The Textbook - Phan

Chapter 2- The Response

Yo have another short chapter of a lame fanfiction that I have no clue how to write! 

Phil Lester walked into second period French, chatting with Hazel Hayes, a good friend of his. She was in the middle of telling him a story about how when she was a little girl, she always seemed to wind up chewing sand at the beach (A/N: gettit??? I'm basically a comedic genius lmfao).

After parting ways with Hazel, he slid into his seat next to Joey Graceffa, Connor Franta, and a few other seniors he was friendly with, making small talk about the overload of work seniors have before Mr. Chapman walked in. The topic then somehow turned to dating, during which Joey offered to set him up with a sophmore named Cat. Phil turned the offer down awkwardly, saying, "I'm bi, but at the moment I have a preference for guys." Joey nodded, and Mr. Chapman walked in, cutting all talk short.

When the class began, and they got the books they shared with the sophomores, Phil groaned internally. He liked the language, but he wasn’t really interested in learning it. “Open your books to page 267,” Mr. Chapman ordered, and Phil flipped through the pages to get to that page. Before he got to it, however, he saw the little slip of paper he left there yesterday. He giggled to himself as he slid it out of the page and continued flipping through to get to the assignment.

After listening to the droning about conjugating verbs, Phil decided to open the note he had written the previous day. Glancing at the page, he saw his own handwriting, but another one below it that he didn’t recognize.

Phil's note read "Reminder to self: make sure own cat doesn't die of TERRIBLE OCTOPUS EXPLOSIONS!!!"

The note below his own simply said “Cats are obviously immune to octopus explosions. Clearly, you are my intellectual inferior.” 

Immediately, he was curious. This sarcastic response to his own silly message was interesting. It could be some dumb little thing, but that didn’t stop Phil’s curiosity. 

He decided to flip to the front of the textbook to find out who shared it with him. “:Dan Howell”, it read. The way this kid made his name into a face was strangely adorable to him. However, the name in the book was unfamiliar to Phil. Was Dan Howell a real person, or a made up alias? This shared textbook was all of a sudden much more intriguing. 

Phil folded up the note he was still holding and slipped it in the pocket of his black skinny jeans. He quickly adjusted his fringe out of habit, before pulling out another sheet of paper from his French notebook. He tore off a corner, doodling a few swirls before writing, “Je suis un poisson.” He had no idea what that meant, as he barely remembered the words, but he couldn’t think of anything else to write. Phil carefully folded up the note and placed it in the crease between two pages with the conjugation of some verb he had never heard of. 

Pretending to pay attention for the remainder of the class, Phil resolved to ask all of his friends if they had ever heard of this Howell kid. He couldn’t explain it, but he was very intrigued.  Maybe it would be pointless, or Dan would turn out to be an asshole, but Phil decided to give it a shot.  What was the risk in asking?

For some reason, Phil was almost looking forward to French tomorrow, if only to look at the note again. Almost being the key word.

Hey so um sorry that this is crazy short and really really lame but hey I tried.

Thank you so much to everyone who voted or left comments on the last chapter! It honestly means the world. 

This chapter is dedicated to the wonderful and fantastic @favtroyler for pushing me to actually get this done, even though it probably isn't nearly as good as she thought it would be.

Peace out homescouts,

Tess ^-^