"…and now it's time for… Random Dancing!"
Music blares out from invisible speakers in the background and Carly and I throw ourselves into our dancing, limbs flailing, hair flying and big grins plastered over our faces. The sound of Freddie laughing quietly to himself as he films it is like a melody in itself, the sound familiar and comforting.
The music stops quickly and Carly and I adopt serious expressions on our flushed faces. We look like hedgehogs, our hair sticking our in odd places from the head banging we've been doing, like spikes.
"And now ends another episode of iCarly," Carly says, her voice a monotone.
"But before we go, we have some sad news for you," I add, my voice equally flat.
"This could be the end of iCarly!" Carly wails.
"Because Carly's brains have been eaten by nerd-zombies!" I yell.
"Nerd zombies?" Freddie says incredulously from behind the camera, and I smack him on the shoulder, beginning to say something to him, which Carly interrupts.
"And Sam has caught flumobongiparpidooble disease!"
"It's very serious," I tell the iCarly audience.
"Until next time!" Carly smiles, jumping up and down.
"See ya!"
"Bye!"
"Auf wiedersehen!"
"Bonjour!"
There's a nervous cough from Freddie behind the camera. "Er, Carly, that's hello…"
"Yes, Carly knows that Freddork," I say sarcastically, sticking out my tongue at him and then smiling despite myself at his off-camera reaction.
"But now we really have to go."
"Don't cry!"
"We'll be back next week with more awesomeness, coming from me and Carlaaay, of course."
"Sam! Remember what we talked about!" Carly whispers, nudging me in the side.
I roll my eyes, and Freddie and I share a smile, then address the viewers again, "And Freddork will be here too… unfortunately. Although luckily for you, you won't have to see his ugly nerd-face."
"Sam!" Carly pouts at me, but Freddie and I are both laughing by now and Carly quickly joins in, and that's when I know that –
"Sam?"
I press pause on the remote and look away from the TV for the first time in hours, up at my best friend, who is standing over me with a disapproving frown on her face. It's pretty much all Carls has been doing lately. When she's not at school, she's lecturing me on how I should be at school or how I should be 'getting on with my life'. Constantly hovering over me, and it's making it impossible to form a clear thought in my head without getting distracted by Carly bringing me some toast or a sandwich. She's been bringing me so much food that I'm not even hungry anymore! Can you imagine that? Sam Puckett, full!
The worst part is that, with her always there, I haven't even had a chance to cry. I don't cry, it's one of my few principles, but for some reason my body has other ideas, and keeps threatening to turn me into a sappy freak any second.
"Whaddayawant?" I ask grumpily, the words coming out slurred and mixed together in my exhaustion. Lack of sleep does strange things to a person's head and I wouldn't be surprised if I start hallucinating in a few minutes. I haven't been sleeping at all lately, and instead of getting better (apparently it's supposed to, according to Carly) it's just been getting worse.
"Why are you doing this to yourself?"
"Huh?"
Carly gestures to the TV screen, her hands on her hips and her eyebrows creased in a mixture of worry and irritation. She's reminding me slightly of Mrs Briggs in a temper, which is a scary thought, because Mrs Briggs is a middle-aged freakazoid who smells like a public toilet.
"Watching old iCarly videos. You're just making yourself more upset about Freddie."
"I'm not upset," I lie. It comes easily to me, like shoplifting and beating up nerds. I never had to learn how to be a good liar (or take any fighting classes), I was born with the talents. Which is quickly becoming even more useful that it was before, because Carly is like the freakin' Spanish inquisition!
"You look like a zombie," Carly informs me, and I'm not sure whether this is her changing the subject or not.
"Gee, thanks, you really know how to make me feel better," I say sarcastically, staring at her defiantly.
"So you admit you were feeling bad?" she says hopefully, wincing slightly for some reason. It comes out as more of a question than a statement, and for a moment I feel as if Carly, for the first time in our long and complex best-friendship, is scared of me.
"No," I snap, and it sounds harsh and bitter and everything that I'm feeling right now, and it's not even an answer to just that question. I'm telling her no. To everything.
She sighs and decides to try a different tact. "You haven't washed your hair in a week, it's the middle of the afternoon and you're still in your pyjamas, there are bags under your eyes that make you look like a panda, and you've obviously been crying. Besides, you haven't been to school since… ugh!"
"It's Monday," I say emotionlessly. "I've only skipped five days of school, including this one. And I haven't been crying, I'm just tired."
"Then go to sleep. Please, Sam, I'm worried about you," says Carly reasonably. Stupid Carly and her reasonableness.
"Go away."
"Do you want to talk about it?" Carly comes and sits down next to me. "I know what you're going through –"
"Do you?" I interrupt her, avoiding eye contact with Carly and instead glaring at my feet.
"Freddie was my best friend too."
I take a deep breath and mutter, "He was never my best friend." Carly jumps about a mile into the air, her mouth wide open and her eyes bulging. She would look comical if this was any other situation, and I wasn't sure that she was going to try and kill me for what I've just said… and what I'm about to say.
"What!"
"Just give it a rest, Carly."
"You just said Freddie wasn't your best friend!"
"Well done, you're not deaf."
"But what about all the stuff you said to me last week? The funeral… and you went to his grave!" Carly looks baffled now, and I don't really blame her. It's funny really, that she can't completely see through my lie, but one of the few things about Carly that irritates me is that she can be so wrapped up in her own little Carly sometimes that she barely notices what's going on about her.
Freddie and I always fought. Right up until the moment he died. Sometimes, if I called his girlfriend a particularly well thought up nickname, or if he was stupid enough to try and talk to me about my mother, then it really got serious, but most of the time it was just us. But, for some reason, Carly could never see that (and probably still can't) and as we got older, she got even more wound up about our constant bickering.
Don't get me wrong, she knows Freddie and I cared about each other (I still do, even though he's technically gone), she just never understood our relationship. That there are so many times when we've been there for each other that she doesn't even know about, and that when I hit Freddie it was no longer bullying, because he was strong enough to fight back, if he'd wanted to.
But there were things I hated about Freddie too. How he never listened when I told him that his latest girlfriend (he hadn't had all that many, but they've all been stupid) was a bitch, how he knew all that stuff about my mom that even Carly doesn't know because she'll be too over-sympathetic about it, how he was so pathetically in love with Carly (even if he wasn't showing it so much, I bet he still was), how he was such a nerd, how he let me wind him up and let me cloud his judgement. And how, when he told me he hated me, sometimes it felt like he really meant it.
And that is why Carly is annoying me so much right now. It's like because he's dead, I'm supposed to forget all the stupid things about him that annoyed me so much. I'm supposed to act like our relationship was all rainbows and smiles, and forget the fact that sometimes, it was as if we were thirteen again and I felt like I really did hate him (even though I'm not sure I ever really did) and how he was the only person who could ever really make me cry.
Everyone seems to be doing that, which is why I'm not going to school.
"You and Freddie were so close, I feel so sorry for you."
"It must be so hard, to lose your best friend."
"I know he loved you Sam, don't forget that."
I just want to scream at them. To wipe the sympathetic looks off everybody's faces and make them believe that I don't care. But more than that, I just want to scream. Yeah, maybe I loved Freddie. But he didn't love me. I made his life hell, even if he let me. I broke his stuff, I got him into trouble – he got detention because of me, for goodness sake! But most of all, it's my fault he's dead. If I hadn't been winding him up, if I hadn't made him mad, then he wouldn't have walked ahead, he would have still been with me, and we would have walked home to Carly's casually and everything would be fine right now. And even if he had, he would have been looking when he crossed the road and he would have seen that stupid car…
"Sam…?" Carly's voice brings me back to reality and I glare at her.
"Leave me alone."
"I know you're still grieving, but is this what Freddie would have wanted? He would have wanted you to move on, get on with your life, go to school. Not hang around here all day, watching iCarly in your pyjamas, barely moving."
"You don't know what Freddie wanted."
"He was my best friend… I know he loved you, and so do I, so please don't do this to yourself."
"He didn't love me. He hated me."
"You know that's not true."
"No I don't."
"Sam…"
I stand up and stride over to the doorway. I'm sick of Carly going on about what Freddie would or wouldn't have wanted, about the 'grieving process', about how she's there for me and whatnot.
"Carly, I'm leaving," I tell her, without looking at her, as I open the door and step out into the hallway. Relief fills me, and I don't care that Mrs Benson just hurried past me and into the lift, looking at me like I was somehow contagious, and I don't care that Carly is shouting after me. No one can tell me what to do, and I don't need to do what Carly wants, or what Freddie wanted (which is a good thing, since I have no idea what that was), or even what my stupid drunk mom wants.
"Sam, wait! Where are you going?"
"I dunno. Anywhere."
"Anywhere?"
"Yeah. I'm sick of you constantly badgering me, you won't leave me alone! So, for once, can you just accept that I'm not like you? I'm not gonna cry and cry to my friends, and then try and put a brave face on everything and go to school and do work."
Carly's crying now. Hardly, but there are still a few stray tears rolling down her perfect face. How come, even after hours of crying, Carly still looks like she's stepped out of Vogue magazine (I don't read it, I've just seen it a couple times in Carly's room).
"You don't have to pretend to me. You can cry if you want to, I won't judge you," she pleads. For a moment, I'm almost tempted by the offer, but then I decide against it.
"I'm not pretending," I say viciously, hissing like a snake. "If you want to go crying to Spencer and Wendy and all those other stupid people at school, then that's up to you. I don't need or want to cry. I don't care. I just need to go somewhere where nobody is crying or trying to make me cry, ok?"
Carly doesn't nod. She doesn't say anything, so I walk slowly down the hallway and into the lift. I press a few buttons, and, muffled by the sound of the elevator, I hear the door of the Shay's apartment slam shut. Yeah, the Shay's apartment.
It doesn't really feel like my home any more.
I go to the park.
It's probably not the best place to go when I'm in this kind of mood, but whatever. It's empty and hopefully it will remain that way for as long as I need it too. If not, I have plenty of ways to get people to go away… and probably never come back.
I sit on the swing set, swinging back and forth slowly, my head rested against the chain. It's so stupid that I almost laugh, because it's something I've seen in a thousand different movies, the only different being that it's fake and the actress sitting pouting on the leather seat is beautiful and obviously not really that upset because she still manages to have immaculate make-up and not a hair out of place. The bush on top of my head, right now, is really the least of my worries. I don't laugh, though, because I might just have forgotten how.
So I'm sitting and swinging.
Nothing much really to say or do. Maybe I should start singing, turn my life into a depressing musical… ha ha. Storming out of Carly's place probably wasn't my best decision. She'll be properly panicking by now, though she won't have called the police because she's not that stupid. Though, surprisingly, what bothers me most is that I'm cold and the swing isn't as comfy as the Shay's couch.
Hmm… my bum hurts. I might be getting frostbite. I should have brought a coat, or a dressing gown, or even just a blanket. I'm already a zombie in pyjamas, what have I really got to lose?
Well, I guess I have Carly. I'll go round to hers and try to make things up with her later. Or I won't. Depends really. She'll still be annoying, and I'll still get annoyed. But I can't go home, so she's really my only hope. And, I'm not gonna be stupid and stop being friends with her. I hope not, at least… Maybe I pushed her too much. Maybe she won't want me back. No, she will. She definitely will. She's Carly, after all. She's too worried about me to hate me. So, yeah. I'll deal with that later. Tomorrow or something.
Thinking about Carly leads me to thinking about Freddie, so I quickly look around to find something else to focus on.
There's a slide and some monkey bars on the other side of the park. It looks like it was built for hobbits or, as is more likely, small children. Not my kind of thing, either way.
Even so, it might gimme something to do. I walk over to it, circling it and eyeing it up and down. It's pretty run-down – graffiti covering the metal sides and dirt tracks all the way up the slide. The kind Mom really digs.
I climb up the side where there's a tiny climbing wall with footholds that were definitely designed for the tiny feet of infants. I manage to haul myself up onto the roof anyway, and position myself so I sitting cross-legged on the thin strip that makes up the top. On either side of me the yellow metal slants downwards, and if Carly were here then she'd probably be freaking out, squealing about how I'll fall or something. But I feel perfectly safe up here, safer than I often do on the hard ground, and I can see for miles. It feels like miles anyway, but even though this is a lot higher than most kiddie parks go, it probably isn't.
Hesitantly, but confidently, I get up and then I'm standing on top of the roof, my arms spread out straight and my feet planted firmly down on the metal. Right now, I feel like I could fly – just leap straight out into the thin air and swoop down to the ground without getting hurt. Like I'm indestru–
"You're not indestructible, Puckett," says a familiar voice, and I'm so surprised that I wobble. My wobble leads to a slip, and then a full on fall, and even though I manage to hook my arms over the top of the roof, I can't hold on. So I plummet towards the ground, but just before I'm sure I'm gonna hit the ground, I feel strong arms wrap around my waist and set me down gently just beside the structure.
I take a few deep breaths to calm my heart rate, and to give me time to convince myself I really am being stupid, and then I look up and my breath catches in my throat. Maybe my exhaustion is making me hallucinate.
There's no other way I could be face to face with Fredward Benson right now, is there?
"Freddie?" I murmur. God, if I'm imagining this…
"Hmm," he says, and I've never felt so physically weak (seriously, I could faint any second), "I kind of prefer Freddork."
I groan.
"Feeling alright?" he asks, and even though he looks concerned, he's smiling.
"What the hell are you doing here?" I'm finally able to say.
"Saving your life," he tells me casually.
"I wouldn't have died," I tell him, still in a state of shock. "I was only about two or three metres from the ground."
He shrugs. "So maybe I just wanted to see you. What's wrong with that?"
"Other than the fact that you're dead?" I say incredulously.
"That didn't stop me before."
"At the funeral?"
"You saw me?"
"Yeah, but I thought I was imagining it," I say slowly. I think I'm getting a headache. "Am I hallucinating right now?"
Freddie laughs. Thinking about him, in present tense, as in, being here, now, feels so weird. Not wrong exactly, it actually makes me feel better than I have in ages, which is even worse actually because when it turns out that I am just imagining him, I'll fall even harder. So I get up and start to walk away.
I hear him run after me. I thought ghosts were meant to be… well, not there. Like, shouldn't I be able to put my hand through his middle and weird stuff like that. If he is a ghost, which he isn't, he's just a figment of my imagination. So he shouldn't be making noise, right? But he caught me… I can't deny that. I definitely did not hit the ground in the way I should, and I feel fine (well, physically fine, apart from being a little shaky). I don't even have a sprained ankle or anything. Which doesn't make sense.
"Sam! Wait!"
I turn around. "Are you a ghost?"
He stops running, but I stopped before him so now we're literally face to face. If I leaned any closer, our noses would be touching, and if I leaned any closer than that then we'd be kissing. But I can't kiss him, he's dead. Not to mention he's Freddie, of course…
I shut my eyes briefly as I feel him take my hand in his, and when I look back up at him, he's looking down at it, running his thumb slowly over the back of it, making me shiver.
"Freddie," I whisper, and he looks back at me, straight into my eyes. He's a little pale, but apart from that he looks like he always did. Black t-shirt and jeans, with grubby trainers (he'd been caring less and less about the state of his clothes as we got closer) and his short hair messy and all over the place. "Are you a ghost?" I ask again, my voice hushed so he can only just hear.
I don't know what to think when he says, "I don't know," his eyes never leaving mine.
A/N: I couldn't really decide where to end this chapter but I hope I've left it at the right place. I would have ended it earlier, but since I'll be away for a while (two weeks, I think) I made it a bit longer.
It might seem strange that Sam is crying to Carly one minute, then yelling at her the next, but it's Sam and she's grieving and she's also quite conflicted about everything, so I hope that's understandable in the story.
Anyway, interesting finish, huh? What do you think, is Freddie a ghost or something else...?
Reviews are much appreciated, they make me smile :D
