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time
noun
the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present or future regarded as a whole.xxx Time. The never ending cycle of possibilities which may or may not take place rely on time. The same cycle of a nine to five job within the space of eight hours. The meeting of lovers and their fate. The lifeline, the game player. The ticking time bomb of life and death. As a child, my mom always told me that the ticking of a clock resembled your lifeline, the time you spent on this earth. Each tick was like a heartbeat; a second closer to the end of your life. A clock was your lifeline and when the clock would stop ticking, so would you.I had been terrified of that theory when I was younger and hated my mom for telling it to me. Like any other eight year old, I feared death -- the concept of it terrified me. It had kept me up at night, my mind a whirlwind of what happened after we died, where we went in the afterlife, if death was a never ending black void of nothingness in the aftermath. For a child who was so afraid of dying, I wondered where that fear had gone in present day. Sadly, I thought about it on a regular basis. I broke my arm by throwing myself out of a tree last summer before Connor and I became friends and after his death six months ago, I had tried again by overdosing on my Xanax medication. I had already been going to therapy for my anxiety but when I tried to kill myself for the second time after my best friend had died, mom decided to I needed to go to therapy more regularly. They diagnosed me with clinical depression and I had to explain to Dr. Sherman that I was depressed even before Connor passed away, that his death just made it worse. Which is why I was currently sitting in Dr. Sherman's office, my eyes and ears focused on the faint tick tick tick of the clock that sat on the wall behind his head, the same tick tick tick that happened to be my lifeline. "Evan." What?"Evan?" My head snapped towards Dr. Sherman, watching his deep frown lines and the crease between his eyes deepen as he let out a loud sigh. His glasses that had earlier been perched on the bridge of his nose were now slightly falling off, a hand reaching up to adjust them before rubbing the side of his head in frustration."I'm sorry, w-what did you say?" I asked, stuttering slightly and playing with my hands in my lap. I knew his frustration was towards me as he believed I wasn't making any progress but mom still insisted I go to the sessions, especially now that Connor was no longer in my life."I asked how you were coping with Connor's death." He asked the same damn question every time I was here and I replied with the same answer every time."Fine." Obviously I clearly wasn't fine, but I wasn't going to let Dr. Sherman know that.I had blamed myself for Connor's death and every moment I spent alive, the more guilty I felt that it was him laying six feet under the ground and not me. I had blamed myself for what happened in his final moments, instead being the reason why he died in the first place. The constant nagging in my head was tearing me apart, apparitions of Connor's dead body haunting me at night and rendering me unable to sleep, my mind replaying the same night over and over again.
Alana Beck had thrown one of her dubious, self proclaimed end of school year parties once again and I found myself sitting on her couch, a can of Diet Coke in my non broken arm watching a very underage and drunk Zoe Murphy and Jared Kleinman twerking on Alana's coffee table. I was surprised it hadn't broken yet with the weight of both of them and cringed watching them slut drop when a beat in the music changed.
"Hey," Connor said, dropping down next to me with a bottle of some beer I didn't care about the name of. I smiled at him, watching in amusement as Jared fell off the coffee table, who then proceeded to exclaim he was okay.
Seeing Connor drink was a rare occurrence – he always hated the buzz he got from alcohol; he was a smoker, a heavy one, even, but rarely touched alcohol. Perhaps the alcohol messed with him so much that night that it took away his life.
"This party's kind of shit, no offence," Connor mentioned, wearing the same look I had watching his sister and friend belt the word's to Rihanna's S&M. The music here was bad, I noted, and it seemed Alana had absolutely no logical music taste. Then again, neither did I.
"Oh, I-I know, party's aren't m-my kind of t-thing but you k-know that already," I smiled, my eyes looming over the ridiculous behaviour of our friends.
Connor and I had been best friends since the start of junior year after he shoved me in the school hallway, mistaking my anxiety as laughing at him; he had pushed me so hard that I fell to the floor. He had approached me in the computer lab later that day to apologise but instead ended up reading some fucked up letter to myself about the now non existing crush on his sister and my deteriorating mental state. As strange as it sounds, we immediately became best friends.Although we had an amazing friendship, Connor suffered from severe depression and Borderline Personality Disorder which would sometimes cause a lot of tension between us and would leave us spewing hateful words at each other, desperately trying to mend the broken pieces of what we had just said. I had to remind myself many times that his mental health wasn’t an excuse for his behaviour towards me; so hateful, so unnerving. He was getting help for it after much insistence from me finally persuading his parents that their son wasn’t okay, that he was truly hurting; but sometimes I had felt that it wasn’t enough, that he wasn’t even trying to get better. I despised him in that sense – I was constantly berated by my mom, by Dr. Sherman, by Jared, by even Connor himself that I was the one who wasn’t trying hard enough even though trying to cope with my crippling, heart wrenching, anxiety made me exhausted day after day. I just wanted to scream that I was in fact trying my best but life never granted what I hoped for. Why was he let off the hook when he’d let loose on me?I was angry, incredibly angry when Connor received a lot of attention for his mental health but when it came to me, my problems were swept under the rug. I never let Connor know that though, I wouldn't have dared because Connor always came first.
“Wanna get out of here?” he asked, his eyes holding that mischievous glint they always did when he wanted to do something rebellious.
Without a word, I stood up, my now empty can of Diet Coke discarded as Connor grinned and followed me towards the front door. I opened the passenger’s door before saying, “Haven’t y-you been drinking? Perhaps I should dr-“ but he cut me off before I could finish.
“I’ve had one drink, Evan. I’ll be fine.” He had emphasised the word ‘fine’, looking at me sternly and I flinched a bit under his gaze. I always hated when he gave me that look, it was the same look my mom would give me when I did something wrong. We got in, Connor starting up the engine and beginning to drive away from Alana’s very loud (and now very trashed) house.
“I know this is a very difficult time for you, Mr. Hansen, but it’s been six months. We need to be making some progress here.” Dr. Sherman’s voice snapped me back to reality and I sent him a glare at his harsh words because how dare he say something like that, something so uncaring and apathetic. “I feel like we’re going back to square one,” he sighed, letting out a long huff and rearranging the sheets of paper in his hands. I scowled, my thoughts no longer wanting to hold back the hurt I felt.“Then why am I still here?” I snapped, watching his face turn to one of shock at my loud and brash words because I was Evan Hansen, quiet, weak, anxious Evan Hansen who would never dare to raise his voice in fear of being shot down completely. I was shocked at myself, eyes wide as I stared Dr. Sherman in the face.
“Where are we going?” I asked Connor, growing concerned at the darkness that had suddenly surrounded us and the lack of street lamps that littered the streets. We had been driving for an hour now, watching the blur of the city lights fade into the background and watching as Connor drove down an assortment of back roads. I always hated the dark. Even as a seventeen year old, I would have to have all the lights turned on in my house when I was home alone. The darkness was the void in my head, the never ending nothingness of eternity.
He didn’t answer and continued driving, eyes darting up to the rear-view mirror every few minutes. I leant my head on the window, sighing loudly and watching the faint blur of trees whizz past us.
He had noticed that I watching him glance at his rear-view mirror every few seconds or so, as if he was looking for something. It freaked me out. What the hell was he looking at?
“What are y-you looking at?” I said, turning around in my seat to stare out of the back window at whatever my friend had been staring at.
"What?"
He looked confused.
“I said, ‘what are you looking at?’ You’ve been g-glancing at your r-rear-view mirror for like, ten minutes now.” He scoffed, giving me a look I couldn’t quite decipher. It was one of those looks where he was silently trying to pick apart what I was saying and over analyse it so he could blow up when he thought I said the wrong thing.
“You’re d-doing it again,” I stated, matter of factly, after he didn’t answer. I clasped my hands together in my lap self-consciously, suddenly becoming very interested in the rips of my sweater sleeves.
“What the hell are you talking about, Hansen?” Connor grumbled, narrowing his eyes in my direction. I had to refrain from rolling my own eyes at his sudden attitude change and getting the nerve to back chat him. He became snappy when he got defensive and I wasn’t in the mood to see him lash out and argue with him. However, I wanted to be real with him. I wanted to be honest. We had always been honest in our friendship with each other. That was our main priority; honesty.
“That thing you do when you’re hiding something. You ignore people. And t-then you become d-defensive when they grow concerned. I’m just worried, that’s all.” I uttered as lightly as possible, careful not to wake the demons and keep him level headed.
“Nothing’s wrong, Ev. I’m fine. You don’t need to be concerned.” The smile he gave me didn’t quite reach his eyes and I looked at him, doubtfully, wondering what he was thinking about. Connor did many things but one thing he never did was share his thoughts. His thoughts remained his, and his alone, no matter how much pain he was in. Only he decided he if he wanted to share them with you.
“Connor.” No answer.
“Connor!”
“CONNOR!” I screamed, watching as something ran out into the middle of the road, flying into the bonnet and the car came screeching to a halt. My breath had been caught in my throat, eyes wide as I stared at the blood on the hood of the car.
“Oh my fucking god, what the fuck was that?!” It was like Connor had suddenly come back to reality, his hands running wildly through his hair and eyes looking at me frantically. “Evan, what the hell was that?!” How the hell was I meant to know?!
My hands were shaking, staring at the now empty road in front of us before pulling out my phone and attempting to dial 9-1-1.
“What are you doing?!” he yelled, eyes looking angry and burning wildly at me. I stared at him incredulously. We had hit someone, we could’ve killed them. We hadn’t even checked to see if they were okay. Their body was lying limp and lifeless in the road right now and Connor’s biggest concern was me calling for help. I was calling the police, whether he likes it or not.
“Don’t call the fucking police, we’ll be locked up!” He argued, snatching the phone out of my hands.
“What the fuck?” I yelled, attempting to grab my phone from his strong grip but having no luck. “Connor, are you insane? Somebody is seriously hurt right now, and you’re worrying about going to jail? We’re not gonna go to jail! They just came out of nowhere! It wouldn’t be our faults!” I tried to reason with him, but he wasn’t listening to anything I had to say.
“I've had run ins with the law before. Just stay here, I’ll check it out.” I wasn’t comfortable staying in the car on my own, watching my best friend from a distance approach a presumably dead body on his own. So many things could happen in that small space of time.
“Are you c-crazy?! No. I’m coming with you.” My hand reached for the handle, about to pull the car door open before Connor’s hand put a strong grip on top of mine.
“Do not come with me, Evan. I mean it. Whatever you do, whatever happens, stay in the car.” His voice had become hauntingly scary again, almost threatening and I nodded quickly, watching as he got out. Why he didn’t want me to come with him was beyond me. I looked out of the back window as Connor pulled his phone out and put the flash light on, calling into the barren darkness. Air formed around his mouth at the coldness of the night and I realised the pair of us hadn’t brought any jackets or extra clothing. All we had to keep us warm were our hoodies.
I was terrified of the dark and watching my best friend venture into it with only so much as a flash light, leaving his shivering best friend in the passenger seat of his car was a horror story in itself. “Please don’t go too far,” I mumbled to myself, watching his figure move towards the thing we hit in the distance before jerking away quickly. He scrambled up, arms frantic as he raced back to the car. He retched open the driver’s side door before revving up the engine.
“We need to leave, now.” His voice was shaking and was stone cold, as if he had just seen a ghost. In our sense, perhaps he had.
“Why, what’s happened? What’s going o-on? A-are they okay?” I became frantic, watching Connor hurriedly drive away. “Connor, please. What’s going on? Talk to me!” I yelled, becoming frustrated at the lack of answers I was getting and why Connor was so desperate to get away from the scene.
“Evan, right now, I can’t tell you anything. But I promise I will when we get home. Right now we need to go.” I suddenly became angry. What wasn’t he telling me? Who was that person who we had hit? Why did he need to get away so badly?
“You know, y-you always do this. You never fucking tell me anything and l-leave me in the dark about everything. Why can’t you just answer the question now?! You’re freaking me o-out so bad, my anxiety is through the god damn roof right now! What are you always hiding?!” I yelled, slamming my hand against the dashboard.
I was beginning to yell more, tears pouring down my face as I stared at Connor harshly. I watched him flinch under my demeanour. “I just told you, I’ll tell you everything when we get home! Please, Evan!” He begged, eyes brimming with tears at the words I had just spat at him.
I should’ve just waited for him to tell me, shouldn’t have let my anxiety think of the worst case scenarios as to what he was possibly hiding from me. I was desperate to know. He was good at hiding things, and my mind immediately assumed the very worst.
My anger had gotten the best of me, my voice not being able to stop the sick words bellowing from my throat and into the open. “I’m so sick of this! I’m so sick of everything! You’re always running off, you’re always hiding! I hate you!” I screamed at him, my vision blurry from the tears clouding it.
“Fuck you!” He screamed back and the next thing I knew, there was screaming from both of as before we blacked out.
Waking up in the hospital three weeks later, I was surrounded by my mom, Jared, Alana and Zoe all standing by my bed side. Mom was clutching my hand as hard as she possibly could without breaking any bones and her golden hair that was usually so kept and tidy was a matted mess of knots on her head. Jared, Zoe and Alana didn't look any better, their blotchy, tear stained faces and red eyes informing me that was something was wrong, something was very wrong.Connor had crashed his car into a tree that night, leaving him permanently brain damaged with no sign of ever recovering and shortly died at the hands of the steering wheel. I, on the other hand, was left severely injured with six broken ribs, a broken leg and a punctured lung. Dr. Sherman is constantly reminding me of how lucky I am to be alive. I wished he wouldn't say stuff like that.Mom cried when she had broken the news to me, Jared falling drastically by my bedside and Alana having to help Zoe stand upright having to once again hear that her brother was gone.Connor's time was up. His clock had stopped ticking, his heart had stopped beating. He was dead. And I was the only one who knew the real reason why.I had killed Connor Murphy.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Whenever people who didn’t know Connor ask about the type of guy he was, I almost always feel guilty about lying.Key word: almost.Connor Murphy was a difficult person to describe.Some people described him as mysterious – long, shoulder length dark hair that shielded his eyes – the way he dressed himself from head to toe in black, his trench coat enveloping him. He didn’t like to engage with people a lot and I guess that’s why others thought he was enigmatic. I wanted to roll my eyes when I heard things like that. I refrain myself from describing what he was really like, that he was in fact really not very mysterious at all and that people profited off of his death by pretending they knew him. They didn’t deserve to know about Connor, at least the real Connor anyway. They didn’t deserve to know the boy that I knew. They constantly saw him as Zoe Murphy’s angry, older disaffected and loner brother who took his terrible violence out on others in wake of his rapidly failing mental health.Connor was different to other people I had met. He was an array of emotions of happy and sad, of light and dark, of grey and black. His head was never the same on any two days.For some time, I had tried in vain to push the never ending memories of his violent mood swings and cloudy outlook on life deep in the back of my mind but I was always reminded of his deteriorating sadness and the extreme lack of help I had to offer him. Dr. Sherman had told me not to blame myself for his mental health and that there was simply ‘nothing I could’ve done.’ The negatives had always outweighed the positives in my mind.The Connor I knew was the Connor I had met the summer after I had broken my arm in junior year.He had stolen a note from me that was meant to be one of Dr. Sherman’s “self-help” letters and after seeing that I had mentioned his sister, he became angry that I had specified the now non existing crush on his younger sister – I looked at her then as beautiful, perfect, angel-like Zoe Murphy – and that he believed I wrote it so he would purposely find it and mock him. I wasn’t mocking him, and I never did mock him, unlike everyone else. He had already shoved me in the hallway earlier that day after Jared had made some idiotic school shooter joke to him and he thought I was laughing at him (that was the thing about Connor: he always believed people were talking about him) even though it was my anxiety getting the better of me.I had chased him down after he stormed off with my letter, putting my anxiety behind me and watched as his tall frame tried in vain to walk further away from me.“I didn’t write t-this to m-mock you, Connor,” I had said, grabbing his arm gently and making him turn around to face me, watching as his expression remained angry, his eyebrows knitted together tightly.
“My therapist makes me write self-help letters to help with my anxiety. I mean, t-they don’t help, but I let him b-believe they do.”
“With all due respect Hansen, this is the saddest fucking letter I’ve ever read.”
We became quick friends after that. He had told me about all of his past suicide attempts, about the lack of help and support he got from his family when it came to his deteriorating mental health. I let myself remember the real Connor as not mysterious or sad or lonely like others made him out to be, but real, small smiles, bitter laughs and deep talks in Ellison State Park where we pictured our lives together when we had gotten out of school.How Larry, his father, believed his cries for help were for attention and that Cynthia, his mom, and Zoe, were in total denial of his suicide attempts, even after the few times he had ended up in hospital. In that time, I had told him the real reason about how I broke my arm, that I tried to throw myself from a tree that summer and failed miserably and instead wound up with a broken arm. I had told him that I had felt so alone, that mom was always working and was barely home and how Jared constantly referred to us as “family friends” as if he was ashamed to be seen with me. I was ashamed of me, too.He had mentioned how he felt like I was the only other kid like him, the one person who understood him better than anyone else. That when things got too much sometimes, he knew I would understand. And I did, because sometimes things got too much for me too and I didn’t know how to handle it. But he knew how to handle me. He always did.xxxI had always felt like my problems were extremely mediocre when compared to Connor’s. He suffered with a very long history of depression ever since he was a child that eventually turned into unexplainable anger throughout his teenage life and eventually he became the laughing stock of our school after throwing a printer at Mrs. G in the second grade. People feared Connor without actually knowing him. They were disgusting to him, the hierarchy groups of high school making his already mundane life even more miserable.Walking into school for the first time after Connor’s death was like walking into an empty battlefield after war. The silence was deafening. It was almost as if I could hear the ringing of a fired bullet flying through the air with me as its main target. The silence was the first thing I noticed when I walked through the doors of school. People stared at me as if I was a predator ready to pounce on its prey, like a bomb ready to detonate. News had gotten around fast about where I had been, what had happened and people expected me to react. But I remained calm, silent. A dripping tap with no running water. I listened in eerie silence about every word that was uttered about me, keeping my head down as I trailed through the school halls.
“He was the one in the car when Connor died,” “I heard he wasn’t even at the funeral,” “I never even knew of this kid until I heard about the psycho’s death,” “Wasn’t he drunk driving?” “The police said he died on impact,” “Connor must’ve been so disappointed to have this twink as the last thing he saw before he died,”
The words had continued like that for the majority of the day, rumours of Connor’s death floating around and people trying their utmost hardest to steer clear of me. They had never noticed me when Connor was still alive but now that he was dead, people wanted to desperately interfere with who I was, with the person they pretended to know. I did my best to keep my head down for the most part, I didn’t want to talk, I didn’t want to explain the grisly details of his death to these ignorant people who pretended to care how that he wasn’t alive.When lunch time rolled around, I placed myself in the seat at our usual lunch table across from Alana, Jared and Zoe as the three of us ate in silence. It felt strange sitting on a bench by myself. Me and Connor had always shared one bench and the other three had shared the other. My eyes averted to the empty space next to me, where a small ‘Connor woz ‘ere ‘17’ was written in black permanent marker. The corners of my mouth twitched up the slightest bit, forming the tiniest smile. I looked up at the other three and we didn’t need to say anything. We didn’t want to say anything. We all had the exact same thoughts in our mind. We were all trying to get on normally with a painful first day back after the accident without people making snide comments until I heard the sick words beckoned from an individual at our school.“I’m glad the Murphy’s kid dead. I was beginning to worry that he was gonna shoot up the fuckin’ school. Such a shame that his little sister was related to a piece of shit,” his friends started to laugh as if it was the funniest joke he had ever told but all I could see was red. My hands violently began to shake at my sides, darting my attention to watch Jared and Zoe’s jaws going slack, their mouths falling open at the disgusting words they just heard at the table next to us. Alana’s pupils had dilated, her usually talkative façade replaced with shock as she glanced wearily at all of us.Tears began to pool in Zoe’s eyes, her hands sweating and head throbbing from hurt and anger over the past few weeks and now hearing the words that all made us sick to our stomachs.I stood up abruptly.“What the fuck did you just say?” I exclaimed angrily, my vision clouded with fury. All I could see was red.I didn’t think what I said was loud enough but somehow it had managed to capture the attention of the whole cafeteria. Everyone was staring at me, some people shocked, some waiting for what I would do next because quiet loner Evan Hansen had actually said something.Justin Algrath, soccer captain and resident bully. The typical rich kid with lawyer parents who always got things his way. The kid who drove the fancy cars to school and slept with the entire cheerleading team. Connor had always hated him. He had made his life hell ever since they were kids.He looked shocked, eyes wide and face beet red from embarrassment. He hadn’t expected me to hear that.He looked at me directly in the eyes, his stance holding pride and not daring to back down from a loser like me, repeating the words I had heard only seconds before. “I said I’m glad your psycho friend is dead. He was close to shooting up the school.” His voice was like venom, his disgusting words dripping onto the surface of everything he touched. His eyes held ice, but mine held fire.“It was people like you who made him want to die every day,” My hands shook at my sides, both from anxiety and from the adrenaline I was feeling coursing throughout my body. I was actually sticking up to this asshole who had bullied me ever since high school and had tormented Connor all throughout his childhood and teenage years.“Your little friend got his wish.” He didn’t even get to finish his rant before I lunged over the table, my fist connecting with his face over and over again, blood seeping from his nose as people screamed, cheered, cried around us like a hoard of wild animals. I kept punching and punching, my mind hazy and a million thoughts racing through my head. It wasn’t until I felt a pair of arms around me that I stopped and realised what I had done. Lying on the floor in front of me was a severely unconscious Justin, blood everywhere, on my hands, on my shirt, on Justin’s varsity jacket.I looked up to see Jared with his arms around my waist, dragging me away from Justin’s body, a crying Zoe and Alana on the other side of him and a bunch of angry school kids yelling at me and ready to beat me up in the same way I had just done to Justin. My vision was blurry with tears and anger, body shaking so violently I found it difficult to breathe and that a panic attack was coming on.Mrs Welham had stormed into the cafeteria at that very moment, with two students trailing behind her, outrage written all over her face. I couldn’t blame her, it was like walking into a murder scene with the amount of blood there was everywhere. Her attention averted towards me and my bloody demeanour, shock and sadness written all over her face as she looked at all of us in silence.“Evan Hansen, get to my office now.”Her voice was calm, eerily calm for a student who had just beaten one black and blue. I’m Evan Hansen, I don’t do things like this, I don’t beat people up. I am the quiet, loner kid who sits in the back of the classroom and has extreme anxiety that makes it impossible to speak to anyone. The ambulance had been called to the school shortly after that and it was revealed that I had beaten Justin into a coma. That wasn’t my intention at all. I just wanted to put him through the pain he had put Connor through his whole life. Mrs Welham had suspended me for a month and mom had gone crazy, threatening to send me to live with my dad in Colorado even though I hadn’t spoken to him since I was seven. I had walked out of Mrs Welham’s office that day collapsing into Jared’s arms and just sobbing, the two of us just holding each other tightly.This wasn't supposed to happen and it had all been because of Connor's death.Connor Murphy, please come back.