21.) Rage (Sam's POV)

Sam Puckett wondered about herself sometimes. Growing up with her mother, she often assumed that her life would always be living off of fast food and cough medicine. These past few years or so she began to think that maybe she did have a chance at survival. Maybe even having a good life later.

Sure, she wasn't the most responsible kid in the world, if you look at people like Carly and Freddie. But if you looked at how lenient her mother was, she might as well be a god. In hard moments, she often tries to keep her cool and get through it.

This is not one of those moments.

She takes her nunchuks, and clashes them against the glass. The little cabinet door had an unlocked handle, but Sam felt like breaking things. After she breaks through the glass, she pulls out a bottle. Then another. Then another. She's done, here.

She pops off the cap and overturns the bottle to her mouth. There are plenty of bad things in the world that Sam has been exposed to (although she hasn't tried all of them). Out of the choices of smoking and doing drugs and other things, drinking was her particular favorite.

And out of all the drinking choices, she preferred liquor, because it was about has hardcore as you can get. She polishes off one bottle without caring to try. She feels her stomach boiling but she doesn't stop. As if stopping is beneficial at this moment.

"Fuck," She mutters. "Now what?"

Her mom is probably raging at the moment, too. Who can blame her? She just hopes she doesn't OD tonight. No matter all the hell she put her through…she doesn't deserve to die over this. Not at all.

Sam stumbles out the basement door, the drunk already hazing up her eyes. God damn it. Now how was she supposed to drive? Even in her liquor haze she knew that she didn't want to die tonight, so she decides to walk. While drinking.

She thinks it's amusing to watch the sidewalk become even more twisted and she continues to drink from a new bottle. She has another one in her other hand as well. In the dark sky, she looks up and finds the stars spinning. Ooh. Pretty.

She falls over, and hits the grass. She watches as the stars spin over and over, changing into confusing shapes and patterns. She feels the fallen bottle splatter all over her shirt, seeping through. Her hand fumbles to her phone and she begins to press buttons.

No, no. There's a rhythm. Sam tells herself. There was no use to try and read the numbers on the phone, so she tries to remember the sound of Freddie's numbers. How does it go? She tries one sound combination, and fails. Then another. Fails again. Then another. She keeps trying until she gets it.

"Hello?" Freddie sounded extremely tired. "Sam, it's two in the morning."

"Hey." Sam chuckles. "So, you'll be pretty mad at me…"

"Why?" Freddie asks. She can hear him sitting up.

"Look, I am lying on someone's lawn, and I'm not quite sure where. Can you pick me up?" Sam asks. Well, at least it's out there.

"What? Sam, what the hell are you doing?" Freddie questions.

"Look, I'm trying to make sure I don't fall off the Earth. Would you be ever so kind and come and find me before the dogs do?" Sam begs.

"Okay, I-I'm coming. Just stay put!" Freddie orders.

"No problem." Sam murmurs, letting her phone fall from her hand and onto her shoulder.

She tries to close her eyes, but she feels just as dizzy. Still, she keeps her eyes glued shut. She opens them again and sees the swirling stars, and that pushes her over the edge. She has about three or four seconds to sit up before the liquor comes back up. She grips the grass and vomits the poison out.

There was no relief afterwards, and she still feels as awful as she did before. She focuses on one particular strand of grass, trying to keep herself from vomiting again. She digs her fingers into the ground, imagining herself falling right off the earth and into space. That'd suck.

The headlights that fall over her burn as if they were rays of chemicals and acids. She hears the screeching of brakes, and the opening and slamming of a car door.

"Sam! What the hell are you doing?" Freddie's voice enters her mind. She can't see or hear anymore. All she can feel is her head pounding, her stomach boiling, her mouth parched despite all of the fluid she consumed. She feels Freddie shake her, trying to make her return to full-consciousness. "What happened?"

The only thing she can do is hold up the mostly empty bottle before her head falls again, and she disappears into dizzying blackness.

llllllll

Sam wish she hadn't opened her eyes. The headache that immediately hit her was a sure giveaway of a hangover. She shuts her eyes again, but it's too late now. She's awake.

She has to admit, she did go a bit overboard that night. She lifts her head weakly and sees that she's in Freddie's room, with Freddie working on some kind of techny thing.

He doesn't even turn around as he says, "Awake, Princess?"

"Unfortunately." She slurs back. Her voice is hardly recognizable.

"Well, that's good then." Freddie stands up and shrugs. Sam's waiting for him to start ranting to her about the dangers of drinking. Especially that time. She could have died out there. But whatever he says now won't sink in, she knows that for sure.

Freddie hated it when she drank. She knew that like the back of her hand. Was hasn't he started—

"Well, it's great to see that you made a full recovery since your previous indulgences. So let's give you a round of applause!" He then proceeds to clap as loud as he can.

"Ugh!" Sam presses her palms to her ears, her head pounding from the noise. "Stop it!"

"Why should I?" Freddie snaps. Oh, here comes the ranting. "You nearly killed yourself last night!"

"I drank a little bit. It isn't a big deal."

"Two full bottles of liquor."

"Look," Sam struggles to sit up. "I get what I did was wrong. Can we talk about it later?"

"We aren't finished," Freddie snarls, but he relents from the questioning. A few minutes later he brings her four ibuprofen and she inhales them all. A few hours later, the pain has gotten remarkably better, but she can still feel the hangover over her.

"Ready to talk?" Freddie asks.

"I guess." Sam manages to sit up. "Let's hear it."

"No, you answer me first." Freddie growls. "You know how much I hate it when you drink. And I found you in someone's fucking yard. So why?"

"Why what?" Sam spits at him.

"Why were you drinking?"

"I had a rough day, okay?" Sam mutters. "It doesn't matter."

"It sure matters when you try to drink your life away."

"Sometimes drinking helps me forget things!"

"Did it?"

Sam stops. "…no, it didn't." She admits.

"So, there was point in drinking. Except for being wasted and collapsing on someone else's lawn."

"Look, I'm sorry." Sam says through gritted teeth. "Like I said before, I had a rough day."

"And you can't tell me about it?" Freddie asks.

"Alright, fine." Sam groans and presses her forehead to her hand. "Just… My mom told me something today. Or, yesterday, I mean."

"What did she tell you?" Freddie asks gently.

"She, um, found my dad on facebook." Sam says, and pauses. She remembers the memory and now she feels the rage that caused her to drink slicing through again.

"Oh." Is all Freddie can say at first. Sam watches as his brown eyes widen and widen and his fingers grip the bed sheets. Sam knew that Freddie knew that family matters of Sam's were one of the few things that Sam hardly ever opens up about. "You don't have to go on if you don't want to."

"No, I might as well get it out." Sam coughs. "Apparently he's doing fine. Well, not like rich or anything. But he's got a stable job. Sorta. You can tell by his picture that he's still on drugs but that's irrelevant."

"But…it's not like he's doing great, you know?" Freddie tries to reason.

"Don't you get it?" Sam grips the bed sheets as well. "He left me and Melanie and my mum to fend for ourselves. We wanted to find him living in a cardboard box, not doing even a bit better than us."

Freddie was silent.

"We did so poorly at first that we had to let my aunt take custody of Melanie. At least she had enough money to send Melanie to boarding school and give us some as well. But it wasn't enough. We almost didn't make it." Sam begins digging her fingernails into her palms to take out her frustration. "So, when I see that he's alive and well, you can how it manages to anger me."

Freddie was still silent, thinking. Finally he says, "Well, you know, that would be pretty bitter, wouldn't it?"

Sam nods.

"My dad's fine, too. Just fine. Where is he? About forty-five minutes away. He has a restraining order against my mom. I still see him sometimes. Well, I used to." Freddie shrugs. "I fell out of the habit of seeing him."

Sam looks at him with round eyes, nodding for him to go on.

"Look, your dad is still the deadbeat loser who left you guys sixteen years ago. There's no changing that. Actually, he's worse off than he would be if he was dead."

Sam narrows her eyes in disbelief. "Pfft. How?"

"Because he's alive. And still on drugs, like you said. God's keeping him alive so He can drag out his suffering." Freddie says, focusing on the dust particles that float in the air. "That is all."

"You think so?" Sam asks.

"Yup. That's just how it is." Freddie gently plays with one of her blonde curls. "I know it hurts, but you turned out fine without a dad. We both did."

"I think we've both had bad experiences with all of our parents." Sam says, thinking of his freakish mom, of her psycho mom, and of their dads who were next to nonexistent.

"True, true." Freddie says. He breaks away from her hair and looks straight into her eyes. "You and I, we'll do better."

Sam knew what he was suggesting. That someday they could prove to everyone else that their parents' actions never affected them. And also that they, just the two of them, could also make it in this world. Together.

Freddie holds out his pinky, blinking at her.

Sam wraps her own pinky around his and nods. "We'll do it."

Freddie leans back, smiling. "Oh, and one more thing."

"What?"

"If I catch you rage-drinking again, I'll end you."

"Pfft, sure."

"I mean it, Sam." Freddie stares at her. "Next time something like this happens, just find me, okay? We could talk it out."

"Sometimes we just need to escape our problems." Sam mutters. "Even if it takes a bottle full of poison."

"Sam, please." Freddie half-begs. "I don't want to find you dead next time. Just promise me."

"Do I have to?"

"Yes."

Sam crosses her arms over her chest. "Whatever. You better drive over to my place quickly then. It doesn't take long to pop the seal off a bottle.

"You know I'll be there in a heartbeat." Freddie vows.

Sam holds her arms out and Freddie hugs her.

"Just like you were for me." He says under his breath, his voice not even a whisper.

"What?" Sam asks.

"Nothing." He murmurs back. "Nothing at all."