on anymore.
It was wrong of me to pin my hope on you. It was a mistake. As strong as you are, no one has strength enough to carry the weight of two lives on their shoulders. I might as well have asked you to be Atlas and hold up the sky.
This was meant to happen, Evan.
When I woke up this morning, I said to myself “everything sucks and I want to die.” And I said “if I see Evan Hansen today, then I can carry that image in my heart and die happy. I’ve already had so much time with him, just seeing him once more will be enough.” And I said, “but if I don’t see him, I will stay alive until I do see him again.”
This is where things could have gone very differently.
If my mom had let me skip school like I’d wanted to, there’s no chance I would have seen your face. If Jared Kleinman hadn’t made that dumbass joke, I would have walked right by you without ever looking up.
If you had fallen out of a taller tree, I would have gone the rest of my life without seeing you. I would have stayed alive waiting for you to appear before me.
In another life, maybe things would have gone differently. Maybe this summer together would have had some magic effect on us that gave us both enough strength to keep living.
But that’s not how it was meant to be in this lifetime.
Please remember, this was not your fault. Bringing you into this at all is just me being selfish. Because I am the most selfish person in the world.
I wasn’t going to write a note, you know. I thought I was above such stupid cliches. And I thought a letter would just make things harder. I was just going to do it and be done, leave nothing to linger after, let everyone forget about me.
But then I found your letter in the computer lab. You said all your hope is pinned on Zoe and, I’ll admit, at first it pissed me off. Why Zoe? Why not me? You don’t even know Zoe, but I was there right in front of you. I was right in front of you, but you were looking past me for a glimpse at her. But then, it reminded me of my own mistake. Pinning all my hope on you.
Don’t do that, Evan. Don’t feed her your pain. Don’t make her your strength. Don’t have her shoulder the weight of your life the way I made you shoulder mine.
If you want to love her, just love her.
Don’t make her your everything.
Don’t do what I did.
I loved you.
But I loved you selfishly.
I loved you for the fairytale idea.
I loved you hoping it would make me better.
Don’t do that to my sister. Having her love you back isn’t going to magically make life worth living and cure you of all your problems. Don’t be as selfish as me.
Loving you didn’t make me better, but being with you did make me different. You brought out a side of me no one else ever got to see.
Evan, I wish I could take all your pain and kill it with me. I wish my death could somehow leave you able to live a happy and fulfilled life. But it doesn’t work like that. I’m sorry it doesn’t work like that. I’m sorry you’re going to have to go on living with this pain, hating everything, wishing for a way out, wishing things were different.
All I can give you is this, in your letter you said you didn’t think anyone would notice if you disappeared: I would have noticed. It would have killed more, or maybe it would have kept me living, but I would have noticed. You mattered to me, Evan. Everything you did, everything you said, it mattered to me.
Evan, when you were up in that tree, were you this scared?
Can we pretend that things do work like this? Pretend that by doing this I will somehow help you instead of just causing you more pain? Pretend that my existence mattered and my death served a purpose?
I want to die knowing that you will keep living. I want to believe that next time you’re in that tree, you won’t even think of letting go because my death would have given you the strength to hang on.
I wish you were here. I don’t want to die alone. I don’t want to just disappear when I’m gone.
I wished I’d been there with you.
Let me say it just one last time. I love you, Evan Hansen.
Sincerely, your best and most dearest friend,
Me
It was mockery of the letters Evan had written to himself. It was a mockery of everything Evan had thought he knew.
Tears welled in his eyes. “Why would he write this?” Evan asked, not really wanting an answer. “Why would he say this? Why would he do this?”
“Was he right?” Mr. Murphy asked. “About how you broke your arm?”
Evan couldn’t look at him. He hadn’t told anyone. Couldn’t even admit it to himself really.
He’d climbed that great big oak that he and Connor had stood under that last day. He’d gone as high as he could go. And it was as Connor had said: there was no future, there was no past, there was just that moment.
Had he fallen or had he let go? It didn’t matter. Not in that moment and not now.
When he’d crashed into the ground, he hadn’t been waiting for just anyone to find him. He’d been waiting for Connor. He’d wanted Connor to find him.
Because Connor had made him feel less alone.
And now Connor was gone.
Before Evan had even gotten the chance to realize what Connor meant to him, he was gone.