It starts out just like any other day at Ridgeway Middle School. Freddie and Carly are standing at their lockers, Carly leaning against her's and talking about an episode of some show she saw on television the other night while Freddie shuffles through his backpack, making sure every piece of homework he did last night is in their correct folders, in the correct order. Freddie can hear Carly saying something like, "The second plot should have been the first, there's this woman who controls minds and tried to make people do her evil bidding—" and he wonders if maybe he overdid the short essay on the book, When Zachary Beaver Came to Town. His paper is about societal views on obesity and how the main character seems to be ignorant of the fact that fat people need help, not to be called fat.
Kids are milling about, awaiting the moment that the bell rings, signaling the start of the first period. Other students walk past as well, quite a few of them stopping to greet Carly with a "Sup?" Freddie doesn't know what it is about this year, but ever since it started a week ago, it seems as if every guy and every girl is starting to notice each other. Freddie's been in love with Carly for as long as he can remember—or, at least, he thinks the feeling is love—but the way that the guys look at her strikes something grim in him. He doesn't know the expressions on their faces, can't pinpoint what narrowed eyes and half smiles mean, but it makes him want to snarl and protect Carly as much as he could. Which wouldn't be much, considering the fact that Freddie is half a foot shorter than the rest of the male population in his grade.
Sometimes he thinks that going back to the sixth grade would be best. There was no hassle, no indeterminable looks, and everyone was the same height.
Sam sidles up to Carly's side, late as usual, just as Freddie starts in on color-coordinating his text books in his locker. (His mom once told him that, depending on how his space was coordinated, he could reach the maximum amount of use of his frontal lobe, which housed his attention span.)
"Psst," Sam hisses at her best friend.
"What's up, Sam I Am A Late Noodle?"
Sam eyes briefly flash in annoyance before she takes a deep breath and whispers, "Something's wrong."
"Oh no, what's happened?"
"Did you find fungus growing in your hair? Told you that you should make an effort to wash more often."
Sam scowls at a smirking Freddie from over Carly's shoulder. "Save it, mama's boy, and butt out. This is not any of your business." She turns back to Carly. "I woke yesterday evening and…"
Freddie tunes them out. Or, rather, tries to, but his color-coordination likes making things hard to ignore. He doesn't want to hear what Sam has to say. He never wants to hear what Sam has to say. In his opinion, she should just disappear, switch schools, or something because she is a detriment to his and Carly's future relationship. With her around, Freddie can never say a word to Carly without being mocked by her. He also can never eat without being grossed out by Sam's apparent lack of table manners. And he can never go a day without being slugged in the arm. If his mother saw the constant bruise he covers up all off the time, she would have a heart attack.
That's not to say that Sam doesn't get punched back. Do unto others what you get from them and all, right?
But Freddie can't help his stupid ears and the fact that Carly's shoulder is leaning against the opening of his locker, and so when he hears what Sam has to say, he immediately lets out a loud, "Gross!"
Carly narrows her eyes at him before dragging Sam off down the hall. Just as the bell rings.
Normally, Freddie would be running to get Carly to not go that way, but this way, where their class is, or at least calling out to her, but whatever Sam seems to have, he doesn't want to get. And so he closes his locker, and with a disgusted look planted on his face, he walks down to his classroom.
Carly doesn't arrive until seventeen minutes later, and her face is ashen even before Mr. Roberts reprimands her for being late, and that raises a sort of alarm in Freddie. When she takes her seat, Freddie asks her, "What's wrong?"
Carly takes a breath, swallows, and whispers back, "Sam…"
"What happened?"
"It's not stopping, she's just…"
"Is it some disease or something?"
Carly shakes her head and looks down, her dark dark dark hair spilling across her face. "I'm really worried."
"Why don't you just take her to the hospital?" And leave her there, forever, Freddie thinks, but gets rid of his evil smirk when Carly turns to give him this look. Freddie suddenly remembers that Sam loathes hospitals with a passion. She would rather die on the street than in a hospital bed.
That's not saying much, though, because Sam looks and acts like she lies in gutters anyway, but Freddie decides not to voice that and gets back to doing his work. He's sure that Sam's going to be fine.
For the next few classes, if Sam comes in late or squirms a bit too much or goes to the bathroom every ten minutes, Freddie pretends not to notice. He's normally not willing to concern himself with Sam and her ostentatious ways, but even he has to admit that her behavior is a bit worrying.
Throughout lunch, Sam has an uncomfortable look plastered on her face, and Carly frets around her like a mother hen.
"It keeps coming and coming, Carleeeeeeee," Sam whines before putting her face in her hands. Carly rubs her back and shushes her, then pushes her bowl of untouched jell-o toward her. It helps Sam, a little bit.
As Freddie peels open his banana, he asks, "Why don't you just go to the nurse already, je-ee-ee-eesus."
"Freddie, I'd sooner strangle you and hang you over a bridge by your own bowels and run as a fugitive all the way to China than step foot inside of a nurse facility," she spits out.
Freddie chokes on his fruit and Carly gives him a reprimanding look like that was his fault. She turns back to her best friend, who gives her a hard stare right back.
"Sam," Carly says.
"It will stop."
"Sam."
"I've got this, Carly. It will stop soon, I'm sure of it."
"Sam."
Looking enraged, she jumps to her feet and yells, "Leave me alone, Carly. You don't know what I'm going through!" before storming out of the cafeteria. Carly grabs her back pack and follows suit, yelling, "Sam!"
Freddie takes in the confused looks of his schoolmates, looking back and forth from where the girls left to Freddie, eyebrows cocked and smiles raised. "It's not my fault I choked on my banana," he grumbles, then turns back to his lunch.
After going the rest of the school day without seeing neither hide nor tail of 1/3 of their triangle, Freddie and Carly find Sam lying face down on Carly's couch back at her loft. Freddie takes in the blank look in Sam's eyes and the way her knuckles drag on the floor, and the way that Carly's nose flairs in anger. But mostly, he takes in the fact that Sam is not eating. Not eating a thing. It's a sight to behold, truly rare.
Freddie makes his way to the kitchen and dumps his backpack at the counter, going to the fridge to grab a bottle of water for Carly, the one that seems to be the most chilled, the way he knows Carly likes it, and when he turns back to the living room, he finds Carly rubbing her back. However, Sam's eyes are still blank.
"You should have just gone to the nurse, Sam," Carly says, then gives Freddie a thank you as he hands her the water. They sit in silence for a short while before the door opens and Carly's older brother walks past the couch to the kitchen, dropping a small bag on Sam's back. Freddie watches as her face turns red and she scrambles up from the couch and runs up the steps with the bag clutched in her hands, Carly calling her name after her.
Carly turns her exasperation on Spencer. "What was that all about?"
Spencer comes away from the fridge with a jar of mayonnaise and a packet of meat, doing a double take as if he didn't notice them there. A flush creeps up his neck. "Um, well. Sam's going through something."
"What is she going through?"
"A change."
Carly rolls her eyes. "A change? Of what?"
"Of epic proportions." Carly opens her mouth, but before she could throw the fit that Freddie saw coming, Spencer continued. "Listen, there's something that I think it may be time to talk to you about."
"Should I leave?" Freddie stands up, pointing at himself, then the door. "Yeah, I think I should leave."
"Have you had the talk?" Spencer questions, scratching his head.
"The talk? What talk?"
"The puberty talk?" And here, Spencer's neck goes a darker shade of red.
Carly interrupts. "You mean the thing where guys' voices go deeper and girls grow insanely big… bajoongas?" She takes a long sip of her drink.
Spencer pauses for a moment, seeming to think things over, and then says, "Yeah, Freddie, you should stay." He has them sit at the island, across from where he's making his sandwich, and starts, "Menstruation is a normal thing all girls go through, some starting earlier than others…"
When Spencer's done making his peanut-butter, rib, mayonnaise, mustard, and cheese sandwich, and is beginning to fan slices of oranges across his plate, Freddie finds himself being able to breathe again. Well, not before he grabs Carly's water and takes a long sip of it himself, prompting her to give him a disgusted look. But the important thing is that he can breathe again. And the first thing that comes to his formerly oxygen-deprived mind is that he needs to bleach, stat, to pour in his ear to get rid of the images.
Freddie doesn't want to admit that he may have jumped in his seat when he heard footsteps coming down the stairs, but he did. And Carly ran to the other side of the kitchen, picking up a sponge and beginning to vigorously wipe down the counter. And Spencer shoved half of his sandwich in his mouth before beating a hasty retreat to the couch, flopping unceremoniously on its abused pillows.
However, they all had grins on their faces as Sam came into view, so that's a good thing.
She took one look around the room, pausing to stare disgustedly at Spencer's stretched smile with food coming out of the corners of his mouth, before her shoulders slumped and she groaned, "Oh God."
"Hey, Sam!" Carly greeted, overly bright, as if she were hopped up on pixie sticks (like that one time where she was, and Sam laughed as Carly talked a mile a minute, and Freddie clutched his middle because one slim packet of that sugar was more than enough that his stomach could handle), and not as if she didn't just get out of a talk about how blood seeps from the strangest of places, and wiped a spot on the counter for the third time.
"Oh, God," Sam moaned louder.
"Great idea, Sam; this sandwich is fantastic!"
She glared at Spencer. "Never speak to me again."
And Freddie felt sort of bad for her—really upset, if he were being honest—because this is something she is going through, and she was right when she said that Carly didn't understand, because none of them did, and a huge part of him wanted to do something for her to take her mind off of it. But he was Freddie, and he and Sam are supposed to have a rivalry thing going on, and he knew that there wasn't much to be done.
So when Sam sat at the seat next to him, and Spencer turned on the television, and Carly walked past her with a consoling pat on the back, Freddie grabbed an orange. He peeled it open and handed it to her, hoping that, maybe, it might help a little.
And maybe that was a smile he saw on Sam's face, but maybe she more so snatched the orange from him than taken it gratefully, and maybe he stuck his tongue out at her, but she ate her orange (and maybe Freddie stared the whole time), sucker punched him on the arm, and went to lounge on the couch with the Carly and Spencer.
It started out just like any other day at Ridgeway Middle School, and maybe it ended with a punch like any old day at the Shay loft, but with the small events of this otherwise uneventful day, Freddie feels like he's coming out of it with, maybe, just a little bit of admiration for this girl.
The end result? He kind of doesn't regret this feeling one bit.