Disclaimer: I don't own DP.

Chapter 12

Paulina instantly shoved Danny away from her and got off the counter. Danny was still frowning in confusion, staying in his place even as Paulina struggled to get her shirt on and shoved his shirt to him. "Who's that?" Danny asked as Paulina frantically tried to fix her hair and her smudged lipstick. "And did that person just say Paulina?"

Paulina turned to the confused puppy-dog look in his eyes and realized that it was make it or break it time. She could either tell Danny that he heard wrong and that he should go because it was her mother on the other side of that door. Or she could tell him that, yes, the person had called her Paulina because that was who she was; she would confess everything.

Paulina took a deep breath and stared into the blue eyes that have haunted her forever. But at the end, all she could say was, "I'm pretty sure she said Sam. You must've been too, um, distracted to hear right." The sudden pounding at the door woke her back up, and she went back into a frenzy, shoving Danny out of the bathroom, into the bedroom and towards the window. "And you should probably go because I think that's my mom."

"What's going on in there?" Sam yelled, jiggling the door knob to find it stuck. Paulina thanked God for her parent's sucky choice of doors. "Open the door!"

"Wow," Danny cradled his t-shirt in his arms as he raised his eyebrows. "Your mom is really pissed. Did she always have an accent like that?"

"I don't know; you gotta go; bye!" She shoved Danny out of the window and closed the blinds just as Sam got the door to open and stormed into the room. Paulina froze in place in front of the window, swallowing nervously.

Sam froze in place too, frowning suspiciously and staring at the room. Once she saw that the room was undisturbed, she cleared her throat and calmly said, "Remember all the ground rules we established? Things we needed to be careful of and avoid?" As an answer, Paulina frowned at her in confusion, not knowing where she was going with this. "There was one thing we forgot."

"What's that?" Paulina asked nervously.

"DEATH!" Sam yelled angrily. "Are. You. Crazy? What the hell were you doing in the middle of that fight? You obviously know nothing about ghost fighting and could've gotten yourself killed. Could've gotten me killed!"

"That wasn't my fault," Paulina scoffed. "That stupid techno-geek kept pulling me along with him. I was trying to get away but it was so obvious he wanted to get me killed."

Sam smacked her forehead with her palm. "He wasn't trying to get you killed; you were supposed to pull Skulker into the thermos the minute the electric shocks took hold of him."

"I am aware of that now," Paulina folded her arms across her chest and glared at Sam. "After I almost got sent to my death. Your death. Whatever! Besides, none of that would've happened if you'd just told me; but no, you were too busy with your head up your ass this morning to get over what happened and talk to me!"

Even though Sam was very tired of yelling, she wanted to scream. She didn't want to be in this situation; she didn't want to be in Paulina's body and watch as the retched witch ruined her life. She just wanted to curl up with Danny on her bed and listen to The Beatles and forget about life and ghosts and paparazzi and fame and all of that crap. She wanted her body back.

"Do you know how close I was to telling Danny everything today?" now that Paulina'd gotten the ball rolling, she couldn't seem to stop. "Even if I still don't know why you can't just tell him so that we'd get our damn bodies back, I honored your rules and kept my mouth shut. Even if I'd almost died minutes before. Even if you were being a stupid bitch."

Sam narrowed her eyes at Paulina and folded her arms across her chest. "Honoring my rules, huh?"

"Yes!" Paulina yelled in exasperation.

"Then why is your t-shirt inside out?"

Paulina blanched as she looked down at herself and saw that her t-shirt was in fact inside out. She looked back up at Sam's angry face and knew she was busted.

Paulina swallowed nervously and knew she fucked up. But this time, she couldn't cry her way out of it. Through the hours she'd spent with Sam and the years she'd known her, she knew that Sam expected her to cry and wouldn't be phased by it.

So she stayed still, not saying anything or pleading her case, waiting for Sam to react. A few moments passed, and all Sam could do was glare at Paulina. And then Sam seemed to come to a decision, shook her head, and said, "That's it. I've had enough."

Without another word, she headed out of the room. Paulina frowned at her retreating back, uttering, "Wait, what?"

Sam was halfway through the doorway as she turned to Paulina with a really tired look in her eyes and said, "I've. Had. Enough. I'm telling Danny so that we could switch bodies back and so I wouldn't have to speak to you again."

Paulina should've been relieved. Ecstatic – she was going to get her body back. She would get her life back. She should've been jumping up and down in joy and racing Sam to Fenton Works at this minute, unable to wait another minute.

But the truth was… She was mortified.

"No, no," Paulina had been spacing out that when she ran out of the room to catch up with Sam, the Goth had already made it downstairs. Sam was headed towards the back door in the kitchen when Paulina caught her arm, causing her to halt.

"Wait, Sam, don't tell Danny," Paulina said. "Please, just wait a minute."

Sam shook off her arm and turned to her with an exasperated look. "Are you serious right now? The only thing you've been pestering me with all week is telling Danny and now that I'm finally going to do just that, you don't want me to? Does nothing ever please you?"

"Sam, you can't tell Danny," Paulina shook her head vigorously at her. "Okay, not after everything I've been through in your body. I'm not ready to go back yet." Paulina took a deep breath and grimaced at how that sounded. "Wait, that's not what I–"

"I know what you meant," Sam gaped at her a little bit. "My life is just perfect and you want to keep it to yourself."

Even though Sam's sentence had been dripping with sarcasm, Paulina finally admitted it and said, "Yes. Yes, okay, that's why. Sam, you actually have a life. Even if the total number of friends you have is only two and one of them is your boyfriend, you have an actual life. They care about you and love you. They don't stumble over their every word, looking for the perfect ones just so that they could please you and stay on good terms with you. But for what? Popularity? The only reason all those people fawn over me is because I'm hot and popular and they're terrified of me. But I don't want that anymore. I'd rather not have anything handed to me on a silver platter and if everything stopped being about plastic and shiny things and it was just real." Paulina let out a huge shuddering breath, having said all the speech in one breath. "You know who I saw today? I saw Valerie. And that girl has her shit pulled together so much that you wouldn't even know she'd been through hell. And I know she'd been through hell because I was the one who made sure of that. And even though she's not popular anymore and the majority of people in school address her as a loser, she's got her entire life figured out. I found out about her ghost hunting thing. And seeing her today… She looked happy. Genuinely happy, even if her life in high school was a mess. The Techno-Geek is happy. Danny is happy. You're happy. Everyone has nothing and is happy and I have everything and couldn't be more miserable."

She couldn't believe she finally admitted it. The feelings have been brewing inside of Paulina for so long, but she was so mad at herself for hating everything she'd ever wanted, so she's suppressed the feeling, pressing them down, down, until she could ignore them. But after actually living a life like Sam's, she couldn't ignore them anymore. That wish was just a slip into that façade. She couldn't hide it anymore. She didn't want perfection – it no longer satisfied her like it used to. She wanted real.

Throughout her entire confession – and she had to admit, she confessed a lot (nothing ever went halfway with Paulina; it was either go hard or go home) – she had been looking anywhere but at Sam, afraid of making eye contact and see her own face staring back at her, appalled. Now that she was done talking, she dared a peak at Sam and waited for her reaction.

It wasn't quite the one she was expecting.

She was expecting Sam to understand everything and to tell her that it would be alright, pat her shoulder awkwardly, whatever; she just expected a little sympathy. However, Sam only snorted, and said, "You sound like such a spoilt brat right now."

Paulina's mouth could've hit the floor, but Sam didn't really care. "Okay, so I get why you kind of hate your life – I mean, I'm sort of living it right now. But you didn't get anything you didn't deserve, Paulina. Your life is the way it is right now because that's what you made it become. You could've had real and happiness if that's what you really want – you could've been genuine. But you decided to be a bitch. It's a cold and cruel truth, but that's ultimately what you are and what you'll always be: a self-centered selfish bitch who only cares about herself."

When Paulina could only gape at her, with nothing else to say, which was kind of a big deal, because Paulina always had something to say, Sam only shrugged. "It is what it is. But you can't have my life, Paulina, because it's not yours. It's mine. I'm telling Danny and there's nothing you can say to me that will change my mind."

And just like that, Sam left Paulina standing there in the kitchen, looking like a puppy someone had just kicked, going out the back door and to the one person she swore would never know about this.

A/N: Okay, so I should've probably mentioned this at the very beginning of the story about the lack of DP episodes I've been watching, so that's why I can't nail the characters perfectly. Sam is basically the one who's reactions I have the hardest anticipating, and Paulina's are the trickiest to create, because on the show you only know her as the shallow witch and girly girl Sam shows her out to be, so I'm trying to dig deeper into her actual character while still maintaining the one we know. So I'm sorry if the characters seem OOC at most times - just thought I should put that out there (:

Anyway, hope you're enjoying reading this! Review x