Happy Un-Daylight Savings Time! Yay for an extra hour of sleep!
Disclaimer: No soy dueño de iCarly.
"What?" said Irene, looking up from the table she was scrubbing. I had just finished telling Ana about the first time Sam and Freddie met when she walked into the room with a soggy dish rag. "Just wiping down the tables," she said. "Go back to whatever you were talking about."
"Anyway," I said, a little uncomfortable now that Ana and I weren't the only ones in the room anymore. "After their first meeting, it seemed like Sam and Freddie just couldn't avoid each other, no matter how hard they tried. The next day was our first day of sixth grade, and Sam and I were surprised to see Freddie at our school. But the fact that we were all going to the same school wasn't the only coincidence."
August 22, 2005
"Come on Sam. You have to come to school!"
"But I don't wanna!" Sam whined through the phone. "Too early!"
I readjusted the phone as I continued up the stairs and into the building. "If you come, I'll buy a whole ham just for you and I won't even complain when you eat it with your mouth open. How's that sound Sam?" No answer. "Sam?"
"I'm here!" a voice called behind me. I turned to see my best friend striding through the hallway, her blonde hair tangled and her body clad in a ratty old t-shirt and blue flannel pajama bottoms. Her feet were completely bare. "Where's my ham?"
"Sam, you live like ten minutes away by car! How'd you get here so fast?"
"I spent the night at your place."
"What? But I haven't seen you since you attacked my neighbor yesterday."
"Yeah, well. There was a sock on the door when I got home so I had to leave, and by the time I got back I was too tired from all the walking to deal with your nasty doorman. So I just slept in Spencer's car."
"You were in there the whole time Spencer was driving me to school?"
"Yep. Spencer flipped out when you called a minute ago and I answered. He thought the car had come to life and was angry with him." She laughed. "Good times. Good times."
"Wait," I said. "Why would your mom put a sock on the door?"
"Um…" Sam slung an arm around my shoulders as we walked toward our homeroom. "I'll tell you when you're older."
A minute later we took our seats next to each other in homeroom. Sam immediately unzipped her backpack and pulled out a pair of sneakers, a hairbrush, and a package of beef jerky. I gave her a questioning look as she bit into the jerky before tending to her bed head or bare feet.
"What?" she said. "I skipped breakfast." She hadn't even finished one stick when the thin, wrinkled hand of our new homeroom teacher snatched it away from her.
"No eating in class!" Ms. Briggs snarled and walked away. As soon as the teacher's back was turned, Sam reached into her bag and pulled out another package of jerky.
I rolled my eyes and faced the front again to see our other classmates starting to file into the room. I recognized a few people from the year that I lived in Seattle in the third grade and went to Ridgeway Elementary. The tall redheaded girl that smiled at Sam and me when she walked into the room was Wendy Schuler. And the chubby shirtless boy couldn't have been anyone but Gibby Gibson, possibly the strangest boy I'd ever met. He was always very nice though. He must have recognized me because when he saw me he waved emphatically. I waved back just as another familiar face came into the room. Two familiar faces, actually, but one of them wasn't a sixth grader.
"Hello," said Mrs. Benson, leading Freddie into the room and towards Ms. Briggs. Mrs. Benson extended her hand. "I'm Marissa Benson. My son Freddie has been assigned to your homeroom and I just want to make sure that your classroom is up to all the safety and health codes." Freddie's face turned crimson.
"Well, Mrs. Benson," said Ms. Briggs with a lemon-pie smile, "you have nothing to worry about. I always make sure that everything in my classroom is as safe and as clean as possible…for the children."
"Oh, good!" Freddie's mother said. "I'm glad someone understands. Now if you'll just let me do a quick inspection–"
"That won't be necessary," said Ms. Briggs, a little too quickly. "Trust me, Marissa – may I call you Marissa?" Mrs. Benson nodded, and the creepy teacher leaned closer and lowered her voice just enough that Mrs. Benson wouldn't realize that everyone could still hear her. "Marissa," she whispered, "Freddie is in good hands. But if the other kids see how protective you are – not that you don't have his best intentions in mind of course – but, well, the other kids might give him a hard time. And we wouldn't want that would we?"
"No, of course not!"
"Marissa, I've been a teacher for nearly thirty years, and I know how cruel kids can be. I think that if you really want what's best for your son, you'll leave."
Mrs. Benson sighed. "I suppose you're right. Freddie," she turned her son around to face her, "I'll be back to pick you up at 3'oclock sharp. Be sure to wash your hands before you eat and stay away from sick people."
"Yes Mom," said Freddie, looking like he'd rather be just about anywhere else.
"That's my good Freddiebear," Mrs. Benson smiled. She turned and walked to the door. "I'll see you this afternoon. Love you! Make good choices!"
"Yeah. Love you too," Freddie mumbled. I heard a few snickers as Mrs. Benson walked away, most of them from Sam. Freddie tried to cover his face as he made his way to the back of the classroom and attempted to become invisible.
As soon as Mrs. Benson was out of sight and earshot, Ms. Briggs' fake smile turned back into a scowl. "Alright maggots!" she barked, making several people in the class jump and Gibby whimper. "You may think that sixth grade is going to be just like elementary school, with soft teachers who are too dizzy from paste fumes to know when you need disciplining? Well I have news for you." She picked up a ruler and walked over to Sam, who had somehow managed to fall asleep in the fifteen seconds between the time that Mrs. Benson left and Ms. Briggs began her rant. "WRONG!" she shouted, simultaneously slapping the ruler on Sam's desk.
"I'm up! I'm up!" Sam said sleepily, her eyes still mostly closed. Ms. Briggs scowled.
"Middle school is nothing like elementary," she continued. "And as much as I hate it – because I know it will probably lead to the complete demise of everything good in the world – you children will be adults soon, and it is high time you started being treated as such. That means that if I ever catch any of you sleeping," she slapped Sam's desk again, "crying for Mommy," she shot a look at Freddie, "cheating, mouthing off, eating, making noise, having fun, or in any way enjoying yourself, you WILL be punished." The creepy smile returned to Ms. Briggs' wrinkled old face. "Is that clear?"
"Yes Ms. Briggs," the class said in unison.
"Good." She held up a stack of papers and then dropped it on an empty desk at the front of the room. "Here are your schedules and locker assignments. Form a line, come and find the paper with your name on it, and then GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!"
The bell rang and we all hopped out of our seats and found our schedules as quickly as possible before sprinting out of the room. "And no running!" Ms. Briggs called after us. "Miserable little brats."
"So what locker did you get?" Sam asked as we slowed our pace to a fast walk.
"Three fifty-five. You?"
"Three fifty-nine."
"Sweet! I'll only be two lockers away!"
"I just hope the person who gets the locker between us isn't a nub."
"Sam! Be nice."
"I won't and you can't make me," she said, though we both knew I was probably the only person who could make Sam act remotely nice.
"Hey, looks like three fifty-seven already found his locker," I said as we found our lockers and noticed a boy with his head in the locker between ours, already transferring books and what looked like tech equipment into it. "Hey, that looks like…uh oh."
Freddie pulled his head out of his locker. He looked at me first and smiled, but when he saw Sam standing next to me his smile faded and his eyes grew wide. "Uh oh," he said. He tried to make a run for it, but before he could Sam grabbed him by the shoulder and slammed him into the lockers.
"Look, nub," she said. "As you might have guessed, I have no interest in ever seeing your face again, and you sure as heck don't want to see mine unless you happen to have a death wish. So you're going to trade lockers with Carly here." She nodded in my direction. "That way, we never have to stand within a foot of each other again."
"What if I don't want to move to a different locker?" he said. Sam raised her eyebrows in surprise. I have to admit, I was pretty surprised myself. I'd seen grown men cower in my best friend's presence. And even though he was trembling noticeably and his voice was small and shaky, Freddie had done something that I'd never seen anyone else even imagine doing to Samantha Puckett: defy her.
"What did you say, you little dork?" Sam's eyes flashed anger and her voice became a low growl. Freddie shook harder.
"W-well…it's j-just that…I already m-moved most of my stuff into t-that locker. I-It would be d-d-difficult to move it into a new one and still be on t-time for first p-p-period."
"Oh I'm sorry," Sam cooed. "I didn't mean to make it sound like you had a choice in this. Let me try again." She shoved him into the locker a little harder and brought her face within an inch of his. "GET YOUR FREAKISH NERD CRAP OUT OF THAT LOCKER NOW OR I'LL TAKE YOUR PRECIOUS BOOKS AND SHOVE THEM UP YOUR–"
"Sam!" I warned. She shot a wary glance back at me and sighed.
"Fine," she said, turning her attention back to Freddie. "You have until tomorrow to move out of that locker. But don't think I'm going to keep letting you off easy like this."
Freddie nodded quickly and she released him with a shove. He took off for his next class just as the tardy bell rang.
"Stupid nub," she mumbled as we walked to our first period English class together. I glanced at her and noticed she seemed a little off. Usually after she gave someone a tongue lashing she went right back to her usual carefree self. But now she looked bothered, and I had to wonder if my warning was the only thing that made her let Freddie go. I got the feeling that it wasn't just me; that this really was the first time anyone had stood up to Sam.
I was just about to ask her if that was why she was still mad, when I noticed something weirder and more unexpected than anything else that had happened during my already weird morning. I glanced at Sam again to make sure it wasn't just my imagination, and sure enough I was right. The right corner of Sam's mouth was tugged upward ever so slightly, forming a small but noticeable smile.
Present
"So what, she was happy that the little punk stood up to her or somethin'?" Irene must have then remembered that she didn't want us to know she was paying attention because she went back to cleaning the tables before I could respond.
Ana flicked her eyebrows up but didn't say anything about Irene's fleeting interest in our conversation. "So did you ever ask her about it?" she asked.
"No, I knew Sam well enough to know that she wouldn't take a question like that very well. As far as anyone knew, she hated Freddie Benson with all her heart. And I think she would've liked for it to have stayed that way."
"Did it?"
"Huh?"
"Did people continue to believe that she and Freddie hated each other?"
"Well…for a while they did. Sam was horrible to Freddie, and Freddie, for what it was worth, could be pretty harsh too when Sam went too far. He continued to be the only person who would stand up to her, no matter how bad he was at it. It drove Sam crazy. They kept trying to avoid each other, but stuff kept happening that made them accidentally meet…or at least I think it was an accident. I'm really not sure of anything anymore. Heck, even I thought they hated each other for years after their first meeting, and I was their best friend."
"What made you think differently?"
"Well, you see, when we were in the eighth grade we decided to start this web show – iCarly. Sam and I were co-hosts and Freddie was our tech producer. It started out as just a fun little project but pretty soon iCarly was more popular than any of us ever dreamed.
We had a lot of fun on that show, all the way until our very last episode about a month ago. But there were a lot of bumps along the way, and none of them were worse than the time that Sam used the power of iCarly to finally push Freddie over the edge."
December 27, 2008
"Hey! Hey!" said the talking foot on the computer monitor. "I'm not here for your entertainment! I'm a foot! Leave me alone!"
"Oh foot," I laughed, taking a bite of the cookie I had gotten for a snack. I barely noticed when the front door creaked open behind me.
"Hey Carly," whispered a voice. I turned around in my seat to see Freddie peeking his head through the door.
"Oh, hey," I said, pausing my Splashface video. I wasn't surprised that Freddie had barged in without knocking or asking for permission. He and Sam were frequent visitors to my apartment. It would have been weirder if he had knocked.
"Is Sam here?" he asked, still not coming all the way into the room.
"No," I gave him a questioning look. Something fishy was going on. "Why?"
He stepped into the apartment and locked the door behind him with the chain lock. "'Cause I pulled a prank on her."
"YOU PULLED A PRANK ON SAM?" I shouted. That's it. I thought. Freddie's lost it.
"Uh huh."
"What, are you tired of living?" I asked. "Why would you mess with Sam?"
"'Cause she put a dead fish in my locker!" he whined. "Smell this!" He held his backpack up for me to sniff.
"No, gross! I don't want to smell your fishy backpack!" I swatted at the offensive bag and he put it away. "What prank did you play on Sam?"
Just then, the front door opened again, this time much more violently than the first. "OPEN THE DOOR!" yelled Sam through the opening. It was a good thing the chain lock prevented her from opening it all the way.
"Call the police," said Freddie, hiding behind me.
"OPEN THIS DOOR!"
"Leave me alone Sam! We're even!"
Sam screamed in anger and ripped the chain lock off the door. She stomped into the room, dragging a terrified Gibby behind her. "COME HERE BENSON!"
"You handcuffed her to Gibby?" I asked in disbelief. Yep. He's definitely gone completely and totally insane.
"She put a dead fish in my locker!"
"Gibby's way worse than a dead fish!" said Sam.
"My mom thinks I'm AWESOME!" Gibby defended.
"GIVE ME THE KEY!"
"Give her the key," I told Freddie.
"Only if she promises—"
"AAAAHHHHHHH!" Freddie was cut off by Sam's battle cry as she charged at him. He tried to run, but it didn't take her long to catch up and pin him to the kitchen table.
"Ow, my arm!" he complained.
"WHERE'S THE KEY?"
"In my front pants pocket, left side!"
"Get the key out of his pocket," she told me.
"Okay." I reached to get the key, then backed up, suddenly realizing the implications. Freddie's crush on me had waned a lot in the three and a half years since we'd met, but he was still a teenage boy. "Ew, no."
"Just let me up and I'll give you the key," he choked.
"PLEASE!" shouted Gibby.
Sam reluctantly let Freddie go and he got the key out of his pocket. "Now unlock me!" she demanded.
He did as she said. As soon as they were free, Gibby ran out the door screaming.
"Like Gibby's therapist didn't have enough to deal with!" I shouted, anger welling up inside of me.
As mad as I felt, Sam looked madder. She grabbed Freddie's collar violently, anger flashing in her icy stare.
"Come on," he tried to reason. "You put a dead fish in my locker; I handcuffed you to Gibby. We're even!"
"Yay!" I said, trying to distract Sam, who I knew wouldn't take the whole 'even' thing very well. "Who wants lemonade?"
"I don't play to get even," said Sam, pulling Freddie closer. "Momma plays to win." She let him go with a careless shove. "I'm gonna get you," she said, backing away. "Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But I'm gonna get you."
And get him she did.
Sam's revenge was worse than any of us could have imagined. Apparently she'd overheard a conversation Freddie and I had been having a few days before and, well…the results weren't good.
"Freddie's never kissed a girl," she'd said into the camera with a triumphant smirk. "Never, not once. I heard him say so myself, and Carly's a witness."
Freddie didn't take it well. For once, the boy who always stood up to Sam had backed down.
That night, I told Sam she'd ruined Freddie's life. "Eh, he's fine," she said. When he didn't show up at school for the third day in a row, I told her again. She just shrugged it off. I told her again that she'd ruined his life when he didn't show up to iCarly rehearsal that week. Still she didn't believe me.
Friday night, when Freddie's absence from the show marked a full week of reclusive behavior, I told Sam again, though I knew it was pointless. Sam was just too stubborn to admit that she was wrong, especially when it came to Freddie. I'd never get through to her.
"You really hurt him," I said, not even trying to hide the bitterness I was feeling towards my friend. "Every time he leaves the house he gets teased because you told the whole world he's never kissed anyone!" Sam looked away. "You know he won't even talk to his mom?" Apparently that caught her attention, because she looked back at me and raised her eyebrows in surprise. "He just sits on the fire escape alone 'cause he's too embarrassed to see anyone," I said. "You like ruined his life and you don't even care!"
"Alright," she groaned, getting up from her beanbag chair. "I'll go apologize."
"It doesn't even matter if you apologize!" I shouted, too angry to care that I'd finally gotten through to her. "Kids are still going to give him a hard time 'cause you can't take back what you said!"
"Look, I didn't mean–"
"You went too far this time," I said. My phone beeped, signaling one minute until show time. "We've gotta start the show."
"How can I do the show now that you've made me all depressed?" she asked.
"I don't know," I spat. "Just get up there and do it." I walked to Freddie's laptop and set everything up the way Freddie taught me to if he was ever gone during a show. I joined Sam in front of the camera and tried to put on my happy face. "In five, four, three, two…"
"I'm Sam!"
"And I'm Carly!"
"And this is iCarly."
"The only web show that contains no trans fats…" I started.
"And keeps kitty's litterbox smelling fresh all day."
"And now, what you've all been waiting for…"
"Carly and I are about to have our very first–"
"MEATBALL WAR!" we shouted in unison.
"We have our slingshots," said Sam.
"And a hundred meatballs." We both lifted up the heavy meat-filled bowls to show the viewers.
"But, um, before we start our meatball war…" Sam said, "I wanna say something." I didn't respond, but I knew she got the message. She stopped the music and stepped forward.
"On the last iCarly," she started, "I told you guys that Freddie had never kissed anyone. And that was really personal…and I shouldn't have said it on the show." I nodded. I knew it probably wouldn't do much good, but at least Sam had finally swallowed her pride and apologized. Only…she wasn't done.
"And for all you people out there who've been teasing Freddie about it, lay off! 'Cause I bet a whole lot of you haven't kissed anyone either." She paused. "Including me." She looked back to see the surprise on my face. I never expected her to go that far with it. "Yeah, that's right. I've never kissed anyone. So if you wanna tease someone about it, tease me." Wow, I thought. I'd never seen Sam like this. It was like all of a sudden she was a completely different person. "Which is a bad idea unless you live near a hospital!" Ah, there she is.
Sam backed up and looked at me expectantly. "Um," I said, still a little in shock, "our meatball war will be happening soon, but for now, please enjoy this photo of a man with shrimp up his nose. I rushed to put the picture on the screen so Sam and I could talk.
"That was amazing," I said. Sam looked down at her shoes. "You lied so people would stop teasing Freddie."
She shrugged. "I didn't lie."
"Wait…" I said. "You mean you've never actually kissed someone?"
"You shocked?"
"Well yeah, but only because you always seemed so…willing."
She smiled sadly. "I'm gonna go talk to Freddie," she said, setting down her blue remote and starting for the door before pausing and looking back. She picked up one of the large bowls on the table. "I'm taking these meatballs."
Present
"It would be years before I found out what really happened when Sam went to talk to Freddie, but even then I knew I had been wrong about her hating him. She wouldn't do nice things for just anyone, much less something so nice that it put her reputation at risk worldwide."
"So you realized that Sam didn't really hate Freddie," said Ana. "What about Freddie? He didn't really hate Sam, did he?"
"No, but I'd suspected that for a while. Freddie was too nice to hate people unless they were truly awful, and I knew that he knew Sam wasn't all bad. He kept doing things that suggested he didn't really hate her all the time. Laughing at her jokes, occasionally supplying her with food, calling her his friend in public. Once he even gave up a sixth month cruise that he won to my ex-friend Missy, just to get rid of her because Sam didn't like her. So I eventually got the picture that they actually cared about each other. I just…I never thought they liked each other as anything but friends…or frienemies I guess."
"They kissed, didn't they?" asked Irene. By now she wasn't even pretending to clean the tables, but sitting at a table not too far away with her arms folded over her chest and a smirk on her thin lips.
"Huh?" I said.
"That night. You said it would be years before you found out what really happened when she went to talk to him. They shared their first kiss, didn't they?"
"Yeah," I said. "They did. I didn't take it very well when I found out, but they assured me that it was just to get it over with and that it meant nothing. The liars."
April 9, 2011
I stood with my arms crossed as I watched Gibby press buttons on my PearPad. I didn't know exactly what he did to the sensory stimulus chamber we'd somehow persuaded my brother to lock himself inside of for our science experiment, but it made Spencer cry.
"Carly?" said a voice behind me. I didn't even need to turn around to see who it was.
"Freddie, do I meddle too much?" I asked.
I could see that he wasn't really sure how to respond to that. "Well…um…I think…"
"Just say it. I meddle too much."
"Okay. You meddle too much." I sighed and looked down at my shoes. "But your intentions are good!"
"But good intentions didn't stop Sam from getting mad at me." I said. "I just want her to be happy."
"I know. But…maybe Sam wants to find her own happiness. You know, without having someone else do it for her."
"I…I guess I didn't think of that."
"But if the only problem is that she really is too scared to express her feelings…well, maybe instead of just leaving her alone with a guy and hoping she'll overcome her fears on her own, maybe someone should actually talk to her about it."
"Yeah, but I don't think she's going to want to listen to me anymore. I already messed things up once tonight."
"I'll talk to her," he said.
"Freddie, you don't have to–"
"I want to talk to her, okay?"
I nodded. "Good luck." He would definitely need it.
"Thanks," he said, power-walking out of the room and down the hallway. I sighed and leaned my head on Gibby's shoulder.
"Hey," he said, looking down at me. "You okay?"
I nodded. "Yeah. Just tired."
"Of staying up so late working on this experiment or of the whole love-hate thing between Sam and Freddie?"
I lifted my head to look at him. "What whole love-hate thing?"
"Come on Carly," Gibby said. "Everyone knows Sam and Freddie have a thing for each other."
"What? That's crazy! That's…that's…" Gibby just raised his eyebrows knowingly. I sighed. "Oh, since when are you all full of wisdom?"
"I have my moments," he smirked. "Like the time I convinced Tom Zuckercorn to create that MyBook website."
"What?"
"You remember. That guy we saw outside of the Groovy Smoothie that one time? The one with PearPhone?"
"Gibby?"
"Yeah?"
"That was a hobo. And he was holding an actual pear."
"Oh yeah. I wonder how he's doing."
I rolled my eyes. "I'm going to go see if Freddie managed to find Sam."
Freddie had managed to find Sam, but I decided it was probably best not to disturb them. They were out in the courtyard, apparently having some intense discussion. I was just about to leave when something happened that I never, in a million years, would have expected. I watched in complete and total disbelief as Sam grabbed Freddie by the collar…
And kissed him.