Prologue
THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN A BOY WHO HATES YOU
A boy who loves you.
Sam thought that it had been a particularly evil brand of torture when she found herself falling for her enemy turned co-worker turned best friend. It had happened so gradually, a series of moments that piled one on top of the other until she couldn't deny it anymore. She, Sam Puckett wanted Freddie Benson. The boy she had used as her physical and emotional punching bag, the boy she had crowned Queen of the Nubs, her first kiss, her unexpected confidant and sometimes partner-in-crime. It was a bone deep longing that she felt for him, something that she never would have thought herself capable of feeling. And so she had made a move, or she tried to. She made an effort to be nicer to him, offering to help on his project, grabbing at any excuse to spend time with him and using Brad as a convenient buffer. But that had backfired when their Mood App worked a little too well and Carly and Freddie made the assumption that she was in love with Brad.
She had a plan. She was going to be nice to him, she was going to spend time with him without Carly, she was going to show him that she had grown up, she could be more than the bully that constantly picked on him. But of course, Sam never had the patience to completely follow through on plans. Instead, she impulsively kissed him in the heat of the moment and then ran away and sought refuge in a mental hospital.
But of course he couldn't leave well enough alone. She had given him an out when they had talked in her room at Troubled Waters. She'd told him that she liked him but didn't want to be his stupid little girlfriend (translation: "I know you don't want me"). She thought that they could just pretend it never happened and go back to how it was before, that was why she had agreed to leave. But no, Freddie Benson had to be the most stubborn, strong willed, annoying, unpredictable, and completely wonderful boy on Earth. He just had to kiss her in front of millions of iCarly viewers right when she was fully expecting him to mock her for her unreturned feelings. It felt like every single carefully built defense that she had put up over the years had gotten knocked down with that kiss.
Sam had spent two years denying her feelings, bottling them up, wrestling them with all the strength she had. In some of her weakest moments, she would imagine what it would be like if Freddie returned her feelings. But it would never last long, she'd always put a stop to her daydreams almost as soon as they had begun because she knew it was impossible. Even when she had put her plan into action, she'd done it knowing full well that she'd get rejected at the end of it. She thought that maybe if she knew for sure, if she could hear it from his lips, that she had no chance of ever being with him then she could move on. It would break her heart and hurt her pride more than a little bit, but it had to be better than never knowing and always wondering 'what if?'
But no, instead he had to kiss her and date her and make her fall even more in love with him and then break up with her and tell her that he loves her in the same breath.
And now Sam was living in a whole new level of hell. One where she knew exactly what it felt like to be held in Freddie's arms, to have him whisper in her ear in that ridiculously sexy voice, to have him kiss her and look at her like she was beautiful. She thought that crushing on him was bad, but this longing for what she once had was worse. Who would have thought that having Freddie Benson love her would feel worse than having him hate her?
It was a punishment of the highest order, or karma coming back to bite her in the ass. And yeah, maybe she did deserve it, for all the mean things she's done, the pranks she's pulled, the people she had hurt. It didn't mean she didn't reserve the right to complain about it all.
But Sam Puckett had a plan and this time she was going to stick to it. Tomorrow was the first day of school and the start of senior year. Freddie Benson was going to be hers again before senior prom.
A/N: Hey look, my first multi-chapter fic in this fandom. We'll see how it goes. The quote at the top is from The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I saw it floating around on Tumblr and I just had to use it, even though this story in no way resembles the plot of The Book Thief. If you've read it, hopefully you're relieved by that lol. It's an amazing book, it's just very sad. Anyways, I also took the title of this from something I saw on Tumblr and that will be explained a little later on.