A vision. Staring into a mix of light and night, I see a vision. It’s the same vision I’ve had before, a story I’ve told, one that became real to me and everyone, and somehow still feels real now, even though it’s not. I’m on the ground, again, waiting for help, needing it, alone and helpless and empty, and the person who arrives in my mind once again—him.
He’s come to get me.
I blink, remembering where I am, in the middle of the street. I register the nearing headlight. It would be so easy to sit here and do nothing. To remain hidden in the dark and let the next moment take me. All the torment: over.
I’m drained of every ounce of energy, but I force myself up. The last thing I want is the Murphys to wake up to a gory accident in front of their house. Another tragedy on their hands, after all the suffering and heartache and misery I’ve caused. I just want them to have some semblance of calm, if not tonight, then soon. Very, very soon.
For me, there’s only war inside, a raging battle with no end in sight. And fine. I know I deserve every harrowing minute of it.
I step onto the curb as the car passes. I lean back against a roadside tree. A tree. Another fucking tree. They’re everywhere, these soaring reminders.
I am alone, the way I deserve to be. The way I’m meant to be. A fucking nothing. Unworthy to the core. How could I fool myself into thinking I could be deserving of anything close to happiness? To acceptance? And then fool others into thinking it, too? How disgusting and pathetic to want something so badly, so desperately, that I could be willing to do the most heinous things. I am broken. A defective piece that has no match and can never fit into the whole. I tried to pass as something more, but now they see me for what I am. What I’ve always been.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. It’s my mom. She keeps texting me, begging me to call her.
I turn around and dig my claws into the trunk of the tree, pressing my forehead into the bark, hoping to scrape my skin raw. Unlike that day, my impulse now is to try to pull the tree down and let it topple over me. I’m done climbing. I’d only end up falling anyway.
Falling. Amazing. I’m still doing it. Telling stories. Even now, standing alone on a dark street, not a soul around, and I can’t even be honest with myself. When will that finally happen? Because there aren’t different versions of the story. There’s only one version. One story. The truth.
I look up at the tree, follow its branches skyward into the starry heavens.
“The truth.”
Saying it aloud—I thought I was all out of tears. The stars start to blur and swirl in wet puddles.
It’s not a good story.
Own it.
I fixed up that sign. That dumb sign. WELCOME TO ELLISON STATE PARK. EST. 1927. I put so much into it. I thought he’d like it, my dad, that he’d be proud, something. I texted him a picture of what I’d done. His response? He had something he wanted to share with me. Something special. His own accomplishment. He sent a picture back. One of those ultrasounds. And a message: Say hello to your brother.
Everything I’d done. Everything I was. It didn’t mean anything.
I saw this incredibly tall oak tree and I started climbing. I wanted to see what the world looked like from up there. I got close to the top and I gazed out in every direction. I could see over the tops of trees, past Clover Field. I could see buildings downtown. A cell phone tower. I could see all that, more than I ever saw before, so much space, but I felt the same way I did back on the ground, closed in, by everything. That’s when I looked down. I realized how high up I was. I hadn’t even reached the top of the tree. There was still more to go. But I had seen enough. I saw the ground below, all the way down. I looked up once more, at the whole world; it was beautiful, I knew it was, but I wasn’t a part of it. I was never going to be a part of it. In that moment—it was quick—I just loosened my grip, unlocked my legs, and…
I woke up on the ground. I thought I was dead. Then I felt the pain. My arm was numb. I couldn’t move. I guess I was in shock that I’d actually done it, that I’d tried to do it, and that I’d failed so miserably. Half relief, half disgust, and still all alone. I wanted someone to find me. To be there for me. To help me. I waited. Any second now. Any second now.
I waited so long. The park wasn’t open yet. There was no one.…
I got up and walked back to headquarters. I couldn’t tell Ranger Gus what happened. What I tried to do. People like that, who do that, they don’t become rangers. Everything would’ve been over. And then there was my mom. I couldn’t face her. I didn’t know how.
It won’t be any easier now.
But where else am I supposed to go?
I move away from the road and the tree. I step onto the sidewalk. I start walking.
• • •
“I’m looking for my mother,” I tell the woman at the front desk.
“What’s the patient’s name?” she asks, placing her fingers on the keyboard.
“Actually, she works here. Her name is Heidi Hansen. I’m her son.”
The woman looks up.
“Can you please ask her to come down here?” I say.
She sizes me up. “Sure.”
I step off to the side.
There’s a chance my mom has already left the hospital to go to her night class. I could have texted or called before coming, but that would have required too much explanation and I’m all out of words. The last few I spoke to the Murphys left me with barely enough energy to make it to the hospital.
I hear my mom’s panicked voice. “Where is he?”
The woman at the front desk points me out. My mom’s jittery eyes rest upon finding me in one piece. Seeing her has the opposite effect on me: I finally lose it.
“Oh, honey,” she says, reaching me.
She guides us outside to a courtyard and onto a bench. I try to pull myself together. Besides a janitor inserting a new bag into a trash can, we’re alone out here. I watch the janitor stretch the bag over the edges of the can. He wheels his rickety cart over the concrete and back inside the hospital.
She rubs my back and encourages me to breathe.
Long minutes pass.
“Talk to me,” she says.
It’s not a command. It’s a welcome mat. All I have to do is step to her.
“I saw the note online,” she says. “The note that Connor Murphy…”
I nod.
“It’s all over everyone’s Facebook. ‘Dear Evan Hansen,’” she recites. “Did you… you wrote it? The note?”
I feel shame, of course, but also relief. If she hadn’t found out on her own about Connor’s note, I’d have to be the one to tell her.
“I didn’t know,” she says.
And now the shame really kicks in. The last person I want her to blame is herself. There’s only one of us at fault here. “No one did.”
“No, honey, that’s not what I mean. I mean… I didn’t know that you… I didn’t know you were hurting like that. That you felt so… how did I not know?”
I finally realize what she’s talking about. “Because I never told you.” I couldn’t even tell myself. It’s taken me the longest time to find my way back to the truth.
She presses her hand into mine. “You shouldn’t have had to.”
“I lied. About so many things. Not just Connor. Last summer, when I…”
I lose my wind.
“I just felt so alone.…”
I reach for the hardest words.
“You can tell me,” she says.
I shake my head. “I can’t. You’ll hate me.”
“Oh, Evan. I won’t.”
“You should. If you knew what I tried to do. If you knew who I am. How broken I am.”
“I already know you. I know you better than anyone else does. And I love you.”
How can she know me when I don’t even know me? What I say, what I think, I can’t decide which parts are real and which are made-up. I try, over and over, to reach myself. How is that even possible when I’m already here, walking in my own skin? Sometimes I wonder if I’m still lying under that oak tree and I’ve been sleeping this whole time and everything that’s happened is a dream.
“I’m so sorry.”
I’m not even sure what I’m apologizing for. For all the things I said and couldn’t say. For all the things I did and couldn’t do. For everything. For every single thing.
She absorbs my silence, seeming to understand the scope of it. “I can promise you that someday all of this will feel like a very long time ago.”
A mother has to say that kind of thing. She doesn’t realize: this will haunt me for the rest of my life.
“Do you remember the day your dad drove by to get his things?” she asks.
Okay, if she’s talking about my dad, then I know things truly are dire.
“It was a few weeks after he moved out. ‘Temporarily,’ we said. Your father and I were both nervous about how you’d handle it, watching all his stuff get taken from the house. But you were so excited when you saw that big moving truck in the driveway you barely seemed to notice. We stuck you in the driver’s seat and you wouldn’t let us take you out. You were having a blast up there.”
It’s hard to imagine.
“And then, a few hours later, your father was gone, and the truck was gone, and it finally sank in. It was just you and me, all alone in that big house. You were upset, obviously, and I understood that, of course, completely. And then, later that night, I was tucking you into bed and you asked me something.”
“What?”
“You wanted to know, ‘Is there another truck coming? A truck to take Mommy away?’ And it crushed me. And I knew that no matter how hard I tried or how badly I wanted it, I wouldn’t always be able to be there for you. I knew I’d come up short—and I did. And I do. But the answer I gave you that day is the same one I’ll give you now and every day after.” She looks into my eyes and lifts my chin. “Your mom is staying right here. You’re stuck with me, kid.”
And she’s stuck with me: the mess I am.
Although, I guess, technically, being here with me is a choice. My father made a different choice. My mom could leave if she wanted. Maybe I forget that sometimes.
When I showed her the sign I painted at the park, she literally screamed, she was so impressed. My dumb sign. She still brags about it to people.
“Let’s go somewhere,” she says. “You’re overdue for the ride of your life.”
This strange sentence can only be a horoscope. “Don’t you have a class?”
She waves her hand at the air, swatting away the ridiculous notion. There may be class tonight, but not for my mom. We stand and begin to walk.
She keeps pushing forward, putting on a brave face. I don’t know how she does it.
“You hungry?” she says.
“No.”
“Not even for pancakes?”
“Not even for pancakes.”
I will never eat again.
“Where do you want to go?” she says. “I’ll take you anywhere.”
I open the door for us. “I just want to go home.”
• • •
I hover like a ghost in the passenger seat of my mom’s car. I can barely feel the seat beneath me, or see the road ahead, or draw air into my lungs. But life goes on. How else can I explain getting from the hospital to my driveway?
My mom puts the car in park, but I’m not ready to go inside yet.
“I think I’ll sit here for a minute,” I say.
“Okay.”
“Leave the keys. I’ll lock up.”
She looks over. I don’t know what she’s searching for, but I let her see whatever she needs to see. My eyes make some sort of promise.
She hands me the keys and gathers her things. I watch her walk up the path and into the house. Our house. We came here, many years ago, looking for a new start.
The driver’s seat is empty now. It’s been a long time since I tried it. I crawl into the seat and take my mom’s place.
I touch the wheel, run my fingers along the smooth arc. I place my hands at ten and two, gripping tightly.
I adjust the seat for comfort. I stretch out my leg, test the pedal. I press delicately at first, then with force.
Ten years ago, I sat in another driveway, in another driver’s seat. What if he’d taken me with him? Where would I be now?
A shadow moves in the master bedroom. The next room over is where I begin and end all my days. Those many nights ago, I thought I saw Connor standing on the street, looking into my window. Sometimes his presence feels so real, so close, I can’t convince myself that it wasn’t him that night, or on the nights after. Even though I know it can’t be.
But tonight I’m the one looking up. The camera of my mind zooms in, traveling up to the second story of my house and into the bedroom I know so well. Every inch of it. What’s hidden inside and under. On the wall, there’s a map. It used to be marked with destinations. Places to go. Dreams. Now it’s bare. A great, blank canvas.