Disclaimer: I do not own iCarly.
A/N: This was supposed to be the prologue to a Sam-centric story that I had in mind, but I'm not sure if I should continue on with it or not. Tell me what you think?
Dissipation
"Crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure."
-Edward Gibbon
The first time Spencer noticed a change in Carly, Sam, and Freddie was when they were fifteen, almost sixteen. They'd just completed a segment of iCarly and were gathered in the living room of the Shays' apartment.
"Alright, I guess I'll see you guys on Monday." Freddie said, grabbing his things and moving to the door. Spencer was confused.
"You're not staying over for a little?"
"Nah, I've got a project to finish."
"Oh. Bye then." Freddie gave them a little wave and walked out the door, leaving it open.
"Well," Sam began. "I'm out."
"You too?" Spencer asked.
"Yeah, I've got some things to do."
"Right, well, okay. Bye, I guess."
"Bye, Sam!"
"Later, Carls, Spence." And she walked out, closing the door behind her. Spencer turned to his sister.
"You're not leaving too, are you?" Carly laughed.
"Duh! I told you yesterday that I was going to Wendy's tonight after iCarly!"
"You did? I don't remember that!"
"Well, you were a little busy with your ketchup hamster." Ah, the hamster. Carly turned and began walking up the steps. "I'm gonna grab my bags! I'll be right back!"
"'Kay." Spencer mumbled, flopping onto the couch.
Two hours later, after Carly had already left, Spencer was still on the couch, wondering just when his apartment had gotten so quiet.
The first time Carly noticed that her and Sam weren't as close as they used to be, was when they were sixteen. Sam was staying over at her house and Spencer had accidentally squirted chocolate syrup onto Sam's shirt.
"You can just borrow one of mine until that one's clean!" Carly had suggested (Sam had forgotten extra clothes at home).
So, the two had stood outside of Carly's closet for a good fifteen minutes before Carly had gotten annoyed.
"Sam, why are you taking so long?"
"'Cause."
"'Cause."
"Yeah, I don't know, Carls. Your clothes are a little..."
"A little what? Girly? Pink? Pretty? Shiny? A little what, Sam?"
Sam looked at her, eyes bored. "A little not me."
"Oh, right. Well, uh, you wanna borrow one of Spencer's? I'm sure he's got one you could wear. And besides, he was the one that messed up the one you had on."
"Yeah, sure. Whatever."
That night, after Sam had fallen asleep on the couch wearing one of Spencer's black shirts, Carly began to wonder just when everything had gone so dark.
The first time Freddie noticed that he didn't like Carly anymore was when they were fifteen. He was sitting out on the fire escape, waiting for his mom to finish dinner when Carly had shown up and sat next to him.
"Hey." She said.
"Hey."
"So, uh, whatcha doin'?"
"Nothing, just waiting for my mom to finish making dinner. Why are you here?"
"Um, I was bored and Spencer was making a mess with his new sculpture and I saw you out here and bam! Here I am." She smiled at him.
He smiled back, but his stomach was uneasy. There was something not right about this picture, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.
"Do you come out here a lot?"
"Yeah."
"Alone?"
"Pretty much."
Maybe that was it. The only people that had been up here were him and Sam. Maybe that's why something felt off.
"Freddie!" He'd never been quite so happy to hear his mom's voice before.
"Coming!" He turned to Carly. "I gotta go, see you later."
"Bye, Freddie."
A few hours later, as he lay in his bed, Freddie wondered when he'd started associating Sam with secrets.
The first time Sam noticed that she wasn't the type of person people like Carly and Freddie should be associated with was when she was sixteen. The three of them were at the Groovy Smoothie after school, a rare occurrence by that time.
"Oh, gross!" Sam cried as she spat out her smoothie. Carly and Freddie jumped back.
"Sam!" Freddie cried. "What was that for?!"
"This tastes like shit! Who made this? I'm gonna give that hobknocker a piece of my mind!" She started standing up when Carly pulled her by the arm, forcing her back into her seat.
"Uh, Carly? What are you doing?"
"What am I doing? Stopping you from doing very bad things!"
"What? I always do very bad things! 'Very bad things' is practically my middle name!"
"Yeah, but, I think you should stop. 'Giving someone a piece of your mind' only leads to bad, bad confrontations. And you should really watch what you say, too!"
"Watch what I say? Seriously?"
"Yeah, Sam," Freddie chimed in. "You need to be careful. What if you let one of your obscenities loose on iCarly? There are kids that watch the show, you know."
Sam rolled her eyes. "I know that, Fredward. I think we were kids when we started."
"What he's trying to say, what I'm trying to say, is that you can't go around saying things like 'hobknocker' and, and...'shit.' That makes people think you're not a respectable person!"
That night, when Sam sat in her room, smoking her pot, she wondered when she'd had to start trying to be a respectable person.
The first time Carly realized she could be anything she wanted to be was when she was ten. Her whole life she had wanted to be a princess.
"Daddy, I wanna be a princess."
"You are, honey. You're Daddy's princess."
But that was never enough.
"Spencer, can I be a princess?"
"Sure thing, kiddo. Can you hand me that paint bucket first, before you go running off with a prince?"
That was insufficient.
So, when her elementary school was going to put on a production of 'Snow White,' Carly knew this was her chance to be a princess.
She got the part and the play was a hit. That day, Carly became a princess.
The first time Carly realized that not everyone was a princess was when she was thirteen. It was the first time she had ever gone to Sam's house. Well, she didn't go inside; Spencer was giving Sam a ride home since she was still too young to walk all the way across Seattle and because Sam's mom couldn't pick her up.
Carly had thought that houses like Sam's only existed in movies.
The building (house sounded too grand) was disgusting. The blue paint was chipping off the sides, the windows were fogged and grimy. The yard had no grass, only dirt. The front door looked ready to fall from its hinges. There were shingles missing from the roof and broken beer bottles littered the front porch, where a lone wind chime hung, the only noise in the silent neighborhood.
That day, Carly found out that, even though she was a princess, her best friend was nothing more than a pauper.
The first time Carly realized that she craved power, she was fifteen. Her math teacher had put everybody in groups and designated group leaders for each group.
Carly was one of those group leaders.
She was in charge of making sure that everyone in her group had all the things they needed for their part of the project, that they understood the chapter, and that they understood what they were supposed to do for the group presentation.
Carly got to boss them around.
She had reprimanded Sam for her bossiness before, but now that she knew what it felt like to be totally in charge, she wasn't ready to give it up. So she decided to run for Student Council.
When she was in eleventh grade, she finally got to be Class President.
That day, she thought she had begun to understand her best friend a little bit more.
That year, she realized she had begun to misunderstand her best friend a little bit more.
The first time Freddie realized that he was good with computers was when he was ten. His mother had just gotten the new Pear computer and was having trouble getting it to work.
"Are you having trouble, Mommy?"
"No, Sweetie, I'm just taking my time."
"I think you're having trouble, Mommy."
"Oh, okay. So maybe Mommy is having just a teensy weensy bit of trouble."
After an hour of unsuccessful attempts to make her computer work, Mrs. Benson gave up. As she was making dinner, though, Freddie climbed into the computer chair and realized that what his mother had had trouble with was double clicking.
When he showed his mom how to double click, she got him his own Peartop. That day, he became a tech dork.
The first time that Freddie realized that not everyone was as tech-savvy as he was was when he was thirteen. He was in Computers Class with Sam and Carly. Well, he was only aware that he was in the same class with Carly because he loved her, duh.
Nevermind that Sam Puckett was sitting right next to him, he was sitting one seat away from Carly Shay!
As the class slowly dragged on, Freddie managed to complete the Oregon Trail five times and have only two people die.
"Sam, won't you just calm down! Hitting the keyboard won't help!"
Freddie looked to his left when he heard Carly's voice and the sound of a keyboard being beaten to death.
"I hate these stupid machines! Why can't they be simple! Argh!"
Freddie suddenly felt very bad for the black keys.
"I-is there a problem, Carly?" He asked. She looked at him with her big brown eyes and he thought he'd melt.
"Oh, no, no problem! Just Sam being Sam!"
"Yeah, no problem here, dork!" Suddenly Freddie found himself looking at big blue eyes instead. He frowned.
"I wasn't talking to yo-"
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever, loser."
And he let it drop there, because he didn't feel like getting hurt at the moment. Not five minutes later, though, he heard the sound of angry mumbling from the blonde next to him. Turns out she couldn't get enough food for her group of people on the Trail and everyone kept dying. After he told her that she should use the arrow keys instead of the mouse, he decided that, maybe he shouldn't be scared of her anymore. But then she hit him for helping and he vowed never to help again.
That day, he also realized that the blonde demon next to him couldn't use a computer to save her life. Or, at least she couldn't when she was thirteen.
The first time Freddie realized that hanging out with people besides Sam and Carly was okay was when he was fifteen. He'd been in plenty of clubs before, but he'd never been completely dedicated to anything besides iCarly. But when he joined the AV club, he realized that he needed to get out more.
Freddie frequently recalled that Sam had been the first to branch out from their group. She began hanging out with a couple "punks" that helped her with her pranks. Eventually, he realized that she was choosing to hang out with them rather than with him and Carly. At first, he didn't mind, because any alone time he had with Carly was great, but then he realized how boring things were without Sam. How monotonous they were without her spontaneity.
But then he got real involved with the AV club, even becoming Club President in eleventh grade. He soon began hanging out with the AV kids more than Carly or Sam.
The day he became Club President, he thought he understood why Sam hung out with other people.
That year, however, he soon realized that he'd misunderstood why Sam hung out with other people.
The first time that Sam realized that she wouldn't ever have what everyone else had was when she was ten. She wanted a computer, because everyone else had one.
"Can we get a computer, Mama?"
"No."
She wanted a princess dress because all the other girls had one.
"Can I have a princess dress, Mama?"
"No."
She wanted to read books, because everyone else did.
"Can I get a Harry Potter book, Mama?"
"No."
She wanted to want, because everyone else got to want for things.
"Am I allowed to want, Mama?"
"No."
When she was ten, Sam realized that she would never get what she wanted, because she wasn't allowed.
The first time that Sam realized that she didn't need her mom's permission was when she was thirteen. She wanted a new pair of shoes, because the ones that she owned had holes in the bottom.
"Can I have new shoes, Mom?"
"No."
But she didn't care anymore. She walked to the shoe store and found a pretty pair of Converse. She put the box in her bag and walked out the store.
That was the first time Sam got arrested.
The next two times were for stealing clothes and food.
The first time that Sam decided that she was over rules and laws and obedience was when she was fifteen. Carly was out of town, visiting her dad. Spencer was at an art convention. Freddie was a dork. Sam wanted to get out of the house she was stuck in. She wanted to go do something. She wanted to have fun. She wanted, she wanted, she wanted.
So she told her mom that she wanted to go out. Her mom told her that she wanted too much and she should be happy with what she had.
But she didn't have anything.
"Do you love me, Theresa?"
"No."
But Sam didn't care. If there was one thing she didn't want, it was her mother's love. So she got up and walked out the house, walked down the street, walked to Ron's house, where she knew she would be able to get away.
Away from Theresa Puckett, away from her jail, away from her nothing, away from herself.
That was the first time that Samantha Puckett tried marijuana. It wasn't her last.
That day, Sam thought she finally got what she wanted.
It would take three years for Sam to realize that she never really got what she wanted.