Hi everybody! I've been working on this story idea for a long time, and I'm very excited to share it with the world! This is a little prologue to what's about to come, so *YouTuber voice* make sure to smash that favorite and follow button! ;)

(Disclaimer: DEH is not my property. It is the property of its writers, I think? I don't know how it works with Broadway shows? You can't say, like, Warner Brothers or Disney - unless it's a Disney show, then you can say Disney - but it isn't mine, so there you go.)

Chapter 1:

The Discovery

"So how long are you doing this?" Heidi asked.

"Just for a year," Evan said. "I can take some classes at the community college, so I'll have some credits when I go in. And it'll give me a chance to save some money for actual college."

"That sounds smart," Heidi said. "And you're starting tomorrow?"

"Yeah," Evan said. "I've told you this a million times."

"You can never be too safe," Heidi said. "I still can't believe it. My little guy, all grown up."

Evan smiled. Heidi walked over to him and hugged him.

"Mom, I'm still living with you for now," Evan said. "It's not like I'll be a thousand miles away from you."

"I know," Heidi said. "But I'll still miss you."

"Thanks, Mom," Evan said, breaking the hug. "Do you mind if I go downstairs and clean out a spot in the basement?"

"Oh, that's fine," Heidi said.

"Thanks," Evan said. He waved goodbye as he opened the door to the basement and walked down.

All the movies he had ever seen had portrayed the basement as the scariest part of the house, but Evan had always liked his basement. It was painted in the same pale blue as the rest of the house, and it felt like just another room - not some dark, dusty place where evil was lurking.

In the corner of the basement was a bed - his parents' old king bed, looking as new as the last time he had seen it. The mattress was still good - but it was covered in boxes of old books and toys, bags of old clothes that Heidi had forgotten to drop in the donate bin, and what looked like an old, broken tray table.

Evan sighed, going to work. He grabbed the tray table and moved it to another part of the basement. The bags went on the stairs, to go into his car - maybe he could donate them on his way to his first day of work. It might be a good tax deduction, he thought.

After he had cleared the toys from the bed, he was left with the boxes of books. One box looked like the books he had read as a kid - Dr. Seuss, Eric Carle, Goodnight Moon. The other had the word "memories" written on the side; from the looks of it, it was filled with photo albums and old school yearbooks.

His face scrunched up as he randomly took one of the yearbooks from the box, sitting down on the bed and opening up the book to a random page.

Of course. It was that page. Why did it have to be that page?

It was his eighth grade yearbook - and, being such a small school, each kid had gotten their own page. Evan had filled his with pictures of him and his "friends" from school - Jared and Alana, mostly - and pictures of his mom.

But this wasn't Evan's page. Or Jared's, or Alana's.

Staring him in the face was the student page of Connor Murphy.

How long had it been since he had confessed? Two, three months? He still hadn't talked to Zoe, or even tried. He'd begged Alana to try and find a way to stop the threats against the Murphys, but he still hadn't dared to tell her that he had been lying. He'd gotten rid of all his social media apps, stopped himself from getting notifications about the Connor Project. On the last day of school, he had tried to go up to Jared and apologize for what he had done, but he had been ignored. The only thing he had heard since graduation was an email from Alana, reading, "Have you gone to the orchard yet? It's gorgeous - I can totally see you and Connor there." He had never replied - he didn't want to bring those bad memories back.

But seeing Connor's page in the yearbook, his hair shorter than Evan had remembered, flooded his mind with those memories, as though a dam had broken in his subconscious.

Evan was about to close the book, throw it back in the "memories" box, and chuck the box across the room, when he noticed something about the page.

There were no pictures. There were no funny movie quotes or obsession over friends.

But there was a heading: My Favorite Books. Underneath was a list of ten titles - while Evan had heard of some of them before, he had never read them.

Evan looked at the list for what felt like forever. Then he put the box next to his bed and put the book next to the bags of donatable clothes.

Thank goodness there's a Barnes and Noble next to Pottery Barn, he thought.

Thanks for reading! I promise there'll be some more action soon - I thought this would be a good way to start it off, and also motivate me to write more by actually starting to post the story. The first time I read the script, I was really intrigued by the concept of reading the ten favorite books of someone who had died, to get to know them better. Now I just need to write it.

Feel free to review, but please no negative reviews or cursing. (And please, NOTHING POLITICAL!) Thanks!