A couple of months ago Spencer brought home several large boxes of old VHS cassettes from the junk yard. There were literally hundreds of cheesy old horror movies from the 80s and kick boxing movies from the 90s, and all kinds of weird B flicks. Ever since Spencer brought them home, Sam and I have spent every single weekend in my bedroom trying to burn through them. We haven't gone anywhere or done anything except watch movies for over two months.

We always start on Friday night, after the show is over and we've walked back from the Groovy Smoothie and Freddie has gone home. Sam changes into her pajamas and we usually stay up all night, sipping just enough coffee to keep us awake until dawn. We'll fall asleep on the floor for a couple of hours, then wake up and start watching more movies, nap some on Saturday afternoon, then stay up all night again. On Sunday Sam stays as late as she can, usually until around 9 or 10, before her mom starts calling and bitching for her to come home. With this schedule, it's not unusual for us to go through 12 or 15 movies in a single weekend.

Sam, tough girl that she is, loves the kick boxing movies. I like some of them okay, even though the American Ninja series was awful, but my personal favorites have been the horror movies. I love Critters and Chopping Mall, Re-animator and Return of the Living Dead, and I love love love the Sleepaway Camp movies. I've always considered myself such a gentle and empathetic person, but in the last few months I've laughed out loud many times watching the characters onscreen get drilled through the head or chopped to bits. But it's not really the cheesy humor or the gory special effects that draw me to these movies - it's the sweet evocation of the time and place. I wasn't even born yet when most of them were made, but they've caused me to feel a nostalgia for the 80s, a decade I wasn't even around to see.

I love having our show, but it's been both a blessing and a curse. We've had some great experiences and met many cool people because of it, but the show has also gotten us into some dangerous situations as well - parachuting into Japan, almost getting thrown in jail several times - so I've enjoyed this change of focus the last two months. We still take the show seriously, but most of our energy and attention is focused on our weekends now.

Really what I love is all the alone time with Sam, because - well, because I love her.

I love the way she punches the air during the fight scenes in her favorite action movies. I love the way she can nonchalantly eat popcorn and Fat Cakes while I squirm and giggle as we watch zombies rip someone's guts out. I love how she gets tired late in the night and starts leaning against my shoulder. I love the times she's fallen asleep with her head in my lap, or fallen asleep face down on the floor and I've had to cover her with a blanket. I love the times I've fallen asleep first and wake up hours later to discover she's laid beside me and covered us both with a blanket.

I just love her; I have for years now. She's my best friend.

So one Friday night in the Spring I could tell something was on her mind. Sam is actually a good actress, and takes her comedy seriously, so I didn't notice anything during our iCarly broadcast, but after, when we were sitting in the Groovy Smoothie, she sat quietly and stared at her drink and left all the conversation to me and Freddie. When we walked across the street back to my apartment she remained quiet, making none of her usual jokes about raiding my refrigerator for ham.

We reached my apartment and I unlocked the door.

"Go on up," I said to her. "I gotta talk to Freddie real quick."

"Fine," she mumbled, shouldering past me and shutting the door behind her.

I turned to Freddie.

"You want me to go home so you can talk to Sam?" Freddie said.

"It was that obvious?" I asked. Sometimes Freddie will stay long enough to watch one movie with us, which was the plan for this night, but yeah, I was going to ask him to that.

"She didn't insult me even once," he said. "Something is definitely bothering her."

I sighed. Behind me, through the door, I could hear Sam and Spencer talking, but I couldn't make out the words.

"Yeah, I'm gonna try to figure it out, I guess," I said.

Freddie stuffed his hands in his pockets, shuffled his feet, and gave me that 'Aw, shucks' look which always made me chuckle. He can be cute sometimes.

"I'll be over here if you need me."

I squeezed his shoulder. "Thanks, Freddie. Just... come over tomorrow and we'll hang out."

We said goodnight and I went inside. Spencer was kneeling at the coffee table, attaching empty bottles to each other with a hot glue gun. I assumed Sam had already went up to my room, because Spencer glanced at me and pointed up with a questioning look on his face.

"I don't know," I told him. "I'm gonna try to find out."

He shrugged and turned his attention back to whatever he was working on.

I walked up the stairs to my bedroom and found her sitting against my bed, with a box of movies on the floor in front of her.

"You sent the dork home, huh?"

"Sam," I said with a mild scolding tone.

"Good," she said. "Mama's ready to party and I don't need anyone bringing me down."

"Ready to party? What do you mean?"

She dragged her duffel bag out from under my bed, unzipped it, and pulled out a pint-sized bottle made of blue-tinted glass.

"I'm talking about me and my bestest friend going to the roof and getting our buzz on."

"Is that gin?" I asked.

"Uh huh."

I laughed. "All right, let's go."

Shocking, right? Carly Shay sneaking up to the roof to drink alcohol? Well, it's never been easy to pry Sam's feelings out of her when she's upset, and I figured a little drinking might loosen her up. And honestly, I don't mind getting a little buzz from time to time.

She slung her duffel bag over her shoulder, and I grabbed her hand to pull her to her feet. We snuck down to the elevator and took it to the top floor, where Sam picked the lock on the maintenance door that led us out to the roof of Bushwell.

The wind swirled around us, tugged at our hair. It was one of those cool Spring nights - we were lucky to have our hoodies on. Sam grabbed my hand and lead me. We felt our way through the darkness and hunkered down against the concrete wall that housed the heating unit for the building. We were sheltered from the wind, with a clear view of the sky..

It was important to Sam to always have a clear view of the sky when we came up here. She never wanted to look down on the city - only up, at the clouds and the stars and moon.

"What's the occasion?" I asked as she twisted the cap off her bottle.

"Just for the hell of it," she said. She took a deep slug, coughed after swallowing it down, and let out a loud "Woo!"

I laughed. She offered me the bottle and I sniffed at it. I'd never tried gin before.

"It smells like pine needles and.. blugh," I said.

"Just drink it."

I choked down a sip.

"Oh God, Sam, it tastes like crap!"

"Yeah, well, no one drinks liquor 'cuz they like the taste." She took the bottle back from me and took another deep pull.

"Geez, slow down," I mumbled under my breath.

I told you I enjoy getting a little buzz sometimes - it can make the movies funnier when we go back down to watch them, and a buzz can make the feel of Sam's tired body leaning against mine in the darkness just a little sweeter and warmer - but within a few minutes it became apparent that Sam had no interest in 'a little buzz.' I took sips until I felt the warmth spreading in my chest, but Sam seriously attacked the bottle like she wanted to wipe herself out. "Slow down," I urged her several times. I waited until she was distracted by looking overhead at the sky to steal the bottle away from her and set it aside.

Her knee leaned against mine. I felt the fingers of her left hand curling into my right hand. With her free hand she pointed up, her fingertip tracing arcs among the stars.

"It's a cliche," she slurred.

"What is?" I asked, squeezing her hand.

"Wishing you could be up there instead of down here on Earth."

"Why don't you want to, uh, be on Earth?"

Her head fell against my shoulder, a mass of blond curls against my chin and ear.

"Where's my bottle?"

"Sam."

She sighed. "It's my mom, okay? Is that such a shock?"

Is wasn't, actually. I had suspected that her moodiness was related to her home situation, somehow, and now I was sure.

"What did she do this time?" I asked.

"Oh, you know, drinking herself to death."

I rubbed my chin in her hair. "So you deal with it by getting drunk... Surely you see the F'ed up irony in that?"

"I'm serious, Carls. I think she's taken it as far as it can go. I think it's all coming to an end soon."

Her free hand reached around and started playing with my hair. I didn't know what to say, so I whispered her name.

"I just know any day now I'm gonna come home and find her on the couch all blue and stiff," she mumbled into my shoulder.

The clouds broke overhead, pouring down shafts of moonlight on us. A gust of wind scattered pebbles and loose bits of paper across the roof in front of us.

"Where's my bottle?"

I sighed, reached for it, handed it to her. She took another shot, then groaned to her feet, stumbled into the moonlight, and poured the rest of the liquor out.

"Screw this," she said. "Let's go."

And I know it was so dumb for two drunk girls to climb down the fire escape, but we just wanted to go straight to my bedroom and avoid running into anyone, so the elevator was not an option. Sam tried to be careful as we clambered down, but I kept a hand on her because she had lost most of her coordination and was much tipsier than I was.

We did not speak. There was only the wind around us, and the sounds of the city below.

I kept my hand on Sam's shoulder, guiding her down, and seethed inside. I was so mad at her mom, mostly for the emotional crap she always put Sam through; but I have to be honest - there was a terribly selfish part of me that hated her for intruding into our weekend time. I mean, the whole purpose of these weekends was so that Sam did not have to think about her mom or her mom's lowlife boyfriends, and so I would not have to think about school, or going to college next year, or how the hell I was going to handle being apart from Sam after we graduated. These weekends were just supposed to be about me and Sam, alone in my room with the monsters and aliens and robots and ninjas and cyborgs and kick boxers. Real life was not supposed to intrude.

We somehow managed to climb through my window without falling on our faces or making too much noise. Sam collapsed on my bed and kicked off her shoes while I shut the window.

"You gotta start locking your window, Carls," she said from the bed, on her back with her arms spread wide. "What if some crazy, rapist, murdering scumbag person climbed up?"

I tried not to giggle.

"Ugh, I'm serious." She raised up, leaning on her elbows, and looked at me. "I can't lose you, Carly. I just can't."

The urge to giggle died. "You won't."

She fell back. "Anyone or anything else, but I can't lose you."

I twisted the latch to lock the window, then walked over to the box of movies laying in the middle of my floor. "You feel up to watching a movie, then?"

"I'm not that drunk."

I laughed. "Is that a yes or no?"

"Yeah, put something on."

"You pick."

"Best of the Best 2."

I rolled my eyes, but laughed. We had already watched it 4 or 5 times, but she loved the fight scenes in that movie. I put the tape in the VCR, and settled down against the side of my bed. Sam rolled to her side, laying above me with her arm hanging down beside me.

I really could not get into the movie. I just kept replaying Sam's words in my head. Sam has never been one to exaggerate, so this was serious. What do you even say when your best friend thinks her mother is slowly committing suicide? How do you help?

I reached over and held the hand hanging beside me. She curled her fingers into mine, laid her thumb over the back of my hand, sweeping it back and forth slowly.

We got to the part in the movie where the bad guy killed Sean Penn's chubby brother when Sam suddenly groaned and rose up.

"Carly," she coughed. She rolled off the bed quickly and stumbled to my bathroom.

I was right behind her. I flipped on the light and saw her hugging the toilet. She puked three, four times. I knelt down and held her long hair back out of the way. I know I scrub and disinfect my toilet at least twice a week, but I was still kind of grossed out by the idea of actually having your arms around it, or your face down in the bowl.

"I'm sorry," she kept mumbling between barfs, and even though she did it to herself I couldn't help but pet her hair and coo that it was okay, that everything was alright.

After she was convinced she'd finally emptied her stomach, she eased back from the toilet and leaned against the wall. Tears ran freely down her face.

"I wanted her to die."

"What?" I asked.

"I prayed last night that she would hurry up and die. Just hurry up and get it over with." She reached out and held on to my shoulder. "I prayed for my own mother to die, Carly."

I could think of all sorts of intellectual reasons why she was justified in feeling that way, but I couldn't think of how to voice them in any way that would make her feel better. Maybe she already understood the reasons; maybe she didn't need me to explain that she wasn't a horrible person for feeling that way; maybe she just needed me to listen.

"It's not like one or your horror movies," she said. "To watch someone die slowly. It's not cheap and it's not over quick." She closed her eyes. "It's not like a horror movie at all."

I sure felt like a victim in a horror movie, though, helpless, unable to do anything but watch the killer with the ax get closer and closer.

I leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead, smoothed the hair around her ear. "I'll always be here for you," I said. "Whatever happens, I'll help you get through it." Maybe all she needed was that reassurance. Maybe I did, too.

"I love you, Carly."

"I love you, too, Sam."

I helped her to her feet and guided her back to the bed. I made sure she laid on her side, then I covered her with a blanket. Within seconds she was breathing slowly, asleep.

My buzz from earlier had worn off and I was not tired at all. I popped the movie out of my VCR. I thought for a minute about putting something else on, but then I just turned everything off. I figured I could sit and watch over Sam until she woke up, to make sure she was alright.

And besides, I didn't want to watch a movie by myself.