Stage Amnesia

The Fall

"Mike, you're on in 3." Came the voice of the director.

Mike Faist tightens up the band on his prop bag. He's done this scene so many times now, several times on Broadway. Normally, he's really chill and is really good friends with the other cast members. But on stage, he is the paranoid loose cannon of Connor Murphy.

He takes a breath and remembers his lines. He gets into character, looking at himself in the lit mirror.

He nods, approving his facade and he steps out to begin the scene with his best friend of the cast members, Ben Platt, playing Evan Hanson, the intensely anxious kid with a huge crush on Conner's sister.

"Do you ever really crash, or even make a-"

Connor steps into the stage, the printed note in his hand. "So. What happened to your arm?" He asks Evan.

Evan struggles with the words for a moment. "Oh. I, um, I fell out of a tree actually..."

Connor can't help but laugh at that. "You fell out of a tree? That is the saddest fucking thing I've ever heard. Oh my God." He said with amusement.

Evan tries to laugh along. "I know..."

Conner takes a look at Evans cast. "No one's signed your cast." He notes.

Evan blushes out of embarrassment. "No, I know."

Connor grins. "I'll sign it." He said.

"Oh... You don't have to-"

"Do you have a sharpie?" Connor cuts him off.

Evan presents the sharpie but winces in pain as Connor pulls him closer by his cast. Connor then precedes to scrawl his name in huge letters over one entire side of the cast.

"Oh... Great... Thanks." He said with dismay.

"Now we can both pretend that we have friends." Connor said bitterly.

"Good point."

Evan takes the sharpie back and turns to go when Connor holds out a piece of paper.

"Is this yours? I found it on the printer. 'Dear Evan Hansen.' That's your name, right?" He said.

"Oh, that's just a stupid- it's a paper I had to write for a, um, for an assignment..." he said, struggling.

Connor looks down at the paper he's holding and realizes something.

"'Because there's Zoe.' Is this about my sister??" He asks with disgust.

"No! Not at all!" Evan said, trying to defend himself.

There was an audible creaking sound. It was loud and distracted Ben for a second, but he regains his composure.

"You wrote this because you knew that I would find it." Connor growled at him.

"What?!"

A loud crack from above the stage draws Bens attention again. He doesn't know what's going on up there but it sounds like Something is about to fall. He returns his focus.

"You saw that I was the only other person in this computer lab, so you wrote this and you printed it out, so that I would find it!" Connor yells.

"Why would I do that?"

"So I would read some creepy shit you wrote about my sister and freak out, right?"

Ben now saw what it was that was making the noise, a light, unsecured properly was starting to shift. "Mike-" he quietly warns. He knows it's going to come down in a second.