"Yeah, yeah, she's always putting me down and calling me mean names and—and every time I get an ice cream cone she takes it and she licks it, she licks it all over the place just to bug me!"

--Freddie Benson

i'M Almost Sick of Her - Chap iv

--

The day dawned bright and early a little bit before noon for us. I woke bleary and with a persistent disconnected feeling in my head, but feeling pretty good about it anyway because my fever was down and the rest of me wasn't so bad either. In fact I actually felt a little guilty about not going to school today, even though my mom would've never let me while I was still a stage three contagion—plus, school usually started at eight, not eleven.

But I was all right with missing one more day. Actually, I was all right with a lot of things, as I had this kind of floaty, excited feeling. And not just in my head. It was probably the whole not-feeling-like-I-was-a-fire-hazard-anymore thing and—oh, okay. Freddie be honest. Sam make Freddie happy.

Not a Carly kind of happy—but happy.

It was just such a rare thing when that elusive something clicked. When we were both focused on something or just when the insults and generally snappy dispositions eased up a bit. It was like this—unexplainable thing that was really good. And it was so hard to concentrate on, or even to realize that it was happening most of the time. It just happened.

Waking up beside her was some pretty crazy stuff. I had to admit that. She was all over the place, all over my bed with her hair and her smell and her arms and her warmth.

Maybe it was just the contrast from the guilt-ridden night when she'd first arrived that made this night's sleep seem so much better. Even the nagging fear that my mom might've seen us like this couldn't detract from it (and she all but had to, since I knew that she checked on me every other hour, at least).

After an unsteady trip to the bathroom that she didn't comment on later, Sam for all intents and purposes seemed to be feeling better too. Maybe not quite as good as I was, but apparently good enough.

Things went just about as they had the previous day following the pillow incident, except so much better. So much faster. It wasn't even like I was there for it; I could only look back after it had happened. The game of Uno, more television, more medication and random spatterings of my noticeably more restrained mother and the uneasy feeling I just couldn't quite sink into that she had seen us like that.

For the next few weeks I would try so many times to grasp, even just to remember what it had been like. I could recall the words, the actions, even that funny feeling that permeated everything, but that was all. It was like a blur that only smudged the more I tried to touch it.

Breakfast turned out to be a rarity for the Benson household, as my mother had been so preoccupied that we'd more or less run out of groceries. It was a sign of desperate times when my mom ordered out for Chinese. It was just too bad that it was entirely out of the question for Sam to have any, and apparently I was barred from it as well since it was "too exotic."

My mom was nice enough—depending on how you looked at it—to let us have our fortune cookies. Not that we could eat them.

"'Be sure to watch what you eat,'" Sam read from her fortune, "'Your beauty is evident to all.' Well, it's got it half right. What does yours say?"

I frowned down at the mocking little piece of paper.

"Seriously, I want to know if you're going to kick it or something," Sam said, "Cause I could stand to borrow twenty bucks … Come on, what does it say? It can't be that bad."

I glared up at her. "'Focus on the color purple this week to give you good luck.'"

Sam burst out laughing.

"It's not funny."

Sam laughed harder.

"What a stupid fortune."

"Oh, come on," she managed, trying to bring herself back under control, "Maybe it means that there's a tech loving hunk in your near future."

"That's disgusting," I scrunched up my face, doing a remarkable job at not joining in with her.

Sam managed to take a breath. "Would you prefer a tech loving stud?"

"Why do you care?" I shot back.

She frowned and shrugged her shoulders. "I don't."

"Uh huh," I crossed my arms, feeling a distinctly established line being probed, "Says the girl who's obsessed with my pants."

"What?" Sam sputtered. "I am not!"

"Let's see," I held up my hand and began ticking the items off, "In regards to my pants, you have soaked, blown up, nearly started on fire, stuffed mayonnaise, lasagna—and oh yeah, flaming Korean hot sauce down—"

"Okay, okay," Sam interrupted almost urgently, "Can I help it if you wearing pants is an oxymoron?"

"Oxymoron?"

"Yeah," Sam laughed, "What do you have to cover up?"

I opened my mouth but closed it again just as quickly. We sat there in silence for a long minute, both of us perhaps assessing the damage done to our formerly well established line.

That, however, didn't turn out to be the most memorable point of the day.

"Ugh," Sam said a little while later, pulling her shirt in and out as we sat in the living room, "It's not fair. It's September. Summer is supposed to be dead."

Somewhere in the early morning, summer had indeed returned with a passion that had culminated into near record-breaking humidity levels. Bushwell Plaza had officially become a Turkish bath.

Sam groaned again. "I feel like a slimy Popsicle—in an oven."

"I wish I felt like that." I looked over and then laughed along with her.

And not long after the hot and sticky front had moved into Seattle, my mom had fired up the air conditioner only to discover that it wasn't working. After a heated phone call down to the lobby, she'd managed to get Lewbert to promise to fix it as soon as possible.

In other words, we were out of AC until February, at the earliest.

So my mom was not only much subdued, probably because of the whole Sam and me sight, but she was also in a tizzy behind the scenes trying to scrounge up enough fans, ice, and other cooling elements to produce an ice rink.

The peak of the day came in the middle of one of her supply runs. I probably should've seen it coming.

One minute I was sitting on the sofa with Sam, arguing that she had been hogging the fan all morning—and she had been—the next she was jerking me up onto my feet and towards the door.

No matter how hard and long I protested, maybe even whined a little that we couldn't and shouldn't be going out of the apartment when we were sick, much less outside, much less whatever else she had in mind, well ... she was Sam.

And she seemed to be having a pretty fun time about it, poking fun at my "whiny monologues" and my general lack of a life and even a couple pokes at my mom.

But what was I supposed to do? She was dragging me along by the hand. By the hand. Her hand. Her soft, warm—

It was at times like these that I wished I could remember to have more fun with it, enjoy these spontaneous and not entirely advisable ventures of hers while they lasted.

Sadly I was given even less time than usual on this particular outing to the park, where I believe we'd been headed. It was like a cloudy furnace outside, full of dark clouds and claps of distant thunder. We hadn't made it three blocks before it had begun to rain and then pour in the course of a few seconds. A few moments before we'd been slowing and laughing and saying we should probably turn back when we'd literally watched it come the down the street at us. We'd only managed a few steps back the way we'd came before it overtook us.

"Oh, my God!" Sam half screamed and I yelped the other half. "It's freezing!"

And it was. Before long we were drenched in an ice-cold downpour that made it hard to see to the end of the block. Although it felt like it was raining ice cubes mostly because it had been so hot before, our priorities quickly shifted from cooling off to avoiding hypothermia.

"Antarctic monsoon!" I'd shouted, laughing as hard as she was, even though I was actually pretty concerned about getting home before my mom came back.

So we retraced our steps with so much giggling and jostling into each other and shivering that I didn't ever want to get home, because I knew this sort of thing would never happen again. I didn't necessarily want to freeze to death either, but still.

When we finally made it back to Bushwell and up to our apartment there was suddenly the whole new problem of possessing soaked clothing that we weren't supposed to be in. And it was like coming back into a freezer. We rushed around while we were still shivering.

But it was kind of cool (as in not temperature-wise) how we'd immediately known what each of us needed to do. I rushed for my room and tossed her bag of clothes at her as she flew past on her way to the bathroom. And then I was doing my best to forcibly peel off my own clothes and dry myself as I tried hard not to think about what was happening in the next room.

So my mom found us a little breathless and still a little wet, but for all ready appearances on the sofa, watching television just like we had been before. She was in quite a hurry anyway, distractedly expounding to us the virtues of always carrying an umbrella. We dutifully nodded as she went on.

So there were more fits of giggles and whispers whenever we thought that she couldn't hear.

There were a few more hours of that. Of pleasantness.

But then I'd gotten hungry and my mom had fixed me an early supper that had included peas.

At the mere sight of those little green balls that I already knew Sam despised so much, she rushed off for the bathroom again. But she hadn't quite made it, losing in the hallway what little she'd drank before.

Maybe that had been enough to do it, or maybe she had also needed my mom politely ranting to her that she should've had something beside her. I couldn't really fault my mom too much. She'd been running herself ragged and hadn't gotten much sleep in the past few days.

Regardless, when Sam had finally made it back to the sofa, her good mood had packed up and left for the Sahara, in search of cooler climates. Everything else kind of went with it.

There had been some uneasy conversation between us, but it had been automatic and more than enough to make me feel guilty about this whole situation again. I was actually getting to be sicker of feeling guilty than of actually feeling sick.

It had been especially awkward sipping my soup of liquid motherly love with her beside me. I'd quickly disposed of the peas long before she'd gotten back, but the mere fact that I could safely ingest edible material didn't exactly do wonders for my guilt either.

"I just really want to get it, you know? I don't need it, I just—" I'd run out of things to say quite a while ago. I just was that desperate to keep talking to her. Why I needed to delve into tech talk that I knew she didn't care about I still don't know.

"I don't care." She finally said it. She made it sound as if it required an effort to be talking to me, even listening to me drone on when all I really wanted was to talk to her. And knowing her it probably did require an effort. But she could at least try, right? Sure she was probably feeling pretty miserable right now, but I was trying to help.

"You know, you could at least pretend to participate in the conversation." I was getting far too angry about this. Maybe I had just been spoiled by this present lull in hostilities.

"Do you want me to lie?" she asked.

"It shouldn't bother you too much," I shot back.

Maybe I was just too caught between feeling like I owed her something big for her being here, and feeling like she owed me something big for being here.

"Whatever," she didn't even look at me as she pulled herself out of our blankets and stood up.

Somewhere about when she was halfway out of the room I realized what was wrong. Why I was acting all funny and annoying. I was disappointed. After everything that had happened over the past two days, after all the progress towards whatever we were progressing towards had happened, it was suddenly all too possible that it would be for nothing. She would forget or maybe not even notice to begin with and I'd be left with this. This same place I was always at. With the feeling that I was so close to something, but whenever I thought I caught a glimpse of it it seemed miles away. As unattainable as Carly Shay.

It took a minute of practically seething and my abrupt jump from the couch and storming of the hallway to my bedroom for me to realize that something was going to happen. And that came just in time to shut the bedroom door so that my mom wouldn't hear, though I could hardly manage to spare that much concern for those sorts of things in my present state.

"You know what?" I was nearly shouting, jabbing a finger at her.

She turned around from my computer, looking almost surprised and kind of quiet. "What?"

The finger I'd jabbed started moving around as I sought to get ahead of my thoughts. What? That was actually a pretty good question that I had no real answer to; that didn't improve my mood.

She was just sitting there, staring back at me like she was expecting something big—and she should be, dang it—but it was like it was something good. Like it was something she might want.

I was really tired of Sam knowing more than I did.

"This is not pleasant!" I probably said it because I needed to say something. But it came quick and easy, and the rest followed.

Her face fell.

"I'm sick of being sick with you being sick with me!" I continued.

"Oh, and it's a real awesome picnic of jank being stuck here with you too!" she shot back, surging to her feet.

"Well, maybe you should've thought of that before you kissed me!"

It wasn't a big deal, to finally say it and get it out in the open. It really wasn't. Which was why it seemed so wrong when her face grew all hurt and taken aback and un-Sam-like.

"You utterly—stupid—" She looked angry. She sounded angry.

"Yeah, yeah, what?" I demanded.

"Nub!" she shouted, a little more than sufficiently loud enough for my mom and probably the entire building to hear. "You kissed me!"

Suddenly everything just kind of stopped. Unnaturally. Unpleasantly.

"So?" I managed as angrily as I could. It was a good question, because I couldn't seem to think clearly enough to figure out what that meant. I realized somewhere that I had structured everything since the whole kissing incident the wrong way. I'd been interpreting everything the wrong way. I couldn't just reverse that in a few seconds—especially not these few seconds.

All I knew was I was at a loss, that I was suddenly the bad guy, and that I suddenly wanted all that to go away.

"So I made a big mistake," I emphasized it, doing my best to be mocking. "It's over. Get over it."

"Don't—don't do that—" she was shaking her head and looking furious.

"It doesn't matter—" I leaned my head in, "It doesn't. It doesn't matter so much that I'm going to tell everyone! Tell Carly—tell Spencer—everyone. Even my mom, because it doesn't matter at all." I watched her face and felt a kind of glee at the way it changed the further and deeper I went. It was such a rare kind of thing to see her face do that because of me. Because of anything really.

"I'll even tell your mom," I pressed further, waiting for her to say something, needing her to say something. But I knew I had gone far enough for that.

"She wouldn't care." But the spite or even the plain anger I wanted wasn't there. It was just like she said it to say something.

"Oh, yeah. That's right." I leaned in again. "She doesn't care."

Whatever thought my neurons had been processing in that particular second was vaporized as my head exploded with an unpleasant sensation. My entire head from the jaw up was suddenly wrenched away hard enough to make more than a few things click.

I didn't even have a chance to reel before Sam followed her fist and fell on me. For a moment reality consisted of her hands pounding, punching, and scratching at me.

I was shouting something incoherently. There really wasn't even enough time to feel how badly it hurt. I just had to get her off of me.

There was some restraint in my efforts, even though every ungentleman instinct in me was screaming to punch back.

Fortunately she got off before I lowered myself to resorting to that.

I was pretty dizzy and throbbing everywhere, so I only managed to catch a glimpse of her flushed face before she stormed past me.

"You're a psycho!" I called after her just before my bedroom door slammed shut.

Needless to say the next stretch of time was spent in my bedroom, licking my wounds, so to say, and absolutely loathing Sam Puckett. It was actually the first time I realized that her last name rhymed with a very interesting two word phrase.

I didn't even manage to feel guilty about what I'd said. There was no doubt I would've if she hadn't tried to rip my head off. Literally.

Carly came in a few hours later.

"I will—I will—" Carly kept saying to my mother as she stepped inside my room and shut the door behind her. She tried to roll her eyes in a playful manner as she yanked off the breath mask my mother had given her, but I could see that she was well aware of at least the general atmosphere of the general situation. "Hey."

"Hey," I said. I turned away from my computer and rubbed at my forehead.

Carly quietly sat down at the edge of my bed. "So what happened?"

"Nothing," I said, too quickly of course. Because of course I knew that if Carly gathered even an inkling of what had happened, she'd promptly declare me a jerk.

"What happened to your cheek?" Carly asked a little bit more pointedly.

"Ran into a wall," I muttered.

"Yeah?" she asked with a sigh. "I couldn't get much out of the wall either. She's barely talking to me." She raised her eyebrows. "She says you two are having a great time. Something about running out in the rain today."

Wow. I'd already forgotten about that. It made me feel squirmy.

Had it really just been early that day?

"We are, everything's fine," I said.

"Freddie," she looked at me tiredly, and I idly wondered how much homework she had tonight, and if my little life problems were cutting into it. "It won't hurt anything if you just tell me."

"Look, nothing happened, okay?" I said, but she didn't look entirely deterred. "I can handle it."

"So is it an 'it,' or a 'nothing'? Make up your mind." She tried to laugh. It didn't work.

"It is a psycho," I muttered.

"Has your mom seen you yet?" Carly reached up to gingerly touch my cheek, which responded smartly with shooting pains.

"So—" I jerked away from her and clapped my hands in a forced kind of happy, "What happened at school today? Anything interesting?"

Carly looked genuinely sad. A sad and tired Carly was enough to make me feel miserable even on the best of days. "Promise me that you'll work it out?"

I looked at her, suddenly feeling put on the spot. It was a promise I wasn't going to make, even with all the sad puppy dog eyes in the world, Carly's included.

So I just pressed my lips together and she eventually got the picture. I hoped she at least appreciated that I wasn't trying to lie to her.

And after a minute or so of awkward silence Carly launched into a play by play description of another mundane school day. Highlights included—well, okay. I couldn't really remember since I wasn't really paying attention. Just kind of sitting there, nodding every so often and waiting for when she would leave and I would be alone again.

"Oh yeah, and there's a new girl."

Whoopee.

Carly frowned. "I heard her name is Amelia and she's from—I don't know, somewhere."

Fabulous.

"She seemed really nice though, you know? Pretty too."

And what is that supposed to mean?

But it didn't take long before Carly left with a disappointed good bye and I was finally left feeling some real guilt. It was relatively rare enough when I got to talk to Carly as it was. But I supposed my batting average for today was already a lost cause anyway.

When I went to bed early, I was left with the positive thought that I was well enough to go to school tomorrow—and get as far away from Sam as possible.