"I'll do it for you." (Barclay, Haley, EMH)

AU: "Dear Evan Hansen" (Content warning: references to depression, anxiety and suicide)

/

"I know a lot of you have heard rumors about why Katie and I started the Joseph Project." Reg pushed back his sleeve with the signed cast on it and held it up for emphasis. " It's true that we're doing this for him, but not for the reasons people say. He wasn't my secret best friend or lover or anything like that. The truth is … a bit more complicated."

/

" … And before you know it, you've got spaceships and Netflix and, and chicken soup. You can't help having spaceships and Netflix and chicken soup. It was all predetermined from the beginning!"

Everyone in the cafeteria stared as Joe prowled between the tables, talking himself into a full-blown meltdown while holding a tomato - one red, one yellow - in each hand. His ex-drama-club-student voice boomed off the rafters as he ranted about cause and effect. Some of their classmates seemed to find all this hilarious, but Reg felt a nauseating mixture of embarrassment and empathy.

Please stop, he thought. Please, just get help. Talk to someone. Anyone.

"What are you staring at, Broccoli?" Joe came to a stop right in front of him. They'd hardly ever spoken to each other before, but apparently the nickname that had stuck to Reg since elementary school was still current.

"N-n-nothing?"

"You're nothing," Joe retorted. "All of us are. Remember that. In the grand scheme of things, none of our lives are worth any more than these."

He hurled one of the tomatoes. It bled red juice all over Reg's blue shirt.

/

"Sorry about my brother. He's … not well."

Reg was frantically scrubbing at the stain with a fistful of brown paper napkins when a soft voice spoke up behind him. He jumped out of his seat and whirled around.

Haley Zimmerman stood behind him, looking worried. He wanted to reassure her, but he already knew that whatever he said right now would come out as stuttering gibberish. Why couldn't they have met on any other day but this?

"Oh no, don't do that," she said kindly. "It'll only spread. I cook at home, so I know about food stains. Here, take this."

She handed him a stain remover pen from her shirt pocket. He attacked the juice spots with it and they actually faded. He handed the pen back to her with a few broken words that were meant to express gratitude, but probably sounded like nothing at all..

"I'm Haley. You're Reg, right?"

She knew his name. Not just his horrible nickname, but the one he actually liked to be called by. "Reg," he repeated in awe, realizing seconds too late how ridiculous that sounded. "Sorry."

"For what?"

"Repeating my own name like that. It's stupid. Just … never mind."

"Okay," she said, looking more worried than ever, backing away slowly as if awkwardness were contagious. "I, uh … I should get to class," she said, with a tiny wave of her hand. "See you."

Reg felt like the worst kind of failure as he watched her walk away.

/

After lunch, he gratefully withdrew to the school library so he could spill his guts into a nonjudgmental computer. Normally he wouldn't do this at school, but Dr. Troi had given him an assignment that he'd been putting off for much too long, and he had an appointment with her the same afternoon. He didn't want to show up to her office empty-handed on top of everything else. Therapy was expensive.

It was just his luck that Joe was hanging around near the printer just as Reg got in line to print out his assignment. He did his level best to avoid eye contact, but this time, the other boy saw him first.

"Hey, Barclay. No one signed your cast, did they?" Joe's cutting voice became almost gentle as he caught sight of the bare white plaster on Reg's arm. "If anyone else here broke a limb, it'd be scribbled all over by now … except me, probably."

"I d-didn't ask," said Reg, clinging to his last shred of pride.

"I'll do it for you." Joe pulled a thick black marker out of his backpack. "No one deserves to be invisible."

He wrote his name in big, bold, unmistakable block letters. Reg could have pushed him away, but he wasn't the pushing type - and, to be honest, he was rather pleased. His mother had encouraged him only that morning to ask people for signatures, if only as an excuse to start a conversation. He'd been dreading the disappointed look on her face, but now she wouldn't have to be disappointed.

Joe had just capped the marker and put it back when the printer beeped.

"Hmm?" Joe picked up the sheet of paper emerging from the machine and tilted his head to read it. His eyebrows shot up high enough to disappear under his shock of curly hair.

"'Dear Reginald Barclay … Sincerely, Me.' You wrote a letter to yourself? And they say I'm strange."

Reg broke into a cold sweat. He meant to say Please give it back, but his stutter wouldn't let him get past the letter P.

He lunged for the paper, but Joe was too quick for him, dodging past the printer and out the library doors as he read the rest of the letter. It didn't take long, and the more he read, the more he began to look like a thunderstorm waiting to happen.

"'Today wasn't an amazing day after all. It could have been, because there's Haley, but I can't even talk to her … ' What the hell, Broccoli? Is this some kind of joke?"

Reg made a final grab for the letter, but Joe gave him a shove that sent him sprawling on the floor. They were out in the empty hallway now, with no adults or even fellow students to intervene, although Reg doubted that anyone could have stopped Joe in a moment like this,

"You stay away from my sister, do you hear me?" Joe shouted. "She's too good for you, and she's got enough crap to deal with already!"

He ran down the hall, still carrying the letter in a crumpled ball in his fist.

"D-d-don't show anyone," Reg finally managed to say. "Please? … Joe!"

But he never turned around.

/

"It was just a few hours later," said present-day Reg, pushing the memories back with all his strength, "That Joe took his own life."

The astonished murmurs from his audience (although Joe's suicide was public knowledge by now) came to him very distantly, as if he were at the bottom of a swimming pool. He was grateful for that. In a few moments, everything would come rushing back and overwhelm him again, but he could hold it off for a few moments longer.

"His parents found that letter with his belongings, and the next thing I knew, they were calling me to the principal's office and asking to talk to me. They thought Joe was the one who'd written it, you see. 'Dear Reginald Barclay … Sincerely, Me.' They thought we were friends.

"I didn't lie to them, but I didn't tell the whole story either, just that Joe felt sorry for me when he saw my cast was blank. I don't even know the whole story, none of us do. We don't know how Joe became the way he was or why he decided to kill himself. I'm sorry, Dr. and Mrs. Zimmerman. I wish I had an explanation."

He couldn't see Joe's father or stepmother in the auditorium through the glare of the spotlight, but he pictured them in his mind's eye: Lewis, looking like Joe would never get the chance to look now, bald and middle-aged, with deep worry lines carved into his face. Leeta, pretty and red-haired, desperately looking for a silver lining to every cloud, even when there was none.

He remembered how their faces had lit up with hope when he'd talked about Joe signing the cast, as if what they wanted more than anything in her life was to hear good things about their son. Reg would have spun them all the fairy tales he could invent, but he just wasn't that good a liar. They would have found him out sooner or later, and that would have hurt them all the more.

"So, no, I didn't know Joe, but I could have. We could all get to know each other better if our fear and anger didn't get in the way. But what I do know about him matters. I know he was a talented musician, who loved opera and jazz and couldn't care less whether it was cool or not. I know he cared about his sister, even if he had his own way of showing it. And I know he told me no one deserves to be invisible. That's true for him, and it's true for all of us."

"There are more Joes out there, and more Regs and Katies. It's not too late for us to help each other, even if it feels that way sometimes. I'm hoping that, for at least some of us, maybe the Joseph Project will be the first step - a song you write, or an instrument you learn, or a person you reach out to on our website. We can't give everyone a happy ending, but we can give you a place to start."

With his good arm, Reg gestured to the side of the stage as Katie had done earlier. Haley was already waiting in the wings. Her guitar was slung over her front, her head held high, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright. She looked nervous, as well she might, but also determined. She caught his eye and gave him a small nod.

"It's only right for Joe and his family to have the last word. After he died, his family found a bunch of notebooks with songs written in them. This one wasn't finished, but Haley finished it for him, and here she is. Haley Zimmerman, everybody, performing "You Will Be Found".""

As she stepped out from behind the red velvet curtain, he did something his former self had never dared to do: he put a hand between her shoulder blades to lead her into the spotlight.

She smiled at him over her shoulder before making her bow.

Thank God. She knew the truth and still didn't blame him.

This unexpected grace made him weak at the knees, but at the same time, he felt stronger than he had in years.