A/N Whoever left me an unregistered review as lunamoody, would you PLEASE contact me? I need someone who has made this drive before, because I haven't, and I'm absolutely desperate for factual information and experiences. You can find many ways to contact me by going to my livejournal profile. Everyone else, thanks for your kind and thoughtful reviews. Please keep them coming, if you have them. Especially if you have any critical thoughts, because those always make my fic better. Thank you! Huge ups to Aergonaut, whom I've coerced into essentially being my beta.

Freddie's car got the scrubbing of its nearly twenty year lifetime, courtesy of Marissa Benson. Every time he swung by Sam's house to get her for school, she'd stretch out in the back seat and smell a different cleaning chemical residue. Carly would chatter back to her about homework that day, while Sam would doze off for the fifteen minutes before they arrived at Ridgeway, smelling varying lemon-fresh or pine-clean artificial aromas. Slowly, after about a month of vigorous applications of rubber gloves and elbow grease, the Cesspool, as Marissa took to calling it, shined up quite nicely indeed.

In April, Sam turned 17. After a day full of cake, dancing, and more cake, Carly was picking up the mess in her living room while Sam sprawled out on the couch. Freddie sat next to her, wedged to the side near her feet.

Sam pushed at Freddie's legs. "Rub them!"

"Um, ew, no?" Freddie pushed Sam's feet off the cushions next to him, causing a chain reaction resulting in the rest of Sam slowly sliding off of the couch and onto the floor. Her face crunched onto a red plastic cup.

"I'm too tired to move," she whined into the carpet.

"This is what we term a sugar crash, Sam." He made quote fingers in the air. "Carly, do you know if her mom is going to come get her?"

Carly poked her head out from the kitchen, where she was rinsing soda cans in the sink. "No clue. She can stay here though, if she's okay with helping me clean up her mess."

There was a distraught moan from the floor.

"I'll take her home, okay?" Freddie stood up and kneeled down, gauging Sam's prone form. After a moment's contemplation, he pushed her with his foot, rolling her over onto her back. Her arms shot up and he yanked her up from the floor into a sitting position. "Come on, you gotta help me out here, I'm a weakling, remember?" Freddie mumbled as he shoveled Sam up over onto his back. She curled around over his shoulders, drooling a little on purpose. "Okay, that's just gross." Freddie spat out a little frosting-encrusted hair that got into his mouth, and made his hunched-over way to the elevator. Sam pushed the call button, obviously far more conscious than she wanted to admit.

When he dumped her unceremoniously into the passenger seat of the Cesspool, she uncurled herself and snapped on her seatbelt. "When are we going on our trip?" she asked suddenly.

"What trip?" Freddie put his car into reverse and pulled out of the parking spot.

"What trip? What trip! The trip down highway 101, you know, the coast to our right, the country to our left, the future in front of us, all that crap. Aren't you trying to figure out a time to do it yet?" Sam was awake again, fidgeting with the radio dials.

"About that. I don't think I can convince my mom to let me go. At least not for two years. Maybe after graduation?" Freddie turned smoothly onto the parkway, the yellow sodium lights flipping past.

"Bullshit. You promised. We made a deal!"

"Yeah but I can't just leave, Mom would send the entire Seattle police force after me. And then, she would go to Canada and recruit Mounties."

Sam shrugged. "So don't tell her you're leaving."

"I'd have to get her out of the house for like, two weeks, and convince her to leave me on my own? Are you kidding me? You have seen me try to lie before, right?" Freddie risked a glance away from the deserted late-night highway to look at Sam. She was crossing her arms.

"Yes. Your mom will believe anything you tell her. I have no fucking clue why you don't take advantage of it more often! Come on."

Freddie made a hemming and hawing noise. "Yeah, but it's just not, not me, okay?"

"That was the other part of the deal. You have to think of it from my perspective. I would totally lie to my mom to live out a dream. Lucky for her, most of my dreams involve roast beef."

Freddie grinned. "Well, fine. If I can pull off being a lying, cheating, horrible person like you, you have to help pay for the trip."

"What?" Sam gaped. "I don't do work, you know that!"

"Well, gas is expensive, and she doesn't exactly get good mileage, you know." Freddie patted the dashboard lovingly. "You have to hold up your part, Sam. You said you'd do the worrying for me, right? Well I worry about money. Among other things."

When he pulled into her driveway, Sam got out and came around to Freddie's window. He obligingly rolled it down. She leaned into the car and breathed quietly. "You wanna know what my wish was when I blew out my candles?"

"If you tell me, it won't ever come true." He leaned with his head on his hand, elbow on the top of the steering wheel. He yawned despite himself.

"I wished I could get the hell away from myself." And then she pulled her face away from his, turned and fled to her porch. Freddie waited, watching until she let herself in and shut the door behind her.

*

Seattle shivered and shook and woke up from a wet winter and a muddy spring. Freddie surprised his mother by obliging her numerous requests to come have a counseling session with her therapist, Dr. Wynkoop.

By the end of June, the plan presented itself. On one hand, Freddie felt awful for manipulating their mother-son therapy sessions for his own personal gain. On the other hand, he figured, if Dr. Wynkoop thought it was a good idea, why not push for it? Slowly, every week, as he listened to his mother pour out every fear conceivable and inconceivable, he nudged the topic of conversation the way he wanted it to go.

Then, Sam surprised him, first by actually passing junior year of high school, and second by getting a summer job. She took the deal to heart, making lists of things they might need, arriving at all hours to deposit them in the trunk of Freddie's car, and never once did she breathe a word of it to Carly. It was decided, mumbled between iCarly rehearsals and movie nights, that Carly wouldn't be able to handle not having a destination, a specific itinerary. And that's exactly what Freddie wanted to avoid.

Mid August, six months after the deal was made, Freddie drove his mother to the airport. He got out, kissed her goodbye, made sure she had extra handiwipes, reminded her that the laminated card with Dr. Wynkoop's contact information on it was in her left pocket, and peeled her off of him when she swooped in for another hug. "Mom, I'll be fine!"

"Are you sure? You can come with me! I should have gotten you a babysitter! What if you eat a musk melon?"

"I'm sixteen, and I am not allergic to melons of any sort. I will call you every day." He rushed back into the driver's seat before she could sweep him up into another bone-crushing hug. Marissa waved, worriedly, through the window to him, and he pulled around through the airport terminal.

When he got back to his apartment, Freddie shut the door behind him, leaned against the door and sighed. Two weeks alone. Marissa had finally, after months of convincing by licensed doctors, therapists, and her son, gotten up the resolve to go on a two week retreat on the other side of the Blue mountains. Dr. Wynkoop had taken Freddie aside in June and suggested it to him, citing Marissa's increasing stresses from the fears of city life. "I think she needs a solid change of scenery, at least a fortnight," Freddie had replied, a smile curling on his lips.

Broken from his reverie by a grumbling stomach, Freddie opened his eyes and headed for the kitchen. There, nearly every surface was covered in pieces of paper. It was the contract.

Dr. Wynkoop had started the paperwork as a coping mechanism for Marissa to handle the uncertainties of taking care of her son. A simple shampoo contract had been all that was needed at first, but as Freddie had struck out on his own, the paperwork had come in handy for other things too. The filing cabinets were full of them. This contract was new, and normally it would be carefully itemized and filed away with the rest of them, but Marissa had wanted to drive home a point. Every page had promises, signed by Freddie in his steady, looping signature.

"I, Fredward Benson, promise to check my scalp every Tuesday for parasites." And "I, Fredward Benson, promise to wash each dish I use in at least 110 degree soapy water."

It was a compromise. First, Marissa had demanded he have a babysitter. But when he'd explained, quite patiently he thought, that he was sixteen, had his own car and could take care of himself quite nicely thank you, Dr. Wynkoop had suggested this alternative. Freddie opened the fridge and pulled out some orange juice. Guiltily staring at page 27 of the contract, item Q, "I, Fredward Benson, promise to use a glass and never drink directly from a beverage container," he chugged a few gulps straight from the carton. It was absolutely delicious.

Nowhere on the entire contract did it say "I, Fredward Benson, promise not to lie to my mother repeatedly and go on a road trip with my best friend to nowhere in particular."

*

Freddie slid into the oppressive heat of his red leather upholstered car. He tossed some sandwiches into the passenger's seat and headed out to meet Sam for an early lunch.

"What do you think you're doing? Someone get that nub out of the kiddy pool!" Sam blew her whistle, climbed down the chair, and stomped over to a large, rude, fourteen year old boy making problems in the shallow end. "When Sam says to leave the little kids alone, you leave them alone! This is your third warning!" She was a sight to behold, in her green swimsuit and shorts, with her eyes hidden behind reflective sunglasses, screaming her head off and wildly gesticulating. The boy slunk back, turning bright red.

Somebody started laughing behind her, and she felt her ponytail being yanked. "If you do that one more time, Clive, I'm telling your mother!" Sam whipped her head around to see Freddie laughing uproariously in her face.

"Oh, god, Sam, it's just so funny to see you defending the kids. You're like, hahaha, you're like the Jolly Green Lifeguard." He wiped the tears out of his eyes.

Sam put her hands on her hips. "This really isn't helping my cred, Benson." She eyed him, pressing her tongue to the inside of her cheek. "Is that lunch? What's the occasion?"

Freddie tossed her a sandwich as they made their way over to the little office by the pool entrance. A frisson of excitement went up his spine as he bit into half of a tomato and cheese on wheat. "Mom's gone. We can go."

Sam stopped halfway through signing the break sheet and looked up at him over the edge of her sunglasses. "You serious?"

"My suitcase is in the trunk." Freddie was suddenly very hungry.

"And here I thought you were gonna wuss out on me this whole time! Aw, look at you, I bet you packed extra handiwipes and everything." Sam slapped him congenially on the shoulder as Freddie choked on his hastily gobbled sandwich.

"They come in handy! Thus, the name!" But Sam was already off, ignoring his protests, to find her boss so she could squirm her way out of shifts for the next two weeks.

After Sam wheedled her way into switching shifts with a coworker on no notice whatsoever, she joined Freddie at a plastic table to one corner of the pool. He was halfway through a blue popsicle. "What took you so long? Couldn't be manipulative and whiny enough for once?"

Sam took the popsicle out of his hand and devoured what was left of it in two crunches. "No. He didn't want me to leave. Said I was the best kid he's got working this summer. Vivian apparently doesn't cut the mustard like one Sam Puckett." She started in on the other sandwiches Freddie had brought.

"Aw, Sam, look at you, queen of your little aquatic kingdom." Freddie echoed her tone from earlier.

"Hey, I just like bossing people around, you know that. Besides, free ice cream sandwiches!" She took her ponytail out and ran her fingers through her hair.

"But you got off, right?"

"Of course! Who do you take me for? I even got the cash he'll owe me once I sign out for the day." She fanned a check in Freddie's face.

It turned out that the day was over as of ten minutes previous, because after another turkey sandwich, Sam pulled her phone out of her bag and called her mother. "Hey Mom, I'm gonna go camping for the next two weeks. I'm heading out tonight. All my stuff is at Carly's. Yeah, I'll try not to attract any bears. No, don't worry about it, Freddie's got that part covered. Yes! I told you about this a month ago. I guess you just... weren't listening." Sam's eyes narrowed, her voice lowered. A pause, and then her face broke into a smile. "Exactly! You remember now, see, I told you. I'll be back in a while. Don't worry about me." She hung up, mission complete.

Freddie's mouth hung open, and it wasn't because Sam leaned back in her chair, thrusting her chest out and extending her neck in a languid stretch. "Do you have magical powers?" he asked.

"Yes."

"It took me three months to get my mom out of the house, and you just, how did you, what?" Freddie spluttered.

Sam sat back up and plonked her arms on the table, leaning forward. "One day, I may choose to share my secrets with you, young one. But not this day. Let's get the hell outta here!" She grabbed her bag and Freddie followed her out to his car, a shining red shape in the hazy sunlight.

*

One shower later, Sam and Freddie were staring at the open trunk of his Lincoln in the middle of the Bushwell parking lot.

"Batteries, cash, bottled water, blankets, more cash, Swedish fish, towels..." Sam was ticking off an itemized list in her head.

"And the files have been emailed to Carly, I did that when you were in the bathroom." They had decided, early on, in order to make sure Carly didn't freak when they went missing, to film an explanation and a couple extra iCarly segments to take the strain off of her shooting one or two shows solo. That had happened before, and it hadn't been good at all. Sam was pretty sure Carly knew something was up about Freddie getting to be on his own for a while, but they'd left the actual fact of the trip unsaid. Freddie trusted Carly not to make too big of a deal out of it.

"And the first aid kit's still intact." Sam patted its orange bulk, a hulking presence among the carefully stored items in the trunk. Freddie's mom had put it there first thing, day after Valentine's. "That's everything. Oh, and your nightlight, of course!" Sam pulled a small object from the front pocket of her shorts, waggling her eyebrows at him. She must have nicked it from his room after taking a shower in his apartment.

"You're doing an alarmingly good job of acting like my mother." Freddie scoffed deliberately, and took the nightlight from her hands.

"I'm just being you, Fredward." She watched as he tossed it nonchalantly into the back and shut the trunk. She chose not to say anything. "Now, get in that seat and drive!" She pushed him by the shoulders forward.

They both slid in at the same time, simultaneous oofs and settling noises.

"Seatbelts buckled?" Freddie fingered the steering wheel, nervously.

"Let me worry about that. And yes."

"Map of the coast in glove compartment?"

"Put it in drive, Freddie!" Sam pointed forward.

"Um, if I don't put it in reverse, first, we'll ram into that car in front of us, Sam."

Sam sighed. "Just, go already!"

Freddie swallowed, and shifted out of park.