Dan rushed home from school and burst into the house. He barely stopped long enough to greet his mother before he was racing up the stairs. Once in his room, he dumped his bag and pulled out his laptop. It was a Monday evening, and that meant it was time for a new video from Dan's favourite youtuber,amazingphil. He logged on to youtube and went straight to his channel.
There was no video. With any other youtuber, this would be normal but Phil… Dan had watched his videos for two years now, and he uploaded a video on a Monday night at 4pm, like clockwork. He had never missed a day. But it wasn't like Dan could check his twitter or facebook to see if there was a problem. Phil had never had an account on these kind of social networking sites. Dan had found this out to his horror when he tried to find out more about Phil after getting into his videos, Between the new videos, Dan would re-watch his favourite old ones and fantasize about meeting him one day. It was stupid, but he had a crush on someone he had never met before and who didn't even know he existed. Dan knew deep down that if they ever met, they would get on really well, and Phil would understand him more than Dan's 'friends' ever would. It was this thought that kept Dan going most days, and he depended on a new video from Phil to remind himself that there were people out there who thought like him and would accept him. He'd felt so alone before he had discovered the wonderful people on youtube.
Dan refreshed the page again and tapped his fingers impatiently. He didn't understand what could have happened to stop him uploading tonight. He refreshed the page again and felt his heart leap as a new video appeared on-screen. It was called 'The Last One'. Dan stared at the title for a moment before shrugging his shoulders and playing the video. And once again, Phil was on the screen and his beautiful smile brightened Dan's day. He was talking about a funny incident that had happened to him the other day and Dan found himself laughing and shaking his head in amused exasperation. Phil always managed to remind him that it was okay to be so cripplingly socially awkward.
When Phil had finished talking, the screen faded to black as usual and Dan was about to replay the video when he noticed that there was another minute remaining. His mind full of curiosity, he watched in anticipation. The screen brightened again and focused on a boy Dan had never seen before. He was sitting in an empty room on a chair, and seemed nervous. The boy cleared his throat and began to talk.
'Hello there. You're probably wondering what's going on here. I've never shown my face before, although you've heard about me occasionally in Phil's videos. I was Phil's best friend.' The boy paused and swallowed. He looked around the room and then back at the camera. 'Six months ago, my best friend Phil died. He'd known it was going to happen. The doctors told him he had a year. He had already been making videos on youtube, and he wanted to carry on his life as usual. So he carried on making videos, but once a day instead of once a week. He made me promise that they would all get uploaded… even if he wasn't there to do it. He planned every video he was going to make. But then he got worse, very quickly. The video you just watched, was the last one he was able to make before…' The video jumped and the boy was sitting in a different position and his eyes were red. When he spoke, his voice broke. 'He never got to make the goodbye video he wanted to make. He didn't want his subscribers to worry, but he wanted to explain when the time was right. He didn't mean for it to end like this. So this is the last video I'll upload to this channel. I've kept my promise Phil, I uploaded a new video every week, on time. And he would have been so proud to see the comments his videos have received and how many people watched them. All he ever wanted was to make people happy. And he loved you, all of you.'
'So this is the end of the video. There will be no more videos uploaded to this channel but I will leave all of the videos up so that Phil can continue to make people happy. As long as people keep watching them, he's not really gone.'
The screen faded to black for the second time and the video ended.