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You Must Have Been Looking For Me

Chapter 13: Epilogue

Summary:

Time moves forward.

Chapter Text

Zoe finds herself in her bedroom. She is sixteen years old. Not far off from turning seventeen. The house is quiet. 

She can remember broad strokes. Connor dying. The Connor Project. Evan and how broken he looked telling them about his lies. Nick and Drew and the mess Zoe made. 

But it’s muted. Half remembered. Like a strange dream she had. A book she read for school a long time ago. 

Because she is sixteen years old. Not far off from turning seventeen. She is not thirty. 

And she has a brother who is alive. 

Connor is alive. Just down the hall. 

She knocks on his door. 

He opens it cautiously. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Zoe says back. 

He gives her a half smile. Tugs at his hair. “Mom and dad came to talk to me,” he says. 

Zoe raises her eyebrows. “Oh?”

“Yeah, I guess… I’m going to some kind of… in-patient thing.” Connor shrugs. “I’m supposed to be packing because I’m going Friday after school.”

“You still have to go to school?” Zoe asks, disbelieving. 

Connor rolls his eyes. “We have to let Larry have one, Zo, or he might genuinely die. He’s not really into the whole… feelings thing.” 

Zoe almost smiles. “Yeah. He’s kind of fucked up, isn’t he?” 

Connor almost smiles. “Been fucking saying that for years.”

Zoe nods. “Want some help?”

Connor shrugs. 

They fold up hoodies and pairs of jeans. Put them into a suitcase sitting open on Connor’s bed. 

“It was fucking weird that mom started wearing my clothes,” he says then, holding onto a graying hoodie. Connor pauses, swallows hard, blinks. Like he’s surprised himself by talking. 

Zoe nods, feeling her stomach twist. She knows. She knows that happened, but it’s a hazy memory. Like it’s too faint to recall properly. Created with a printer that’s low on ink. 

It all happens in that funny way that life happens. Starts and stops. Racing forward sometimes, dragging others. 

The next day at school, Zoe spots Evan lingering anxiously near enough to Connor’s locker that it’s clearly not a coincidence. “Are you gonna talk to him?” Zoe asks. 

Connor bites his lip. He looks unsure. 

Zoe raises her eyebrows at him. “Come on. You already know he’ll like you.”

Connor frowns. “I don’t… I could fuck it up.”

Zoe nudges his shoulder. “But you might not.” 

Connor seems to consider this. “If I fuck up his life -”

“You can blame me for it,” Zoe says.

Connor frowns and stomps off in Evan’s direction. Evan’s eyes widen in alarm, but then something Zoe immediately recognizes as relief overtakes his face. 

After school on Friday, Connor leaves for his inpatient stay. He’s back home in a few weeks, and some of the exhaustion seems to have fallen away from him. But not all of it. Then he’s gone again for a few more weeks. Nobody complains about how much it costs or how inconvenient it is or even how much school Connor is missing. 

Zoe finds Evan in the hallway during Connor’s second extended absence because, from the disappointed look Evan wears, Connor didn’t explain where he was going or why. Zoe gives him an abridged version of the truth: Connor’s not doing well so he’s away to get better. 

Zoe watches his eyebrows pinch together. “He’s… he’s sick?” Evan tugs at the hem of his shirt. “Is he - I mean - what’s -” He stops. Clears his throat. “That’s so rude, sorry.”

Zoe gives him an understanding smile. “He. You know. It’s mental health stuff.” 

Evan swallows audibly. “Oh,” He says, and his voice sounds oddly hollow and Zoe recalls the way anxiety always seemed to roll off of him in waves and the vacant looks he would sometimes get, and she gives him a smile she hopes is reassuring. 

“It sucks. But he really wants to get better.” 

“Oh. Y-yeah. Good.”

Connor comes back to school as the leaves drop off of the trees. Evan gets his cast off and Connor writes his name on Evan’s slightly shrunken arm in sharpie. It makes Evan wince and laugh and call Connor a dickhead. It takes a few days to wash off. Zoe privately thinks that maybe Evan didn’t try too hard to scrub it away.

By November, Evan is a familiar figure in their lives. For real this time. No lies or stories. They all sit together at lunch with Cat; Zoe has ditched most of her jazz band friends claiming they’ve outgrown each other. Connor catches her eye when she says this but doesn’t voice his opinion on it. 

He does, however, loudly voice his opinion that jazz band is “fucking lame” and full of losers while Evan frantically tries to hush him for being rude. Evan bugs Connor about actually doing his homework. Connor looks completely startled, so startled that he actually does it. Surprised to be noticed. To be cared for. To be nagged.

Connor and Evan spend a lot of time together, actually. Sometimes with Zoe, but not always. Sometimes she picks Connor up from Evan’s house and he comes home smiling. He won’t say much, and he won’t even cop to being friends most of the time, but Zoe can tell. Having someone is helping.


They reach Christmas and Connor’s not dead. It’s a fucking miracle. Zoe’s not pregnant or recovering from becoming unpregnant. Connor’s in therapy and on drugs that give him migraines but he keeps at it. Keeps trying. Zoe’s asked to be put on birth control because while she’s not having sex with anyone, she wants to be prepared in case someone she might want to sleep with comes into her life. Their parents are at some Christmas party the Harrises are throwing so it’s just the three of them at home.

Two days before Christmas, Zoe joins Evan and Connor in the living room and they watch It’s A Wonderful Life. Their parents are at some Christmas party the Harrises are throwing so it’s just the three of them at home.

“I’m Jewish,” Evan says as they are about to start the movie. “I’ve never seen it.”

“You’re Jewish?” Connor says with a twisted smile. 

“You came to my bar mitzvah-” Evan begins, then stops. Smiles in his own twisted way. “You’re fucking with me.”

Connor grins bigger.

Zoe gets up and makes popcorn, and then they watch the movie. Personally, Zoe doesn’t enjoy old films. Everything in it smacks of all the things that were wrong about the past. 

Connor complains about the ending. 

Evan looks slightly horrified. “You think George should have died?”

“No,” Connor says in a hard voice. “It’s just… it’s not that easy, y’know? The movie… it makes it look easy.”

Zoe excuses herself to go get a glass of water and when she comes back, Connor has an arm around Evan’s shoulders. He looks spooked. They both do. 

“Everything okay?” Zoe asks. 

Evan’s eyes are red rimmed and his cheeks are pink. “I’ve been… I’ve been kind of having a. A hard time. The movie…”

Zoe nods. Sits on Evan’s other side. 

“You remember how my arm was broken at the beginning of the year?” Evan says quietly. Zoe’s eyes meet Connor’s over the top of Evan’s bowed head. 

“Yeah,” Connor says. He’s very pale. 

“I… It wasn’t. It wasn’t an accident.”

He tells her and Connor, staring at his lap, how he really broke his arm. 

They both know already. But it’s smudged and blurred. Like a weird dream. A story you heard through the grapevine. Like it belongs in somebody else’s life. 

And it hurts all the same. To know he’s still in so much pain. It’s not in the past for Evan. 

Connor nudges Evan nicely, a friendly nudge. “It’s okay,” he says. 

“It’s not . I’m such a - you guys aren’t going to want to hang out anymore, right? I’m such a mess and if my mom…  If she found out… And-and we’re all, we’re kind of fr-friends and. I don’t. I don’t want you to hate me. it’s not okay.”

Connor nods. “I know,” he says, frowning deeply. “It’s not okay. None of it is okay. I get it.” 

Evan blinks a few times, his eyes  glassy. “You do?”

Zoe takes a breath. “He does.” 

“That’s why I… missed all that school,” Connor says after a moment. “At the beginning of the year. I was… I was planning… I get it, okay?”

Evan blinks a few times rapidly. “I didn’t… Fuck, I’m s-sorry, why didn’t I-?”

“You’re still here, right?” Connor says, interrupting him. “That’s a good start.”

“Y-you don’t hate me?” Evan says in a brittle, fragile voice. 

“No fucking way,” Connor says fiercely. 

Zoe gives Evan a smile. “Never.”

Evan sleeps on the floor in Connor’s room that night. 

Zoe and Connor’s eyes meet the next morning, eating breakfast while their parents nurse hangovers. Evan sits and eats, quietly thanking their parents for having him over. 

“He’s okay?” Zoe asks quietly while she gets some coffee. 

Connor shrugs. “Hope so.” He spends most of Christmas Day with his phone in hand. Zoe sees that it’s Evan’s name that keeps lighting up his screen.


Zoe and Cat have a slumber party on New Year’s Eve. Zoe drops Connor at Evan’s to stay the night. His mom has to work and Evan’s rung in the last three new years by himself. Connor’s face twists up all funny when he find this out and he insists on coming over.

“What are you going to do?” Zoe asks as she drives Connor. 

“Normal sleepover stuff,” Connor says. “Arson. A little bit of wire fraud. Maybe cyberbully some freshmen.”

Zoe rolls her eyes at him. 

“We’ll probably just watch something on Netflix or whatever.” Connor shrugs. “I’m not… I dunno if I’m any good at this friendship shit.” 

Zoe gives her brother a serious look. “He won’t be alone on New Year’s Eve this year. That’s pretty good.” 

She isn’t positive, but she thinks that Connor’s cheeks go pink in the dark.


Things keep going in that way that things do. There’s school. Connor goes to therapy. The weather is cold and stays cold. Zoe goes to therapy. They have joint sessions with their parents, sessions that end in yelling and tears and make it hard for Zoe and Connor to look at each other because part of them will always know that the alternative to the screaming and the thousands of dollars of therapy is a burial plot in a lonely cemetery. 

February is a shitty, freezing month. Evan misses some school, but then he comes back. He looks terrible when he returns, and Connor makes way too big of a deal out of it. He keeps nudging Evan to drink more fluids the whole next week at school, until Evan snaps that it’s awfully rich to be nagged by someone who can’t be bothered to eat most days. 

Connor closes his mouth and says nothing. He doesn’t bother getting out of bed the next morning, despite Zoe and their mom trying to convince him. 

Evan looks horribly guilty at the lunch table that day. 

He comes over that night with two pints of ice cream, and eventually manages to coax Connor out of his bedroom. Connor looks wearily over at Zoe when their paths cross in the kitchen later. 

“He’s right,” Connor tells her, talking a long sip from a glass of water. “I… Food is. It’s sort of a thing.” 

Zoe nods. She knows. 

There’s another few trips to their therapists and their mom hires a nutritionist and Evan invests in a reusable water bottle so he doesn’t get dehydrated as much anymore. 


Zoe and Connor fight sometimes. Connor disappears for a weekend and she demands to know where the fuck he was. Their parents seem lost and don’t say much. Zoe says more than enough. She shouts herself hoarse, wanting to know where the fuck Connor was and what the fuck he was doing. 

“Just figuring some stuff out,” is the only explanation Connor provides. But he isn’t dead and that feels important. 

But they fight and they don’t really get anywhere. There’s nothing to win in the arguments. Connor is cagey and secretive. Zoe is scared out of her mind. Evan sometimes gets dragged into it, on long tense rides home from school, and then Connor accuses them of ganging up on him and Zoe doesn’t know what she’s supposed to say. 

Because he’s not wrong. 

They are ganging up on him. 

But he disappears, sometimes. Usually only for a few hours, but sometimes for a few days. And he never explains where he’s been. There’s no explanation and it shatters Zoe’s fried nerves. It pushes Evan to the point of breaking. 

“You can’t just - we’re supposed to be - you said we were friends, ” Evan accuses on one of those long tense rides home from school. 

And Connor gets really quiet. Says nothing and rests his head against the glass of the window. Zoe drops Evan off and then drives Connor home. He says nothing. Just stares out the window. 

Evan gets really quiet at school. Stops showing up at their lunch table. Connor’s been missing off and on too. One day Evan finds Zoe after jazz band. He’s tugging at the hem of his shirt. 

“What’s up?” She asks, shouldering her guitar case. 

“I… Connor hasn’t really been. Answering my texts?” He says. Tugs on his shirt some more. “Is he still mad at me…?”

Zoe has no idea. “I’ll find out,” she says. 

Evan gives her a weak smile and declines a ride home. 

Zoe knocks on Connor’s door after dinner that night. He opens it in that cautious way he usually does. 

“Are you here to yell some more?”

Zoe shakes her head. She goes to sit on Connor’s bed. “What’s going on with Evan?”

Connor shrugs. “Nothing.”

Zoe raises her eyebrows. 

“Fine,” Connor says. He nudges his door closed. “I… We’re getting too close. He started talking about staying home next year. Not going away to college. I don’t want to… He can’t stay home.”

Zoe raises her eyebrows more. “Would that be so bad?” 

Connor frowns at her. A deep frown, one that makes him took a hell of a lot older than eighteen. “It’s how it started. When things were bad . When we both…” Connor shakes his head. “I can’t be the one who fucks his life up.”

Zoe can’t swallow for a moment. 

“He went and dropped out within the year,” Connor explains. He keeps forgetting Zoe only half knows this version. He saw more than she did. He knows more. “Because of me. I don’t want to do that to him.”

“You don’t know it was you,” She says sensibly. 

“I do, actually.” 

Zoe frowns. She pulls her knees to her chest. “What about you? What happens with you if he goes?” 

Connor tugs at his hair. “I’ll figure something out,” he says. “I just need to… I need him to go. To mean it.”

“It was his decision,” Zoe says reasonably. “You can’t try to change someone else’s choices. Trust me.”

Connor looks horribly hurt when she says that. “Yeah.” He rubs his cheek. 

Evan sleeps on Connor’s bedroom floor again that weekend. Zoe wonders about it but doesn’t say a word. 

Evan tells everyone at lunch later that week that he’s going to college in the city. Close enough to home. He got a decent financial aid offering. He’s nervous about having a roommate he doesn’t know, but excited because they have a good environmental science program.


Things speed up, then slow down. The end of the year happens in a rush. One minute it’s spring break and in a blink it’s finals and graduation and Connor has just barely managed to strike an agreement with the administration to officially graduate on time with promises of summer classes. 

Alana Beck gives a speech at graduation. Zoe sits between her parents and covertly launches a beach ball into the crowd when Connor’s name is called to cross the stage. A teacher grabs the ball away from jubilant graduates who keep volleying it through the air and genuinely deflates it by stabbing it with a pocket knife. Connor gives her a wide eyed grin from the stage as it all happens.

Her family invites the Hansens to join them for dinner. It’s just Evan and his mom; his dad didn’t fly in from Colorado. Evan doesn’t seem to mind. The six of them are all smiles at dinner. Even Connor and Zoe’s dad. 

“So, what’s next for you Connor?” Heidi asks politely. 

He ducks his head. He’s applied to go part time at the local community college, accepted pending him completing and passing his summer school classes. And he got a job at an Amazon warehouse. 

Their parents can hardly hide that they’re thrilled he’s doing anything. 

Heidi looks surprised to learn that Connor Murphy, with his wealthy parents and his high school diploma, is being allowed to work in a warehouse. But she doesn’t say anything. Just says she hopes he likes the new job. 

The summer is long and slow. Too hot. Zoe and Connor spend a lot of afternoons sticking their feet in a lake by their house. Evan joins them regularly. He’s working at Pottery Barn. He decided he didn’t want to go back to Ellison Park. Cat joins them sometimes too. 

They go to the festival grounds down by the lake in the middle of June for Pride. It’s mostly booths of local LGBTQ organizations and a giant dance floor, but Connor has a fake ID and everyone gets tipsy. The breeze off the lake is a little bit chilly, and the dance floor is hot, but the vodka-and-redbull drinks go down easily and everyone is laughing and giddy and having fun.  

Zoe doesn’t miss the wistful way that Evan watches her brother as they make friends with a baby drag queen and all of her friends. 

Zoe takes pity on him and throws an arm around Evan’s shoulders. “What’s up, buttercup?” She asks him, lips loose with liquor. 

Evan’s still watching Connor. He’s laughing with the baby drag queen who is trying to convince Connor to try walking in heels. Connor appears to be somewhat convinced; he sits down in the middle of the dance floor and starts yanking off his boots. 

“He just… Connor’s great,” Evan says hesitantly. 

Zoe tries not to smile. “He can be yeah,” she says. “When he’s not being a dumbass.”

Evan sighs. “I’m the - it’s definitely me. I’m the - the dumbass.”

“Don’t say that,” Zoe says immediately. 

“It’s true,” Evan says, a bit glumly. “I wasn’t even… I didn’t think I liked guys… It’s stupid. I’m stupid. He doesn’t see me like that.” 

Zoe sighs, because she knows that’s not true. She knows it so deeply. She knows it to the bone. “I think he’s just… scared to ruin things. Y’know? You guys are friends. He’s never really had a lot of those.”

Evan’s eyes go dimmer. Sadder. “Yeah,” He says, a little too quiet for Zoe to properly hear over the pounding music. “Me either.”

Connor wobbles over to them in the drag queen’s six inch platforms. “I could totally -” he nearly topples himself, but stays upright by throwing an arm around Evan’s neck, nearly strangling him in the process. “I could be a drag queen.”

Evan smiles at him, this bright smile. And Zoe’s heart aches when she watches Connor smile dopily back at him, keeping his arm around Evan’s shoulder while Evan keeps a steadying arm around Connor’s waist. In the heels Connor is a giant, far too close to seven feet tall, and he and Evan are giggling as they wobble over to the drag queen to dance some more. 

The next day, when they’re all nursing slight hangovers and heartburn and can’t stop finding new places that glitter has stuck to their skin, Zoe corners Connor in the kitchen. “He likes you,” Zoe says plainly. 

Connor frowns. “I know but… He can’t. He… It’s too much.”

“But you like him,” Zoe insists. 

“I’ll ruin it,” Connor mutters. 

“What was the point of all this if you don’t even get to be happy?” She says, frustrated. 

Connor’s eyes go a bit dull. “Since when was any of this about whether I was happy?”

It slices through her. 

She runs up to her room and slams the door and can’t bring herself to come out for hours. Zoe’s stomach clenches in guilt. She feels… Wrong.

Selfish. 

Guilty.

Was this ever about Connor? Or was it just because she never learned to move on? 

Did he do this for her? Was she pushing him unfairly?

Somewhere close to midnight, there’s a knock on her door. Zoe’s too exhausted and beat down to answer. She calls out, “Go away, mom! I’m trying to sleep.”

“Zo, come on,” Connor’s voice pleads. 

She can’t bring herself to open the door. She’s too afraid of what she’ll see. She sinks to the ground beside the door and wraps her arms around her legs. 

A moment later, she sees the light under the door shift. Change. Go dark. Like Connor’s sunk down in front of her door. He lets out a sigh. 

“I don’t… I don’t think I know how to be happy,” He admits in a small voice. A voice she can barely hear through the crack in the door. “I honestly… It’s like. I don’t even want to try? Because. I might be bad at it. I might… fuck up. And I’m used to… this. Feeling like shit. It’s not good but it’s… Fuck, I don’t even know if you’re fucking here, I just -”

Zoe slides her hand through the crack under the door. Her fingers rest on top of Connor’s. 

He’s quiet for a bit. 

“I’m scared to try to be happy,” He says softly. “I think I’m gonna screw it up. And then I’ll feel worse because… because I failed. Y’know?”

“Yeah,” Zoe says back. 

“I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want it to be how it was…” 

“Then don’t let it.”


And then somehow it’s August. It’s miserably hot, so hot that feet in the water doesn’t do much to cool them down. Connor seems lighter. Evan seems anxious. 

“I just don’t know if I’m cut out for college,” he admits one unbearably hot afternoon where they’ve given up on being outside and have retreated to the central air conditioning of the Murphy house. 

“Yes you are,” Connor says immediately. 

“Maybe I should delay a year,” he says. “Go next year. I’m not sure I’m ready.”

“And what, keep working at Pottery Barn?” Connor scoffs, like this idea is totally ludicrous. “You’re too smart for that.”

“Says the guy working for Jeff Bezos,” Evan mumbles. He seems irritated. Sad. Something Zoe can’t put her finger on. 

“Some of us don’t have the grades for college,” Connor remarks. 

“And some of us don’t have the stomach for it,” Evan replies through gritted teeth. He gets up abruptly. Announces he’s going home. 

Connor lets him go. Zoe turns to give him a questioning look. 

“I don’t understand why you have to push him away so hard,” She says. 

“I’m not trying,” Connor says, his face down. “But he’s gotta go. He needs to at least try.”

Zoe shuts her mouth. 

Evan leaves for college at the end of the summer. He doesn’t come around to say goodbye, which stings a little. He’s Zoe’s friend too. 

But then Zoe’s diving into her senior year. She’s seventeen. She doesn’t have a dead brother. She plays in the jazz band and does her homework and Connor comes home and bitches about how they basically time his piss breaks at work. 

But he seems okay. Maybe a bit lonely. 

But alive. 

The fall passes so quickly. One minute it’s September and Connor has been Not Dead for year. A whole year. Everything is so different and yet totally the same.

Then somehow, it’s Halloween, and Connor stands awkwardly in Zoe's doorway and asks if she wants to go to a party. 

“Whose party?”

“Some guy Evan knows. He’s too nervous to go by himself and his roommate keeps getting drunk and ditching him.”

Zoe raises her eyebrows. “So you’re talking again?”

Connor looks down at his feet. “I just...” He rubs a hand through his hair. “I didn’t… I don’t want to hurt him.” He takes a breath. “But I… I miss him.”

Zoe waits. 

“And like… what’s the point of me even, like, being here if I’m just… fucking miserable? Like, miserable on purpose. I'm making myself miserable, and I keep doing it, and like. That makes like. No sense. I want to, y'know, cut that out.”

Zoe smiles. 

“Shut up, nobody asked you,” Connor gripes.

Zoe agrees to go to the party. Because Connor is nervous to see Evan alone.

They stop and buy silly costumes at Target. Zoe gets a onesie that looks like a skeleton. Connor gets one that looks like a giraffe. 

When they get to Evan’s dorm, he looks relieved. He’s dressed as Arthur from the cartoon, and when Connor sees it Zoe watches his face go all soft. 

“I’m so glad you guys are here,” Evan says, and he looks nervous as he says it, like maybe there’s a chance they’ll change their minds and leave. 

“Of course we’re here!” Zoe says firmly, and she pulls Evan into a hug. 

The party is at the house of someone that Evan knows, and when they get there, despite Evan’s worries about going by himself, they’re all immediately swept into a conversation with the host. There’s a drinking game that Zoe’s never played before and a lot of laughter and before long she’s pulled into a conversation with some girl who knows Evan from their freshman comp class. They’re talking about music and how this girl wants to start a band, and across the room she watches Connor pull Evan into a hug and something inside her feels warm. 

Because Evan hugs him back. 

Because Connor isn’t alone. He’s here. He doesn’t want to actively be miserable anymore. And Zoe… she realizes that she’s free. 

Connor has been her responsibility. He’s been her burden, her unresolved grief. He’s been the thing she’s carried around for forever, across time and reality. 

But he’s just a person. A kid, just turned nineteen, who was lonely and troubled but made the conscious choice and effort to try. 

And Zoe… she’s just a kid too. 

And she’s finally free. 

She takes a deep breath, her shoulders falling loose and the tightness in her chest briefly unbearable. She’s free. 

“Are you alright?” Asks the girl next to her. 

And Zoe smiles despite the sting in her eyes. “Yeah. I think I am.”