Obviously I'd like to disclaim all rights to iCarly. The show and characters belong to Dan Schneider, Schneider's Bakery and Nickelodeon.
April 13 is National Scrabble Day. Go figure.
"Hey, Freddison."
Sam's face wedged between 8-C's door and its frame is one Freddie knows all too well. It's an I'm bored face. Bad things have happened after giving in to it, and with only a few days before her Birthday, she's probably going to goad him into helping her hunt down her hidden presents.
"Carly had to rush Spencer to the hospital. It might be a third degree burn this time!" she near-whispered, her face radiant. No one could look that beautiful while talking about another person's pain. Not anyone that Freddie knows, anyway.
"Sounds awful," he replied, wiggling the key in the lock of 8-D. "I'll come by later to see. Ton of homework to get to."
Sam steps out and tug him away. "I. Am bored. And I just ate a whole plate of ham sandwiches, so you can turn down your anxiety dial."
His hand hung midair, reaching for the doorknob. "I will not be half responsible for anything that results from you being bored today, Sam."
She heaved a huge sigh. "I just want someone to play Scrabble with. Shit."
He pulled away from her long enough to extract his key. Hesitated. "You're kidding, right? Every time we play a board game, to either quit halfway through or knock the board clean when you're losing."
She crossed her arms. "I swear I won't this time."
He nods, tucks his key into his pocket. "Fine. One game."
The board already has a word on it. "Carly was supposed to play with me," she explained.
"B-R-O-U-H-A-H-A?"
"It's a real word!" Sam whined defensively, sitting on the couch.
He smirked. "I know it is." She threw him the bag with a little snort, but smiling. Taking the 'O', he made 'owl'. Sam rolled her eyes.
"Don't let me win."
"I'm not. Lousy rack."
"Whatever," she said, not meeting his eyes, obviously pleased. From the 'L' she spelled 'still' backwards and gleefully scribbled in her points.
In a surprisingly amicable silence, they continued until all of the letters were gone. Carly and Spencer – sporting very anticlimactic fist degree burn – even managed to look a little shocked when they walked in to Sam loudly tallying up the score (she beat him by three points).
Before bed, he gets a text message from Sam. It's a picture of their completed board. He smiles at it for a long time, then lets his thumb hover over the delete command.
*
It's only later, when he wakes up in the middle of the night to look at it, that he notices.
Spread along the bottom, where most of her words have clustered, is a message.
S-H-E
S-T-I-L-L
L-O-V-E-S
Y-O-U
