Dan and his butterflies

Pilot

Phil. Phil was the name of the person I loved. He was the only person I had ever loved. It was quite silly actually. He didn't even know me. I mean, he did in some way, but he didn't really consider me as more than an acquaintance. I, on the other hand, considered him to be the only person I had ever and will ever love. I know I sound like a creepy stalker, who at some point will kidnap Phil and have him be a sex-slave in my basement. But I can't even seem to move when I'm around him, so you see, it would be hard to drag him down to my basement. I can't feel my whole body when he is near me, let alone control what comes out of my mouth. I swear to God, when his blue eyes look at me it feels like angles are singing and heaven is opening up, welcoming me. And when he smiles; my heart will beat so fast and all the blood in my body suddenly seems to want to fill my cheeks. But then, all of a sudden, you realise that you can't and never will have those eyes and that smile and you suddenly feel like crying, but you can't cry, because you're in the middle of class, so you hold it in and it turns into a lump in your throat that's hard to swallow. And then you sit there, not learning anything because you're trying to swallow that lump in your throat, that you got from a person who doesn't even know you. It's kind of sad actually.

I get a D-minus in sports. Sports at my school is an optional lecture, you were able to choose to get a better grade overall. You could choose between arts and sports, and like an idiot I choose sports because I knew Phil would. I don't blame the grade on him though. I have, so far, fractured 4 fingers and broken a nose. The broken nose I got from Phil. He, accidentally, jumped into me doing beach bowl. I stumbled over, laying in the sand looking up at the sky. I didn't even feel the pain. All I could think about was how nice Phil's shoulder smelled. So when Phil fell down on his knees next to me and asked me if I was okay, all I could say, before I passed out, was "you smell nice". My friends call it the 'nose incident'.

"Dan!", I shot my head up looking at the teacher, who was looking very intensely at me. "Can you answer the question I asked you?" she asked. I could see the whole class looking at me. Waiting for me to say something. I didn't hear the question because I had daydreamed about Phil.

"Oh... uhm... I'm sorry what was the question again?" I asked, hoping the teacher wasn't having one of her bad days. She was a middle aged woman who'd been recently divorced. She had been really moody after it.

"What was the name of the last Zar in Russia?" she asked again, seemingly annoyed but nothing more. As I predicted, I had no idea how to answer the question. I wasn't really the best in school. I only had some art skills, but because of a stupid crush, I didn't have art as a course.

"I'm sorry but I really don't know", I could tell, by the look on her face, how disappointed she was. It wasn't the first time I didn't know the answer to a question.

"I expect more from you next time" She said, before moving on to guy named Greg, who had had his hand up the whole time.

I sighed. I had to find a way to stop Phil from ruining my grades. He wasn't ever going to be part of my life, so he shouldn't ruin a big part of it.

After class I walked up to my friends. They were all sitting at a table in the cafeteria. "Dan!" Chris shouted waving me over, "we were talking about whether or not I would be able to pull of modelling, what do you think?" he continued. I wrinkled my nose and shook my head, trying not to imagine Chris in front of a camera in designer underwear and without a shirt.

"Aren't you too short anyway?" I asked, trying to avoid the question. He looked baffled at my answer.

"Fuck no!" he said raising his voice so the table next to us gave us a shady look. "Just because I'm shorter than you, doesn't mean I'm too short for modelling!". He was right. I was extremely tall and I often forgot that people around me wasn't short, but just normal sized. Chris was actually really tall if he wasn't standing next to me or Pj.