Hey. 'Nother one shot. I know, I know, I need to do other stuff. But for some reason I've become really hooked on the idea of getting to 189 Virals stories, so that in the total list of Book fics, Virals moves up a position, past North and South Eleven to go, peoples. Plus, I think one shots are good because they can deal with separate topics and readers don't end up hanging for ages, waiting for an author to update, when in fact the author has moved on. I personally like multi chapters, but there are far too many incomplete mini novellas out there, so here's... yes... another one shot. I don't own anything except the idea. Heads up: not much plot line.

December thirty-first. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand, and then my hand on my jeans. Winter in South Carolina - barely above fifty degrees, but I'd already tossed my jacket and was considering a change into shorts. Whitney had briefly remade the house. Christmas only lasted twenty-four hours, but she'd stayed for the whole week and, as far as I could tell, hadn't left yet.

In the days leading up to Christmas, she'd decked out the whole house in red and green. I could barely move for mistletoe and quite frankly our Christmas Tree took up more space than my entire bathroom - thank God Whitney had left it in the lounge. Not that I wanted my eye being poked out anywhere else in the house either, but I noticed Whitney had opted to direct us rather than help Kit and I drag Mr Fir up the stairs.

Even I had to admit, when I bounded downstairs at six in the morning on the twenty-fifth, and the massive tree loomed over a promising pile of presents, covered in shimmering red baubles and colourful fairy lights, crowned by the golden star, it had looked spectacular. Especially in the setting - our lounge floor was made of polished wood, the windows had been framed in silver and gold tinsel and smaller decorations sat proudly around the room, showing off before their eleven month break. I'd snapped a few pictures. You can never be too old for Christmas, although my friends would probably - outwardly - disagree. I'd fetched the milk and cookies before thundering back up the stairs to get Kit.

He'd seemed stunned at my bouncy, vibrant attitude so early in the morning, but then again, our first Christmas as father and daughter was bound to bring surprises. My usual lethargic grunts and sleepy stumbling had been replaced by a bubbling of enthusiasm, and literally bouncing off the walls. Mom was big on Christmas. I'd always be the first up and we'd run to our little tree and have hours of excitement, then crash at around nine am from the early start.

Guess Kit never had a teenage daughter before.

I was slightly horrified to see Whit and Kit in the same bed, but brushed it off to usher them down four flights of stairs to the tree. I solemnly served the milk and cookies, then we divided the presents and got right to it.

Whitney bought me a necklace that is actually pretty nice - not that I'd admit that. A simple silver chain with a charm, not too bulky, pretty awesome design. Aunt Tempe's present took the cake, though - forensic chemistry sets beyond my wildest dreams.

Be jealous, boys.

Now, though, six days later, Whitney had decided that the inhabitants of Morris needed another community celebration: a bonfire in celebration of New Years. Her instructions were to gather all the wrapping paper and other flammable leftovers and pile 'em up, then chuck on a match. I was looking forward to it - I had personally bought Hi nine packets of discount marshmallows for Christmas, and Whitney was cooking. Should be a tasty night, at least.

But Dearest Whit had decreed that for New Years, the Christmas decorations had to go. I'd been running up and down four flights of stairs all morning, collecting Whitney's miscellaneous decorations and shoving them into bags and boxes. And we hadn't even started on the hulking fir tree.

I hoped Kit was getting a stepladder. We needed it for the star.

Wearily, I unplugged the fairy lights and began to unwind. I had to physically walk around the tree to uncoil the Christmas lights, and after a few laps I knew my hair was full of pine needles and I probably looked like a carrot-coloured porcupine. Such is the sacrifice you have to make for Whit when she is planning a party. I had time to get the needles out later.

When I'd finally coiled the lights and bagged them, I made a start on the baubles. It was pretty slow going, since I'd been warned that the decorations were glass and not to be dropped. Ten minutes of painstaking work later, I barely managed to clear a quarter of the tree.

Kit showed up with that stepladder, and he made a start on clearing the baubles off of the back of the tree. "Why'd we even put baubles here?" he complained. "This side of the tree is facing the wall."

I giggled. "No idea. Whitney decorated, didn't she?"

Kit bit back a laugh. "Cut her some slack. She was excited. She hasn't had to accommodate a kid for Christmas in years."

I grinned. "Well, she pulled it off." Kit agreed.

With two people, the work went faster, and we had the whole tree bare in fifteen minutes - aside from the star.

"You want to take it down?" Kit offered the stepladder.

"Nah. I put it up."

"Oh, go on."

I obliged, lifting the star carefully from its position and handing it down to Kit. He placed it gently in its box and packed it away with the other decorations. Kit held up a hand to help me off the stepladder, but just as I reached out to grasp it, the doorbell rang, and Kit turned. I put some of my weight on a hand that wasn't there, and cried out as I tumbled off the stepladder, crashing gracelessly to the floor. Pain knifed through my ankle and I cried out.

"Tory!" Kit crouched down, concerned. "Hold on a moment," he yelled to the door as the bell rang again.

"It's fine," I told him, waving him off. "I'll be fine."

Kit looked at me doubtfully, but headed off to answer the door. I pulled myself up into a standing position, keeping all my weight off my ankle as Kit opened the door for Lorelei Devers. She saw me standing there, favouring one leg. "It can wait," she told Kit, backing out of the house. "You'd best take a look at that foot." She pointed to me, and I waved.

Kit closed the door as Mrs Devers turned away from our house."Something for work," he explained. "Now how's the leg?"

I shrugged. "Hurts a bit." It was, in fact, throbbing, but I doubted it was serious. Sprained at the most. Kit examined it, comparing me to an injured turtle, and then lightly bandaged it and handed me an ice pack.

"Take it easy for the next few hours," he told me. "I don't want any weight on that ankle for twenty minutes at the least."

I nodded and smiled innocently. "Have fun with the tree."

He groaned and went to enlist Whitney's help. When he returned, she looked slightly gloomy at the prospect. "Might want to ditch the heels, Whitney," I advised. "We don't want you turning your ankle as well. Then Kit would have to move the tree by himself."

Kit looked horrified, so Whit grudgingly removed her heels. I watched the two of them staggering along with the massive fir. I discreetly snapped a picture and texted it to the boys. I captioned it guess who just rolled her ankle?

HS: Whtneys incapacitated?

VB: *facepalm*

VB: ME IDIOT

HS: lol

VB: :|

VB: Thx

HS: ...u ok?

VB: meh. sprain

I turned off my phone and pocketed it, whistling for Coop.

Morning grew into mid-morning, and mid-morning sprouted wings and became a - slightly - warmer afternoon. The hours marched on and Whitney scrambled to finish preparations for the bonfire. At 6:00 exactly, the three of us marched/walked/hobbled out of the house and towards the beach. The bonfire would be held on the sand as far away from the water as possible - luckily it was low tide, so the Morris community had a wide expanse of sand to settle down on. The Stolowitskis set up camp chairs near the pile of inflammables, and the rest of the families followed suit. The boys and I opted for a large picnic blanket spread over the sand. Hi and Shelton sat down on the rug, while Ben added newspaper and dead leaves to the pile and arranged it so that oxygen could easily fuel the flame. Kit hurried over to help.

I lay down on the blanket and watched the sun set over the ocean. All around me was almost chaotic - Shelton trying to stop Hi from eating the marshmallows I'd given him before dinner, someone spearing sausages onto toasting forks, ready to cook in the bonfire, dogs racing around, adults talking and Ben scrambling to find matches - but I felt peaceful, and a sense of belonging settles over me like a cosy blanket. I turned lazily to referee the argument between Everyone's Favourite Bozos. Why be a rich, stuck up moron like Chance when you could have something like this? It was perfect - all we needed now were the elusive matches.

Five minutes of lazy squabbling later, someone procured a cigarette lighter and a small cheer went up. Whitney, as the host, was ushered forward to light the bonfire, and she blushed and giggled, totally in her element. It took a few tries to light the fire, but once one of the sheets of newspaper caught, it was only a matter of seconds before our fire was a foot high. Another cheer, this one louder. Someone held the fork of sausages over the flames. Hi debated whether he could start cooking the marshmallows yet.

Whitney served up plates of salad and barbecue, and we all took a fire-roasted sausage. The flames were huge - five or six feet high, and we still had a collection of branches to stack into the bonfire. I threw a stick or two in myself, and watched as sparks flew.

Around eight-thirty, Shelton's iPhone came out, and we had a selfie-fest in front of the flames. There were at least four photos of me I knew I'd regret, but we were so hyped on the energy of the evening I didn't care. I didn't stop grinning the whole time.

Once we'd polished off the fire-toasted bacon Tom Blue had brought, Hi brought out the marshmallows and there was a mad scramble - not just by us kids - for the pile of sticks, everyone wanting to find a sharp one. Shelton opted for a toasting fork, clearly worried about eating off a stick, but everyone else was totally getting into it. I hadn't had this much fun since Christmas.

By the time it got to quarter to eleven, we'd momentarily run out of things to talk about, and someone started singing I love the flowers, I love the daffodils as a joke, but someone else joined in,and soon we were all singing the ridiculous campfire song like a pack of girl scouts. It all fell apart after a minute from the laughing, but that was probably a good thing because nobody seemed to know the same version of the song, and I don't think there were more than two people present who could actually hold a tune.

"That was worse than happy birthday," remarked Shelton. "Nobody ever sings that in the same key."

Ben snorted. "And nobody ever finishes in the same key they started in."

I popped a toasted marshmallow into my mouth. "Where'd Hi go?"

"I think he went looking for biscuits."

"Biscuits? He was so hyped to eat the marshmallows!"

When Hi returned, we opened a fourth packet of marshmallows and made s'mores. I'd never had one before, and tried it warily. The boys watched for my reaction. I took a bite and chewed slowly. My eyes widened. I swallowed the s'more in a hurry and made my verdict. "It's like a mouthful of fabulousness." I reached for a second. Ben chortled and held the chocolate coated biscuits out of my reach. I turned the puppy eyes on him, and in the second it took for him to soften, Hi snatched the biscuits and handed them to me. We high-fived wordlessly and I poked my tongue out. Ben shrugged and ate the final marshmallow.

Hi's mouth dropped open and he turned out stare at me like a wounded puppy. I sniggered at the expression on his face. "Another five packets behind you, Hiram."

At about ten past eleven, the sugar high kicked in and the four of us ran around like mad lunatics (including me on my fast-healing ankle), laughing at nothing whatsoever. We invented a new 'tag' game, which we decided to name 'Thingymajiggy From Outer Space', because why not, as Shelton put it. Half past eleven and the sugar high dived, which ended up with the four of us almost going to sleep in a huge pile, but to our astonishment the adults seemed to be on a sugar high as well, and were having a marshmallow fight. So of course we had to join in that. Ruth revealed a Toblerone bar she'd been hoarding since Christmas, and so we had some of that, and by quarter to midnight, our sugar levels were skyrocketing again.

Once we'd all calmed down a bit, someone initiated a whole-group storytelling session, and the theme appeared to be 'true story'. I supplied one or two from back when I was young and remarkably stupid, but I think we were all most astonished at one story Lorelei Devers had to tell.

"I was in my last year of high school," she began, "and my best friend Jocelyn and I were so excited for this camp that hey allowed us to go on. It was a week long camp and it promised to be the best fun we'd have all year. So, when we went on the camp, we decided to have a midnight feast on the second last night, as was custom back then... back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth."

"I'm not sure I want to hear this," Shelton muttered, and I laughed quietly. Lorelei continued. "We had our feast all organised and sorted, and we were so ready for it. I was so thrilled to do it. But then, when I went to her tent on that second last night, she wasn't there. I learned the next morning she'd spent the night with a Mr Rogerson."

I blinked. Lorelei's highschool best friend had been... like that? Not what I'd expected at all.

"I was rather upset that she ditched me for a man," Lorelei suppressed a laugh. "So on the last night, I went into Jocelyn's tent while she was asleep, and chopped her ponytail off."

Shelton let out a shocked laugh. "What?!"

"I bought a lottery ticket once," Tom Blue said. "My boss at the time was threatening to fire me if I didn't give him the ticket, and I enjoyed the job, so I gave it to him." Tom shook his head. "Six million dollars. And my blackmailing boss got it."

I winced. Six million - ouch. It's not like Ben's family couldn't have used the money, either.

Someone finished their story about a pet rabbit, and then Ruth announced loudly and excitedly, "It's nearly time for the countdown!" Whitney squealed loudly and scrambled for her cell, to stream live radio.

We sat for a few minutes, listening vaguely to a news reporter reading a list of the year's greatest achievements. Some were pretty entertaining, some mildly disturbing, some downright terrifying. Ben tapped his foot impatiently in the darkness of the night, illuminated by the dancing flames and the moon. The live radio crackled away, and the waves on the shore washed in and out, and I nearly fell asleep because of my sugar high falling.

Shelton poked me, hard, when the countdown reached fifteen. The news reporter began grimly, then an edge of excitement crept into his voice. We all joined in.

"Ten... nine... eight..."

A year without my mom.

"Seven... six..."

A new home, a new surroundings. New friends.

"Five... four... three..."

"Infected by a crazy virus.

"Two... one..."

A soft smile.

"HAPPY NEW YEAR!" We were all hugging each other at once, delirious and slightly maniacal with the lack of sleep, charged with excitement. Kit set off fireworks and we watched them flare in the sky, and then we all cheered and hugged each other again, making New Year's resolutions that were sure to be forgotten in the morning.

By the time we managed to pack up everything and dose the fire, it was quarter past midnight and I wasn't the only one suffering from a severe case of the yawns. Whitney, Kit and I trooped towards the house. I was so floored I nearly forgot to get Coop - luckily my wolfdog had the sense to follow when everyone else was leaving.

Wordlessly, we piled the leftovers in the fridge and then stumbled upstairs. I nearly lost count on the way up, but I found my room eventually.

I didn't even bother getting changed before crashing. Long day. Long year.

But it was worth it.