Evan is a self-described shy, timid high school senior. He loves nature and watching documentaries. He struggles with severe social anxiety and takes medication to cope. Evan is ashamed of his mental illness and sees it as a mark of defection. He struggles to articulate his feelings not only because speaking to others makes him anxious, but also because he is afraid of revealing his true feelings, which he fears are too dark for his mother to handle. Despite his struggle to articulate himself, Evan is a talented writer. He won third place in a national short story contest, and his mother pushes him to enter an essay contest so he can win scholarships to help pay for his future college tuition. The summer before his senior year, Evan worked as an apprentice park ranger at a local park, where he found solace in trees and solitude.

Evan is hyper-observant; he perceives the nuances of his classmates’ conversations with each other, their outfit changes and food choices, and the subtle cues of their body language and location in the lunchroom. He’s also acutely aware of how he does, or doesn’t, fit in to it all. However, Evan fails to recognize that his classmates share many of the same struggles and fears as him, despite acknowledging that some of them occupy the same rung on the social ladder as him.