Alive (Phan)

TWELVE

I don't know if my mum really believed that I was sick or not, but she let me stay home from college for the next week. I barely left my bed, even for meals. After a few days of ignoring Di's nonstop text messages, I finally got up the nerve to tell her that I didn't want to be with her anymore, which I assumed was not well-received because she didn't text me again after that. I had thought, hoped even, that once Phil returned to college he would wonder where I was, but he never made any effort to contact me either. I wondered if he knew what had happened. I doubted it, but even so, I felt too guilty about everything to try to reach out to Phil or PJ or even Chris. Sometimes I wondered if everyone's lives would just have been easier if I hadn't been a part of them. I guess maybe everyone else thought the same thing, because for the next two months I had no contact with my friends. Phil didn't even look at me in Lit. Chris switched seats to sit as far away from me as possible in Drama. I never saw Di and when I would run into PJ he would smile, but we never spoke. Eventually, I fell back into my old routine of walking to school with my music, eating lunch alone, and sleeping in the grass between classes.

The end of term arrived before I knew it. Mum and I had Christmas alone and she bought me Sgt. Pepper on vinyl and I bought her a necklace she had been eyeing in the shop for months. After Christmas, the holiday was mostly uneventful until New Years' Eve when Mum flounced into my room announcing that someone was at the door for me. I was confused, but I got out of bed and dragged myself to the front door where I found none other than Phil Lester, obviously lost in his own little world once again.

"Phil?" I asked hesitantly.

"Hi Bear," he teased as if it were only yesterday that he had been in my doorway to take me to that first party at Chris'.

"What are you doing here?"

He blinked and then said, "Don't you want to get out of here?"

That didn't really answer my question, but as I met his eyes for the first time in months and I couldn't help but say, "Let me go change." He smiled his response and I went back to my room as calmly as possible to find my mother sitting on my bed.

"Why's Phil here?" she asked.

"We're going out tonight, is that okay?"

Mum smiled, a familiar glint in her eye, "Yes," she stood and hugged me, "Just be safe, okay? And let me know when you'll be home."

"Yes ma'am," I shut the door behind her and was immediately in a mad dash to throw on some decent looking clothes. In ten minutes, I was out the door and accompanying Phil in a strange car.

"It's my brother's," he explained, "he let me borrow it for the night."

"What's the occasion?" I asked, "I mean, other than the New Year?"

"You," Phil smiled, backing out of the driveway and into the empty street.

"What?"

"You heard me," he laughed.

"I don't get it," I said, puzzled, "I go nearly three months with nothing: no contact from you or PJ or anyone and then today you just show up at my house like nothing happ-"

"Look, Dan," he interrupted, not taking his eyes off the road "You're right. We shouldn't have treated you the way we did, but things were-" he trailed off and just said, "I'll explain everything, I promise, just- just not now, yeah?"

"Okay," I agreed, although I was unsure.

"It isn't far," he said, pushing a CD into the slot in the dashboard.

"Woah!" I screeched as some abstract music blared from the car's speakers (which were much higher quality than the ones in Diana's car).

"Sorry, sorry, sorry!" he yelled over the music as he frantically scrambled to turn the volume down, running a red light in the process.