Chapter One

Sept 13th

“Why the fuck are you writing weird shit about my sister?”

Connor Murphy is standing over him, gripping his letter so tight in his hands that it crumples. He is terrifying, all hard lines and twitching tension and anger written on every part of his expression. He’s never even seen Connor stand near Zoe, how was he supposed to know he’d be that mad just reading her name? Evan wants nothing more than to curl in on himself and disappear.

“I-I didn’t mean it like th-that, I pro-” He tries to placate him, but he can’t make his voice rise above a whisper.

“Fuck you, Hansen-” Connor starts, reaching out for him and Evan is frozen in fear but he stops.

The bell rings, his unlikely saviour, and Evan stares up at Connor, half expecting him to stomp off or fade away like everyone seemed to at the end of the day. He hopes, he prays, that the other boy will give it up and leave to thrash him another day, maybe just forget him entirely, but the world is not that kind.

Connor grabs his non-casted arm, pulling him out of the computer lab, barely giving him time to grab his bag. He tried to get him to let go, trying to pulling hand off and making a decent attempt at speaking up. He stuttered and squeaked, trying to apologize, to explain he had to get to an appointment, whatever would work. Connor barely stopped, looking back at him with a sneer.

“I’m not fucking done with you,” He spat, then grumbled as he pulled Evan through the halls and out into the rain. “-don’t need to fucking deal with this shit- first fucking day- bullshit-”

It wasn’t a real downpour, but it was enough to make Evan nervous. He didn’t even know where he was being taken. What if a car swerved in the rain and hit them? Or if the rain got worse and they were stuck in a storm? A hurricane!? God, what if they got struck by lightning?

Evan tried to look around for anyone to help, anyone to pay attention, to save him, but no one came. Looking around the parking lot, he couldn’t even see Jared’s car. Wasn’t he supposed to drive him to his appointment? He feels bile rise up in his throat but if he threw up here, Connor might get even more pissed. What kind of loser stress pukes? The past 30 minutes have been the most pathetic he’s ever felt. Even the sharpie on his cast is starting to bleed in the rain and he realizes way too late that his arm is getting soaked.

It’s taking everything in Evan not to cry at this point.

When they reach what must be Connor’s car, he pulls the door open and pushes Evan inside. He’s still grumbling to himself, too low and quiet for Evan to figure out what exactly he’s saying.

At this point, Evan has fully accepted that he’s going to die here. Connor Murphy is going to drive him to a dump or a lake or something to kill him and dump his body and nobodies going to realize he’s missing until his mom checks her voicemails and hears he missed his appointment and it’s going to make Connor’s name on his cast really ironic. He’s been hyperventilating so long, his eyes start to go black around the edges.

“Get your shit together, Hansen.” Connors voice makes it through the haze of panic and catastrophizing in his mind.

He turns his head just slightly to look at him, but Connor’s not even looking at him, just scowling out towards the road.

“If you puke in my car, I am actually going to kill you.”

The idea itself makes Evan nauseous. He closed his eyes, bringing his chest and his knees as close as possible without putting his sneakers on the seat, and tries desperately to keep himself together. He’s just barely gotten his breathing under control when the car stops, far to abruptly for his comfort. Evan looks up and out the window, trying to figure out where they are.

They’re parked in front of a small park. The area is closed in by hedges and trees and the play place is so old, the wood of it’s railings has cracked and broken off on some places, along with the chains from one of the swings. The place is clearly abandoned, bringing back the worst of Evan’s ‘He’s Going To Fucking Kill Me’ theories.

“Get the fuck out of my car.” Connor reached across him to push open the car door, stomping out on his own side and slamming the door.

Evan barely has time to scramble out when Connor grabs him, pushing him up against the side of the car.

“Why the fuck are you writing shit about my sister?” Connor stared him down, and Evan just barely had enough brain power to notice the patches of brown in his blue eyes.

“I- I don’t- that is, I didn’t mean to-” He tried to pull together something to say but his tongue isn’t cooperating. It feels like he’s trying to talk through marbles.

“Is this some kind of fucking joke?” Connor asked again, “are you trying to make me angry? Or do you just have some creepy crush on my little sister?”

“WHAT, NO!”

“That’s it then, huh?” He narrowed his eyes, taking a step back, “You what? Think you have a change? You’ve never even fucking talked to her. You thing she’s really that desperate for a pity fuc-”

“N-no I don’t!” He tried, tears long since falling and getting swept away by the rain. “I-I don’t like, I mean, I don’t like her like that! I used to- I guess, last y-year or I th-thought I did or something b-but I just- it’s more like I look up to her? Or uhm, I don’t know, she’s just really confident and-”

Connor darts toward him and he almost screams, completely ready to get knocked over, but instead Connor’s hand is covering his mouth. Evan looks at him like he’s crazy, trying to figure out what’s going on, but he just shushes him. They're both quiet for a moment, a long, rainy, uncomfortable moment before Evan hears what Connor heard.

A little cry, muffled under the rain hitting pavement. A little cry, and then a louder one. Crying. That’s the sound of a fucking baby.

Evan looks back up at Connor, trying his best to show with his eyes exactly how freaked out he is and apparently it works. Connor let’s go of him, and they both bolt away from each other, searching opposite ends of the park for wherever that fucking baby is.

The closed in space and the rain don’t help, bouncing the sound of it’s crying around the area in the most disorienting way possible. There’s so many old playground structures and overgrown foliage around, all shrouded in fog and slick with rain and moss, it’s impossible to go five feet without almost slipping and eating wood chips.

Lucky for his nerves, Evan finds the kid first, tucked into a little alcove that the rain has only just started to reach, dripping in from the tree above it and completely soaking it. It’s stuck in a car seat that even he can tell is too small for it, squirming and crying the more the rain seeps into it’s clothes and hair. Her hair, he assumes, based on the pink and purple colour scheme. He calls out for Connor, fully aware he should not try to pick up the child and/or the carrier one handed.

“Did you find- holy shit.” Connor rushed over from the other side of the park, immediately stopping and staring at the little girl. The girl didn’t seem to take kindly to his volume and started crying even louder.

“O-oh my god Connor, g-get her in the car.” Evan pushed him toward the kid, not even thinking about the fact that he just pushed Connor fucking Murphy, and went to try and pick up the small amount of scattered toys sitting around the car seat. They were all kind of dented and washed out looking but he wasn’t about to leave them behind.

“What if her parents come back for her?” Connor barked at him, wincing when the kid wailed. Still, he took the second to pull off his jacket, laying it over the kid before he scooped up the car seat.

“W-who the f-fuck would leave a baby in the r-rain if they were c-oming back?” He snipped back, quieter.

They both ran back to Connor’s car, too busy freaking out and trying to figure out how to buckle in a car seat to gripe at each other. At the very least, the kid wasn’t screaming anymore, just softy crying as they climbed into the car and started up the heater. Connor moved like he was about to start driving, but stopped, looking out onto the road. They didn’t know what to do.

“W-we need to like, bring her to the, uh, the cops or something,” Evan managed, pulling out his phone to try and find the nearest police station. He should not have been as surprised as he was that Connor nearly smacked it out of his hands.

“Are you fucking stupid? We need to go to a hospital.” Connor said, looking back at the girl in the rear view mirror. “We don’t know how long she was out there or why she was left, what if there’s something seriously wrong with her? I think she has a fever!”

“I-uhm. Alright. Alright drive to the emergency room.” He frowned, trying to figure out what exactly he was going to do. “My m-mom works there. I’ll warn her we’re coming in.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

They didn’t talk to each other for a long while, Connor focusing on the road while Evan tried to reach his mom, looking back at the kid worriedly while the phone rang. It took three tries and more than a bit of begging on his end but his mom finally picks up, sounding just as harried and concerned as he thought she would.

“Evan? Is everything alright?” She asked and he could hear when she stepped into a quieter room to hear him. “You remember you have an appointment today, right? Is Jared still okay to take you?”

“Y-yeah, mom, I remember,” He smiled nervously, even though she couldn’t see him. “I uh, couldn’t make it though. There’s an emergency.”

“An emergency?!” His mom audibly moved her phone up to her cheek, “What happened? Are you okay, is Jared-”

“I’m fine mom!” He cuts her off, “I just. My friend is having an… emergency. We’re heading to the hospital right now. Can you meet us there, please?”

“Of course, hon, I’ll be here! I’ll see you and your… friend.”

“Yeah, mom. Thanks.”

He hangs up, taking a second to just breath. He feels like he’s aged five years in the past hour. His face is tacky from rain and tears and his head hurts from panicking so hard. His arm itches under his cast. At the very least the baby has stopped crying. He can’t even find the energy to freak out about Connor driving in the rain.

“So,” Connor starts, grabbing Evan’s attention. “how do we tell your mom we got a baby?”

“I guess we can’t sa- just say we found her, huh?”

“Hell no. Do you know how suspicious it would look for two teenage boys to show up out of nowhere with a baby they ‘just found’? We’ll look like total creeps.” He grimaced, just barely curbing the urge to slam his head on the steering wheel.

Evan bit his lip, trying to think of something, anything beside the truth. “Uhm, we can pass her off as a cousin?”

“No, my parents are pretty well known around town. Even if they believe us, if it gets back to my dad, we’re fucked.” Connor stared out at the road, and the quickly approaching emergency room signs. “We can say she’s… I don’t know, your cousin?”

“Ignoring the fact that we’re about to see my mom, she doesn’t have any siblings and my dad lives across the country.” He sighed.

“Well I’m running out of idea-” Connor stopped, eyes flicking up to the rear view mirror. “Oh. I just had a great idea.”

Evan turned to look into the backseat, trying to see what exactly had suddenly inspired Connor, and met the little girls gaze. She was quiet, watching them both with wide eyes. Wide, mostly blue eyes, with dark brown taking up half of one iris and a sliver of the other. He looked between the girl and Connor, the usually rapid fire wheels in his mind turning surprisingly slowly.

Dark hair, pale skin, blue eyes, partial heterochromia. Even if the girls face looked completely different from him (which, Evan wouldn’t know if it did either way, all faces kind of just looked like faces to him), she would be easy to pass off as a relative. Specifically, a daughter.

“This is the best idea we have, isn’t it?” He asked it like it was a question, but it really wasn’t.

“Yep. Just follow my lead, Hansen.”

*

The rain is just starting to let up by the time they get to the hospital, which Evan thanks any god out there for. They go to unbuckle the kid, and while Connor is lifting her up, Evan notices the little separation between the base and the actual carseat part. Connor is carrying the kid towards the doors, but he stays behind, lifting the seat and digging around under it, trying to find out if it does that on purpose or if they were just driving a toddler around in a broken-

“Shit! C-CONNOR!” He calls, feeling damp paperwork under his hand. He pulls them out as gently as he can, trying to shield them from the rain. Connor slows down enough for him to catch up and pass them to him.

“Are these-?” He looks down at the documents and then to the kid.

In his hands are a small, wrinkled stack of documents. A birth certificate, birth record, a social security card and some sparse looking vaccination records.

“Yeah.” Evan nods, stomach wrenching. “I don’t think her parents are coming back.”