Nose Ring
An Introduction

You're walking the halls of Ridgeway High, heading to your locker. The bell rang long ago, but you were stuck in Mr. Howard's class, cleaning all the desks because he caught you sleeping during one of his "enriched" lectures. There's no one around, save for janitors and a few chatty teachers, and stray papers lay strewn across the floor or sticking out of lockers. Most are blank pieces of notebook paper, or old worksheets, or ripped-up notes between friends. You're used to this familiar image by now – Mr. Howard definitely does not favor you, so it's not often you get out of school on time when you have his class at the end of the day.

Suddenly, you turn the corner to find a lone, worn, red-and-yellow notebook lying on the tiled floor, a few papers sticking out and a footprint or two on it. You've never found a whole notebook on the ground before, and your curiosity gets the best of you. You pick up the notebook and continue on your way to your locker, dusting it off. You stuff the stray papers back inside of it safely and examine the front: there are Cuttlefish and Drake Bell stickers, and a few doodles of the initials SP, as well as Sam written several different times in several different writing styles. There are also several logos for iCarly dot com all over the notebook, front and back, including a few pictures of who you know to be Carly Shay and Sam Puckett doing their webshow together.

Now you're really excited as you realize just whose notebook this is… Sam Puckett from iCarly! She's not exactly "popular", but she's definitely a legend. She and Carly are slight celebrities around the school, and they're known for being just about the funniest couple of girls in Seattle. You watch their webshow every week, and you've watched every extra segment on their site about a hundred times over – they're just hilarious and irresistible!

You've hurried to your locker to stuff your books inside, and now you're leaving school, on your way home. Your heart is beating faster inside your chest at the mere thought of what you'll do with this notebook when you get home.

When you finally do get home, you rush to your room and throw your things to the side, plopping down on your bed and placing the notebook in front of you. The stickers and doodles attract your eyes, but you decide to muster up the courage and finally open it, your eyes searching the pages. You flip through them hurriedly, skimming each page with your eyes to see just what you were getting into. You find that all but maybe 10 or 20 of the pages are full. Each page has 2 notecards taped to it (using both sides of the lined paper for a total of 4 cards per 2-sided page), and each notecard has a date on the top - it ranges anywhere from 2 or 3 notecards having the same date to about 5 or 6 notecards having the same date, meaning she used a different amount of cards each day, depending on how much she felt like observing and how much was worth writing about. They are all written with similar writing from the cover of the notebook, some of them more obviously jotted down than others. Each notecard has a 7-line observation, making them all somewhat poetic… like a new age haiku or something. The dates of the notecards start in October of 2010, which was just about a month-and-a-half after the school year started. The last postcard is dated from today.

You find this somewhat odd, but even more compelling and intriguing.

You look to see that the inside of the cover of the battered notebook has a name, phone number, school name, and city in the top left corner. It reads:

Sam Puckett
206-988-4239
Ridgeway High School
Class of 2012
Seattle, WA
iCarly(dot com)

Your eyes widen a little at seeing this, but you try to ignore it; you're way too curious not to look through this thing now.

With eager hands and excited eyes, you begin to read the notecards, Sam's well-known voice and tone filling your head as each word darts past your eyes. The first written date has 3 notecards to it.

However, for the next few hours, you find that you're in for a bit more than you bargained for…

to be continued…

A/N: It's a proven fact that Sam had to repeat the 3rd grade, so she's technically a year older than Carly and Freddie, which makes her 17 in her junior year, about to turn 18 in April. They're all set to be juniors in this, and it's set to start in 2010, and end sometime in the beginning of 2011, near the end of the school year. That makes Carly and Freddie 16, and Spencer 28. Carly will turn 17 in January, Freddie will turn 17 in February, and Spencer will turn 28 in November of 2010 and then 29 in November of 2011.
This entire story was inspired by a notecard at FOUNDMAGAZINE dot com. The link to the exact notecard can be found in my bio, beside the summary of this story down at the bottom of my profile, where I put all the upcoming stories I'm typing.
I still haven't decided what the pairings are going to be for this, I just know it's going to be Sam-centric (obviously), though I've got some pretty interesting ideas so far. If you read this and the first chapter, please let me know what you think.