A/N- There were a couple of questions that needed to be answered.
Where are Avery and Jo's parents, and are they looking for them. Avery parents will not come in to the story at all. You might learn more about them if she decides to tell Luke, but they aren't coming back into her life. No one knows who Jo's dad is, and they won't find out in the story.
And now we're back with another new episode of Where Are They Now!
Sam POV
"Hey, everyone you have got to go check the lake out right now! It looks amazing in the sunset!"Luke said. He was walking up the pathway with Avery. They seemed to be getting close, and I had seen them whispering together all afternoon.
"Luke's right, it is probably the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Why don't you guys go check it out, and we can finish setting everything up. Go on, it's really cool!" Avery said. She was acting kind of weird, and Luke seemed tense.
"Oh we can't let you guys do that!"Spencer said.
"It's fine. We don't mind at all; you guys need to see the lake."Avery said. They kind of seemed like they were trying to get rid of us. Maybe some of us should stay.
"Alright then, we'll be back soon." Spencer said.
"I'll race you guys!"Gibby shouted. The four kids took off, and left Gibby way behind.
"Sounds so romantic!"Carly said. She took Jason's hand and pulled him down the pathway. Should we leave Avery and Luke to set up? When did I become the voice of reason?
"Are you coming Sam?"Freddie said. He didn't seem to be worried at all. Avery and Luke are smart kids. Everything will go fine.
"Yeah let's go see the lake." I decided. Luke and Avery smiled at us as we walked down the path. Weird.
We walked down the forest path in silence. It wasn't completely awkward, but we just couldn't quite figure out what to say after our talk in the car. By the time we made it to the lake, we still hadn't said anything.
"It's…breathtaking."Freddie said. I couldn't think of a better word to describe the sunset. The colors of the sunset reflected off the water, turning the water into bright shades of orange, pink, and purple. It was something you saw in pictures, but the real thing was amazing.
"Wow…"I said. That was really all I could say.
"I haven't seen a sunset this beautiful since…"He stopped suddenly. He was remembering the same sunset as me.
"Since our hundred day kiss?"I said. I remember that night; Freddie and I were on the roof of Bushwell Plaza. We had been dating one hundred days, and this was the spot we picked to celebrate. The sunset that night was the spectacular, and we took it as a sign our relationship was meant to be. Guess we were wrong.
"You remember the sunset that night?"He asked. I remembered every moment we spent together when we were dating.
"Yeah, it was a beautiful night."I said. He smiled. Wait, I meant the sunset was beautiful! Truthfully the kiss was good too.
"Sunsets were always a sign for us, and now we've been apart for ten years. Then suddenly we see the most beautiful sunset of our lives."He said.
"What are you saying Freddie?"I asked. Why would he say that?
"I just thought I would point it out. It is kind of weird."He said. Wow way to make this conversation awkward Freddie.
"Yeah…"I said. "Our whole relationship was weird."
"What that supposed to mean?"He asked.
"You know what I mean, Freddie! We had an unusual relationship! Half the time it was perfect, and then the rest of the time Carly had to settle our fights!"I said. How could he not remember how often we fought?
"I remember us fighting, but I don't remember it being a bad thing!" He says smiling.
"You liked us arguing? That is pretty unusual."I said. Deep down I liked fighting with him a lot, but he probably knew that.
"I liked everything about our relationship, Sam. I loved how you could always tell what I was thinking, and how we were always teasing each other. I loved how you would pout when you lost a bet, and you would always watch nerdy movies to make you happy. I don't think that's unusual at all."He said. I had to admit he was right about how happy we were dating, and I did have tons of great memories from then. The only problem was we didn't know how to compromise very well, we were both so headstrong, and that lead to fights. Not just normal fights, but angry fights where we wouldn't see each other for days. I remember one time I was so mad at Freddie I decided to go with my mom to Silver City just so I could avoid him. (A/N Silver City is a historic mining town that we just went on a ten hour field trip to. Not the most fun bus ride of my life.)
"There may have been many things we loved about our relationship, but you know it wasn't perfect at all!"I said.
"Don't pretend you didn't love how weird our relationship was! It was perfect for us, and you know it!"He said.
"If our relationship was perfect we would still be together now! Obviously it was never meant to be!"I snapped. I hadn't meant to sound mean, but our relationship hadn't been perfect.
"We were in love, and then because of one stupid fight we ruined everything! He snapped back.
"Then why did you leave, if it was just one stupid fight!"I shouted. We were screaming at each other in front of all our friends, but at this point I could care less.
"You didn't stick around either! You were off traveling the country, when we could have been starting our life together!"He shouted. How dare he turn this around on me!
"We are never going to agree on this! For the thousandth time it wasn't my decision for us to break up!"I said. After our breakup ten years ago we had argued about this quite a few times, and we could never figure out exactly who decided we were going to split up. It definitely was not me.
"It wasn't my idea Sam! You're the one who told me to never speak to you again!"He shouted back.
"How could you possibly think I was series about never speaking to you again? You knew I could never do that!"My voice was getting kind of soar from yelling, and I couldn't even remember how this conversation had started.
"Sorry that I ever believed anything you said."He said.
"Why are we even talking about this? Does it really matter how perfectly weird our relationship was, or why we broke up. It doesn't matter anymore anyway. Let's just go back to camp, okay."I said. I was done fighting tonight I just wanted to climb into my sleeping bag, and forget this conversation.
"Okay."Freddie said. He turned and stomped back up the pathway to camp. How had a beautiful sunset, caused all that yelling?
Avery POV
"Did you hear all that yelling, Luke? We were like a mile away and we could Freddie and Sam screaming at each other! This is really bad!"I said. I didn't want my mom to keep ignoring everything that happened between her and Freddie, but fighting was the exact opposite of what I had wanted to happen between them.
"Avery it's not a bad thing."He said calmly. How could this possibly be anything but bad?
"Why isn't it a bad thing!"I said completely confused. Luke seemed to be one step ahead of me when it came to dealing with problems.
"Sam and Freddie have been through a lot, and it is going to take a lot of work for them to fix everything. When they start to feel nervous their response is to yell at each other, and run away from the situation."Oh that made a bit more sense. That is where we come in; this just proves our plan is going to work."He said.
"How can you be so sure our plan is going to work?"I asked.
"I don't know for sure, but I know we have to try. So stop worrying, and let's just go with it okay, Ave?"I nodded. Together Luke and I had come up with a very devious plan. The plan had been simple so far. Luke and I had been making sure Sam and Freddie have to spend a lot of time alone together, so they can talk, argue, and hopefully have a good time. Of course that is only the first phase, and the next part of the plan will be a bit more difficult.
"Everyone is coming back, act natural!"I said quickly. Luke may be devious, but he can't hide his emotions very well at all. I just had to hope no one would notice how unusual he was acting, luckily I was pretty good liar. I could probably cover for him, unless my mom was suspicious too. I could never lie to my mom; I'd tried before but she always knew I was up to something. The key to lying was just avoiding the lie, and adding more details to the truth. Of course I never use this unless it was very important, like today.
"Hey, the sunset was pretty great right?"Luke said. His voice sounded higher than usual, and his smile looked really forced. What happened to act natural?
"Was it as beautiful as we thought?"I asked. I on the other hand sounded completely normal, so I was probably going to have to do all the talking tonight.
"Amazing…the most beautiful sunset of all time."Spencer said. Everyone nodded in agreement.
"It was so romantic!"Carly said. I loved my Aunt Carly, but sometimes she was so sappy! "Did you know sunsets are a romantic symbol? Something about the time when the moon and sun come together; I read that it was a sign that a relationship was meant to be."Carly gushed. Sam and Freddie looked really uncomfortable, and you could feel the tension. Oh, Carly how right you are.
"Oh yeah, I heard that somewhere!"I said. My mom turned and glared at me. Maybe I should change the direction of this conversation. "Anyway, what are we planning on doing on this camping trip, Spence?"
"Oh, lots of cool stuff. Socko is going to let us use his kayaks, and we can go hiking, fishing, biking. Or if anyone else had ideas, we could do other things."Spencer said. I had lot of ideas actually, and all of them work well with our plan.
"Oh, I heard there is a really cool beach you can go to around here! It even has a water slide!"I said. Luke smiled at me, I was helping the plan along perfectly.
"Yeah we could totally go there."Spencer said. Yes! "Anyway we should probably finish setting up everything."
"Umm, Spencer we already finished setting up while you were all looking at the sunset."Luke said. His voice had returned to normal, and you could hardly tell he was nervous.
"What are you talking about?"Spencer asked. I should probably answer, since I would have to twist the truth a bit.
"Spencer, we set up all the tents, and finished blowing up all the air mattresses. Dinner is ready, so I don't think there is anything else to do."I said.
"What…there are only four tents set up?"Spencer said. So maybe we had hidden one of the tents in Luke's suitcase, so Sam and Freddie would have to share a tent together. Was that wrong?
"There were only four tents to set up, and the truck is completely empty, Spencer." I said. The truck was empty; I wasn't lying about that part.
"Oh no… this is my entire fault! How could I have forgotten a tent! What a stupid mistake." Spencer said.
"No Spence, we were all there this morning; no one noticed a tent was missing. Don't feel bad, it's not a big problem."Luke said.
"Yeah, we can all fit into four tents."Jason said.
"Alright let me think, how are we going to do this?" Spencer said. Just have to hope he puts Sam and Freddie together. Luke has thought this over, and Sam and Freddie together is really the most logical option, but Spencer isn't always logical. "Okay I have a plan! Tent one Brad and Julie, tent two all the kids, tent three me, Gibby, Carly, and Jason, and tent four Sam and Freddie."
"What!" Sam and Freddie screamed at the same time. This was going splendidly so far.
"The last tent only has room for two, and I don't want Carly with Jason. And I really don't want to be alone with Gibby." Spencer said.
"Isn't there some other way?"Sam said. She obviously did not like this arrangement at all.
"Sam, it isn't a big deal. We don't have quite enough tents, so we are going to have to make some sacrifices." Spencer said. Everyone agreed with him, and went off to start eating dinner.
"Hey Luke, Avery you know what's weird. I am almost positive I put five tents in the truck." Spencer said. Was he going to blow our plan? "How could a tent just disappear like that?"
"Maybe it fell out of the truck?"Luke said. It was so obvious he was lying; we should probably just give up now.
"No I think you two took it. Don't even try and deny it. I know what you're doing; you guys want Sam and Freddie to talk." Oh man our plan was ruined already! "I'm going to help you, that is why I put Sam and Freddie together." We had Spencer on our side? Fantastic.
My longest chapter yet! This chapter was basically a setup for everything that will be happening soon. Review would be fantastic!