After math, Evan Hansen waited outside the classroom for Connor before the two boys walked down to the music room to meet Michael and Jeremy fortheir next class. The date was Friday,  September fourteenth.

"Oh hey, Connor,  guess what Jeremy says that Christine says came– that Christine says  got here yesterday!"  The smaller of the two,  in a blue polo shirt,  was taking double strides to keep up, so the taller began taking slower steps. 

Connor groaned. "The ukuleles?"

Richard Goranski, a boy in their grade, heard their conversation as he passed them,  and since hallway conversations are the opposite of private– meaning anyone can interject at any time without being rude– he felt the need to take advantage of this liberty.  "The ukuleles?  Yeah,  they got in yesterday, they're really fun, and we got to watch clean vines at then end of class while our fingers rested!"

Evan had no real problem with this, since,  being a friend of Jeremy's, Rich welcomed Evan and Connor into their group with open arms– he was just a little irritated because he had been just about to say that. 

"Well vines could be fun. But I would like to put on record that I did not vote for this. " Connor said to Evan as opposed to Rich, a fact the anxiety-ridden teen both noticed, and appreciated.

"I did! Come on,  it's gonna be fun!"

And with that,  they arrived in class. The teacher had no seating chart, and since Michael and Jeremy always got there first (the science lab was closer to the Specials Hall than the math room) they also always saved the other two seats. As they entered,  Evan saw Michael doubled over with laughter, next to Jeremy,  snorting and shaking. 

"What happened? Did we– did we miss something?" It should be noted that Evan Hansen, anxiety ridden teen,  suffered from severe FOMO. 

"So,  we walked in and–" Michael started,  before bursting into more laughter.('Adorable',  thought Jeremy)

Jeremy took the metaphorical Baton. "And I saw the ukuleles and you know I was not looking forward to this and–"

They tag teamed,  explaining between giggles,  that Jeremy had seen ukuleles, realized Christine was serious, and tried to say, 'Fuck the delivery guy',  'Are you kidding me? Really?" and "I'm Heere, I'm queer,  and I do not want to play the ukulele." at the same time and ended up saying "I'm Heere, not kidding, and I really wanna fuck the delivery guy."

Connor burst out into full on,  rolling on the floor giggles (as previously stated, the teacher basically just gave them instruments and said, "Knock yourselves out.", unlike the woman who taught music the days Christine and Rich had it,  who taught them things), and Evan snorted. A pause,  during which Jeremy realized that if something was funny enough,  Evan was a snort-laugher, and then Evan was giggling and snorting so hard his entire upper body shook,  he couldn't breathe, his face was red,  and he clutched his stomach because he was laughing so hard that it hurt. It was surprisingly similar to a panic attack,  but much more enjoyable.

Just then,  the teacher,  Mr. Johansen, burst into the room. "I forgot its walk-through day today,  everyone grab a uke and sober up!"

All the kids scrambled to snatch the nearest ukulele, and Mr. Johansen showed them where to put their fingers for a G chord.

"Ow!" muttered Jeremy, as the discordant noise of sixteen ukuleles being strummed at once filled the air,  "Christine wasn't kidding when she said it kinda hurt!"

Michael heard him, pressed the sore tips of his boyf's fingers to his lips,  and kissed them. 

"Better?" he whispered. Jeremy blushed. 

"Uh-er-um-yeah. Thanks Michael."

Evan leaned into Connor's shoulder, brow furrowed in concentration. "This as bad as you expected, Connie?"

The corner of Connie's mouth quirked at the nickname, and kept quirking until he smiling down at the boy next to him with the sappiest smile actually possible. "Nah. Wasn't that bad. And now we can tease Jeremy about cheating on Michael with the delivery guy."

//AUTHOR'S NOTE// 

Hey! We absolutely are not currently learning to play the ukulele in music right now. And @Boots666 absolutely didn't turn to me and say that should write a one-shot about it. And I totally didn't not only agree I finally figured out how to work the italics from the Google Chrome app on a Lenovo tablet. It's harder than you think. Now, I know what you're thinking: why does River keep giving us such short and unsatisfying one-shots these last few chapters? And why is her name River, there's no mention of Doctor Who,  but the name is from Doctor Who!  wHaT iS gOiNg oN?!?!?!  

Answer #1: This was actually over a thousand words but the theme changed drastically in the middle so that's gonna be updated later today. Also, as I explained last night/this morning, it was past three am and I had school. 

Answer #2: I actually do really like Doctor Who, I'm just not super involved in that fandom,  meaning I don't create or even do much appreciating the fanstuffs, just because I'm REALLY into musicals and I'm focusing on that. 

So yeah the real point of this A/N was to apologize for two shitty updates in a row and to promise an Actually Pretty Good one in the next few hours or so. 

Later, Cultured Cutlery, 

Sincerely,

Me: River