Sam looks away from the current Girly Cow marathon just long enough to make an annoyed 'tch' sound at her best friend and worst frenemy. Both of them have covered the coffee table in an endless wave of textbooks, novels, notebooks, and laptops. Sam, on the other hand, is comfortably sprawled out across the floor while doing what she does best: nothing.
Doing homework. In the middle of July. Sam rolls her eyes in disgust.
"So was that assonance or consonance in the... third stanza?" Freddie asks as he studies a packet. Sam groans loudly, but no one pays any attention to her.
"Umm...let me check." Carly digs through her mountain of papers to find whichever one it is that holds the answer.
Sam, annoyed with the boring, meat-less atmosphere, slowly ventures into the kitchen. When she plops back on the living room floor with a full ham in tow, Carly and Freddie are still rambling on about who-knows-what. They're going on and on about authors and diction and motifs and iambic penta-something and none of it matters in the least.
But then there's the way Freddie watches her while she's reading, with the awed expression, how she gently places her hand on his arm while asking a question, the way he blushes ever so slightly when their eyes meet.
"I love you, you nerd!" She gushes as he cracks a particularly tough question.
'She doesn't mean it,' Sam assures herself. But that doesn't stop her hand from slipping mid-slice, sending ham chunks flying everywhere.
"Ugh, Sam!" Freddie rolls his eyes as he flicks a bit of ham from his shirt. "Is it possible for you to be a little more sophisticated?" He doesn't have to finish that sentence with "like Carly" for it to echo in her ears. She growls in response. He says something about the importance of this essay, she says something about the importance of his tick bath, but before it can turn into a real fight he just sighs.
"Why don't you just leave, Sam? You're only getting in our way."
For maybe the first time, Sam has no smart remark. She looks away slowly and pretends she has a reason for being here, that it's not because she's afraid of what they would be doing if they were alone.
Then they're back to the far-too-touchy, way-too-giggly homework session, and not even the meat can distract Sam. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, then resumes watching Girly Cow, devouring ham, and promising herself that she won't hurt Freddie, not this time.
Sam is just calming down when the nerds decide to take a break. Carly quickly makes shakes for all of them while Freddie stretches.
"You're perfect, you know that?" Freddie mutters casually as she hands the shake to him. Sam's fists suddenly clench as she freezes in place. She calms herself down long enough to slowly eat another slice of ham. She forces herself to wait at least a minute, because any less would be obvious. Once she's waited long enough, she stands up and walks over to stand directly in front of Freddie. He has no chance to react before she kicks him directly in the groin.
He drops to the floor, clutching himself, with Carly immediately at his side. With a twisted smile, Sam wonders how long a dull pain will last there. (She's hoping it will be exactly as long as every insult thrown towards her, every single one of his acts of adoration towards Carly will last in her mind.)
"What's wrong with you? Can't you see you're hurting him?" Carly yells at Sam.
And Sam just has to laugh bitterly as she storms away, because that is the most ironic thing she has ever heard.