Summary: Upon meeting by chance at Camp Sparkle Lake, Mary Benson and Clara Puckett discover something shocking about their family history: they're twins, mysteriously separated at birth. They go on a mission to set right what clearly has gone wrong. A story of sisterhood, family, and lost (maybe even found) love. Based on The Parent Trap.
Disclaimer: I don't own iCarly. I wish I owned Spencer so I could display awesome sculptures in my room.
iTrap
Trapter 10
Luckily, Mary was gifted in the art of on-the-spot-lying.
"Samantha Puckett's line," Mary chimed in the most robotic, airy tone she could produce, "This is…" Her eyes fell on the burnt bottle of nail polish, still resting uselessly on the counter. "Jen Polish speaking. How can I help you?" Emily, who had returned with the remainder of Carly's banana cream pie and two plates, gave Mary a questioning look. Mary stuck one finger in the air, and Emily shrugged, already helping herself to some pie.
"Uh, hi," the awkward, familiar, authoritative voice filled her ears, confirming her original suspicion. Her dad, for whatever reason, a reason she thanked the ham for, was calling her mom. After thirteen years. Mary heard Freddie clear his throat on the other end. "This is… a friend. Of Sam's. Sort of."
"Could you be a bit more specific?" Mary responded, suppressing excited giggles, "Sam has quite a few friends."
On the other end of the conversation, Freddie had his head on the steering wheel, his cell phone against his ear, so nervous that he was positive he was going to vomit. Why am I doing this? I should just hang up. Hang up right now. End this stupid, illogical phone conversation. "C-could you tell her that…" He swallowed, took a deep, deep breath, "That the nub is getting married?" The end of the question came out hurriedly, like his tongue was on hot coals and needed the words out as fast as possible. "She'll know who you're talking about. It's on September 1st, in Boston. Tell her she's invited. You know, if she wants to come." He could just see Sam rolling his eyes at him. He hadn't seen her in a while, a long while, but he could never forget her look of annoyance, for it had been burned into his giant brain from childhood.
An idea struck Mary like brilliant lightning. Her innovative brain buzzed with the thrill. She simply couldn't get enough of scheming. It was in her blood. It was what she did best. It was what she did next.
"Oh, well, isn't this great timing," she said to the air. Emily listened in curiously, her mouth full of pie. "Sam just walked in. Hi, Miss Puckett! Please hold."
Freddie's heart rate tripled instantly. He was so startled that he accidentally set off his car horn, and the few people in that particular Harvard parking lot sent him glares.
"What was that?" Clara mumbled sleepily, turning over in her seat.
"Everything's fine," Freddie stated, more to himself than his already back to sleeping daughter, "Breathe. Everything's fine."
"So I just spoke with Sam," Mary came back onto the phone, "She says she would appreciate a formal invitation."
Freddie couldn't believe his ears. "She…wants to come?"
"Yes, she does."
"…Actually?"
"That's what she told me."
"…This isn't a prank?"
"What would make you believe this to be a prank?" Mary covered her mouth, still trying not to laugh.
"Well, because…" Freddie tried, but then gave up, "Never mind. So I should just send it in the mail then?"
"No," Mary answered quickly, taking the bait, "Miss Puckett would prefer it to be in-person." From the other end, Mary could make out what sounded like a shocked, abrupt choking noise.
"What?" Freddie spluttered in disbelief. There was no way this could be happening. Sam had made it beyond clear she never wanted to see his 'nerd face' (her words, not his) ever again. He pinched himself, wincing at the pain. No, no he was awake, there was no doubt about it. This was real.
"She says she will be at the Ridgeway High reunion on August 15th." 'Jen Polish' explained to him. Freddie mentally did the math. Today is the 5th. So that's ten days from now. Did he dare?
It was odd, because he hadn't wanted her to want to come. He wasn't so sure what he did want, but it definitely wasn't for her to want to come to his wedding.
"I'll be there," Freddie agreed, before he could change his mind, "With an invitation. And a smile." Back in Seattle, Mary did an appropriate victory dance, involving lots of jumping, twirling, and a one-handed Macarena.
Meanwhile, Freddie literally face-palm'd, realizing how much of an idiot he sounded like. And a smile? At least he was speaking with Jen Polish, and not Sam directly. He would never hear the end of it, he'd imagine.
Of course, who knew, at this point? Maybe she wouldn't have insulted him at all.
This thought made him feel inexplicably lonely.
"Great!" Mary exclaimed, "She'll see you then. Good day!" Mary flipped the phone shut contentedly.
"Clara," Emily jumped in immediately, "What was that?"
"Um," Mary tried to stall, "Can I have some pie?" She reached for the box, but Emily slammed it shut.
"No pie 'til I am informed," she said, trying to be stern, though it was extremely difficult to take her seriously with the light-up earrings (definitely another gift from Spencer). "You've got some major 'splainin' to do, my dear." Fortunately for Mary, Sam and Carly chose that precise moment to appear on the stairway.
"…And you and Clara can stay in the iCarly –" Sam visibly flinched, "–studio if you want!" Mary caught the last half of Carly's sentence.
"Nah, we'll squeeze in here," Sam responded, knowing she would feel bad making Spencer house her and her daughter for the next week and a half. Her pride would not allow for it. "You've got a pretty comfortable couch."
"You sure?" Carly asked sincerely, as the two entered the kitchen, and Cary opened one of the cabinets. "I know Spencer wouldn't mind. You practically lived there through our entire public education."
Somehow, the idea of living in the iCarly studio did not sit well with Sam. Way, way too many memories she had worked day and night to blur if not forget completely. "I'm definitely sure."
The sound of Carly opening and closing the kitchen cabinet did not go unnoticed by her sons.
` "Mom, what're you making?" Stephen called from his video game.
"A delightful combination of bacon and cheese puffs!" Carly hollered back, smiling playfully. Before Carly could say 'cheese puffs,' the two boys had paused the game and flung themselves shamelessly towards the kitchen.
"I want more than Michael gets!" Stephen demanded.
"What? No, Mom, that's so unfair!" Michael whined.
"Huh, that's funny," Carly said lightly as she poured the cheese puffs into a bowl. Sam took a seat next to Mary and watched in anticipation. "I didn't hear either of you say the magic word."
"Please!" they both groaned.
"Okay, it'll be ready soon," Carly announced, "And everybody gets an equal share."
"Except Mama gets more, right?" Sam added. Carly gave her a wary look.
"I'll have some, too, Aunt Carly," Emily chimed in, "Pretty please."
"Why don't you guys move to the kitchen table?" Carly suggested, "More room for breathing and leaning and stuff." At more or less the same time, everyone evacuated the kitchen counter and took a seat at the table. Carly poured everybody a glass of water. Emily decided to challenge the boys to a three-way game of Tic Tac Toe, however that worked.
"So what was that I heard about a hotel?" Mary asked curiously.
"Uh, there's this… thing," Sam tried to explain without giving too much away. She had no idea how much 'Clara' actually knew. "That Aunt Carly and I have to do in town about ten days from now. So we're just going to hang around 'til then."
"Ha! Three in a row, fools!" Emily said triumphantly.
"Nuh-uh!" said Michael.
"Rematch!" insisted Stephen with a huff. "I call rematch!"
"Is it the Ridgeway High reunion?" Mary asked her mom innocently. Sam's eyes narrowed.
"How'd you know about that?" Sam asked, suspicious.
"Oh, well," Mary commenced stage two, "While you were upstairs, I pretended to be your secretary, and some dude called your cell phone." This caught Carly's attention, and she froze at the oven where bacon was currently sizzling.
"Some dude?" Sam clarified.
"Yeah, he wanted to know if you were coming to the reunion," Mary lied.
"Does this dude have a name?" Sam was surprised by how nervous the question left her. To ease the tension, she took a sip of water.
"Nope, but he called himself a nub," Mary replied with a nonchalant shrug. Sam spat out her water in shock. Carly accidentally dropped the frying pan of bacon.
"We're good!" she called out weakly, after discovering all the bacon to be accounted for.
"Maybe Dracula called," Stephen suggested, completely oblivious to Sam's wide eyes.
"Yeah, or Santa," Michael snickered.
Sam was stunned into silence. Then she was furious. How dare he call her out of the blue like that! How dare he allow Clara to talk to her own father without allowing her to know about it! The signature Puckett fight face slowly enveloped Sam's features, and the cup of water resting innocently in front of Sam's fist was slowly crushed until water spurted from its opening like a volcano.
"…Mom?" Mary asked carefully, unsure what to do. She hadn't been around the past thirteen years, after all, and Clara had failed to give Mary a crash course on what to do when Sam got angry.
"Clara, don't you ever answer my phone again," Sam snapped, getting up to grab her phone from her purse and the bowl of cheese puffs, "I need to pee." With those parting words, Sam marched out of Carly's apartment, slamming the door behind her. The entire table was silent, half the table utterly confused.
"She does know that it's easier to use toilet paper for that, right?" Emily asked slowly, noticing the cheese puffs' absence.
"Aw, man, she took the puffs!" Stephen complained.
"It's okay, the bacon is the best part," Michael assured his brother.
"Mike, Stephen," Carly said curtly, her eyes on Mary, "Why don't you take some bacon and go sit on the couch?"
"Sweet!" they both said, jumping out of their seats and racing to the frying pan. Picking up on Carly's cues, Emily went with the boys. Carly took a seat next to Mary.
Mary wasn't one to cry, but before she knew it, she was tearing up, the world around her becoming an unfamiliar, wet blur. Of course her mother would hate her after knowing her for only a few days. Of course she would screw things up like she did with everything else. She began to cry silently, her heart aching.
"Hey," Carly said softly, placing a hand on Mary's shoulder. This only made Mary start to sob. "Shh, shh, Mary, it's okay." She rubbed her back as Mary sniffled. "Your mom was just startled. She's not used to being taken by surprise like that."
"Sh-should I go after her?" Mary inquired through her tears.
"No," Carly shook her head, "No, just let her cool off. She'll come around, she'll go to the reunion, it'll be alright. Promise. I would even ankle-swear on it."
Mary sniffled once again. "Ankle-swear?"
Carly smiled. "Here, stand up. I'll teach ya."
The elevator opened, and an aggravated blonde stepped onto the eighth floor of Bushwell Plaza. She raced past 8D and 8C, past 8B and 8A, her pace quickening with each passing second, until finally, she reached her destination.
Letting loose one of her infamous frustrated groans, Sam thrust the large glass window open and stood on the ledge, staring out at the old fire escape she never seemed to be able to escape from.
She was both angered and relieved by the fact that through all the years of mistreatment, abandonment, the place was exactly as she had left it. Even Freddie's stupid, crooked fold-out chair remained, patient as ever, and it brought Sam back to warm, clear nights over college breaks where he would drag her out here with a second chair to look at the stars together. She would pretend to be bored by his astrological babble while secretly hanging on his every syllable.
Sam stared down at her black flats and stamped her right foot down. Here she had had her first kiss. Here she had fallen in love with the last person she'd ever expected to.
She dragged herself over to Freddie's discarded chair and plopped down, setting the bowl of cheese puffs onto her lap. She grabbed a piece and examined it, allowing her brain to wander in places she had for the past thirteen years guarded with mental electric fences and rabid dogs.
"Meatball?" fourteen year-old Sam Puckett asked her frenemy, who was turning the volume down of an appropriate soft rock song. Her hand outstretched, the peace offering planted in the middle of her palm, fourteen year-old Freddie Benson gazed at her, sincerely perplexed.
"No thanks?" he answered, clearly unsure what to say to this. Sam didn't seem to mind though, as she merely shrugged and chucked the meatball off the fire escape.
Freddie watched the meatball fly to the ground only momentarily before shrugging slightly and facing the blonde, who was trying with all she had to muster up an apology, something she never before attempted. Freddie accepted the strange things she did, the mean things she said, always, through and through.
He knew her inside out and was still here. And that, that was why.
This is dumb, she'd decided with a huff. I'm in my mid-thirties, and I'm sitting on a dirty fire escape eating cheese balls. Man up, Puckett.
So he wanted to see him. Big deal. Lots of people wanted things they never got. And it wasn't like she reciprocated the feeling, or ever would. Because she didn't.
Not in the least.
And maybe if she repeated this to herself enough times, it would be true.
"I was just going to say…"
"That we should kiss?"
"You're gonna break my arm now, aren't you."
"No."
"I come bearing gifts!" Sam whirled around to see Spencer, crawling in, a plate of bacon in his hands.
"Hey, Spence," Sam said absentmindedly, "I'm guessing your sister spilled the beans?"
"Carly and I just thought you would want the second half of your snack," Spencer went on to say, taking the liberty of dumping the plate's contents into Sam's bowl. Awkwardly, the man who had somehow become like a brother to Sam over the years took a seat next to her on the floor. From afar, the scene would seem absolutely silly, a grown man in a fencing outfit sitting pretzel style next to a woman in a chair eating bacon and cheese puffs, but to both of them, this was serious business.
"If you're out here to convince me to go to that reunion," Sam warned, "I would just leave now before things get ugly." Spencer winced in fear but stood his ground.
"I'm going," he said, as if that would change things.
Sam raised an eyebrow. "So?"
"So do you have any idea how many totally insane ex-girlfriends I'm going to run into?" he went on, silly as always. He raised his fingers and began counting them off. "There's Jessica the mime enthusiast, Danielle the sorceress, Elaine, who firmly believed she turned into a rhinoceros at sundown, Cathy, who never bathed…"
"Remind me when I asked for a detailed timeline of your high school love affairs?" Sam stopped him, having heard enough.
"My point is," Spencer explained, "That it ended. With all those crazy people, one way or another. Either I got hurt, or they did, or both. But maybe I'll go to that reunion and finally give or get some closure. Or maybe," Sam should've known. Spencer may be loony, but there was always a light at the end of his madness. "I'll rediscover something I once had, or something that had always stayed with me, and then I'll finally be happy and stop moping around on fire scapes eating cheese puffs!" He raised his hands in the air and stood up, backing away. "I'm just saying!" The last three words were spoken in a British accent, which he continued, to say, "I'm going to go now before you kill me. Peace!" He ran out the open window.
"You'll never be British!" Sam called after him.
"Stop crushing my dreams!" he called back spastically. Sam softly chuckled to herself.
Yet she couldn't deny that Spencer sort of had a point. At least about closure, for she refused to even contemplate the second half of his motivational speech.
With a sigh, Sam took out her phone and dialed a number she knew by heart.
"Gretchen? Yeah, it's Sam… no, yeah, I'm fine… what're you doing on the 15th? I'm going to need some back-up."
"Well, isn't this wonderful?" No need to use names for that sentiment.
It was about eight at night, and Freddie, Clara, Rose and Marissa Benson were seated at Freddie's large family-style kitchen table. It was so large, in fact, that each person had their own entire side of the table, leaving just enough space in between for the dinner to be extremely, extremely awkward.
"So, Rose, dear," Marissa broke the uncomfortable silence with an appropriate question to ask over a fancy steak dinner, "What is your blood type?"
Clara watched as Rose tried to remain polite. "I'm… not sure, actually."
"I ask because I want to make sure you are a potential donor should Freddie have an accident," Marissa elaborated, wide-eyed and oblivious. Bored as ever, Clara decided to pull the video camera out, hoping this little get-together would spring to life when a camera became involved. Or at the very least, filming the scene would help it end faster.
"Mary," Freddie scolded, as Clara zoomed in on his face, "C'mon, put that away. We're eating." She would have had she not detected a hint of a smile on her dad's face. She hoped this meant he was just as bored as she was.
"I have to agree," Rose chimed in, glancing at the lens in a subtly superior way that reminded Clara of every girl that had ever bullied her, "It would be much better if we all conversed rather than play with toys at the table."
"This isn't/That is not a toy!" Clara and Freddie said at the same time. They looked at each other. Freddie cleared his throat awkwardly and continued. "It's, um, it's my camera. And it's very expensive."
"I hope it's not flammable," Marissa said worriedly, "Freddie, get that away from Mary. You know how I feel about technology!"
"I'll be careful," Clara promised, and swiped the camera past every face at the table. Marissa looked blissfully unaware of the tension in the room. Rose looked like she was trying too hard. Freddie, well, to be honest, Freddie just looked plain miserable.
Which was interesting, considering the woman he planned on spending the rest of his life with was about a foot and a half away.
Apparently everyone had forgotten about the camera because Marissa continued her terribly timed questions. "Do you two plan on procreating? Because as lovely as you are, dear – " This was directed at Clara. Freddie slapped his hand to his face in embarrassment. "I'd love to see what sorts of beings could emerge from your gene pool."
"Mom," he moaned, "Stop. Please. I beg of you."
"Oh, Fredward, don't be so immature," Marissa disciplined.
"I don't believe Fredward and I have had that discussion yet," Rose responded through gritted teeth.
"Oh, well then." Everybody settled into another awkward silence and went back to chewing.
That was, of course, until Rose let out an earsplitting screech and stood up on her chair, screaming and pointing at the table. Clara was so startled that she almost missed the shot. Almost.
Freddie stood up immediately, glancing around frantically. "What? What's going? What's happening?"
"BUG!" Rose cried, gesturing wildly to the daddy long legs spider that had somehow made it's way onto the table,. She screeched again as it crawled towards her. "K-KILL IT! KILL IT, FREDDIEBEAR!"
"I'll get the disinfectant!" Marissa offered, pulling herself up and racing upstairs. Freddie found a random People magazine, rolled it up, and murdered the poor bug in one shot. Rose breathed an overly dramatic sigh of relief and took a seat once again, just as Marissa came back down and sprayed the place silly with an unidentifiable, stinky gas that made everyone gasp for air.
Oh my Einstein, Clara couldn't help but giggle to herself, this is gold.
"Fredward," Rose gasped, grabbing the magazine from Freddie's tired hands and shaking the dead spider onto the floor, "You did not just use the new People to whack that spider! I haven't even read it yet!"
"I – sorry," he stuttered, feeling guilty, "I was just trying to… you were so freaked out…"
"You are just ridiculous!" Rose shook her head, "How could you do this to me?"
"I'll get you a new one!" Freddie said quickly. Rose smiled.
"Now there's the man I love," she cooed. Clara made sure to get a shot of pushing her own food away in disgust. She would never eat again. Ever.
"You know, it's quite funny," Marissa noted, getting up to clear the table, "Sam definitely would have just let that spider be." She vacated her spot, leaving a shocked Freddie, a confused Rose, and Clara, who had just gained more respect for her grandmother than she ever thought she would.
"Sam?" Clara asked loudly and dramatically, reading Rose's thoughts, "Who is this Sam?"
"Yes, Freddie, I was just wondering the same thing." Rose looked, as Mary would say, pissed like nobody's business.
Freddie rubbed his temples. How Sam managed to torment him even after thirteen years apart, and a whole country away, he would never know. "Sam," he explained, "Is the bane of my existence."
Clara shut the camera off.
A/N: Silly Freddie, understatements are for kids.
(Not really, but I thought it worked with the situation at hand.)
Anyway, I'd like to take this moment to FREAK OUT about the promo for the upcoming iCarly episode, iLost My Mind. OH MY GOD! AH! AH! AH! AH! Can't. Wait. Must. View. Ewgrrsgstdfhgsgdfszgbsdbnf
Okay, sorry. Had to.
In case you guys are wondering, you haven't met Ben for a reason. I purposely made all the iCarly gangs' marriage imperfect, just 'cause I thought it'd be more realistic. Of course, Carly and Ben are happy, it's just he works a lot and is really busy. I don't see it necessary to meet him, although if anyone wants to I wouldn't mind adding him in.
I hope you liked this chapter. I hope Mary didn't seem OOC when she cried. You've got to remember, she's a thirteen year-old girl, and though they are similar in many ways, she and Sam are entirely different people, as Mary's got a bit of Freddie in her, as Mrs. Benson said, "gene pool." LOL. Poor Freddie.
Okay, I'm going to end this super long A/N and post this now. Enjoy! :)
-Colors