Sam stood in her bathroom, examining herself in the full length mirror on the back of the door, wearing only a lavender bra and panty set. She ran her fingers through her long, blonde hair, pulling out the strays and shaking them off her hand in the direction of the waste bin. She'd been in the bathroom for over half an hour, trying to answer a question that'd been hanging in the air all day.

She tousled her hair with her fingers, flicked her bangs this way and that, pouted her lips, batted her eyelashes, and posed in a modelesque way that made her feel a little sick. She wasn't sure what she was doing or why she was doing it. She only knew that something had her in a funk. Something, or someone, had given her the idea that she was unattractive. The problem was, she had no idea what or who it was. She decided to put off her worries for the next day, pulled her nightie from the towel rack and slipped it over her head. As she twirled her hair into a bun and stuck a pair of lacquered chopsticks into it, she heard her mom outside the door, calling out to no one in particular, asking where the TV remote was.

Sam sighed and rolled her eyes, locking the door and plucking her toothbrush from its holder. She uncapped the toothpaste and squeezed a dollop out onto the bristles, ran it under the faucet and began brushing her teeth furiously. She felt like an idiot. She couldn't be thinking what she was thinking. It's not that she thought she was ugly... But, come to think of it, did she ever really think she was attractive? Perhaps she did, at times, in a certain dress or when she changed her rugged surface to fit someone else. But that didn't make the girl, Sam Puckett, attractive. She lifted her eyes to the bathroom mirror, still hunched over and brushing her teeth with all her might. There she was. The girl she'd been looking at for the past 16 years. Who was she? Sam slowed down her brushing when she noticed the white foam of the toothpaste spilling from her mouth begin to turn pink. She spit into the sink and rinsed her mouth out with cold water, taking note of the tiny split she'd made in her gums from her passionate brushing session, a trickle of blood lining the space between her teeth. Try as she may to stop its course, it seemed to return seconds later. She wrenched open the bathroom cabinets, fervently searching for hydrogen peroxide. Then it hit her, it was in her mother's bathroom. She slid a heavy hand down her face and begrudgingly unlocked the door and pulled it open. Before exiting the tiny, shell pink bathroom, she bore her teeth at the smudged mirror. Yep, still bleeding.

Walking down the hallway, the lingering odor of alcohol wafted to Sam's nose. She scrunched her nose in protest, tiptoeing past the couch where her mother was flopped down, watching Nip/Tuck on DVD. She was too busy making sure her mother wasn't stirring to avoid interaction with her that she stepped on an empty beer bottle, pinching it and causing it to roll quickly over the wood floor in the opposite direction, hitting the wall and rolling back slowly. Damn it, thought Sam.

"Hey, Melanie, why don't you get yourself a beer?" croaked Pam from behind the couch.
"It's Sam, mother, and I'm only 16 years old." Sam rolled her eyes and quickened her step to her mother's bedroom door, but not before hearing her drunken mother utter a simple, "So?"

Sam hated her mother's room. At times she felt it was like she was stepping into her future. Her bed was never made, it almost always had a lingering odor of God only knows what, the carpet was well stained with the history of many morning-afters, and the ceiling fan was so thick with dust, Sam almost always got some sort of eye infection after a visit. She shielded her eyes with one hand and flicked the yellowing light switch on the wall. Kicking aside dirty laundry which, over the years, seemed as much a part of the room as the bed, Sam made her way to the bathroom. The door was always open and the toilet was never flushed. Sam curled her lip at the string bikini hanging in the shower, gagging at the memory of her mother forcing Sam to take Splash Face pictures of her in it.

Sam wrenched open the cabinet above the sink, immediately spotting the hydrogen peroxide, taking a swig of it and gargling. After a few seconds she spit, shut the cabinet door and eyed her teeth in the mirror. She searched for the open cut with her tongue and found a funny feeling patch of gum, which seemed to once be the source of the bleeding. She capped the hydrogen peroxide and decided to bring it back to her bathroom, should the problem arise again. She made her way quietly passed her now sleeping mother, placed the brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide on the bathroom sink, and headed to her room, where the open window pulled her bedroom door into an unintentionally loud slam. Sam slapped her forehead and made to close the window, a few minutes later, hearing the TV click off and her mother's bedroom door close. Good. She wasn't in the mood for a late night therapy session with her mother. She had a tendency to get weepy when drunk.

Now that her mother was certainly asleep, however, Sam felt a hunger pang. The good thing about her mother was that there was always food, albeit most of it was junk, in the house. The terrible thing was that she never bothered to prepare food for Sam, and the fridge was always padlocked, because Pam claimed that she wanted to make sure Sam wasn't eating unhealthy foods. Pam promised, every afternoon, that she would prepare dinner for the two of them. It always came down to one of three things. She'd either get quite wasted and unable to do anything but sleep until 2 AM, she'd demand that Sam clean her room first, which brought them to the third option, which meant that Sam would refuse and make her own way to Carly's house to eat dinner there. Sam plucked a lacquered chopstick from her hair, causing her blonde locks to slip out of the messy bun; she unscrewed the larger top half of the chopstick, revealing a tiny compartment of bobby pins. Taking one of the bobby pins out, she bit off the rubbery end of it and unbent it, then shoved it into the keyhole of the lock, fiddling until it clicked open.

Sam scanned the contents of the refrigerator; a good majority of the space was taken up by cases of beer. She pulled out a soda then opened the freezer and took a personal pizza out. Sam threw the pizza in the toaster oven and tossed the box on the couch while she chugged her soda, then threw the can on the couch as well. While she waited for the pizza, she clicked the padlock on the fridge closed, adjusting the chains as they were before she opened it. Once the pizza was finished, she head back to her room, without plates or napkins, scarfing down the pizza on the way.

As Sam entered her room, she pulled the door shut behind her, noticing her phone lying on the bed, the light of it going out as she plopped down onto the bed in the pitch black room. She seemed to have missed a call. She picked up the phone and punched in her password, but before she could check who called, a text from Fredward popped up on the screen.

"Of course you didn't answer" it read. Sam scoffed as a smile played across her lips. She slid down into her sheets and curled up, dialing Freddie back, number for number.

It rang... and it rang... Sam was ready to hang up, then...

"Puckett," came the deep voice on the other end.
"Whaddya want, Fredward? I was going to sleep." Sam resisted smiling, though no one could see her.
"Listen, it'll only take a second. My mom forgot to take my phone tonight, so I figured I'd—"
"Spit it out, Fredhead!" Sam figured she was letting him talk too long.
"Okay, so tomorrow night Spencer and Carly come back from visiting their granddad, right?"
"Right..." Sam replied, a sigh of exasperation exploding inside of her.
"Well, Carly called this morning and she mentioned that her granddad threw out her lucky boots because they'd been worn thin, and I was thinking—"
Here Sam let out a long and obvious yawn.
"Sam, stop it, I'm trying to tell you something and you—"
"Yeah?"
"What? What do you – Yes, I am and I don't –"
"Really?"
"Sam. Can you just –"
"Fascinating." Freddie went quiet; Sam was smiling from ear to ear. "Okay, okay, tell me what you were thinking, nub."
"As I was saying, I think we should buy her a new pair of boots, right?"
"So, what are you calling me for? She's your girlfriend."
"What? She's not my girlfriend; I just wanted to do something nice for her. I need you to come to the mall with me tomorrow afternoon, I don't know anything about that kind of stuff."
"Whatever you say, dorkwad." Sam had been on her side, her phone perched on her ear, but now she sat up, reaching for the phone with her hand, ready to hang up.
"Alright, cool, I'll call you tomorrow. Sam, please don't sleep in until four, I really –"

That was it. She tried hard not to think about the events of the day as she plugged her phone into the charger, but it was inevitable. She was never one to over think things. She never imagined that anything she or anyone else did had any hidden meaning. Sam Puckett was her actions, not her thoughts. She hated Freddie. Right? So, what was she feeling, earlier in the day, when she suggested to Freddie that they hang out, and he told her he was on the other line with Carly, and that he'd call her back? But, he never did. Now, he called her, not even mention the fact that he hung up on her earlier in the day, and just to ask her a favor, to help him out with something he wanted to do for Carly. So what? She didn't care. She just missed Carly, that's all. She just wanted some company. Right? Sam felt a lump in her throat and a sudden heat rising in her face and she took two breaths, one more of a hiccup, short and sharp in her throat, and the other, a deep and calming breath that put her to sleep.