"Bye!" Please Freddie, just-
"But before I go -"
Argh! Didn't he know he was killing her – no, of course he didn't and he wouldn't find out if -
She got up from where she'd been sitting. "That's it! Get out of here, before I do a -"
"Hey guys, is everything okay?"
Carly had stuck her head out the door. Startled, Sam and Freddie both turned to look at her. All three of the iCarly trio were silent for a moment. Then Sam said, "Everything's fine, Carls."
"You're not still mad at me?"
"Are you gonna keep trying to push Brad on me?"
"Well, that's kind of what I came out to tell you. I was talking to Brad, y'know, kinda trying to feel him out for you – wait," she held up a hand to forestall Sam's interruption, which she was already opening her mouth to make. "And he mentioned - I'm sorry, Sam, he has a boyfriend."
Freddie and Carly both looked at Sam with pity in their eyes, which normally would've incensed her, but the ridiculousness of the situation caused her almost to snort with laughter. Almost, but she cut it off as she suddenly realized this was her out. Quickly arranging her face in some semblance of devastated long – suffering, she said, "Oh...oh, I see." She even threw a little waiver into her voice. I'm so good I should be in movies, she thought.
"Sorry, Sam" Freddie said.
Without looking at him, as if she were lost in miserable thought, she said, "s'cool."
Carly walked up and put her arm around her. "I'm sorry too. But I know there's a nice, straight, loving boyfriend out there for you."
"You really think so, Carls?" God she was good. Of course it was probably easier to pull off this act with Carly than if she had to -
"Yeah," said Freddie. I think so too."
Steeling herself, Sam managed to send him a grateful glance. It could only be a glance because she felt if she looked at him longer she'd break down and confess how much she longed for his hands, stable when hers were shaking, and that simply wouldn't do. Then all the brilliant improvisation she'd just done would come to naught.
She and Carly started walking back into the school arm in arm. Opening the door, Carly went in and Sam was about to follow when Freddie said, "Oh, Sam, your water," picking up the bottle and holding it out to her.
"Are you really sure you're okay?" He asked, his tone low, as she took it back.
"I'm fine," she said. "C'mon, it wouldn't be very Sam Puckett of me to lose my mind over some guy, now would it?" Again internally bracing herself, she gave him a little punch on the arm. He looked down in surprise. "Now I know why it's taking you longer to beat me at arm wrestling. That was pathetic, Puckett." He smirked and moseyed on into the school building. She followed, thinking to herself,
Pathetic Puckett. Yeah, that sounds about right.
And she couldn't stand it.
Sam's mother owned a gun. She'd bought it when Melanie and Samantha were 10, and her latest ex at the time started showing up unexpectedly and scaring away her new suitors.
Letting him see the gun and demonstrating by firing into pillows that it was loaded served to scare him off for good. She congratulated herself on her ingenuity, put the gun on a high shelf in her closet, and forgot all about it.
Sam knew it was there, though. And she thought about it. Not all the time, not every day. Just when she was hurting in a particularly aching way. Like when Carly pulled her little "Please...for me?" trick on Freddie and he fell for it.
In those moments, she kinda hated them both. Carly because she was using someone's love that she knew she'd never return, and Freddie because he kept going for it over and over.
In those moments, she would often think, Just shoot me. And when she thought that, the image of her mother's gun would appear to her.
All of the foregoing is in aid of saying that a few days after the lock-in, Carly and Freddie got word that Sam had been checked into the Troubled Waters mental hospital on a suicide watch.
Carly didn't know what to do for her friend. She felt bad about even observing her through the panel, though she'd been told Sam knew she might be there.
But, she just sat on the mattress that was the one piece of furniture in the room. She'd asked for paper, brushes and paints but been turned down because she wasn't allowed anything she could hurt herself or worse with.
"Come on," she'd tried to joke, "if I was committing suicide I could find a less painful way than gouging my eyes out with paintbrushes." But the workers there were surprisingly uninterested in her humor.
The thing was-
The thing was...she hadn't really been about to kill herself with the gun when Melanie walked in and freaked. Her twin had run to their mother and God knew Pam Puckett was never going to believe anything but the worst of her "bad girl" daughter.
So it became another thing she could take the path of least resistance about. Like letting Carly and, and, their tech wiz, think she was really heartbroken over Brad. Here all she had to do was nod and agree to three days in the hospital. So she figured she would get some rest and maybe, just maybe, it would have the added benefit of warning Freddie away from her.
Because ever since the lock-in she kept catching him looking at her strangely, almost as if there were unspoken words between them. But she couldn't imagine what they might be.
She knew, she'd always known, that he would never be with her the way she wanted him to be with her, never like her the way she liked him. She'd known that ever since he'd started working out and got...kinda...well...hot. And she realized he was giving her feelings like she used to get from Jareth the Goblin in Labyrinth, which DVD she and Melanie used to steal from their mother and fangirl over.
It was impossible, she knew that. Unfortunately her hands didn't always know that, especially at night when they wandered and she needed-
She tried to think of anybody else but him. That dancer they'd seen when Carly dragged her to the American Ballet Theater...the vampire in that movie...kind of a wuss name for a vampire but there was nothing wuss about they way he'd bitten that girl and drunken her blood...
But the stupid nubs face kept popping into her head.