So guess who has a chemistry exam on Wednesday and hasn't even started studying? No not Vladimir Putin! Me! But doesn't he have a cool name? Putin. Heh. Anyway, my teacher still hasn't given us our study guides, so I will take that as an excuse to write this story and not study. Yay for procrastination.
Disclaimer: I don't own iCarly. Nor do I own the universe. Yet. Mwahaha.
"Can anyone tell me what the capital of Montevideo is?"
I raised my hand. "Um…Ms. Briggs? I think you meant to ask what country Montevideo is the capital of. You see, Montevideo is a city…"
"Mr. Benson," said the creepy teacher spitefully. Miserable little brat. How dare he correct me? "If you would rather argue with your teacher than answer the question, I'd be happy to go to the office and let you argue with Principal Franklin." Heh. That'll scare the sass out of him.
"No," I said quickly. "I mean, that won't be necessary. What I meant to say was…Uruguay?"
"Wrong. The correct answer was Montevideo."
"But you just said…"
"I'm here!" said a girl as she rushed into the classroom, her blonde hair messy and tangled.
"Who and what are you?" said Ms. Briggs coldly.
"Sam Puckett at your service." She saluted, smoothing out her wild hair and smirking to herself.
"Ah, yes, Samantha. I see you finally decided to join us."
Sam's smirk disappeared and she clenched her fists. "Okay, A, my name is Sam. Not Samantha. NOBODY calls me Samantha. So don't. And B, you people should be glad that I only missed the first week of school. I once stayed on summer break for an extra two and a half months before my mom finally noticed. And then it was only because the police had to go and get involved. Trust me Teach, you should be grateful you get to enjoy my presence at all."
Ms. Briggs scowled at Sam, forgetting all about her anger with me. "Those are some good things to know, Sam. Now here are some things you should know about me. A, my name, as far as you and the rest of the maggots you call classmates are concerned, is Ms. Briggs. Not Teach. Not Francine. Ms. Briggs. B, I don't like it when my students talk back to me. So don't. And C, you just earned yourself a big, fat detention." She smiled evilly as she took out a detention slip, wrote Sam's name on it, and handed it to her.
Sam took the detention, totally unfazed. "Whatevs. I like the people I meet in detention. You just saved me the trouble of having to go find all the trouble makers in the school myself." She walked to the back of the classroom and plopped down in the desk in the back, far-right corner, as far away from Ms. Briggs as she could get. "By the way," she said, smirking once again, "I don't think telling me that I just earned myself a detention qualifies as a fact about you. That's more a fact about me, don'tcha think? Gosh, I'd heard you were a bad teacher, but I didn't think you'd be that dumb."
And that was how Sam ended up with two detentions on her first day of middle school.
"Hi Carly," I said, smiling at the pretty brunette girl as she piled books into her backpack at the end of school.
She looked up, a little startled. Whoa, where did he come from? I wonder how long he's been standing there watching me. "Oh. Hi Freddie. Can I…help you?"
"Nah," I said, "I just wanted to say hi. Unless maybe you were reconsidering going out with me?"
Oh man, not again. "I'm really sorry Freddie. But no. Not now."
"Oh. Okay. That's fine. I was just making sure. You know…just in case maybe you had changed your mind." I leaned against her locker door in an attempt to look cool. Her locker had been open and when I leaned against the door it slammed shut suddenly and I fell to the floor.
"Oh my gosh! Are you okay?" she offered me her hand and helped me up.
"Yeah, I'm…I'm cool." Carly didn't respond, but I could hear what was going on in her head.
Cool? Not really. Oh, that was mean of me! Bad Carly! No dessert for me tonight. Well…maybe just a little. Spencer said he was going to make a chocolate cheese cake… No. I thought mean thoughts, and mean people can't have dessert. He's probably wondering why I'm not talking right now. I should say something. But what? "Uhhh…"
"Yo! Carlotta!" Sam walked around the corner and towards Carly and me.
Phew. Saved by the Sam, Carly thought. "Hey Sam. What's up?"
"I need a ride. Apparently my mom forgot that she was going to have to pick me up from school today and decided to take a quick trip to Vegas. Oh, and can the ride be to your place? No telling how 'quick' this trip will really be. Remember the last time she took a quick trip somewhere? She was gone for two weeks."
"Sure Sam. You can stay at my house. I think you still have a pair of pajamas and a change of clothes there from last week."
"Sweet. So Carls, guess what happened with Briggs today."
"Don't tell me you already got yourself in trouble," Carly groaned.
"Hey, it's not my fault the woman is a total nub." She reached into her backpack and pulled out some beef jerky. "Besides, I wasn't that bad. I simply informed her that she was wrong about a few things. I guess she just can't take constructive criticism."
"Wait…if you got in trouble, why aren't you in detention? Ms. Briggs isn't one to just let someone off the hook like that."
"Oh, Briggasaurus gave me a detention. Two actually. I just didn't feel like…" Sam finally noticed that I was standing there and stopped mid-sentence, glaring at me.
"What's that doing here?"
"Sam, be nice to Freddie. He hasn't done anything to you."
"Don't try and fool me Carls. I know this is the same nub who tried to steal my ham the other day. Momma never forgets a face who tries to steal from her." She looked back at me and raised her tiny fist. "Get lost, Loser. This is my school. Why are you here anyway? What are you, a stalker?"
"N-no," I said, my voice shaking. "I go to school here too."
"I haven't seen you here all day."
"We were in Ms. Briggs' class together. And I saw you at lunch. You made me give you my pudding cup."
"Nope. Doesn't ring a bell."
"Hey kiddos," said Spencer as he walked into the school. "Ready to go Little Sis?"
"Yeah, I'm ready. Oh, and I told Sam she could come with us."
"I expected nothing less. Come girls, your chariot awaits," he said with a very bad French accent. They started to leave. "Hey, uh…Frankie…you need a ride?" Was that his name? Frankie? Or maybe it was Fenley? Felix? Fabio? Steve?
"No thanks, my mom is probably waiting for me right now. And it's Freddie by the way."
"Freddie…right…I knew that. You're sure you don't need a ride? We've got faux-leather seats and cup holders."
"I think I'm good."
"Alright then. Later Fred." He turned to leave again.
"Hey Spencer?" I called before I could stop myself.
"Yeah?"
"Do you think…do you think maybe I could come by your apartment sometime? You know, like to hang out?"
"Uh, sure Fredman. That'd be great. You could help me with my sculptures! In fact, why don't you come by today? I have a new sculpture that I could really use some help with."
"Okay, sure. I'll ask my mom. Oh and Spence, you may want to hurry up. I think Sam is trying to hotwire your car."
"What?" Spencer turned and looked out the window to see Sam fiddling with some wires in his yellow Shmolkswagen Bug. "I'd…better go see about that. See you later!" He turned and ran awkwardly to his car.
Well, it'd be interesting to see how being at the Shay's with Sam again would go. Hopefully she wouldn't try to kill me this time.
Somehow I convinced my mom that the Shays weren't as dangerous as she thought they were and she let me go over to their house that afternoon. Of course, I could only go after I had finished my homework and had gotten my bi-weekly body examination, so it was close to six-o-clock when I arrived at the Shays' front door.
This time when I knocked, Carly answered the door. "Hi Freddie. Um, is there something you need?" Please don't ask me out again, please don't ask me out again, please don't ask me out again…
"Your brother invited me over to help him with a sculpture."
"Oh. Well, okay then. Come in." She opened the door a little wider and let me through. "I think he's in the kitchen."
"Thanks." I noticed Sam sitting on the couch watching TV as I walked by. She didn't seem to notice me at all. I still couldn't hear her thoughts, but I could hear thoughts of mutant beavers and flaming tacos coming from somewhere in the kitchen. All I saw when I got there was what appeared to be the world's largest brown paper bag. "Spencer?" called out.
"Hey Freddo!" said Spencer, popping up from inside the bag. "Glad you could make it. I was just about to do the spray painting."
"Cool. Hey, what happened to that other sculpture you were making? The one with the law books?"
"Oh, yeah. Turns out my purple goo is pretty corrosive to paper. Who knew?"
"Ah. Well what is this new sculpture?"
"Glad you asked. You see, right now this may look like an ordinary paper bag. But soon it will be covered with wonderful colors, and I'll but a box in it. I shall call it, 'Think Outside of the Box.' You get it?"
"Um, yeah…but then won't people have to be really close to the bag to see that there's a box inside?"
Spencer's face fell. "Oh yeah. I guess I didn't think of that." He sighed. "I guess I'm just not cut out to be a great artist. Maybe I should just go back to law school."
"No, it was a good idea. But I think you need to do what your sculpture says and think outside of the box. Make something crazy and unexpected that no one has ever thought to do before."
Spencer brightened. "That's a good idea Freddo. Thanks. Hey…" a smile slowly crept onto his face. "I think I've got it. I'll be right back." Before I could respond he ran upstairs, giggling to himself the whole way while his thoughts sing-songed I'm gonna be an artist, I'm gonna be an artist. Judging from the idea I heard him think just a moment before, he certainly was.
Spencer came downstairs a moment later carrying a laundry basket filled with socks.
"Hey Spence, grab me a soda?" said Sam without even turning around. That was odd. Spencer hadn't really made much noise when he came back downstairs. Then again, Sam was a little closer to the stairs than I was, so she probably did hear him. But it was a little weird that she would notice him but never notice me. Maybe she just chose not to acknowledge me.
"Sure," said Spencer, setting the laundry basket down and going to the refrigerator to retrieve Sam's soda. Sam took it from his hand without even looking away from the television.
"So my idea is this," said Spencer, though I already knew what his idea was. "All my old socks sewn together into a giant sweater. We dress a cardboard box up with the sock-sweater and give it another pair of socks for feet and another pair for hands. And I shall call my masterpiece…"
"Thinking Outside of the Socks," Sam and I said in unison. We glanced over at each other briefly, both a little weirded out.
"Yep," said Spencer, oblivious as usual. "It's going to be my best creation yet! I bet you're wondering what I'm going to do when I don't have any socks left for myself."
"Not really," said Sam.
"Well, I heard about this guy who lives right here in Seattle and makes custom socks for a living. How awesome is that? Pretty awesome!"
"Not really," Sam repeated.
"Best of all, he's having a knock-your-socks-off special this week. Buy nine pairs of socks, get the tenth pair half-off!"
"Fascinating."
"Isn't it?" Spencer shouted enthusiastically. "I'm going to go call and schedule an appointment right now! I think he and I could be great friends!" He ran back upstairs again.
Then the room was silent except for the sound of two guys wrestling on the TV. I decided that I kind of wanted to sit on the couch, but I was a little afraid that Sam might hurt me if I did. "Um," I said, inching toward the couch, "can I sit here?" Sam looked over, seemingly surprised that I was still there. She gave a slight nod and resumed watching television.
As I took a seat on the couch, I couldn't help but wonder what must have been going on in Sam's mind. It must've been something amazing, I was sure of that. Even besides the whole not being about to read her mind thing, something about Sam seemed different to me. She was unlike anyone else I'd ever met, that I could say for sure. And I was pretty sure that the reason I couldn't read her mind wasn't because it wasn't important. There was something special about Sam, and I was going to find out what it was.
I appreciate all the reviews I've gotten so far, and I'd really appreciate some more. :)