As for my little challenge for last chapter, everyone who guessed did get it right. However, there was one specific answer I was looking for, and the only one to get it was daisy17. If you look back to Chapter 3, you'll see that when Lilly mentions that she didn't have anyone for her own on Valentine's Day, her shoulders sagged for a moment. Congratulations!

Chapter 4

Sugary Sleepover

"What time is it? What time is it?" I asked as I hopped over the litter of junk food wrappers, boxes, cans, and other containers that were scattered all over the floor of Miley's room.

Miley glanced at the clock. "One-thirty," she replied calmly.

I stopped. "Wait a minute. So it's still dark outside," I walked over to the window and threw back the curtains, revealing the black night sky, "but it's not nighttime?"

"Yes," said Miley slowly.

"So, it's not really Friday night anymore? It's actually Saturday morning?"

"Uh huh," nodded Oliver.

I felt a wide grin tugging my cheeks away from each other. "That is so cool!" I resumed jumping in between the vessels of caffeine and sugar, not caring in the least that both of my best friends were rolling their eyes at me.

Things weren't really that different between the three of us. Miley and Oliver may have confessed there feelings to each other and started dating, but it was almost as if nothing had happened. They still joked around and everything. The only difference was that they threw in some kissing in between this behavior for good measure and they were both a lot happier all the time. To an outsider, you wouldn't know they both been feeling pretty miserable on the inside quite often... most of the time. There were, of course, exceptions. Before the whole Valentine's Day incident that I so brilliantly orchestrated, Oliver would hardly ever be able to listen to If We Were A Movie without a hint of obvious sadness flickering across his face at least once. And on Valentine's Day itself, he seemed pretty depressed a lot.

Nevertheless, I could tell they tried their best not to make me feel left out, and I was grateful for that. I admit that I could do with a little less kissing. It was cool the first time and everything, but the novelty of it quickly wore off. Well, for me at least. They never seemed to get tired of it. If they were somehow able, they would probably make out forever. And it did occasionally lead to some awkward moments. Like in an excruciatingly dimly lighted movie theater. I happened to know that they had been kicked out about halfway through Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (although it was much easier afterward to pay attention to the movie).

But the fact that they were finally together was well worth the price. For the most part, life was good.

For the most part.

"Eating ten Oreos and washing them down with an entire can of Coke in the course of two minutes sure gives you a lot of pep, huh?" said Miley.

I bounced off her bed and danced over to her. "Does pep mean you're constantly blinking?" I asked, my eyes faithfully snapping open and closed.

"That's pep, alright," she said, eying me warily.

I nodded briskly, for no real reason other than a conduit for my sugar-induced fit of hyperactivity, and swung my arms in wide arcs like a pinwheel. But these activites were beginning to bore me. I needed something more.

"So, whattaya wanna do? Whattaya wanna do?"

"How about watch a movie?" suggested Miley.

"NOT GOOD ENOUGH!" I screamed, causing her to flinch.

"Got any better suggestions?" she said, rubbing her ears.

I pondered the question for about half a second. "Yeah."

"What?"

"PILLOWFIGHT!"

In one smooth motion, I snatched a pillow off Miley's bed and hurled it at her. Miley squealed as the pillow hit her face with a muffled thump. She gave me a malevolent stare for a moment before grabbing the pillow and springing towards me. I quickly got another pillow and raised it just in time to block the downward sweep she had been aiming at my head. The pillows made a small boom as they hit each other.

Thrown off balance by my parry, Miley stumbled backward. I used the opportunity to lash her once on the side before she could recover, which sent her even further back before she hit the wall. I swung at her head again, but she ducked. My pillow hit the bare wall. I swung it down as soon as it did, scoring the top of her head.

Grasping her pillow with both hands, Miley shoved as hard as she could. This sent me backwards, freeing her from my trap. I felt something hard collide with the back of my knees. It was only after I fell that I realized it was the edge of Miley's bed. I tucked my arms and legs into a roll and stuck the landing on the other side of the bed.

Oliver clapped, which reminded me that he was there at all. "Hey Oliver, why aren't you pillowfighting?"

"Please. Pillowfights? I think I'm a bit too mature for that."

Miley threw her pillow directly at his head. He ducked, then rose again, a smug smile on his face.

"Haha, you miss-" he was cut off by my pillow hitting him squarely in the face. He looked at us challengingly. "Oh, it's on."

He grabbed one of the pillows and charged. Miley, who had retrieved another pillow off her bed, rose it up to block his strike. I also picked up a pillow, but didn't immediately enter the fray. Instead, I ran to the place where Oliver had been sitting and used my free hand to grasp the pillow he had left behind. Now I had two pillows. Perfect for fighting two people at once.

I sprinted at Miley and Oliver, who were locked in combat. Before they knew what hit them, they had each received three pillow strikes in varying places. They seemed to silently declare a truce, because they immediately stopped attacking each other and concentrated on me. Not that it made any difference. Fueled by my sugar rush, my pillows served as powerful extensions of my own arms. They flew gracefully through the air, each move weaving into the next so that it all appeared to be one continuous attack. They were in such a flurry of motion that it was impossible to pinpoint the exact location of any of them. It was like trying to do the same with one of the blades of a moving fan; they seemed to be everywhere at once.

I heard the door squeak as it opened.

"What're you guys doing?" said a Southern twang that brought a thrill to my insides.

Suddenly, I had no inclination to continue the pillowfight.

Composing myself, I turned around.

"Hey, Jackson. Just having a pillowfight." Okay, good. My voice didn't waver at all.

"Looks more like a pillow war to me," said Jackson, eyeing the four pillows and exhausted teenage couple lying equally immobile on the floor.

"Yep. I got them almost as bad as I got you earlier today." Jackson's satisfied smile at the sight of his defeated sister disappeared. "Oops, I mean yesterday." I giggled again.

"You're gonna hold that silly little doesn't-mean-anything-at-all one-time incident over my head for the rest of my life, aren't ya?"

"Yep," I replied cheerfully.

"Well, it doesn't look like you're gonna be continuing this pillowfight any more," he purposely changed the subject, "and I've got nothing to do. You guys wanna watch a movie?"

"Sure!" I agreed a little too enthusiastically. Everybody looked at me oddly. Jackson seemed to dismiss it as a product of my sugar rush and walked over to the movie shelf. I figured Miley and Oliver would probably do the same, but as I watched them out of the corner of my eye, they continued to look... was that suspicion? It was the same look they gave me earlier - I mean, the day before.

Do they know?

"Whattaya wanna watch?" called the source of my doubts from the corner of the room.

I suppressed the impulse to sigh. Not from what was said, but from who said it.

Jackson, Jackson... Why did I have to fall for him, of all people? If my crush on him was evaluated by some dispassionate computer, it wouldn't turn up the result as perfect. The fact that he was Miley's brother was a big factor against me. I mean, you couldn't just date your best friend's sibling. It would give rise to a whole slew of awkward situations.

So, let's pretend Jackson wasn't Miley's brother, just a guy who I saw ever so often while getting a milkshake at Rico's. And you know what? It still wouldn't work. He was two years older than me. So if he wasn't Miley's brother, he'd think of me as some kid who liked chocolate shakes way too much. Okay, maybe that was true, but that wasn't the point. But since he was Miley's brother, to him I was officially nothing more than his baby sister's best friend... who liked chocolate shakes way too much. And then if he somehow found out how I felt, he would just shrug it off as some meaningless childhood crush... or worse, be disgusted by it.

None of these thoughts registered consciously to me. I was used to them. Just a vague sense of the words cropped up inside me whenever I so much as read the name "Andrew Jackson" in my History textbook. It was worse sometimes than others. The middle of History class wasn't very bad, but when I found myself thinking about it more deeply at ten-o-clock, waiting in my bed for sleep to overtake me, the feeling of emptiness inside me increased greatly.

What did register consciously to me was the dilemma of what to watch.

"Something scary," I said immediately.

"Good call," he answered. I couldn't help but feel unnaturally good about his agreeing with me. "What've we got here?" he said to himself, rummaging through Miley's DVDs. "No... no... no... sheesh, Miley, do you have anything scary?"

"Forgive me for not relishing the emotion of fear," retorted Miley.

Jackson turned back to his search. "Hey, here's something," he said after a few seconds, holding up a darkly colored DVD case with something blurry and green on front that I couldn't make out from the other side of the room. The letters were also very thin, so I couldn't read it. "Miles, how'd my copy of Alien 3 get in your room?"

She shrugged. "Maybe it burst out of our chest while you were asleep one night and crawled in here." This earned a small chuckle from Oliver. "I didn't even know you had that movie."

"I haven't watched it yet. I think I got it last Christmas. Maybe Dad was sorting through the movies we got and accidentally put it in your pile. Either way, we've got something to watch now."

"Are you sure you wanna do that?" asked Oliver cautiously.

"Yeah," said Jackson. "Why not?"

"Oh yes, please tell us," I said with a smile. "You're not scared, are you?" I happened to know that the same aunt who had brought about his fear of gum had showed him the first Alien when he was just a baby. However, since dealing with the Alien movies happened a lot less than dealing with gum, this particular phobia was as of yet unknown to his girlfriend, who was currently looking at him curiously.

He looked nervous for a moment, then swelled up his chest and tilted his chin up to the air. "Pshh, no," he said in a voice much deeper than normal. "I, uh, just wanted to make sure you guys wouldn't be too scared." As if to prove the point more, he put an arm around Miley comfortingly.

By the time it was half an hour into the movie, he had withdrawn the hand so that she wouldn't be able to feel it shaking.

The tone of the movie was, like its two predecessors, very dark and eerie. After an extremely chilling opening credits sequence, it begins with the main character, Ripley, fresh out of the action of Aliens crashing on some remote prison world. Once the people there wake her up, they inform her that all the friends she had made from the last movie had died in the crash. Ouch.

But there's an even bigger twist. At the same time as them having a funeral for the Marine and little girl who died, a dog starts acting all funny. Before long he's on the floor thrashing around, when - splat - an Alien pops out of its chest, totally covered in blood.

As for me, the whole thing could have been a lot worse. Despite the inward groan I had restrained when it was suggestested we watch a sci-fi movie (no matter how allegedly scary it was supposed to be), I was enjoying myself. The movie was mildly interesting, and with Miley and Oliver sitting next to each other, that left me free to sit next to Jackson. I probably would have been a lot more scared (not to mention disgusted) at the sight of a cute little dog practically exploding if he hadn't been beside me.

Staying awake was no problem, either. Although my sugar rush had officially ended, I was naturally hyper. I stayed up a long time and slept very little. It was in my nature. I also still had a treasure trove of sugary goodness to help. Whenever I felt my eyes start to droop, all I had to do was take one sip of Coke, one bite of a Hershey bar, and all tiredness instantly left and stayed that way for another twenty minutes.

So now the Alien had been loose for some time, and I knew enough about the series to know that Aliens grow up very quickly. Some dude was doing something in this big tunnel that was angled slightly downward into a giant fan. He looked down a little tunnel branching off it and saw something move. Immediately I knew what it was, but that was the thing about horror movies; you know something bad's gonna happen, but you've gotta keep watching, just to make sure. And sometimes the filmmakers take advantage of it and fake you out, and - at the expense of the moment - nothing bad happens, save that you just got duped.

Not this time, though. The guy started sticking his head down the hole. From the way he was talking to it, I surmised that he must have thought it was his dog. Since we already saw the dog die, now we pretty much knew for sure it was the Alien.

And yet, it was exciting. You now know for a fact he's gonna die, but it still keeps you enthralled until you see it with your own eyes. The magic of horror movies, I mused. My heart was beating harder as the seconds passed. I became increasingly aware of the fact that the lights were off. With every word he spoke to it, every step he took closer, the tension built up more, and more, and-

The Alien lunged at him. A long, toothed rod shot out of its mouth, punching messily through his skull. The man screamed.

At that exact moment, the door swung open. We all screamed. Without thinking, I grabbed onto Jackson, who grabbed back at the same time.

The dark figure who had opened the door reached out and flicked the light switch. Instantly, it was revealed to be none other than Mr. Stewart, in a thoroughly non-intimidating t-shirt and pair of pajama pants. I instantly felt ashamed of myself for being scared.

"Can y'all please keep it down?" he requested tiredly. "It's past two o' clock and I'm trying to sleep."

"Sorry, daddy," apologized Miley. She obediently turned down the volume a few notches after the man in the movie slid down the tunnel before being sliced to bloody ribbons by the fan.

"Thank you." He turned to me. "Keep an eye on them two," he said while pointing offhandedly at Miley and Oliver. It was part of the long-time deal; I had to be present at any overnight thing Miley and Oliver were at so they wouldn't be too tempted to do anything more than kissing, if you know what I mean. It was a bedroom, after all.

"And Miley and Oliver, do the same for them." This time he was gesturing to Jackson and I. Before either of us could say anything, he bid us goodnight with a yawn and shut the door.

I was about to ask nobody in particular what he meant by that when I answered myself; Jackson and I hadn't let go of each other.

I quickly did so and made sure I looked anywhere but at him, partly so he couldn't see how red my face became. The TV screen made a good tool for this.

The rest of the movie passed pretty uneventfully. After the Alien killed almost all the characters, they killed it by dropping it in molten lead then spraying water all over it, making it explode. However, the main character had another Alien inside her body, so she jumped into the vat of lead and killed herself just as it burst out of her chest. As the credits began to roll, Oliver, rather hastily, ejected the movie and turned the lights on.

"That was pretty good," said Jackson.

"Yeah," agreed Oliver, who almost managed to keep the shakiness out of his voice.

"So, you weren't scared, Oliver?" I asked suavely.

"Come on, are you kidding? That wasn't scary at all."

"Riiiiight."

Oliver stuck his tongue out at me quickly while Miley wasn't looking, then turned his back in order to feast on a bag of Cheetos. I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. I knew who it was immediately, because my skin tingled where it was touched. I looked at Jackson for the first time since the whole hugging incident to be greeted by a crafty-looking wink.

Jackson slowly crawled over to Oliver, making sure he didn't make a sound. Miley and I watched with interest. Then, when he was less than a foot behind him, he grabbed Oliver by the shoulders and made a screech that sounded remarkably like the Alien from the movie right in his ear.

Oliver reflexively threw the Cheetos in the air with a decidedly unmasculine scream of terror. Everybody except him burst into laughter, me most of all, as the Cheetos rained down all over the floor.

"Well," said Jackson after he and Oliver had cleaned up the Cheetos (with their mouths), "I think I'm gonna go to bed now. My aim is to be awake by two o' clock tomorrow."

"I see you're trying to get up earlier," observed Miley. Her sarcasm, however, appeared to be lost on her brother.

"Yep. Goodnight, everybody." With that, he walked out and shut the door.

Despite the natural sinking feeling I got when he left my presence, I was still quite cheerful when I said, "Okay, guys, how about another pillowfight?"

Miley and Oliver exchanged a scared glance before turning back to me. "Goodnight, Lilly," they said at the same time.

We each crawled into our respective night-dwellings: Oliver and I in our sleeping bags, Miley in her bed. Oliver slept on the left side of the bed, I slept on the right.

"Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

"But I'm not tired."

"I said goodnight!"

"Fine. Goodnight."

Predictably, I was the one who wasn't tired. Still, I tried to force myself to go to sleep by closing my eyes and trying to keep any thought from entering my head. This attempt was doomed from the start, however, as it was pretty much impossible for something or another to not be going through my mind at any given point. Tonight's topic: Jackson and I hugging. As much as I tried to prevent it, the scene kept playing itself over and over in my head, which in turn quickened my pulse to a point where all essence of tiredness I had previously built up was destroyed.

Perhaps that was the reason why I was able to stay up long enough to hear Miley and Oliver start whispering to each other. I was very curious as to what they were talking about, especially since it was probably none of my business, but I couldn't hear what they were saying, nor could I get any closer without them noticing.

As much as I tried to convince myself they were just flirting with each other anyway, I felt a strange sense of unease as to what they could possibly be talking about. I had no idea why; I just kind of sensed it.

Eventually, as their whispering continued, I drifted off into dreams where Aliens ate Cheetos, Miley and Oliver never refused pillowfights, and there was nothing holding me back from Jackson.