09.04.2016

The Graysons had slowly become Uncle Blake and Aunt Sasha's closest friends. They would meet almost every week and now, on the last weekend before school started again, they had invited us all to stay over at their house in Long Island.

Irene is waiting in the garden when we arrive at their humongous mansion. A flash of light coming from behind the bushes grabs my attention. Out of the green leaves emerges Oliver. His hand holds a large camera and he is taking photos of the flowers.

"I need you to go and study before the party, Oliver. All those answers better be correct," Irene calls out to him. He groans but leaves.

My last meeting with Oliver was brief. Even though he had spent more time with Harry and Alex when we last visited, they didn't know much about him either. Besides everything he had so generously informed us of at dinner, of course. Which didn't reveal much regarding his actual personality. Except maybe, that he talks a lot and is awfully chipper.

Harry had told me that even though he had been nice enough to take him and Alex to his game room, he had actually spent the whole time playing video games with his friends online, leaving Alex and him to pretty much fend for themselves. Oliver might not have been as tall as his brother but he was still a lot older than the boys. Of course, with that much of a difference in age, they didn't really have that much in common. So who could blame him.

Irene and Aunt Sasha get busy planning the party of the season while Simon and Uncle Blake sit to have a drink before heading out into the mini golf course in their backyard. The conversation turns to school with Uncle Blake gushing over Alex and his straight A's in the previous grade.

"Oliver has been giving us a lot of trouble in Math," Simon sighs. "We've even gotten him extra tutoring over the summer but it's still the same."

"Well, Mel is great at Math. And they're in the same grade. Why doesn't she help him out?" Uncle Blake offers, forcing me to look over from my phone.

"Really? Melody, do you think you could do it?" Simon asks me, taking me by surprise. I am not used to people asking me so nicely. Usually, I'm just ordered around.

"I guess I could help," I shrug, trying to sound as polite as possible. Although, the look Uncle Blake gives me at the moment doesn't make it seem like I have much of a choice.

"That's great. Thank you," Simon smiles.

I get up, sliding my phone into my jeans pocket.

"Oh, his room is upstairs. First door on the right in the left hallway."

I knock at the door and wait until I hear footsteps reach closer and open it. Oliver is surprised to see me. Which is not surprising.

"Your dad sent me to help you with homework or something," I inform.

He groans in irritation but steps aside to let me in.

I glance around his huge room. A large TV is attached to one wall with a PlayStation plugged right below it. The rest of the walls are green, with black and white photographs plastered over them in different sizes. There is also a poster of Christiano Ronaldo on one corner.

"I don't know why Mom and Simon are so obsessed with me scoring well in Math," he grumbles while rushing his hands through his messy, blonde hair. He sits at the edge of his bed and his brown eyes find mine.

"I'm a photographer, not a mathematician," he gestures to the photographs surrounding him, as if his statement is as obvious as the sun shining outside.

I tilt my head and eye him.

"Are you an actual photographer or just a monkey with a DSLR?" I raise an eyebrow at him but quickly cover it with a light chuckle to make it sound like a joke. The last thing I need is to offend him.

"An actual photographer," he rolls his eyes. Luckily, he doesn't seem to be bothered much. "Come here, I'll show you," he reaches for the laptop placed on his bed and pulls it open.

I sit down next to him as he shows me a close up photo of a sunflower with a giant bee on it. My eyes widen as they take it in. I would've never thought such bright yellows could look so pretty that I couldn't look away.

"That's beautiful," I whisper.

He scrolls through them revealing photos of different flowers and stops at one with a ladybug sitting on a leaf. I feel his eyes on me as I stare at it in awe.

"These are just some I took today when you guys got here," he explains.

"Wow. I take it back. You're good," I smile at him.

He returns the smile and shuts the lid of the laptop.

"I know! But I am expected to do Math instead," he falls back onto his bed in frustration.

"Well, you're expected to pass high school," I shrug.

"Fine," he huffs, pushing the laptop off his lap and standing up. "Let's do some Math."

He leads me to his desk and sets down an extra chair for me. We spend the next hour or so trying to solve some basic algebra and trigonometry. It's not easy and after grilling Oliver for so long, one thing becomes abundantly clear: I do not have the patience to be a teacher.

Oliver groans as he fails to understand yet another equation.

"Why am I wasting time learning this when I could be using it to learn something better?"

"Yeah, like what?" I ask, curious.

He turns his head to face me, excitement masking his features.

"I've been teaching myself photoshop. Let me show you," he hurries towards his bed and grabs his laptop again before I can protest. Something about his enthusiasm rubs a spark of excitement inside me too, taking me by surprise.

He sets the laptop down on the desk so both of us can see and then starts his program.

"I'm not very good yet. Or like, even a little good," he claims nervously while we wait for it to load.

Once it's up and running, he starts clicking around while explaining the process to me.

"See I take this picture of a donkey... or wait, let's try a monkey," he grins at me and winks.

"And now here, we've got this photo of Nick looking angry. I take his face from here," he draws some things around Nick's face using I don't know what, and soon Nick's head is separated from his body and being moved around on the screen.

"And then place it here. And voila!"

He has placed Nick's head over the body of the monkey. It looks terribly fake but still hilarious. We both burst out laughing.

"That's terrible," I laugh.

"Let's do you," he raises his phone in front of my face.

I instantly cover it with my hand. "No."

"Come on. We'll pick something nice. Not a monkey, promise."

"Fine, I wanna be like a princess or something."

I smile and he snaps a picture. After transferring it to his laptop, he gets to work. We pick out a photo of Barbie to photoshop my face on. Once it's done we both stare at it in horror.

"That's officially the worst thing to happen to Barbie. I look like shit," I note.

Oliver stares at his masterpiece for a few seconds with a cocked head and then looks at me.

"You do look like shit." And we both burst into laughter again.

I didn't know in that moment, but Oliver would soon become my best friend.