Yesterday, there'd been no sign of Connor Murphy. Granted, I had no idea what Connor's class schedule looked like. Well, aside from the obvious fact we shared last period study hall. I was, for at least as long as I lived without getting retrograde amnesia, never going to forget we shared last period study hall.
Aside from that, I didn't really know where Connor was supposed to be, or if he was or wasn't in those places. His locker wasn't near mine, and we weren't in the same homeroom. I would've known if we were. Not to say that I'd ever deliberately paid attention to Connor before this, but, Connor wasn't exactly the kind of person you had to be specifically looking out for to notice. He was more the kind of person you had to pretend you didn't see even when you did. Maybe, I'd thought with hope I didn't really have, we only had the same study hall and Tuesday/Thursday AP English. Maybe, this was normal, to not see him.
I thought that, yet, every time I'd see someone who could have been or could have spoken to Connor since Tuesday, my pulse leapt into my throat. At one point, I'd spotted a figure in an army jacket with long brown hair, and I'd knocked myself against a locker to get out of the way. When I'd finally stopped ducking, I saw it was Julie Holtzer. I hadn't even noticed her hair bow.
There was no sleeping. No eating. Every nerve in my body was ready for flight, fight or freeze. There was a pretty clear preference in my system for options one and three over two, but, that didn't exactly matter. Excluding the false flags—which I was about as good at planting as I was at spotting—there wasn't much to go on. For someone almost everyone liked to gossip about the same way people liked to complain about most politicians, Logan Paul, or, say, the recent escape of an elephant from the zoo, today, Connor was practically a ghost.
Maybe, for once, I was lucky. Except, I'm never lucky, unless you count being unlucky as a kind of luck. But, without anything to go on except uncertainty, I just had to go. Keep on moving, stuck with the eternal sense that each new step was the one which would break the floor, my remaining bones, or my dignity.
Who was I kidding? I had no dignity. What I had was a sweat-dampened, crinkled doctor's note still excusing me from gym. I'd passed it to the gym coach before class started, again, and slinked solemnly off to the bleachers.
The only thing I hated more than using that doctor's note was knowing that I was still technically in gym. It smelled in gym, even worse than most things did. The lights were brighter. No one, not even janitors, knew how to wash those foam mats on the wall, because they were covered in this sort of scratchy faux leather plastic stuff that looked like you could hose it down, except it had just enough holes in it to still retain the stench of fifteen-year-old shame and musty dodge-balls.
With nothing else to do, I tried to focus on my letters. Key word tried. I spent most of fourth period gym staring at the blank, ruled paper of what I'd imagined my letter should have looked like if my world wasn't one wild Connor Murphy sighting away from imminent implosion. By the end of class whistle, I had something close to coherent. I skimmed the words, my pen tapping against the second to last empty row of the page, reviewing my handiwork. Or, hand writing work.
Dear Evan Hansen,
Today is going to be a good day, and here's why. Today is not the first day of school. Or the second. The pleasantries and introduction and weaving sideways because you thought the classroom numbers went up the hall on the second floor instead of down, that's over. From here on, you get to really establish your new routine for the year. That's good. Comfortable.
The first day is the hardest part. Other than exams, and there are a few weeks before any of those can start, so. All you have to do now is repeat what you already did. About a hundred and eighty times or so before you graduate. After that, it's your choice where to go. And for now, you don't have to think about it. You just have to go to English, then Physics, then listen to the teachers, and listen to yourself.
And then, an explosion. Not a literal explosion, but, a voice. It was basically the same thing for how it coursed through me so completely. "What the hell are you doing?"
No.
No.
"Nothing!" I might have shouted. My pulse was too loud to tell. My arms clutched the notebook, retracting myself so quickly inwards that I smacked my shoulder on the next highest bleacher. I swallowed the pain into reflexive denial. "Writing. Writing nothing."
"Really? Because, and maybe I'm crazy, here, but, last I saw, those look like words," He answered.
My head snapped up, focusing on the source. A guy with glasses slightly too big for his face and confidence too big for both was standing by the bottom bleacher. His name was Jared Kleinman, and he was the closest person I had to a friend. From the way he stared up at me like he was still the one looking down, it said a lot about my non-existent friendships.
"Look. Evan," Jared pointed at me. I watched his finger more than I watched Jared, if only because it was moving and I couldn't really help it. "You can't text me on Wednesdays. I told you. It's DND night. I'm dungeon master, and our mage was right in the middle of a saving throw while fighting this hoard of elemental giants. I've been designing this campaign for weeks. Wait, why am I explaining this?" the 'to you' was implied.
I shrugged into my notebook, unsure of what he wanted me to do to respond. The shrug must have been enough, because Jared moved his finger a little closer to my face for emphasis. "Look. Just don't text me on Wednesdays unless your mom needs my parents, and when she tried, both their phones were dead enough to become undead if I planted them in a pet cemetery. Or, if you do, at least don't text 'dot dot dot' at me."
"Ellipses, you mean?"
"Yeah, those. It looks like you're still typing. Or you forgot that sentences usually include words." Jared rocked back on the heels of his sneakers, casually expanding the already moderate distance between us. He flicked the direction of his pointing over his shoulder. "So, do you want to tell me what you were trying to tell me before you totally freaked out? Or can I go use the bathroom before English?"
"It's not—" that easy. Not like that. Not something I can say at school, where anyone could walk out of the locker room and hear me admit to writing stolen letters to myself. Any of those sentences would've been fine. They were all so fine, in fact, that I couldn't pick any of them. Instead, what spurted out me was a rushed, doubtful "Nothing." That, and a little bit of spit that I really hoped Jared didn't notice.
"It's not, nothing?" Jared repeated.
My right hand crept away from the notebook, up the side of my neck. Already, I could feel a layer of grime too intense not to itch. I scratched repeatedly, pulling my collar down as I insisted. "I mean, it's. It's not a thing. No thing. Completely. Seriously unimportant."
"Okay. Well. Have fun with your nothing about nothing." Jared reached for the headphones around his neck. He pulled them up and started to turn away.
"Wait. I." I stepped forward on the bleachers, swaying in his general direction without standing up. My right arm outstretched to flail at his without being anywhere close to reaching him.
The urgency in my voice, the will to speak—all of that left as soon as Jared turned with a possibly impatient "What?"
No options. No excuses. No time to do anything but ask, and hope Jared's bladder was a lot smaller than his curiosity when I blurted out. "Have you seen Connor?"
"Not when I can help it. Why? Or is that another non-thing you have going on?" His foot tapped up while he waited, probably matching a rhythm from music I couldn't hear.
My leg shook on the bleacher, matching Jared's without the song. "That's a—" complicated question. I paused, my throat locking up for anything more substantive than a staggered "yep," except, the second I said it, I knew that wasn't enough. The air was still stale. Jared was staring. He needed-no, deserved-an explanation. Except, we were at school. Other students were coming out of the locker room. There wasn't time to say it and be sure no one else would hear.
I was so busy crouching and shaking my leg that I didn't realize my notebook was slipping until Jared was staring straight at my note. A trace of a laugh started to creep up his nose, then into his words. "Is that your name? On a letter?" Shit.
I scrambled off the bleacher, clutched my notebook to my chest, and scrambled to leave. I slipped out the side step, my voice raising with my feet while I rushed through the first goodbye I could sputter. "Have fun peeing."
It wasn't until I'd already said it, that I realized I'd just told Jared to have fun peeing.
I tried to turn around and correct myself. My feet stalled by the door out, holding my ground. My brain rushed through a bunch of options, scrambling them together into a verbal mush. "I'm sorry. Wait, that's not, the. I didn't mean it, or like that. I—"
By the time I really focused on where I was speaking, I noticed the emptiness beside the bleachers. No one was there. While I was busy failing, Jared had already left. Fight, flight, and freeze. No surprise which one won. Again.
I'd made it out into the hallway, tucked my head down, and let myself be swallowed into the crowd of aimful people marching around. Well dressed, composed teenage worker ants, all with a purpose, clique, and place to be. How everyone knew the halls this quickly after school started, who knew? Or, well, I guess they knew. I didn't know. Was that the point? It was, probably.
Before I could consider anything more, my pointless stalling was overtaken by a voice on the speaker. At first, it was just a jolt. A paddle to the chest, lifting my heels from the padding of my New Balances into the air, without me hearing a single word of it. Then, the speakers crackled. The announcement repeated. Slower. Crisper. Unimagined. "Will Evan Hansen please report to the principal's office?"
And everything went silent.