Chapter Text
Dear Evan Hansen,
Today is going to a be a good day because it’s the first day of senior year and all you’ve got to do right now is be yourself. But also confident and cool and easy to talk to, but mostly be yourself, that’s what’s most important.
And hey! Maybe this year you won’t have any classes with Connor, you’re taking mostly AP classes and you don’t think he takes those? Not that he’s stupid or anything, oh wow that sounded so bad. No I didn’t mean it like that he’s probably super smart, smarter than you anyway since he probably knows that if you jump out of a tree not to land on your fucking arm because that will obviously soften the blow and then all that time you spent hyping yourself up only to end up with just a broken arm because you can’t even killyourselfrightand
Maybe this year you’ll make some friends! Just got to think positive.
Evan Hansen really wasn’t the biggest fan of Connor Murphy.
Now, Evan wasn’t like a bunch of the people at his school that would go out of their way to be rude to the eldest Murphy in hopes of making him lose his temper because they found it amusing for some reason. Evan wouldn’t ever do something like that. In fact, Evan went out of his way to ensure that he was nowhere near Connor Murphy whenever the boy got angry, Evan didn’t even dislike him all that much.
No, Evan was just scared of him.
It probably went back to the fourth grade when Evan had bumped into Connor, sending whatever papers the boy had been holding tumbling to the floor. Evan tried his best to rectify his mistake as he apologized profusely and attempted to help clean up the mess he had made. Connor didn’t even hesitate before punching Evan directly in the nose at full strength.
Needless to say, their quality of interactions did not improve as the years went on.
Evan decided rather soon after meeting Connor that he would do whatever he possibly could to avoid interacting with Connor. But, for some reason, if they ever had a class together, their teachers would always end up seating them next to each other. Which didn’t make any sense because their last names weren’t even anywhere near each other but whatever.
Those teachers were the same ones that wouldn’t let you pick your partner, which in general Evan saw as a plus because he rarely knew anyone in his classes, so being assigned a group would eliminate the stress of being the only one without a partner and having the teacher go, “Well, Evan doesn’t have a partner because he is a pathetic loser, who here will take pity on him and let him into their group?” or something like that.
The point is, Evan honestly preferred assigned partners, but his teachers were too lazy too actually go about assigning them partners, they would instead tell the class to just, “Work with the person next to you! :) <3” even though Connor and Evan working together would always end up with Connor yelling at Evan over something that Evan probably did wrong, and then Evan would start crying and the Connor would start yelling more and it would just be a ridiculous mess that never failed to end with Connor getting detention and Evan having a panic attack.
Yet his teachers still wouldn’t move their seats and the exact same process would begin the next time they had to work in pairs.
Needless to say, Evan and Connor weren’t really the greatest of friends, which, ok, fair. Evan wouldn’t really want to be friends with himself either, so he couldn’t really blame Connor for not wanting to associate with him.
But that wasn’t really relevant because it was possible that the only class that the two might have together would be homeroom, and Evan only really knew that because for some reason they all had the same homeroom class since freshman year. Which wasn’t bad, because Evan wasn’t a fan of change.
So far, the day wasn’t off to a terrible start. He’d walked into the school and went over to his locker. Got talked at by Alana Beck, and started walking to class. Not too bad, he hadn’t made a fool of himself, just had to get to-
“Is it weird to be the first person in history to break their arm from jerking off too much, or do you consider that an honor?”
He was wrong, he was so wrong, everything was terrible and he shouldn’t have shown up at all.
After jumping in surprise at the sudden exclamation, Evan actually thought about the words that his only… sort of friend and said and his face lit up with a blush, “Wait. What? I didn’t, I wasn’t… Doing that.
“No, no, paint me the picture: You’re on your bed, you’ve got a nature documentary, or some shit pulled up, I don’t know, and then you-“
“No, Jared that’s not what happened Jared, please stop talking about that!” Evan cut him off, flushing up to his ears. Evan frantically explained himself, “I just, I just- I fell out of a tree…”
He trailed off as Jared snickered, “You fell out of a tree? What are you, like, an acorn?”
Evan pursed his lips, “Well actually, it’s a, it’s kind of a funny story actually, because. Well, this summer, you know, I was working as a, as a park ranger, yeah? I’m kind-kind of a tree expert now, not to brag or anything.” Evan smiled a bit but quickly continued as he saw his friends less than impressed expression, “Any-anyway, I was trying to climb a forty foot tree,”
“And you fell.” Jared cut him off, Evan nodded but continued.
“Yeah, but it’s actually kind of a funny story actually, after I fell I just kind of laid there, for at least ten minutes and just kept thinking ‘Any second now, someone will come.’”
Jared gave him a strange look, “Did they?”
“No, nobody came. That’s the, that’s what’s funny.”
Jared looked at Evan for a few seconds, breathing out a small, “Jesus Christ…” Jared shook his head and neither of them talked for a moment.
Desperately trying to fill the silence, Evan blurted out the first thing that came to his head, “Hey, Jared, do you want to, si-sign my cast?”
Jared wrinkled his nose up, “Why are you asking me?”
“Well, I just thought, because we’re, friends?”
“We’re not real friends, we’re family friends. It’s a totally different thing.” Evan swallowed as Jared clapped him on the shoulder, “Hey, tell your mom to tell my mom that I was nice to you or my parents won’t pay for my car insurance.”
Evan pursed his lips and forced down his disappointment, “Yeah, I will-”
Jared cut him off again, but this time it was to call out to someone else, “Hey, Connor! Loving the new hair length. Very school shooter chic!” Connor didn’t say anything in response, he only turned to look at Jared with a blank stare which frightened Evan even though it wasn’t even directed at him. Whatever confidence Jared had that caused him to say that seemed to have disappeared as he quickly started to backtrack, “It was a joke? I was just joking.”
Connor’s blank expression had evolved into a glare as he deadpanned back, “Yeah, no, it was funny. Can’t you tell? Am I not laughing hard enough for you?” Evan slowly began trying to make himself disappear into the wall whilst silently begging his family friend to just apologize.
Instead, Jared gave a nervous laugh and muttered out, “You’re such a freak.” before walking away from the angered Murphy.
Sadly at this moment, Evan’s throat began to tickle and he let out an involuntary cough, Connor had rounded on him in a second, “What the fuck are you laughing at, Hansen?”
Evan’s face drained of color and he tried to back away from Connor who was rapidly closing the distance between them, “Wait no, what? I wasn’t-“
“You think I’m a freak?”
Evan was nearly backed against the lockers at this point, he could feel tightness in his chest and tears started pricking the corners of his eyes, god why did he always get like this whenever he got yelled at? “No, I don’t, I don’t think you’re a freak-“
“I’m not the freak.”
“I know that! I-I never said that-“ Evan’s voice caught in his throat as Connor was looming over him now, and he looked so angry and-
“You’re the fucking freak!”
And then Connor pushed him, Evan was sort of happy that Connor hadn’t instead decided to punch him. But his happiness was short lived as Evan’s reflexes kicked in and he tried to catch himself, only to land directly on his broken arm.
Yelping in pain, Evan cradled his arm to his chest and tried to wipe away the tears that by now had started streaming down his cheeks. Evan took a deep breath as he started to stand, only to be pulled up by the collar of his shirt and pressed firmly against a locker.
Evan stared wide-eyed at Connor, until the eldest murphy started to sneer, “Quit crying, you aren’t a baby, are you Hansen?”
Evan pursed his lips and went to respond, only to have his words fail him. Oh no, Connor was still holding him up by his shirt, and he was still glaring daggers at him, and was he raising his fist? Was Connor about to punch him in the face, that couldn’t happen because then Evan would get in trouble for fighting, and then he would never be able to get a scholarship, and without a scholarship he wouldn’t be able to go to college, but if he didn’t go to college then he would end up dead on the side of the road because the only thing that ever interested him was trees and without a degree what kind of job could he make out of trees? None, that’s the kind of job he could get, no job, and everything was just going so wrong and-
“Hey, what are you doing!?”
E van turned in confusion to see a very exasperated girl storming towards them with a glare fixed onto Connor, who groaned and replied with, “None of your fucking business, Zoe.”
Oh.
This was Zoe Murphy. The same Zoe Murphy in which a few years ago Evan had a crush on her that lasted roughly a week until Connor caught him looking at her and then had told him that he’d “Kick your ass if you even breathe in her direction!” which, fair, but like Evan honestly thought that was pretty excessive, but whatever, he didn’t know what it was like to have a younger sibling so he couldn’t relate.
“Yes it is, you’re yelling at some random ass kid for no reason. You always do this shit! You getting in trouble at school doesn’t just affect you! Besides, look at him, he’s terrified!” Connor rolled his eyes before looking back over at Evan’s teary expression, he chuckled at that before walking off, presumably to class. Zoe shook her head before turning to look at Evan with a soft smile, the same smile one would give a frightened deer, which was honestly a pretty accurate analogy right now., “Hey, I’m Zoe, I’m sorry about my brother, he’s a total psychopath.” She held out her hand.
Evan winced at the wording, but accepted her outstretched hand, “Uh, thanks, but it um, it was totally my fault. I probably deserved that so um, sorry.”
Zoe looked a bit confused but nodded regardless, “Ok, well, uh, you’re… Evan, right?”
Evan short-circuited for a moment there, why did she know his name? Was he more noticeable around the school than he thought? Sure people messed with him from time to time but he was pretty sure that he was next to invisible, why did Zoe know his name? They weren’t even in the same grade so unless he was notorious around the school for being a sweaty, anxious freak then she shouldn’t know his name. Unless for some reason Connor had talked about him at home, which honestly why would Connor do something like that? Connor clearly didn’t like him too much, but he didn’t think he hated him enough to complain to his family, unless Evan had totally read that wrong and Connor talked about him all the time which, it isn’t like that wouldn’t be warranted, Evan could be pretty annoying, but he didn’t really know how to deal with that and-
“Hey, are you okay?”
Evan blinked and found that Zoe was looking at him with concern, great. “Oh, sorry, no I’m, I’m fine, sorry, yeah I’m Evan..” Evan looked off to the side and rubbed his hands together, he heard Zoe’s soft reply.
“Alright, I’ve gotta get to class, I’ll see you around.” She gave a little wave before walking off and Evan hesitantly called after her,
“Alright…Bye, Zoe!” and immediately regretted doing so because honestly, who did that. She was clearly uncomfortable talking to him, so why would he think it was ok to call after her? He didn’t have time to dwell on this as he needed to get to class because he was going to be late, and who was late on the first day of school? Everyone would stare at him and his teacher would think he was a slacker, and he’d be known to his class as the kid that showed up late on the first day of school for some stupid reason, how inconsiderate could someone be?
Taking a deep breath, Evan started walking towards the classroom on his syllabus.