She craves her words like the addicts crave just one more high or one more handful or pills or just one more night of bloody bliss in their secret love affair with self destruction. She craves her touch like somebody who's gone for weeks without food and she craves to simply breathe the same air as her like the pathetic fool that she can't help but make herself into.
She sits for hours and looks for some other hidden meaning behind every single word that comes out of her perfect mouth. She lays in bed at night and hears nothing but her voice while she holds herself and pretends that her hands weren't hers.
She wishes that she were as brave as she makes herself off to be. She wishes that she could kiss people the way that she punches them--without a care in the world about what'll happen next. She wishes that Carly Shay were worth just as much as everybody else in the world to her: absolutely nothing.
She sits and writes page after page covered in nothing but "Sam loves Carly," as though writing it just one more time will make anything change. As though Carly would ever feel the same way. As though Carly's watching everything she does the same way she watches Carly and maybe one day she'll confess her undying love.
She tries not to stay at home because she's really very welcome there. She tries not to stay with Carly too much because she never wants to be anything but welcome there, and even though Carly's told her so many times that she could come over at 3 in the morning and she'd still be happy to see her, she's still scared that Carly Shay's a liar.
She presses her lips to her hand like a little girl who's never been kissed before would. And Sam Puckett wishes every night at 11:11 for the same stupid little girl's dream.
She knows she's obsessed to a point where it's just unhealthy and creepy and not even sweet anymore, but she can't help it. It's just how she works. She's been this way for months and it usually gets better by now but it hasn't. It's just gotten worse and worse and worse and she doesn't know if she's going to be able to take it much longer, which sounds stupid and makes most people want to tell her to just shut up, since she's only a sixteen year old girl and sixteen year old girls aren't supposed to know the first thing about love or need or anything, they're just supposed to pretend, but she isn't pretending. She hates the way that she feels like somebody's stabbing her in the heart every night when she lays alone in bed and wishes Carly were there with her, and she doesn't even want sex anymore, she just wants to lay there and hug her and tell her that she loves her. And if they want to tell her that she doesn't know the first thing about anything, then fine, but whatever she's feeling it's driving her crazy.
And even if it's breaking her heart, if love is insanity, she'll sit in an asylum for the rest of her life.
--
"Sam?"
Carly's voice cuts through her like razor blades, and it's even worse when she's been lost in her fantasies of love and treehouses and forever and she's gone completely from reality, and then all of a sudden she's been snatched back into the real world and nothing's ever the way it happens in her mind in the real world so everything hurts even more.
"Yeah?" She's saying and she's used to it, so she can pretend. She'll just sit there with her makeup and her masks and her recorded voice that she's played so many times it's going to start breaking soon, and she doesn't know if she's going to be able to record it again, and she'll act like everything's the way it's always been.
Her life's got an orange lens over it. People only ever see the sunny, warm side. They never see the thunderstorms and the rain and the fucking hurricanes. They just think she's one little ball of sunshine.
"Did you hear a word I just said?"
"Nope!"
Carly's sighing and shaking her head and most people hate when their smart best friends start to act like their mothers, but Sam secretly loves it. Half the reason she never shows Carly her homework and pretends she's never done it is just to get that look from her. It's the most adorable thing she's ever seen, she can't help it.
"You're going to absolutely fail chemistry and you're going to have the worst GPA ever and you're not going to get into a college and you're going to look back and blame me." She's saying simply, pulling open Sam's textbook angrily and slamming her hand down on the page she's supposed to be studying.
She loves how Carly acts like her mother. It's the sweetest thing and it shows just how much she cares, but sometimes she wishes that Carly would understand that she's really not all that stupid, she just doesn't care that much about her grades. They're actually pretty decent, she just doesn't care and she doesn't want to be some annoying nerd and she doesn't want Carly to stop studying with her, so she sits there and erases all the A's and B's and turns them into D's and Fs and it sounds stupid but it works.
"So?"
"Sam.."
And she's feeling herself breaking again. She wishes she were strong and she could sit here and just talk to her best friend about chemistry, but she can't.
She wishes she could just lay there with her and tell her everything that's perfect and everything she's feeling and she wishes that everything could work out perfectly, the way every girl says when her boyfriend dumps her or her crush says that he doesn't like her. She wishes that she was every other girl and she'd be over Carly by now.
"Yeah?"
"You're ridiculous."
If only Carly knew.
"But you know you love me."
And Sam smiles hopefully at her and Carly smiles back and it's the same smile that they've been giving each other for years on the surface, but there's something different this time. There's something so incredibly differently about it, but it's so the same that Sam doesn't even know what it is.
--
She spills out words like blood from somebody too far gone to change their mind. She sits and she wishes she could cry and she wishes she could die from wanting her, but she can't and she won't, so she'll write and she'll write and she'll write until she just can't anymore. She'll write her heart out, until her fingers blister and nothing even makes sense anymore, and then she'll finally be able to sleep.
She writes of what she supposes is love and what must be heartbreak and the way Carly's always on her mind, and she asks if that isn't love, then what is love? If her obsession is mere obsession and it doesn't stand a chance next to love, then what in god's name does love feel like? And she wonders if this simple obsession is driving her so insane, then will she live through falling in love?
She wishes that she could be the person she pretends to be. She wants to be the girl that nothing matters to. She wants to be the girl that laughs on the inside whenever she laughs outside and the girl who's never sad and the girl who never wanted anything and never needed anything.
Sam sat and wished in paragraphs and pretty words that she could be anybody but her. She spews out words drenched in teenage depression and self questioning and wondering if anything she feels now is going to matter at all a few months from now, and if it does, is it still just obsession?
Carly's everywhere. She sees her hair whipping through hallways behind the girl that wasn't even there, and her voice echos down the cold empty hallways of the hospital they brought her to when they decided she was a danger to herself, which she doesn't even understand because she hasn't cut herself and she hasn't taken pills and she hasn't beaten anybody up, she just cries at night when nobody's listening, and nobody's a danger to themselves because they're a bit heart broken, right?
And they ask her why she's so sad and she tells them that she isn't sad, she's just a bit lonely and she spends too much time thinking about all the things that she wishes would happen, and then they tell her that that means that she's sad.
But she isn't sad. Sad is when you mope and you mope and you can't do anything and it happens when somebody you love dies, and nobody's died and Sam's too young to love anybody, anyway, so there's no way she could be sad.
They ask her what she's obsessed with, so she talks about her hair and the way her voice sounds and the way she always smells like strawberry shampoo and the music she likes and the way she's always been there for her, and they ask her why Sam's so obsessed, and she shakes her head and says that she's not old enough to be in love yet.
Somebody thought that she was going to kill herself. Somebody saw her writing on her notebook and they took her into the guidance office and asked her all these questions and then they brought her here. And the food tastes like crap and there's only one other kid here, but he doesn't talk and he sits in his corner rocking himself and he's way too skinny and she's not supposed to be scared because she's Sam, but she's scared of him.
--
It's been a week and they're letting her go home. They're making her see a therapist every week and they're telling her that she needs to take Xanax and something else that she can't remember for her depression, because apparently she's depressed, but that can't be right, so she's not going to take the pills, because she knows that they have the wrong diagnosis and if she takes them her body's going to get all messed up.
The first place she goes when she's home is Carly's house. She knocks on the door and she decides that she's going to just say that she had pneumonia and her mom wouldn't let her use the phone or the computer and that's why she hasn't called, and she was really sick so she just slept most of the time anyway.
But Carly's opening the door and she's grabbing Sam and Sam doesn't think that she's ever been hugged so hard before now. And Carly's voice sounds even sweeter than she's ever remembered it when she mumbles, "Oh my god, Sam, you're home.."
And Sam wonders why she would think that she'd been anywhere but home, but then Carly tells her that her mom told her where Sam's been and Sam just sort of sits there for a minute and wonders if Carly's going to tell her to go home because she doesn't associate with crazy people.
"Why didn't you tell me something was wrong?"
And she promised herself that she wasn't going to cry and she wasn't going to act like it was a big deal, because that's what everybody expected her to do. She was supposed to smile and laugh through everything, but she just can't. She doesn't want to be that girl anymore.
She's trying to find the right words because she only gets one chance and it's supposed to be perfect, she reminds herself as her eyes water, but all the words are gone. All the beautiful words she wrote three days ago without even trying are gone, and now there's nothing but the most basic, uninspired things left and they won't do. She'll just seem like every other boy who's ever asked her out and told her that they love her, but she's different.
So then she just grabs Carly by the back of her head and she hopes to god that it's as good as any words she could ever find, and she's kissing her and she's hoping that everything's going to work out the way that she's been dreaming for all these months, because she doesn't think that she can have it any other way. She thinks that she'll take all of her anxiety meds and all her depression meds for her stupid disorders that she doesn't even have and she'll swallow all the pills she doesn't need, just to prove them wrong.
But Carly's not moving. She's frozen against Sam's warm body and she's realizing, lips on Carly's, just how stupid she's being.
"Well, gee, I missed you too."
Sam's feeling her heart breaking all over again, and she can't take this anymore, because she just wants something to go right for once, but she can't have the one thing that she wants so much.
--
"Sam.." But she doesn't want to listen. She can't hear her voice. Never, ever again will she want to hear that voice. She just wants to sit in some room and write and write until nothing matters except the words. Love and heartbreak and people and compassion won't mean a thing anymore, and then she'll be okay again.
"Sam, come here." And she wishes that Carly couldn't do that to her, but she can. She wishes that she wouldn't do every single stupid little thing that that girl asks for, but she does, no matter what. So she pulls herself up and walks over to Carly and she sits down next to her and she tries not to look at her, but she can't help it.
She doesn't want to look, but she has to. She has to stare at her because she's beautiful and she's perfect and Sam's been staring for so long and she still hasn't found a single thing that's wrong with her, so she turns and looks.
"Yes?" Sam's asking, and she's trying to act like nothing's wrong, but she's so incredibly bad at acting and her tape recorded self has finally worn out.
And she's expecting questions and she's expecting hate and she's given up expecting anything good from anything, and that's why Carly caught her off guard when she leaned over and rested her head on her shoulder and kissed her cheek.
"Hello to you too.." Sam's mumbling, feeling her cheeks burning, and Carly's smiling and then she's kissing her the way Sam always wrote about.
--
This is why I never write third person anymore.
This is one of those things that just should not be done. D: I'm awful at third person.