Fork In The Road
A/N. This is a story I owed princess-warrior 17 for some time now, so here it is sister. Summer Of '12 is being worked on, but real life and writer's block have kept it at bay for awhile. Most of the backstage crew has posted stories this weekend and you should endeavor to find them as they are all well written and fantastic.
I was unhappy with the end of iCarly (I felt it was a last minute writing and very sloppy) and this angst story drifted into my head.
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The New Seattle World Mall had been built in the last half of 2020, about six months after Freddie Benson's last visit to the city. He was amazed that the place had gone to hell in the ensuing seven years. Stores had fled the massive three story structure like rats from a sinking ship. What retail giveth, the internet taketh away. The brisling three hundred plus stores that had been heralded as a boon to the Seattle economy had shrunk to just over ninety-eight in less than two years, and was now down to just sixty-three.
Freddie sat on one of the many benches that had been placed around the large center in anticipation of crowds that never came. He sipped at the white chocolate latte he had purchased from one of the many cart businesses located throughout the mall. The carts and the wears they sold were the only thing keeping the mall alive he supposed.
He was playing around on his Surface, a gift from his wife and son on Father's day, when the sound of what he thought sounded like a stampede of wild elephants came up from behind him. Four children whipped past him so fast they created a small gust of wind. The tallest of the four, all of them under the age of five he thought to himself, had flaming red hair and pushed through people like a bulldozer till the four made it to their destination, an ice cream cart.
"Woe there fireball," the vendor, he looked to be in his late fifties, said to the small mob, "what can I get you guys?"
The redheaded boy stared at the man like he was a moron and said, "Duh numbnuts we want some fucking ice cream!"
Much to the displeasure of a mall clean person several feet away from Freddie, he spit out the mouth full of latte he had and began to laugh.
"You got some mouth on you you little punk," the man said as his anger turned his face red.
"And you got a stick up your ass. Now make with the ice cream dickhead."
"You little son-of a-," the man started to say when an almost but not quite familiar woman's voice rang through the mall.
"Charlie! I told you to stay right beside me damnit!"
Freddie jerked his head around at the voice and was chilled to the bone at the sight of the woman who had shouted.
Sam Puckett, or whatever her last name was now, walked by him toward the cart and the children, her feet making a slapping sound from the flip flops she was wearing as she did. When she reached the cart she slapped the boy in the face and then did the same to the other three children. All four of the children began to cry which caught the attention of the few people in the mall.
The voice sounded for all the world like a three pack a day cigarette habit and a seven a.m. Jim Bean breakfast. It was hallow and spoke of a life that had taken a wrong turn at the fork in the road. The once carefree, strong, and beautiful Sam that he had known and loved was long gone. He didn't know this person in her place.
Her once luminous blonde hair was now a sickly cigarette stained mop that looked like a broom that had been left in the sun to long. Her graceful and admittedly curvy body was now chubby at best, fat at the most. Where her shoulders and back had been straight they now appeared stooped and worn down from a lifetime of excess and bad choices. The quick glance he got of her once bright and shining blue eyes, he had quickly brought his Surface up to hide his face from her, were flat and had long ago lost their shine. To say he was shocked would have been an understatement. He had once, and in some ways still did, love the part of this now stranger he was looking at and he began to drift back in time to the beginning of the end of Seddie.
After Carly left for Italy everything changed. Three days after her departure Sam dropped out and left Seattle for L. A. with no explanation or even a goodbye. It had stung him badly that she had done so, but like Carly he let Sam go. It was the lowest point of his life at the time.
Freddie had never been the type who made friends easily. Despite iCarly and the attention it brought to him Freddie was and had always been painfully shy. His mom had so over protected him that he found it had to relate to people and forced him into the role of wallflower. With the departure of Carly and Sam he drifted back into his shell and became a loner of sorts.
About seven months after she left Freddie got a call from Sam's new roommate Cat telling him Sam was hurt. He rushed to L.A. only to find Sam was fine and the whole thing was an attempt by Cat to make Sam jealous, and it worked. Freddie stayed in L.A. with Sam, much to his mother's dismay, till autumn and the beginning of fall classes at WSU.
Those few months were a heady time for them and were now forever locked away in his mind. It seemed like happily ever after was headed their way. Freddie was in love and thought Sam was also. He left for college with of forever in his head.
The first sign of trouble came when the nightly calls became every other night calls and then once a week calls. When they did speak he could feel the distance growing between them and that something was wrong. He tried to talk to her about it but she would clam up or hang up entirely.
Three weeks before spring break he got a call from Cat. Sam had left the apartment they shared and had taken up with a married so called writer named Charles Hamby or CH for short. CH wasn't making a living at writing, but he sure as hell was selling drugs.
Sam showed up in July of the same year at his doorstep looking haggard and high as a kite. She told him the story of the drugs he gave her, the times he would pimp her out to pay his debts, and the abuse he heaped on her mentally and physically. He took her in and things began to smooth out for them and the old dream seemed about to come true.
Five weeks later she left without leaving a note and crushed him all over again. It was the beginning of a three year pattern for them. She would go do whatever the hell she wanted to do and when things got bad would run back to him again and he'd take her in every time. He knew she was using him, but he also knew he was a willing participant in the relationship.
The last time he did so was the worst. He had taken her in again and helped her clean up only to come home and find her stoned and in bed with CH. It took every bit of strength he had to throw her out, and as he would find out later most of his savings also, but he did it. He stopped answering her calls and even transferred to another school in Tennessee so she couldn't find him. He climbed into his shell again and licked his wounds, determined to never let anyone in to hurt him again. Sam never left his mind, but he was able to file her away in a very small corner and move on.
It was one year later that in a small Visual Arts study group that he met Noel. They were both painfully shy and far more talented than the others in the study group. They were both only child, both had lost a parent, Freddie his dad and Noel her mother, and had a love for all things Galaxy Wars. They became friends and slowly opened themselves up to one another. As the trust between them grew so did a love. By the time they graduated they were living together and married a year after that. He loved Noel with all his heart, but Sam would always find a way out of her corner and into his mind again and spread her confusion to all over again.
Five years ago Nathan was born and a joy he had never known washed through Freddie's world. The tiny seed of his and Noel's love became the center of the universe and the proof, at least to Freddie, that God existed. His thoughts of Sam, while still there, were few and far between after Nathan.
The Benson clan, Freddie, Noel, Nathan, and as yet unnamed baby girl Benson, due in the spring, had come west to spend the holidays with his mom. Freddie had agreed to it only after his mother swore that Nathan wouldn't be subjected to tick baths, tofu pancakes, or nightly body scrubs. He had to admit it was funny watching his mom fight a herculean battle not to disinfect all three of them and cook real food.
He lowered the Surface and watched Sam and her brood wreak havoc on the ice cream cart man. Freddie felt the man's pain. One Puckett, or whatever name she was now, was bad enough, but five, even Satan himself would scream and run from them.
I should at least say hi to her, he thought.
He didn't move at all. He couldn't. She wasn't his Sam anymore. He knew if he said hi that the Sam he knew would be gone forever and this new one, this imposter of his Sam, would be what he had left of her. He couldn't use this Sam. He needed Sam to be what she had been and not what she had become. It would break his heart to only have this Sam in his mind. He had spent many nights asking God to bring her back to him and had always thought God hadn't listened to him. He would have moved heaven and earth to make her his.
"Dude," the unmistakable voice of his son Nathan pulled him out of himself and back to the now. "Look what I found for nanna for Christmas."
Nathan held up a book and Freddie felt an ear to ear smile cross his face as he read the title:
Infectious Ticks Of North America
"Dude that is the perfect gift for her." He picked the boy up and sat him on his lap as he watched Noel waddle up to them.
It was a sublime and pristine moment and he finally understood things clearly for the first time. All those years ago, when he thought God wasn't listening to him, God had heard him and blessed him by giving him what he needed instead of what he wanted.
Noel smiled as she reached the bench.
"Well I'm to pooped to pop mister man," she rubbed her stomach as she spoke. "Let's go home."
Smiling, Freddie stood, Nathan in his arms, and kissed his wife.
"Let's," he said.
As they headed down the right side of the mall he noticed that Sam and her brood were heading down the left side and he smiled and thought:
Goodbye Sam.
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"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
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Maybe not my best, but I hope it's not my worst. I'm hoping this helps me get the flow going again, so be kind, LOL.
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Love to the Backstage bullpen, you know who you are, for the wild chats and great fun we are having being petty, childish, and just plain mean sometimes, it feels so good. I wouldn't miss the chats for anything.
Writtenbyabdex: Thanks for the shoulder to cry on and the whoopee cushion to make me laugh.
If you're looking for some great reading I have to say that anything by these writers will fit the bill:
KingxLeon21
Dwyn Arthur
Heartlines
TheWrtrInMe
WhiteKnightro
WildPomegranate
Princess-Warrior 17
eleanorr1gby
As always review and let me know what you think.