A New Start

Chapter 6

Evan laid in bed, thinking. Why did Connor leave so fast? Did he do something wrong? Evan paced around hi room until he heard the front door open. He composed himself before walking down the stairs to say hello to his mother. Heidi set her purse on the cluttered kitchen table and looked up at Evan.

"Hi sweetie! How was your day?" she asked, hugging her son.

"Uh, it was good," Evan said, playing with the hem of his shirt. "I rehearsed for auditions next week."

"Oh, that's great, Evan! Maybe you'll make some new friends at the auditions!"

"Not likely," Evan muttered to himself as Heidi opened the fridge.

"Hmm. We don't have much in here. Pizza?" She suggested.

"Yeah, that sounds good."

- - -

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, you what?" Quinn asked Connor over the phone.

"Yeah, I held his hand. We were like this close, too!" Connor had panicked and needed to call someone. He couldn't very well talk to Evan about it, he would die before talking to Zoe about it, Jared's a grade-a asshole. That left Quinn.

"Oh, my god!"

"What? Wh-What?"

"You're gay for Evan Hansen!" Quinn laughed. "Who would have thought, Connor Murphy. Gay for Evan Hansen."

"Shut up!" Connor said, his face turning pink.

Quinn chuckled. "Alright, alright. So, what are you going to do about it?"

"What? N-nothing. I'm not gonna do anything. He's probably straighter than a ruler."

"You won't know unless you try." She stopped talking for a few seconds. "Yeah, I'll be down in a minute!" She yelled, slightly muffled. "Sorry, Con, I gotta go. Mom just called for dinner."

"Okay. Bye, freak."

"See ya, loser."

Connor isn't exactly sure when their "affectionate" nicknames started, but it was just their thing now. Connor tossed his phone onto his pillow and pulled his sketchbook out from under his bed. He flipped the pages open until he got to his most recent work: a sketch of Evan.

- - -

Zoe was leaning against her bedroom wall, thinking and plotting. She knew something was up with Connor and she was determined to find out what it was. Then she heard him talking.

"That's weird," she whispered to herself. "Who could he possibly be talking to?" She pressed her ear to the relatively thin wall separating their rooms and listened.

"Shut up!" She heard Connor yell. Only it didn't seem violent. It seemed... almost joking? "What? Nothing!" He mumbled the next part so Zoe couldn't hear it at all. "Okay, bye freak." Then he stoped talking. Zoe sat back away from the wall, more confused than before.

- - -

"Evan!" Jared said, walking up to his friend after school. "Ready to go?"

"Uh, I'm-I'm just waiting for Connor. He said he needed to grab something from a teacher."

Not too long after, Connor and Quinn came strolling out of the building, laughing about something. Evan felt a weird feeling in his stomach. He'd never heard Connor laugh, let alone been the one to make him laugh.

Quinn wrapped her arm around Evan's shoulder. "Hey, Evan!" She said in her usual cheery voice. "We ready to go?"

The group walked off the school property and headed towards Evan's house, the first stop. Soon enough, Quinn and Jared started arguing about something. It started off as something small and petty, but then it escalated.

"You're always overachieving!" Jared snapped. "Trying to outshine me and make me forgotten by mom and dad!"

"What?!"

"Yeah, always outshining me, trying to push me out of the family."

"That is so not true!"

"Isn't it? Isn't that why you skipped a grade? So people would compare me to you instead of the other way around?" Quinn glared at him before walking down the sidewalk. "Alright, don't answer me. Prove my point."

Quinn spun around, a fire in her eyes. "Does it cross your mind to be slightly sorry?"

"What?"

"Do you even care that you might be wrong?" She snapped. "You know why I work so hard? So mom and dad don't forget about me. Because whenever you started a new grade, it was oh, Jared's getting so big, he's so smart. But when I started those grades, our parents didn't even bat an eyelash. So, really, I have no fucking idea what I'm doing. I'm just pretending. I'm flying blind! Just so I can get Mom and Dad's approval." She spun around and continued down the street, turning at the intersection.

Connor let out a long whistle. "Look, Kleinman, i hate you, I think you're an asshole, but you need to apologize to her."

"What? No, I'm not doing that." His phone buzzed. Then it buzzed again. And again. He pulled it out if his pocket to see that Quinn was spamming him with the middle finger emoji.

Connor leaned over and scanned the messages. "She's not actually cursing at you yet, that's a good sign."

"Why do you care, Murphy?"

Connor sighed, his shoulders drooping. "Because, I know what it's like to have a sister who hates your very existence. I wish I'd apologized when I had the chance. Because before you know it, she won't tell you anything. She won't tell you when she gets a boyfriend, she won't tell you about how she had a great day, she won't trust you with anything, even the most mundane facts going on in her life. You won't be the big brother she deserves."

Jared stood in stunned silence for a minute. "Whoa. That was deep," he finally said. His fingers swayed over his phone's keyboard. "I-I'll let her cool off first." He put his phone back in his pocket as they neared Evan's place.

"See you tomorrow," Evan said as he dug his key out of his jacket. Connor waved as Jared called bye back.

The two stood there for a minute before wordlessly deciding to just go their separate ways.