Haunted (Dear Evan Hansen)

II. In Which the World Ends

Navigating through the dangerous, student filled school hallway sparked a fear deep inside Evan that he couldn't exactly explain. He was always trying to keep aware of everything around him. He tried to avoid any tripping obstacles or anything that made him a target of anything. Especially of attention. Attention was the worst. If the hallways weren't narrow enough, it felt like they were closing in on Evan. Shutting him in and trapping him. There was no way to escape the fear and pain that was his first day of his senior high-school career.

So when his closest family friend, Jared Kleinman, put his hand on Evan's unbroken arm's shoulder, Evan just about peed himself. He whipped quickly around to see Jared standing behind him, with a small smile on his face. What was this all about?

"Hey, Evan, how's it going?" To Evan, Jared didn't really sound like he really cared at all. But that was alright, it wasn't really like anyone cared about Evan anyway. Except probably his mom. And even then, Evan still sometimes wondered. Evan guessed that it was extremely hard to enjoy being in the company of someone who questioned every single little thing you did, checking whether or not it was a test that you actually liked them or not.

"G-good! It's good, I mean it hasn't been p-particularly awesome," Evan motioned down to the cast. "B-but other than that it's been pretty great." He was left scratching the back of his neck in slight nervousness. Was that too long of an answer?

Jared looked at Evan's cast in interest and Evan couldn't help but feel the slightest bit of uncomfortable. Had Jared never seen someone with a cast before? Was his just particularly interesting for some reason? Would everyone stare at it like Jared was?

"How does it feel to be the first person to break his arm by jacking off too hard?" Jared grin widened so it spread from ear to ear. Evan could immediately feel a blush covering his whole face and he fought the urge to just bury his face in his hands and scream. Was that what people were going to think now? Would that be the immediate thought of everyone who saw his arm? Jesus Christ.

"N-no, that's actually not what h-happened at all," Evan told him quickly. "See, um. I got a um a job as a junior park ranger over at a national park and I- I got to learn a lot about trees which is pretty c-cool because I guess I'm kind of a tree expert now," Evan told him. Immediately he corrected himself. "N-not that I'm trying to brag or anything but I just-"

"And how exactly did you break your arm?" Jared interrupted him. Evan could see the same face he saw on his mother's this morning, and pretty much the same expression he saw on anybody's face who ever tried to talk to him. He had been trying to figure out what the expression had been for several years, because it didn't really look like anything. It kind of just felt like exhaust, boredom, anger, sadness, and a little bit of disgust all mixed into one, and Evan really hated that face. Would he ever be okay enough so that he wouldn't get that look anymore? Or would he be faced with that look for all time?

"W-well that's actually kind of a funny story, you see. I- I was climbing this forty-foot-tall oak t-tree and I fell out of it," Evan wrapped up his story, his hand immediately crawling back to the back of his neck. He could have gone on.

"You fell out of a tree?" Jared's eyebrows raised, questioningly. "How the hell do you fall out a tree from that high up?" Evan began panicking a little bit inside. Was he supposed to answer this question? Or was in a rhetorical one?

"See, it was um, kind of funny because after I f-fell, I laid there for like a solid ten minutes, convincing myself that someone was going to come and get me and we would just kind of l-laugh about it. Like I kept telling myself that every few minutes I was like 'oh they'll be here in a few seconds' and stuff but, uh, yeah."