Carly came back as soon as she could. She'd said that Spencer wanted to talk to her about something, but that it wasn't important enough to talk about now. They stayed there through dinner and ate the casserole that Freddie had brought.
It was something that vaguely reminded Sam of her dad. He was the only one in the family who knew how to work the oven and he would make them dinner when he didn't have to work a double shift. She hated being reminded about her dad so she didn't eat. She moved her food around a lot and created enough distractions that it seemed like she had eaten her fair share when her mother cleared the plates.
When they had finished dinner, it was silently decided that it was time to go. Carly would have normally petitioned Spencer to let her stay the night or she would have forced Sam to come over, but she'd been worn out from the day's events and didn't have enough energy to do much of anything really.
Carly wrapped her in a hug that lasted longer than most people would be comfortable with. Spencer had to lightly tug on her shoulders to finally get her to let go. He in turn gave her a quick squeeze goodbye and walked out onto the front lawn. Carly waited as long as she could to follow him. She told Sam that she would text her as soon as she could, which Sam took to mean once she was in the car, possibly on the way there. Freddie stayed back awkwardly shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He'd asked Spencer to give him a ride home so he would be leaving but he didn't know how he was supposed to say goodbye to her.
"Are you going or what, Benson?" Sam asked. She put her hands on her hips and looked at him. He didn't meet her gaze instead he opted to stare at the area to the left of her where the Puckett family photos hung. There was one of her and Melanie, which Freddie stared at a bit longer than was normal. He thought that they looked rather happy in the photo and wondered if Sam remembered when that photo was taken.
"Fredweird, are you even listening to me?" She asked him. He gave a small nod and lowered his eyes to stare at his shoes.
"I, um, I was just –" he paused and looked up at her. She was slightly exasperated but overall she was Sam, wonderful, lovely Sam.
"You were just, what?" She asked. There was no anger in her voice, and he wondered if that was just because she was sick or if it was because she wasn't really angry with him.
"Nothing." He managed to mutter, " I was just, nothing." A small smile played at the corners of her mouth and she rolled her eyes, just like old times.
"Get out of here, Benson." She said half-joking, half-sarcastically. He backed out of the house onto the small concrete slab that the Puckettes called a porch.
"I'll be back." He said.
"Of course you will." She replied and with that, she shut the door. She heard Spencer's car start, the low hum of the engine slowly disappeared as they made their way down the street.
Before Sam was able to make it into her bedroom she got a text from Carly, typical. Carly was telling her how wonderful she was, also typical. Then went on to talk about how Freddie was sobbing in the backseat like a small child and how if she wanted to make fun of him for it Carly would allow it this once, not so typical.
She knew that Carly was just trying to make her feel better; she also knew that Freddie was probably not crying at all. She texted Carly that she was planning on going to sleep because she was exhausted, which was true.
Instead of sleeping, she lay on her bed and stared at her ceiling. She remembered doing this when she was little, staring up at the ceiling, finding patterns in the texture. She often would imagine people and places, for which she would make up fantastic stories that she would tell to her father.
He would sit next to her bed every night before she went to sleep and she would tell him stories about the places and people who lived on her ceiling until she drifted off to sleep. She hated thinking about her dad, but it was hard not to when little things reminded her of him. She'd not thought about those lines in her ceiling for years, having opted to sleep on her side or at Carly's, but tonight she'd made the mistake of looking up.
Sam hadn't gotten much sleep when her mother shook her awake at three in the morning to take a dark blue pill with something that vaguely tasted like tea. It was Thursday, normally this would be the day she would rehearse for iCarly but she knew that they wouldn't be doing iCarly for a while. She wondered if Carly and Freddie told anyone, she wondered if they told Gibby who would take it the hardest because, well, he's Gibby.
Her mother made her evacuate her room at seven because it needed to be cleaned, so she took up residence on the couch. Bad reality television had become her kryptonite by noon. Teen Mom had started a marathon at ten and she had become obsessed with yelling at the television all the things the 'mothers' were doing wrong.
"If only they'd had this show when my mom was a kid." Sam thought, "Maybe she wouldn't have been so bad at mothering."
Sam's mom had to leave at one to go get groceries because they were out, which would have been surprising if they were anyone but the Puckettes. Sam just burrowed down into the fortress of blankets and pillows she'd made on the couch and let her mom go.
She was in the middle of telling off Farrah when the phone rang, she groaned. A call on the landline in the middle of the day normally meant telemarketer or debt collector. She pushed herself off the couch and made her way into the kitchen. She picked up the off white receiver that hung from the wall.
"What do you want?" She asked with a tone of disdain.
"Sam?" an older man asked, "That's you right Sam?"
She wanted to slam the phone back onto the base or disconnect the phone line from the jack, but she found herself unable to move.
"Sam?" he repeated, "Can you hear me?"
"I- Wh-" her words came out broken, but she cleared her throat and responded, "What do you want dad?"