4.
You are Samantha Puckett, best friend of Carly Shay and future owner of a false passport (you know a guy who knows a guy). Everyone in sight has the good sense to clear your path as you stomp through the halls, trying out new names in your head because you're going to have to go on the lam straight after you murder said best friend.
Not really, but you are as mad at Carly as you ever get. You'd locked yourself in the bathroom for ten minutes before you headed back to the library, sneaking through the small courtyard at the back to get a look in through the window and make sure the nub was still absent. You took to the PearBook, making fudgy small talk with Brad. The old skin was firmly back in place as you silently talked yourself down; you could pass this off. If it came to the worst, you'd tell them you were thinking about pizza toppings or something, they'd roll their eyes and it'd all be forgotten.
"Hey, everybody!"
You turned like everyone else and saw Benson at the door standing next to Carly, his look and voice abnormally bright. Of all the things you expected when you saw him again, some half-baked story about a two-headed frog wasn't one of them, but it soon became clear that he had been talked into one of Carly's schemes when he led the rest of the class out into the courtyard while she dimmed the lights to 'romance' and left you with Brad in cripplingly awkward silence.
Stupid horse documentary. The next time you saw Spencer, you were making him put a block on the Animal Channel. Carly is a child in many ways, a little impressionable and naive to the point of oblivious, although it doesn't stop her from interfering even where you wish she would leave well enough alone. You and Freddie had once sat duct-taped together (an incident which has since led to some confusing dreams) listening to her get all hysterical over your secret first kiss. Honestly, you were bitterly disappointed; you'd liked sharing just one thing with him that wasn't about her. She coerced a promise of full disclosure from you both, but you had your fingers crossed and bit your tongue to keep from yelling that it was none of her damned business. It never used to be this complicated. Your loyalties were once clear and undivided, but lately there's a resentful part of you that comes out every time she rolls her eyes or shakes her head impatiently at Sam and Freddie, the riot-girl from the wrong side of the tracks and the little boy next door, as if you were the same kids you always were. As fiercely as you love your best friend, her condescension is starting to quietly chiz you off.
You get to Little Miss Matchmaker's classroom door (looks like Spencer threw up again) and draw a calming breath before you call her over. If it were anyone but Carly, they would already be flat on their back trying to decide which part of their face to clutch first. You tell her it's not right to ambush your friends, but she's not really listening, too excited at the thought of 'hooking you up.' You tell her you don't love Brad, which is easy enough. You tell her it's a stupid PearPad app, which it is. You're on a roll until Carly sticks a fork in the toaster.
"You've been acting different!"
For some reason, it lands like a blow and you can't hide it. You fire back a weak denial and hear him taunting in your head; 'That was pathetic. You're losing your touch, Puckett.' Carly protests that every time the boys do something together, you're not far behind and she's so close, so very close to the mark. She says she wants you to be happy and once more, your throat tightens with the need to tell someone; he makes you happy.
Instead, you throw out some wisecrack about pie and she lets you leave without following.
When you get back, Brad and Freddie are nowhere to be seen and the suckers are filtering into the library, so you swipe someone's bottle and go outside to pace the moonlit courtyard like a caged tiger, knocking back ice-cold water like hard liquor. The good princess and her sidekicks, the loudmouth tomboy and the lovesick nub; in the beginning, these roles had bound you all together but lately, it's been more like they're holding you in place. You aren't like her, and truth be told you don't even want to be. That embarrassing episode when you tried to girl-ify yourself for the sake of Paul (or was it Pete? Could've been Pat, but whatever) had made it clear you'd have to forget the better part of yourself. All the same, you feel something changing, something real and important, and not just in you.
Carly is the same, still the voice of reason, caution...restraint (sometimes, you think she sounds like a teacher), but she hasn't noticed that the nub is getting restless in their closed little world. Brad had shown him there are better friends, people who share his interests, don't take his affections for granted and don't leave him covered in bruises. You can feel him drifting away, and it bothers you more than you used to admit. Although you've never been one for hindsight, most of your memories involve Freddie in some way or another, and regardless of what you let him think, he's become special to you in ways you can't easily describe. 'Acting different' was all part of the plan, to let him know that you're as tired of this 'barely-friends' routine as he is, that you don't want to lose him, not really, that there might somehow be a slim chance that maybe on some level you could possibly be something like sort of...
...'IN LOVE.'
You slump down onto the steps, feeling raw and battered to the point of breaking. That's what the app had said, wasn't it? You felt that if nothing else, at least the war, the years of buttons pushed and lines crossed, had given the two of you your own peculiar rapport. In some ways, he knows you better even than Carly. How is it that a machine could read you and he can't?
The midnight hour is striking when the boy himself finds you, and you're not particularly surprised to see him. He leans against the library wall with his thumbs tucked in his pockets, a habit he has when he doesn't know what to do with his hands. He says he knows about the fight you had with Carly, but coming after you was his own idea. You know that, for some unfathomable reason, he cares about you. Not only did he give away a cruise to get rid of that Missy chick (hard to believe he still thinks you don't know; this is a school, not a monastery), but in all the screaming matches since, he's never mentioned it, never once thrown it in your face, though you almost wish he would. Things would be far simpler if you could just go back to hating his guts.
"But Carly's right," he adds.
For a few seconds, you groan your frustration into the night air and despise your best friend. You don't know whether to laugh or weep at the absurd situation you've made for yourself but as you sit in the dark on the steps of the gym and look at him standing a million miles away, it doesn't seem very funny. Repeating yourself for what feels like the thousandth time, you tell him you're not into the new kid. As usual, Freddie rolls his eyes and echoes Carly, pointing out that you've been finding excuses to spend time with him and Brad, and you want to scream at the bone-headed dolt. He doesn't even ask, doesn't even see what you feel is written all over you.
"And that means I'm in love with him?"
"Well, you hate me!" he retorts sharply and with casual conviction, positive beyond a shadow of a doubt that you aren't hanging around for his company. You consider all the wounds you left on him, all the ways you made him feel small, the hundred reasons you gave him to leave you out in the cold; he's always been the strong one. He took your best shot and here he is, still standing, while you've made yourself hollow and brittle as old porcelain.
"I've never said I hate you," you protest quietly, but even as the words are leaving your mouth, you hear how preposterous they sound. His voice cracks high as he contradicts you with all the times you've said exactly that, complete with documentary evidence, the 'I hate you' birthday card you gave him for a private joke. With a defeated sigh at his blindness, you gesture wearily at the door to demand he leaves, though it sounds more like a plea.
"Fine, I'll leeeave," he complies mockingly.
"'Bye." You manage to make it sound caustic, but the realness of the word sticks in your still-aching throat.
"But before I go..." he persists.
In your frazzled state, irritation takes over. You surge to your feet and pull up close, trying to bull him into going away with a 'double fist face dance' (the threat is a little clumsy; you're off your game tonight), but to your surprise, the nub doesn't even flinch. In fact, he squares up in front of you and plants his feet, determined to be heard. As he recites the speech he undoubtedly rehearsed, his gorgeous brown eyes soften, his tone warm and sincere in a way you've never heard and you find you can't take your own eyes off him; he's here for your sake, not hers. You see the boy next door who's lost none of his sweetness in spite of everything you've done, the man he's becoming who was brave and wonderful enough to fight for his friends even against themselves. The girl you are might've beaten him up by reflex, but if the woman you are becoming hasn't already fallen, she is now totally lost.
"...but you never know what might happen if you don't..."
You will never hear the end of that sentence as you hold him fast and stop his mouth with yours. For the second time that night, the world stands still as you close your eyes and surrender. He usually smells of soap and fresh laundry but now there's cologne in the mix, and the faint scratch of his cheek on yours reminds you of the distance between that first kiss and this one. Benson is a startled mannequin under your touch, arms stiffly spread, and your grip on his unexpectedly broad shoulders tightens as you struggle not to run your hands up his neck, over his face, through his hair, to feel him all around you the way you crave him. You're burning your own heart out but you don't stop, don't even care. If this is your only chance to be this close, then wild horses couldn't drag you away from this one excruciating, ecstatic confession.
11 seconds. You broke your record.
As you take your hands (and lips) off him, the consequence of what you've just done sweeps over you like a freezing draft. In your young life, you've never experienced anything like this, rage and fear and doubt and hope and want and need all at once. His muscles unclench themselves, and as he blinks dumbly at you, his expression pinballs between wide-eyed shock, stammering bewilderment and out-and-out gaping. It's like the human equivalent of the 'Blue Screen of Death,' and you imagine the crashed software in his head trying to reboot and rewrite his memories in light of the blank you just filled in; you've been hanging out with nerds too much.
"Sorry," you mutter lamely in the silence. It's the best you can do right now.
"S' cool," he shrugs back in similar fashion; once again, you can't say you blame him.
You are Sam Puckett, and it looks a lot like you're in love with Freddie Benson.
Ain't hindsight a bitch?