There's a Reason I Go to the Library & It's Not Cause I Like Reading

Chapter 1

Dan Howell was lonely. Not in the sense of physically alone, he had a hot girlfriend and a great family, more in the sense of a lack of anyone who he could truly trust. He was just passing through life, like anyone else, except he'd stare off into the distance once or twice a day and wonder what it'd be like to live away from Wokingham, away from the factorial process that was 6th form.

The former would end up coming true not soon after.

If you asked him at the beginning of 2008 whether he enjoyed Rawtenstall any more or less than Wokingham he wouldn't have been able to give you an answer. He was just as lonely as he was before, except now he didn't have his girlfriend or his childhood mates. He was alone at a new school across the country where his articulated accent was even more different from everybody elses.

He didn't get out much, preferring to stay locked in his room with his stable-ish internet connection and his boxes of Jammie Dodgers his parents bought for his younger brother's lunch that ended up disappearing from the pantry to underneath the teenager's bed.

His house was on the side of a hill on an empty street a short walk from an abandoned hospital, and he could see into the valley from the balcony on the first floor by the living room. He spent a lot of the time he wasn't online listening to the sounds of the wind and cars echoing through the hills, with the occasional shout or car horn being distinguishable from the muffled mix of the sounds of the small town in the distance.

The quiet made him think. About school, university, A-levels, the universe in its entirety; how he'd been slotted into the unrelenting modern system where he'd sit in a classroom for 13 years to get a couple slips of paper saying he can sit in a bigger classroom for 4 more years to get another piece of paper allowing him to work off the debt he would be in for sitting in that bigger classroom. He thought about how he never asked to be put in this system that would work away the enjoyment of youth. He thought about the possibility that vikings had sex where his house was. He thought about a lot.

His room was at the back right corner of the 2nd floor. You'd find him sat at the desk beneath the clock by the door, draped ungracefully across the bed, or sat at his window, Nokia N95 in hand, clicking random buttons just to hear the sound. His new, green and blue room felt different from his old brown one in Wokingham, in a way Dan could not distinguish. He felt more at ease in this new room, but it felt strange in a way that could not be pinpointed. He shrugged it off, what more could he do? He was just a weird sixteen-year-old with a weird fringe and a reliance on GDHs he wouldn't dare to shake.

But Dan knew that something was slightly wrong in his life, like something had been shifted out of balance at some point when he was younger, and ever since something had felt off in the way he thought and acted. He doubted every decision he made thinking that it was always the wrong thing to do, until his friend told him that that happened to everyone once they realised that the world was much bigger than they thought. Dan didn't believe his friend, but what choice did he have?

Dan Howell would still be lonely.