susurrus / dear evan hansen

lie number six

cynthia stared around her son's bedroom hopelessly.

she thought of all the evenings and late, late nights connor spent in here.

drops of blood stained the carpets

cracks snaked up the walls.

it was so painfully connor, with the sketchbooks and the oil paints and the watercolours and the books and cds and things he used to try to drown out the demons in his head.

she gingerly picked up a sketch. it was of three people she didn't recognise - two boys and a girl. cynthia smiled slightly, and then noticed the polaroids jauntily blu-tacked to the dented wall.

five of them, all featuring a boy with a cheesy grin and connor reflected in his glasses. they were somewhere dark, a joint in one of the boy's hands and a bottle in the other.

when was this?

cynthia blinked and shook her head, flicking through a sketchbook lying open on his desk. this one contained printed pictures of a girl, who was eating pizza cross-legged in a parking lot. she was grinning too.

she exhaled slowly, trying to process all this. did connor actually have friends? did he leave them anything, like he did with evan-?

no. that wasn't connor. that note was evan. although, that boy in the sketch-

cynthia sat down tensely on connor's bed. she thought to a day not too long ago -end of may or early june- when her son was out all day. he didn't tell her, or anyone, for that matter, where he was going. cynthia was starting to consider calling the police when she heard a car pull up in the drive and there was connor, with an unusual glint in his eye, and swallowing his grin like he did wine. and in that moment, he was ecstatic. she saw something she hasn't seen for years.

light.

he was iridescent.

cynthia shook her head, trying to understand it all: the late nights he came home positively shining. full of light.

maybe those people -the two boys and the girl- who helped him. because, for a week or two, he seemed happier. lighter.

and then it all stopped.

connor dimmed. and that light never came back.

her baby boy was gone. gone. gone.

connor dimmed.

and that light never came back.