Rebuilding

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I picked my head up from the soft pillow to discover that it was nearly noon, and I wondered if waking up this late was normal for me. I couldn’t hear any activity elsewhere in the house, so I figured Dan was still asleep. Hopefully he had gotten more than I did, though I’m not sure when he actually managed to fall asleep. His crying only faded slightly around midnight, and when I fell asleep finally around 12:30, I could still hear him fight to catch his breath through soft sobs. I thought about how close Dan and I must have been before the accident. We had been living together for over two years, apparently, surely there had to be some kind of significant bond between us. And if my forgetting him was enough to make him cry in the dark of his room at night, I had to have made some impact on his life.

A quick thought of romance crossed my mind. We were just platonic friends, right? As far as I could tell, I was straight. I thought back to that day in the hospital, back to when I first saw him; at least since the accident. I noted that he was a good looking kid, but found no hint of attraction to him. I remembered the phone call I had accidentally listened in on. “He’s my best friend”, Dan had said to the mystery caller. Another phrase from that call flashed through my mind. “It’s my fault he’s in this mess”. Was it really? What had caused the accident? I vowed to talk to Dan about that at some point if I couldn’t remember on my own.

My thoughts were broken by the sound of my stomach growling. I passed Dan’s door on my way to the kitchen, and found it shut and the lights off. He was definitely still asleep. I poured myself a bowl of Country Crisp and walked back into my room. The laptop sat on my desk, open and plugged in, clearly in sleep mode. I walked over and sat down at the desk, setting the bowl of cereal next to the laptop. I shook the mouse, and the screen lit up to reveal a Twitter page. I thanked any sort of higher power that I was already logged in to the computer, and therefore didn’t have to attempt to crack the password. I looked at the webpage. It was a “connect” tab of someone’s Twitter, presumably mine. I read through some of the interactions; there were quite a lot.

-          @AmyPhillion: @AmazingPhil PLEASE COME BACK

-          @UnitedPhan: @AmazingPhil phil your in our prayers!!

-          @philisntonfireyo: @AmazingPhil is @danisnotonfire taking good care of u?!? <33

-          @ima_amazing_phan: @AmazingPhil we miss you! Xoxo

That wasn’t even a fraction of the tweets from random people, all asking about me and begging to know whether or not I was okay. Some included the username @danisnotonfire in their tweets, so I went over to that page. It displayed a picture of Dan, and said “Dan Howell” where there was a checkmark next to his name to show that the account had been verified. Over 600,000 followers. His last tweet was from Friday, the 16th. It read, “hey guys. phil should be home tomorrow. thanks for your support. no radio show for a while, chris will be filling in for now.” What radio show? And who was Chris? And how did Dan have over 600,000 Twitter followers and why did they care about me? I clicked “Profile” which led me to my own Twitter page. I was shocked.

            Over 400,000 followers on my account, along with a verification check next to my name. My last tweet was from Friday, December 9th. It said, “INTERNET! WE NEED YOUR HELP! Send me your questions and would you rathers! Special video coming ;D”. In reply to that tweet were a whole bunch of random questions and bizarre would-you-rather scenarios. One tweet stuck out to me.

            -@phan_is_on_fire: omFG PHIL IS NOT ON FIRE 5 WHAT WHAT PHIL OMFG

What the hell was “Phil is not on fire 5” and why was this person so excited about it? I scrolled back to my “info” on the twitter profile. “That guy with the hair from YouTube and Radio 1 ★✩★ youtube.com/amazingphil” it read. Radio 1? The BBC Radio station? I clicked the link in the description and was brought to a YouTube channel. My YouTube channel. Over 900,000 subscribers? Over 150 videos?