"I was thinking about our next sess-"

"Buzz off, I'm trying to sleep." He said, then ended the phone call.

It was coming up to ten in the evening and I had only just checked my phone, I had three text messages from Jace and one from Flynn.

Of course, Flynn wouldn't make sense because he's probably out with friends. Unlike me, he kept a fairly large group of friends. He would be at a houseparty one night, then out clubbing with his fake ID another night, and sometimes I would catch him coming straight to school after pulling an all nighter and make his way straight over to the showers in the gym, smelling of alcohol and dressed messily.

Jace however, is a certified clingy little bastard. He also slept really early, it was only ten-thirty and it was an extremely boring Friday evening.

Since our little Starbucks trip, we have and one and a half other sessions. I say 'half' because I walked out of the second one halfway through due to me being extremely tired and lazy.

Usually, our sessions lasted two and a half hours. Come on, does he expect me to stay for even two hours?

I still had no clue what time our session was meant to be tomorrow because Jace was too tired to talk to me.

I still rang him again though.

Ring

Ring

"What do you want?" I heard a sleepy Jace on the line.

"You know, hanging up on people mid-sentence is really rude." I pointed out, all sassy like. "What time is our session tomorrow?"

"I'm exhausted, alright? Am I not allowed to sleep anymore now that you're under my wing?"

"Wha- how does that even make sense. I'm not 'under your wing'."

"Four o'clock tomorrow, my house. I'll text you the address. Okay?"

"Sure. Gosh, someone's in a mood"

"Goodnight Zach,"

"Night J. Don't let the bed bugs bite."

"J? How is that ev-" I cut Jace off mid sentence, which was exactly what he did to me and grinned to myself like the Cheshire Cat before falling asleep in my own peaceful slumber.

- - - - - - -

"Hey hon, where are you heading out?" Mum asked me while hovering over the stove.

"Meeting some friends."

"You have friends?" Liam asked, awestruck.

"Yes. Do you?"

"You hang out with my friends and convert them to nice people." He said and shivered.

I convert them to nice people? Did Liam just compliment me?

I started walking to the door. A compliment from Liam is rare, like really rare. I felt all full of myself as I stepped over the threshold.

"Where do you think you're going?" Dad's deep voice rung.

"Meeting some friends. Problem?"

"I have news. Come and sit."

I rolled my eyes and slouched my shoulders and shut the front door then stomped my feet to the kitchen.

"What?"

"Your Aunt Stacy and Uncle Frank are staying over next week, with Trisha and Molly." My dad announced, causing me and Liam to look at each other simultaneously and share a look that meant 'oh shit'.

My dear cousins, Trisha and Molly, were what nightmares were made of. They're about seventeen and they're twins. They're whiney and reckless, they always fight with each other, and all of us have to witness it, and they always do things by their own accord. They stayed over Christmas last year and threw a new years party at my house while mum and dad were out.

They stole mine and Liam's phones and rung every contact, informing them of the party. They even blackmailed Liam and I into shopping for them. If we didn't obey, they'd tell our parents that the party was mine and Liam's idea.

Consequently, my mum's favourite vase was smashed and someone had sex in our shower. Liam and I had to tidy up everything with minimal help from Trisha and Molly. Clothes were strewn all over the place, red cups scattered the front lawn and people were all over the place. Our living room was renovated- all the sofas were put to one side and the coffee table acted as a 'stage'.

"Mum! No! Molly and Trisha are horrible. They treat us like slaves." Liam seethed.

If anything, Molly was the worst. She flirted with all our friends- which Liam wasn't too happy about- and she also decided that she would sleep in Liam's room while Liam crashed with me just so she could have her own bed. She got everything she wanted at the click of her fingers. Trisha, on the other hand, shortly trailed after Molly, so we called her Trish The Bitch.

"Yeah! Mum, please don't leave us home alone with them. Please." I begged.

"I wanted to show Frank the garage." Dad stated.

Last year, when they stayed, their parents weren't with us so mum never got the chance to take them both to the nearby national park that she constantly fawns over and Dad never had the chance to show off his new car and the car garage he worked at then.

Aunt Stacy and Uncle Frank are probably the most snobbiest, stuck up people I have ever met. At least, that is the impression they give me. They spent their money like water from a running tap, buying the best perfumes, make up and clothes and they still hadn't forgiven me and Liam for our little prank.

We egged their new car at Halloween.

They can be nice people, they are nice people to mum and dad but seriously, their moods change like the damn weather. It's unpredictable.

Liam and I groaned in unison, then he gave me a pointed look, nodding slightly to the stairs. I got out from my seat and followed Liam upstairs. I hope he hurries up, I had errands.

"What are going to do?" Liam said as he paced back and forth in his room with his hands pulling at his hair.

"Make sure we lock Mol and Trish in the basement?" I suggested.

"We don't have a basement."

"I meant garage, or shed. Ok?"

"Really, though, what will we do?"

I thought for a moment, then I had the perfect idea. If this were a cartoon, I would have a lightbulb on top of my head.

"How about, I take on Trisha and you take Molly. We don't allow them to push us around and we put cameras around the house?"

"That's ridiculous."

"But not impossible." I smirked.

He gave me a funny look, one the basically screamed, 'you creative little ass'. He should really cool it with the compliments, it's kind of freaking me out because he only gives compliments like three times a year.

"Can we plot something? I love love love missions like Halloween." I said. I watched a little too much of The Crystal Maze as a kid.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. I did the plan before so now it's your turn. Now, if you excuse me, I have errands."

I walked out the door then out the house and grabbed my bike out the garage then started riding to the address that Jace gave me. He lived on the same road as Oliver, A brother from Torvux.

"You're late." Jace stated once I got to his house.

"Your point is..?" I said.

"Well it's not me whose going to fail physics."

He proceeded to walk into the house and I followed him, closing the door behind me. We walked past the kitchen, were I saw a middle age woman and a small girl with the same hair as the woman. Straight and blonde.

"Is that your mum?" I whispered to him. The house was really quiet, irritatingly and abnormally quiet.

"Foster mum." He said nonchalantly. "Come on, take your books out."

I realised Jace took me to his room in the basement and it was immaculate. It was quite big, actually, scrap that, it was huge.

On one side was a television with beanbags and sofas dotted around it. On the opposite side was his double bed, all neatly put together. He had a desk against the wall but It was covered in reading books and scraps of paper. The walls were covered in posters and photos and there was only a minimal amount of wall showing.

"Uh, where?"

"Here," He said, sitting down cross legged near the beanbags.

I emptied my rucksack on the floor. Two textbooks, a notebook and a pencil case.

"Right, how much do you know about electromagnetic radiation?" He asked.

"A little." I said sheepishly.

He rolled his eyes and flipped my textbooks to the correct pages. The whole lesson was one hour longer than expected, the time just flew by and by the end, I covered everything there is to know about electromagnetic radiation. Jace explained everything as precisely as he could and made up a few examples to help me.

"Uh.. I'm tired." I whined, laying back on the rug.

My neck and back ached and my stomach was rumbling. I felt horrible.

"Would you like to stay for dinner?" Jace asked.

"Sure." I smiled.

I packed up my books and went upstairs to the kitchen, where Jace's family were already sat down at the dinner table.

"Sorry im late for dinner, we went a little overboard with revision." Jace explained to his family.

"Don't let it happen again!" his mom scolded playfully. "Hello dear, you must be Zach, yes? I'm Janine, this is my husband Vince."

"Nice to meet you." I said, shaking Vince's hand. "What's for dinner? It smells heavenly."

Vince was bulky, tall and I could see his muscles popping through his t-shirt. He must be a trainer.

"That's my mum's special casserole." Jace said, making a plate for me.

"I had to make it, it's Jace's birthday, tradition." Janine said.

My eyes opened in shock, it was Jace's birthday and I didn't get him anything or take him anywhere? I feel horrible.

"Happy birthday man, sorry, i don't have anything." I said to Jace.

"It's fine. I don't want anything."

I looked at him skeptically and started eating my dinner. How could Jace be so calm about this? Doesn't his birthday remind him of his real parents? I wonder what happened to them anyway but then again, it's not my place to butt into his life.

If something traumatic had happened to him, he showed no sign of it. He always seemed happy. He was probably the most smiliest person I had ever met.

After finishing dinner, I helped tidy up. It was the least I could do. I did after all, stay unintentionally for dinner.

Jace's mum's cooking reminded me a lot like my grandma's cooking. Mum's cooking was alright but it tasted nothing like my grandma's or Janine's.

What I'm trying to get at is, Jace's mum's cooking is better than my mom's.

I walked through the hallway to grab my bag but then I was stopped by Jace.

"Hold on," he yelled. "You have to try my mom's brownie cake."

How can I say no to cake?

"Fine... If you insist."

I sat opposite the little girl at the dining table. When I walked in, she was tapping her feet constantly, patiently waiting for her cake.

"So what's your name?" I grinned.

"Why do you wanna know huh?" She boomed.

I guess she learned well from Jace. You wouldn't have expected that of a small girl.

"My name is Camellia."

I turned around, seeing Jace hovering over me. "You're nothing like Jace, I mean, seriously, the guy looks like a rat faced- ah!"

I yelled as I felt the chair moving and abruptly fell to the ground. Jace didn't actually look rat faced, but it was hilarious to joke about it.

"Oops. My bad." Jace snickered.

I groaned and got up off the floor. It seemed that being around Jace, resulted in several injuries every time. If I had been anywhere else, I would've gotten my revenge, but since it was in the company of his parents, I had to be on my best behaviour.

"Brownie cake!"

This time, I ran to the counter where Janine was serving the cake and I stuck my plate out in her face so she could give me a slice and waited like an obedient dog as she cut it.

"So how old are you Camellia?" I asked, shoving some cake into my mouth.

"Too young for you." Jace interjected. I gritted my teeth.

"Nobody asked for your input." I replied vaguely.

"I'm thirteen next month." Camellia said, which was slightly astounding since she only looked about ten.

"My birthday is next month too. On the 17th of March."

"Mine is the 20th. We could have a joint birthday party!"

"Obviously we will." I smirked, looking at Jace.

"So you steal my mum and now you steal my sister." He gasped.

"How did I steal your mum?" I cocked my eyebrow.

"She likes your company and believes it would benefit me with being more social and whatnot." He waved off.

"Well, I'm off now." I said, putting my plate in the sink and waving at Jace's parents in the living room.

"Oh. So soon?" Jace's mum asked.

I started tying my shoelaces up and putting my leather jacket on before Camellia hopped out in front of me and handed me a container of some leftover food, probably given to her by Janine or Vince.

"See you Zach!" She grinned.

"Bye Cammie, bye J." I snickered at the nicknames and grabbed my rucksack.

"Cammie? How is that even-" Camellia said at the same time Jace said, "Stop calling me J!"

I didn't hear the rest of what they had to say because I had cut them off mid-sentence by closing the front door. It was amusing that Camellia said the same thing as Jace when he first heard his nickname.

I grabbed my bike from the front porch, noticing I messed up a small part of Janine's gardening.

"Whoops." I shrugged off.

- - - - - - - -

"it's like nine o'clock. Where were you?" Liam asked.

"I was meeting some friends, like I told you."

"I know that's not true."

"Well screw you then." I threw one of my shoes at his stomach and ran upstairs.

"You little bi-"

"Liam! Language!" Dad yelled, then muttered 'asshole' for only me to hear.

"And for you," Dad pulled me down the stairs. "What took you so long?"

"I was with some friends and we had dinner out." I said simply.

Why I couldn't tell anybody about my tuition sessions with Jace I would never know. All I could do was suggest.

I think it's probably because dad's demeaning sense of protection. He would need to interrogate anybody new I meet and 'verify' that they're suitable. I don't want Jace having to go through that. He would probably run away from me and not tutor me when I'm so close to my mock exams.

"You've had a long day. Now shoo, off to bed." Dad waved me off and went to the living room. I rolled my eyes at how he still liked to baby us at our age.

Regardless, I groaned and stomped upstairs, Liam following behind, but not because my dad said so. It was so much more amusing to be in our rooms, anyway.

"We need to discuss the royal family coming over next week." Liam said, walking into my bedroom and looking through my bookshelf.

"Do you mind not looking at my things?" I said, stripping myself and putting on a pyjama top.

"What are we going to do man? I can't handle being around them."

"Why don't we discuss it with the guys? They must have bratty relatives."

"If we bring them into it, they would do team up with Molly and Trish. I mean, according to them, they did throw an awesome party." Liam pointed out and flicked through an old Beano comic I had.

"We can tell them we'll take them shopping and leave them somewhere."

"To die and rot?" Liam grinned.

"No. We'll be close by."

"Oh." Liam slouched his shoulders and frowned.

"That's boring though. We need to make it interesting."

"We can take out the book."

"The book. We haven't used that for years."

"Exactly."

Let me tell you something about 'The Book'. It was never named because we weren't creative little kids.

The Book was filled with pranks and all thing hilarious and embarrassing (including funny pictures of the twins) It was something Liam and I made when we were really close and extremely bored one summer.

Come to think of it, Liam and I only became temporarily close when we needed each other more than ever- for example, our bratty cousins coming over.

I grinned evilly to Liam and he mimicked.

"Do you know where it is?"

"Yeah," he said, walking to the corner of my bedroom and opening up the little crevice in my room. It was a tiny little space for all the crap, such as Christmas Trees and decorations. It used to mine and Liam's hiding and plotting space to make us feel all badass like when we did pranks or something to make my parents angry.

When it got filled up with crap, Liam and I slowly drifted apart because we no longer did any pranks.

"Are you just going to stare at it or are you actually going to help find it?"

I shook myself out of my reverie. All the memories came flooding back. Me and Liam were inseparable as little kids, after mum and dad had finance trouble, we didn't get much attention so Liam and I grew fond of each other.

But then, our fondness died when the crap cupboard started getting filled up.

I walked to the cupboard and opened the latch and pulled the door open, only to see a Christmas tree In my face.

"This is going to take ages. Can't we just memorise the book?" I whined. "Actually, there's no point in finding it anyway because it's just stupid and full of crap."

"Nope. I want to find it and look at our six and eight year old stupidity."

I rolled my eyes and pulled the tree out, as well as all the boxes of old toys. There were tons of boxes, to say we were spoilt little children was an understatement. The cupboard had an old cot, a pushchair, a play kitchen and about twenty five boxes of stuff like appliances and blow up beds.

I don't actually know why Liam wanted to find the stupid book so badly, it was just... Stupid.

"Found it." Liam grinned at the view of a small bright blue book on top of a large box.

I turned around and saw my room was a complete mess, boxes were everywhere, on my bed, desk and drawers.

Really? All this for a pathetic book?

Liam grabbed the book and sat cross legged on the floor. I went and say next to him.

He blew the dust off it and looked at it as if it held all the answers to life.

I snatched the book out if his hand and opened it to the front page. "You're taking too long." I said.

The first page was a contents page, It was written in messy crayon handwriting of all different colours. On the back of the front page read 'Liam and Zach's magical book of power and survival' but magical was written with a 'j' instead of a 'g'.

I flipped through the pranks. There were a ton but majority of them were just plain stupid and risky.

I looked at Liam, half expecting him to grimace because of the stupid ideas but instead he was staring at the book, smiling a little.

Liam can smile!

"Do you remember we did that one on Maria?" Liam grinned.

I looked at he page he was pointing at, it was titled 'how to send back a cootie'. I rolled my eyes at the stupid name and read- or attempted to read- eight year old Liam's writing.

Step 1. Fill up some waterballoons with water. (Maybe even mayonnaise or pickle juice).

Step 2. Throw the balloons at the enemy.

Hint: you can throw from high buildings for better effect and, you can mix things, like honey and peanut butter).