I DIDN'T EXPECT to spend my New Years with a snoring boy beside me.

Our original plan was to watch movie marathons until we could see the fireworks, but one by one, we all started to get tired. Mom was the first one to say that she wanted to go to bed, so she returned to our house after saying I could stay with the Grants for the night. When it was finally midnight, fireworks exploded and we all cheered. A few minutes later, though, Mr. and Mrs. Grant decided to go to bed, leaving us.

Not long after, I was the only one standing. (Figuratively, of course.) We were watching Mr. Bean's Holiday but you could tell it was getting kind of boring. Tom was beside me, sleeping soundlessly with — I wanted to laugh — his earphones still plugged. The song Bulletproof Love by Pierce The Veil was blasting through his ears. Luckily he had no password, so I turned it off for him.

Jessie, Jake and Raph — being the "grown-ups" here — slept on the carpet. If I'd known Jake would be snoring like a pig, I'd have bought earmuffs. And you would believe that no one could top off that snoring. . . well, you're wrong.

Oliver was the winner here. He snored so loud that it was a miracle he didn't wake the whole neighbourhood. I could hold a parade right here and there and he still wouldn't wake up. It didn't help that he was on my other side either, facing me. But that allowed me to see the little beauty marks on his face. Like that little scar on his chin. Or the freckles around his cheeks.

I wasn't creepy at all.

Anyway, on normal days, I would've written a letter, but today I didn't felt like it. It's not like I didn't want to wish a Happy New Years — I really did — but I doubt they were having a good time. I didn't want to brag.

I looked back to the older brown-haired, olive-skinned boy beside me, lost in his dreams. I wonder what he was dreaming about.

Looks like I wouldn't be figuring that out, because before long, my eyes were getting droopy and I lost my consciousness in five. . . four. . . three. . . two —

________

A buzzing sound woke me, disturbing my beauty sleep.

I sat up on my bed, rubbing my eyes. Who would call me at seven in the morning on a Sunday? That was just too cruel to begin with.

I lazily looked at the screen. Then I sat up straight.

Valerie Moore.

Val was calling me. For what could be the hundredth time.

The last time I talked to her was during the previous holidays, when I greeted her with "Merry Christmas!" and "Happy New Years!" and nothing else.

I groaned before ignoring her calls. I didn't like ignoring one of my best friends, but it was easier ignoring her than telling her the truth. There was less pain. And because once I looked into those eyes, she'd know every lie.

"Who was that?"

I jumped from my bed, landing with my ass on the floor. I winced, both because it hurt and the fact that I couldn't stand up on my own. Then I noticed him sitting on the corner near my bed. No, actually, he was sitting on the floor.

"Oliver," I groaned. "What in the hell are you doing here?"

"Your mom said I could come here, so I did," he replied, smiling at me instead of apologising or helping me up. "She went out for a morning run."

At this hour? "Great, just great," I muttered, staying on the ground. "Let me guess, you climbed over the window?"

He grinned. "You know me so well, Woods." Then he nodded towards my phone. "So, who was calling?"

"Mom."

"Big fat liar."

I sighed. "Val."

"And you haven't told her yet?"

I answered him with silence, and he must've understood because he said nothing else. Then we hear a loud bang from outside the room, inside the house.

Both of us froze.

"What. . . was that?" Oliver asked slowly.

Since my bedroom was upstairs, I had no choice but to move to the guest room in the first floor after my leg condition. So that meant wherever that loud bang came from, it came from somewhere very close to us.

"I don't know," I responded quietly, my heart beating fast. There was only two of us in the house. So I sent out a quick text: 

Emily: Mom? Where are you?

The reply came a second later: 

Mom: Just rounding up Roseville. Why, dear? Something wrong?

Roseville was another neighborhood close to ours. I gulped. 

Emily: Nothing's wrong. Just checking.

Oliver was already standing by my side, reading over my shoulder. "Well, then. You better check it out."

My head whipped around. "Me? Why me?"

"It's your house!"

"I HAVE A DYING DISEASE, OLIVER!"

"FINE!"

He stomped across the room and slowly opened the door. Before he forgot, though, he went back to my bed — well, actually, across my bed and into my window.

"What are you — " He couldn't go to his room, since it was on the second floor. He knelt down, searching for something in the grass. I could hear him muttering a curse under his breath, but then there was an "Aha!" and he stood back up, a baseball in his hand. 

"What?" he asked as I stared at him. "We need a weapon!"

I raised my eyebrows. "And you think a ball is going to magically save us from whoever's there?"

"It's something, alright!"

He quickly went inside, then out, the door closing shut. A few moments passed and I started to worry. What if it was a real burglar? For the last seventeen — sorry, eighteen — years of my life, we'd never had burglars, but I knew some of the neighbours here who did. 

I stared at the door harder.

It opened abruptly and thank God, it was Oliver's face I saw. However it didn't relax me when I saw his expression. 

"There's no one here and the door's closed."

Was he serious? I could've sworn the loud bang came from inside the house. Or maybe it was just from a friendly neighbour's house "I wanna see."

I began pulling myself up, but failed when my hands couldn't handle my own strength. I sunk back down on the floor. Ollie noticed my struggle. "I'll carry you."

"No!"

He rolled his eyes. "Relax."

Hesitantly, I let him carry me towards the wheelchair. Once I was buckled up, I told Oliver to walk ahead while I "rolled" behind. Quite literally. With the wheelchair.

When we reached to the living room, it was dead quiet.

I looked around. "Maybe they've go —"

Out of nowhere, we heard a flush sound from the bathroom across the hall. We both stared at each other, and without talking, we knew what to do. I rolled down my wheelchair until I reached the base of the stairs so I wouldn't be seen. Oliver positioned himself behind the sofa, ready to attack, baseball in hand.

The door finally opened, and the person emerged. I peered and nearly sighed in relief.

"Oh, it's just — "

Too late.

"Dude, what the hell did you just do?!"

Oliver had threw the ball right in front of Jake's eye. And we all knew that he had a very, very good aim.

He blinked. "We thought you were a burglar."

"A burglar?" Jake cried. "Oh, sure I am! For God's sake, I was just trying to use the bathroom!"

I frowned. "You came all the way to my house to use the bathroom?"

"Yes!" Jake said in response. "Don't look at me like that. We only have three bathrooms, one was broken — I'm going to kill Tommy — and the two was used by Raph and Jessie."

Um, okay. Like that wasn't weird at all. "You could've told us first," I argued.

"I'm sorry! I thought no one was home!"

Oliver rolled his eyes. "Whatever, idiot. Let's go, I'm hungry."

By the time the three of us made it to the Grants', I was beginning to question if it was a good idea or not.

The house was a loud, chaotic mess.

Jake and Raph began playing a video game that involved war and shooting people — you know, the usual. It was obvious that Raph was winning because he was smiling and was completely calm, while Jake was screaming from the top of his lungs, "MOVE FASTER! NO, DON'T DIE ON ME! I CREATED YOU!"

Near them, Jessie was dancing to this video that she was watching from her laptop, like a tutorial or something. There was so many quick movements of her arms and legs that I was surprised one of them didn't snap. Meanwhile Tom, who was the closest to the door, was booming out to another Pierce The Veil song. The weird thing was, the song was post hardcore, so you could imagine him standing on a table and whipping his hair and stuff. But in reality, he was sitting on the sofa, staring at the wall like he was drifting into space.

Entering the Grant household was like entering a new dimension.

"Do you want something to eat?"

I hesitated. "Yes."

Oliver decided to make a peanut-and-butter sandwich which I took gratefully. He noticed, though, that I was chewing it very, very slowly. I wanted to tell him that it wasn't because of the sandwich; it was because I was scared of choking again. When I gestured to my throat and made choking expressions, he snorted but understood. 

The others didn't.

"I didn't know you were a slow eater," Jessie commented after I've just finished the sandwich.

"I didn't know you were a slow dancer," Oliver snapped.

Jake whistled. "Oh, buuurn — ow!" He rubbed his shoulder, glaring at his twin sister. "Why do people keep on harassing me, women?"

"Because you make it so damn easy," Raphael answered instead. Jake glared at him but Raph flashed him a brilliant smile.

________

Afterwards, Oliver and I went up in his room. 

Okay, don't start thinking that — we were just playing Monopoly. Jesus.

Downstairs was too loud for us, so we found sanctuary in his room. His room was on the second floor, and as much as I hated to admit, Oliver carried me up all the way. I hid the blush on my cheeks the entire way there.

"So," I started when Oliver made his next move. "Don't your siblings have, um, friends or something? All they ever do is hang out in here, my house or the park." I paused. "No offense."

He outright laughed at my face. "Didn't I ever tell you that each Grant has the speciality of making friends? Even Tommy has friends here and there, and look at him." He moved his piece. "They're sociable; they just hang out whenever you're not around."

I frowned. Should I be offended? I felt like I was limiting Jessie, Jake and Raph of their "hang out" times. Considering that they taught me every week day, the only free time they got was after Oliver or Mom got home (which was around the evening) and the weekends. Was it too much time?

"Don't make that face," Oliver scolded. Was he looking at me? I blushed.

Wait. What?

"You don't need to be guilty of anything," he continued. "They chose to teach you. Well, after some forcing from our dearest mother, but that's besides the point."

We stayed in silence for a while. I glanced out his window, and I could feel myself forming a smirk. "I've always wanted to try climbing up that window to your room. I mean, er, from your room to mines, I wonder. . ." I added hastily when Oliver wiggled his eyebrows at me. "Stop that!"

He rolled his eyes. "You're too easy." He glanced at the window, then at me, with a playful smile. "Too bad you can't walk."

I was actually glad that he could joke about it. It was definitely better than him freaking out back on the first day in the hospital.

"Which reminds me." He put the Monopoly board away and stretched out his legs, which envied me. Don't get me wrong — it wasn't his legs (although it does look good for — no! Stop it!), but it was the fact that he could still use them. Move them any time he wanted to.

Like a normal person could.

"Time to work out," he grinned.

Oliver and I had been "working out" every once in a week. Working out meant stretching our arms, hands and shoulders. Dr. Grey advised that exercise was important to keeping my joints flexible, not tense, so it would lessen the muscle weakness.

Halfway through the exercise though, my stomach grumbled.

"Wow," he smirked. "Hungry already?"

I rolled my eyes. "The sandwich wasn't really that much. Plus, it tasted kind of weird."

"You hear that?" I heard nothing. "That's the sound of my heart breaking."

I threw a Monopoly piece on his face. "I'm in the mood for some pie. You have some?"

"No," he muttered. "But we could go to Pies 'N' Stuff."

"What is that?"

He returned my frown with a blank face. "A pie place. They have one of the best pies in the city. We've been there?" I was still staring. "After Devon acted like his jerk-self? That time we got detention because I offered you pie during the practice physics quiz? You ate cranberry pie?"

I shook my head. Cranberry? I thought. "I hate cranberry."

"Um, no, you loved it," he pushed, looking at me in a way I didn't like. "We went there a few times already. You loved the place."

I could practically imagine the wires working in his brain, trying to find an answer as he stared at me with calculation and emotions I couldn't place all at once.

"Oh, right!" I let out with a huge smile. "That one! How could I forget? Yeah, yeah, of course I remember."

Oliver's suspicious face was quickly replaced with a grin and a relieved expression, then he went downstairs to ask Raph if he could buy us some pies.

But later that day I realised two things:

1) If I ever loved something — and as Ollie had described, I'd loved it — I wouldn't forget about it that easily.

2) Oliver was right. I was a big fat liar.

So now you know who the liar is: Emily! And coincidentally, there's another Emily in Pretty Little Liars. (Yes, I used to watch it but stopped after like 2 seasons.) 

Anyway, what did you think about that little lie? it's one of the symptoms ALS patients sometimes experience — losing bits and pieces of memory, their thinking becomes sluggish, etc. So sad.