"I know, but she can't help it, she's just naturally vicious."

--Freddie Benson

i'M Sick of This Feeling – Chap. v

"Hey, dork."

I whirled around, not quite horrified to see her walking towards me, plastic bag with her gym stuff in one hand and her hair wet.

I couldn't find anything to say. She quickly took in my embarrassing attire, consisting of my gym shirt, boxers, and nothing else, along with the way I was leaning against the door to the boys locker room. I wished I could melt through that door, disappear from her amused and deceptively sympathetic expression. The only way this could get any more embarrassing was if Carly showed up. Not that she had any P.E. classes this semester.

"I take it they were calling you a dork, too," she looked like she was genuinely trying not to laugh, "And pushing you out of the locker room ... again."

It wasn't the first time this year that I didn't care all that much for the new joys of High School.

"It's all in good fun," I said sarcastically, because there really wasn't anything else for me to say. I wished my cheeks weren't burning so badly.

"Freddie, I'd give you some life advice right now," she started to pick through my gym bag that they'd thrown out into the hall. It was too bad they hadn't been nice enough to include my pants. "... But I think a demonstration is better."

"What are you doing?" I asked, stepping away and feeling something akin to hopeful. Not that I wanted her to go in there and beat them all up, but ... it made for an appealing thought.

But she was going to do something.

She hushed me as she pulled my aluminum deodorant bottle, the kind that mom always bought me, out of my bag and stepped over to the locker room door. At some point she had procured a small tack hammer from her bag. I didn't even want to know what she carried that around for.

With a practiced air she leaned against the door, opening it a little as she positioned my deodorant bottle up against the frame.

"Hey, Freddieee—" Cat calls came through the partially open door. "Do you want your pants back? We might email them to you—"

Sam slammed the hammer down near the tip of the bottle, pulled away from the immediate burst, and then chucked it underhand through the door like a grenade.

Before I could put words to my pointing finger she was pulling me along down the hallway and away from the overpowering odor and startled shouts echoing from inside the locker room. We had just made it around the corner when we heard the door burst open and what probably amounted to the room's immediate occupants pouring out. I could smell it even from the other end of the hallway.

"But my pants—" I managed, still trying to catch up with everything. Not that that particular pair of pants would probably be wearable anytime before Christmas—2040 A.D. I'm not exactly sure what the half life for concentrated deodorant is.

"Here—" Sam sighed as she dragged me, "Put these on."

She sounded like she was annoyed with the whole ordeal, and she also seemed to avoid my cheeky and uncontainable smile for the rest of the day, though she was rarely able to keep from smiling a little as well.

And even though I'd worn girl sweatpants until I'd gotten home, and the jocks had obliged Sam's favor by giving me a swirly following the next gym class ... it had been a good day.

That memory was what I had to wake to. That and the fact that Sam was still on my floor.

I left for school long before she woke up.

--

Okay, so I might have been rushing the whole not-sick thing a little bit. I picked up a headache that wasn't totally there somewhere in the morning, and my mouth had that slimy taste that didn't go away, no matter how much water I drank and how many times I spit.

Lunch helped, but I was still essentially dragging myself through the motions. It was just another day as a sophomore, the year still being new enough that everything hadn't quite fallen from familiar into routine. Still, these three weeks were working up to that pretty fast.

I was essentially counting the minutes until the end of the day when I should've been paying attention, especially given how far I'd fallen behind. All the while I was essentially regretting that I was wishing time was passing at all. After all, the end of school meant another beginning of her.

I had given my pain and suffering a name, and it was Sam.

So I was stuck hating myself for measuring the seconds. But that changed rather abruptly. It happened during Chemistry.

"Oh, Miss Puckett is still absent?"

I vaguely registered Mr. Kinney, our science teacher, say this. I vaguely turned to listen, but quickly lost all sense of vagueness when I saw that Mr. Kinney was talking to a brown haired girl holding her books in front of her.

"Yes, we'll need you to partner up for today," Mr. Kinney turned and I started a bit when he looked at me, "Uh, Mr. Benson?"

My heart was suddenly pounding. Sam was always my lab partner.

And Sam wasn't here.

"Yes, you'll be pairing up with that boy there today. Now find your seats quickly everyone," Mr. Kinney called as he rose from his desk and made for the front.

But I wasn't watching him.

She looked nervous, timid practically. Her eyes were everywhere but on me as she walked towards my lab bench.

"Hi," she said, finally looking up when she stopped in front of me, "My—uh, I guess I'm going to be working with you today."

"Yeah, hi," I said, a little startled to discover how not-easy it was to talk. I got paired with a cute girl because Sam was sick? What were the odds?

But then Mr. Kinney began talking about something to do with chemistry, or at least that's what I assume he was talking about. The girl quickly sat down in the stool next to mine and began unpacking her things.

Between my headache and trying to sneak glances at her and marveling at how unreal this all seemed—a completely different girl that looked like that sitting in Sam's seat—I was fairly preoccupied.

She was slight and—different. Like a rare variety of soft that was ... well, rare. And bright. She kind of reminded me of Carly—only not. Shannon maybe? Nah.

I couldn't really help myself. Maybe it was because I'd been subjected to Sam at close quarters for so long that this girl seemed so mesmerizing. Maybe the reason why my Carly-and-me-together-forever-induced-guilt response stalled in kicking in, and was fairly weak at that, was because my resistance towards Sam and her unfortunate possession of her more attractive appeals had been on the verge of crumbling for days. And at least with that there'd been the whole friendship thing to keep things in hand. Not that I could really see myself getting anything resembling out of hand thinking about this girl. It just naturally seemed wrong.

She was probably the most innocent thing I'd ever shared a sentence with.

She caught me glancing at her once, and sort of smiled shyly and looked back up towards the front.

Mr. Kinney went through whatever he was talking about fairly quickly and told the class to begin on the lab we'd been handed. I only needed a glance to relieve myself of the notion that it would be very difficult, even with how much I'd missed.

"So ..." I turned towards her, "You just moved here—recently?"

Why was this so hard? I hadn't had a hard time talking to girls in—well, ever really.

"Yes, my name's Amelia."

"I'm Freddie."

She smiled a little and went on. "Me and my family just moved all of our stuff here this weekend. My dad got a big job at the software plant—"

"Oh, yeah," I put in.

"Oh, do you know it?" she asked, sounding a little hopeful.

"Oh ... no ..."

Whoops.

"Well," she pressed on, "Yesterday was actually my first day here, but I had to have some stuff done at the office, so I missed this class yesterday." She paused for a moment.

Say something, say something—

I smiled and nodded slightly.

She dropped her eyes from my face for a moment. "So ... um."

It took me an uncomfortable second to realize that she was trying to bring up the subject of my face. Or more specifically the bruised parts of it, which were still excessively visible, despite my botched attempts to cover it with some of my mom's makeup this morning. "Oh, this?" I laughed a little and the way she joined in confirmed that was what she meant. "It's nothing ... I just ... ran into a wall."

"Oh, you must've hit it really hard, that must've been terrible—"

"No, no," I said in what I hoped passed as a tough sounding voice, "It's no big deal." And it wasn't. "It happens ..." Pause. "Not that it happens often—or at all—usually." I laughed a little nervously, watching her face change the farther I fumbled. "No, I don't ... walk into walls often—" I sort of gave up.

"Well anyway, I guess since we're—lab partners and all," she laughed a little, "We should go get our stuff."

"Right, we should definitely do that," I blurted, at first glad just to be able say something; after that, pretty much horrified at my boundless tact.

"Okay," she started to stand up, coming off her stool from the left. I decided to stand up from the right, like I always did. Near awkward collision ensued.

"Oh, I'm sorry—" she said in an embarrassed voice as she started to sit.

I'd already started to do the same. "No, it's okay—really—"

We went through those motions one more time. She was blushing profusely well before we were done.

Somewhere in the middle of that I belatedly realized that Sam always got up off her stool from the right—when she bothered to get up that is.

"It's all right, I'll get the stuff," I remained standing.

"Oh, that's sweet of you."

"Ah, yeah," I managed, faced with the uncomfortable notion that I might be coming off too blatantly as trying to be the gentleman. I just needed a little damage control. Funny how I always got everything for Sam, gentleman or not. "Well, I know where everything is and—I'll go get it."

"Okay," she said.

While I was walking away I remembered that I was supposed to be having a bad day. I was still sort of sick and was having record level difficulties with my two best friends, one slightly more than the other. I had already more than resigned myself to be miserable for an indefinite period of the near future.

It was strange how something new could make everything change.

But surely this girl that I was going to be sharing a lab bench with for one class period hadn't done that, had she?

I furtively looked back over my shoulder. She was sitting there with a hand over her mouth, quietly laughing to herself. When she caught me looking again she smiled but didn't turn away this time.

That was the happiest trip to the safety goggles rack I would probably ever take.

Suddenly it was hard to remember just what I had been so resigned to be miserable about.

--

It was easily the best chemistry period I'd had so far this year. And that was saying something since it was one of my favorite classes to begin with. If I was honest enough to myself about Sam, something that becoming harder and harder to do, I would say that I almost always enjoyed that class with her. Sure, the insults were generally a bit more abrasive. There was also the tension of always trying hard to prove that I was smart to her and not mess up our lab work. But it wasn't so bad, even if she did make me get, do, write, explain, formulate, plan, listen, and pour virtually everything, along with basically every other verb in the English dictionary that pertained or could ever possibly pertain to the class. All with what amounted to negative amounts of gratitude, might I add. And I might.

Why was it then that I enjoyed doing it with her? I decided to put that one on the world's largest back burner, which was quickly culminating into my future book, "Mysteries of Sam: The Most Mysterious of the Mysterious Female Species."

But getting back on track from future Pulitzer winners, I had a great time with Amelia. It was almost enough to let me forget that there was still a blond vial of plutonium sitting in my bedroom, probably doing unmentionable things to my tech equipment. Like doing things to my computers she'd actually like to be doing to me.

I was still musing if it was technically possible for a computer to be castrated when I found myself in front of my door, breathing heavily and wishing I wasn't.

But as it turned out I had little to fear as my mother immediately informed me that Sam's mom had come and picked her up around noon.

I was somewhere between disappointed and crushed. Which was of course a natural reaction after having worked myself up to what I had been all day. Whatever that was.

So I was left with a quiet and by most accounts homicide-free evening. And it sucked eggs. I had this lethargic disposition of not feeling like doing anything and hating that I was just wasting time. Long gone was that upbeat stuff I'd gotten from Amelia.

It had finally happened. Sam was gone from my apartment, maybe for good. Maybe forever.

In dreading the following day of school where there was at least a low double digit percent chance that Sam would be there, I began to get even angrier at her. For just about everything in general. I easily passed the slight emotional dip of guilty undertow I hadn't even noticed picking up before, and was up to despising levels well before I got to school.

--

At lunch it was a chore to sit where we always sat, because that meant I had to sit within conversation distance of Sam. But it was vital to keep up the whole nothing-is-wrong shtick at all costs.

"Could you pass the restraining order?" I made an exaggerated face. "Whoops, I mean the ketchup."

Carly looked at me with an unreadable expression. Sam just rolled her eyes and obliged without saying anything.

"Well, this is great fun. Yeah, a fun time," Carly murmured, but stopped when Sam and me both stared at her. She groaned. "It's been so much fun sitting with you two chatter boxes, but I've got to get to class."

No, you've got to go to another one of those extracurricular things that are slowly sucking your soul away. Seriously, anything that overlapped lunch, no matter by how little, was not worth it.

I of course didn't voice that line of thought, but I figured it was probably pretty mild compared to what Sam was thinking judging from the look on her face.

Then Carly was gone, leaving me all alone with Sam and the building need to verbally hurt her. It would've been nice to know why I was so angry, but it didn't really matter.

"So, what's it going to be?" I put my elbows on the table and leaned forward, going into game show host mode. "Is Contestant P—P for Psycho—going to take her unsightly-ness and leave—as she should—or is she going to be unable to resist grazing on the rest of her feed?"

It just wasn't enough. I wanted to call her a cow, a delinquent, a loser, all those names that I never would've before because that would've been crossing a line.

I really had been stupid, stupid enough to believe that there was any sort of line.

It almost looked like my words were having some kind of effect. The stare she returned didn't look all that sturdy, but then again she still probably wasn't feeling all that sturdy around food yet. There was no way I would be able to verbally hurt her. But I had to try.

"Mm," I took a bite, "And it's Salisbury steak today. It must make it such a difficult decision. In fact, ladies and gentlemen, I bet she couldn't even get up if—"

She stood up.

Before I could say anything else she leaned over and tipped the rest of her milk over my tray.

I caught the briefest look on her face before I was left staring at her retreating back.

When I looked down at my tray, I didn't see the milk or even the forlorn bit of soggy Salisbury.

What had that been? That look—

I pounded my fist on the table, wishing that would fix it. Wishing that could just erase the last ten seconds and everything accompanying it.

But it didn't, and the seconds stretched on and things changed.

It wasn't my fault if she couldn't take it. I'd been taking it from her for so long I practically owed her this and so much more. If there was any justice in the universe that was.

I just had to do something. I didn't like it this way, I didn't like this sort of low feeling, but it's all I had. I only hoped she was feeling a fraction of—

"Hi, Freddie."

My mind wasn't exactly in a hospitable state, so I didn't acknowledge or even really process the greeting until Amelia and the other girls with her were well past.

Belatedly I spun around to watch them as they walked away.

It hit me so suddenly and completely that I was left feeling pretty stupid.

I could date Amelia. I could date anyone I wanted, I just hadn't realized it until now. I was free to do whatever I wanted, not what I was supposed to do, like date Carly, or what I really needed to do—which no longer included anything to do with Sam Puckett.

I could do it, I really could do it.

And I would be perfectly within my right.

But—it wasn't that simple. Was it?

I found myself standing, walking, then disposing of my lunch—or what was left of it—before I could really think about it. It was like my feet were moving on their own accord, telling me that it really was possible.

It was such an intoxicating idea. But there was something wrong with it.

I picked up pace, hurrying after where I'd last seen Amelia and the others heading. But I wasn't able to catch sight of them. Coasting to a stop, I checked the time and headed to my locker. There was no hurry, I would catch her in Chemistry.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head against my locker door. Why had I made up my mind on this already? How had I made his mind up on this? I couldn't even remember, but suddenly this seemed like an idea that I couldn't go back on anymore. Like I had already asked her.

I can date anyone. But every time I thought that, even tried to think that, something inside balked. There were rules, things I just couldn't do, right?

Anyone.

At that point it went from intoxicating to frightening.

But Amelia wasn't just anyone, so obviously there wasn't a problem.

I rolled my forehead around the front of my locker.

--

"Hi," I said two periods later, giving the greeting I'd agonizingly settled on.

"Hi, Freddie," Amelia looked up and gave me a smile that she apparently didn't mind giving more than once a day.

"Have you, um, seen what we're doing today?" I asked, deciding to stick to the script as I sat down in the stool next to her.

"Oh, something about valence electrons," she said, "I think it's up there on the board."

Stupid, stupid—

"Oh, oh yeah," I said, mentally wincing. "So it is."

"Oh," Amelia looked towards the door, "Is that your friend that was sick?"

I gave the barest glance, just enough to confirm that it was Sam. "Yeah. That's her."

"Well …" Amelia twiddled with her fingers, "Aren't you going to go sit with her?"

"Do you want me to?" It was out before I could think better of it. And I could've.

"No, no," she said hurriedly and tried to laugh a little, "It's just that I don't want to think that you're sitting with me just because I'm new ... if you'd rather sit with her."

"No, it's not like that." I didn't have to fake my smile.

"I mean I really loved being your lab partner yesterday. I had such a great time," she lowered her voice a little, "I was so scared yesterday when I walked in. I bet everyone saw it."

"No, you were great," I said. I'd fallen into letting her talk, because I apparently couldn't.

She looked at me in a way that made everything all squirmy and uncomfortable. "I'm sure someone like you never has to worry about that sort of thing."

"I think you'd be surprised," I laughed along with her, wringing my hands underneath the table.

Just talk, just talk to her—

"Okay, students, please take your seats," Mr. Kinney said as he walked in. There was a general movement to comply.

And then suddenly there were two girls looking at me. One with a questioning, but guardedly hopeful expression. The other I did my best not to look at at all, but I was more than capable of picking up her stormy expression. She turned back towards the front when it became apparent that I wasn't moving.

Did I mention that it seemed extremely weird for Amelia to be sitting in Sam's seat? Like Lewbert in a leotard kind of weird.

"Today we're going to explore the fascinating topic of valence electrons and what role they play within the atom," Mr. Kinney began, officially sealing the matter of seating arrangements. He was all bluster and confidence for the notion that the class did in fact care to a great degree about the subject, just like he was overly confident about everything.

"Now this is a simple equation where we can see the result—" he pointed to board, "Eight, being the result of—"

"Dude, that looks like a five," Sam spoke up in a decidedly grouchy sounding voice.

"Why that's—that's correct." Mr. Kinney took a closer look at the very distinctive five drawn on the board and scratched his head. "But that can't be correct—where did—no, this can't be right. Wrong, wrong, wrong—" He was quietly muttering under his breath in an increasingly distressed voice as he distractedly used his free hand to wring at his little bit of hair.

There was some subdued chatter and giggles as Mr. Kinney's confusion escalated. This wasn't a rare thing however. The way Mr. Kinney over zealously plunged into everything often caused this sort of stuff, producing either a really angry or a really self-deprecating teacher. Which was all very amusing, for the first week or so.

However, the effect hadn't had time to wear itself out for Amelia yet. She was in the biggest fit of giggles in the class, and I found the way she tried and utterly failed to politely hide them was much funnier than anything else that was happening. She had an infectious giggle, subdued or not. It was all light and prim without being contrived. It was—something I was not used to, unsurprising considering my choice of friends.

"I'm sorry," she tried when she caught me staring and smiling back at her, "It's just—are all of your teachers this ... unusual?"

"Believe me, this is nothing." I said it in a way that made her giggle harder.

And suddenly it wasn't so hard. It wouldn't be a big deal to ask her. It wouldn't be wrong, despite all my vague apprehensions that it would be. Carly obviously wouldn't mind—that is if she even noticed. And Sam—well Sam could go to happy hobo acres for all I cared.

So it didn't turn out to be such a big deal waiting through the rest of class, making jokes that Amelia laughed at, and honestly too. What a refreshing change. It was almost disconcerting for me, to be laughed with rather than at.

But I honestly tried not to enjoy the way Sam looked throughout class, and honestly it was hard to keep track or even remember to with Amelia there. But it wasn't hard to miss her sour expression she wore throughout her lab with Aaron and Billy. They were a pair of perpetual slack offs with a seedier sort of air, the kind that hung out at the fringes of class and everything else they could in the pursuit of cool; which was just perfect for Sam.

There was a pang of guilt at that.

No, it wasn't perfect for Sam. She wasn't like that, but I wasn't responsible for who she was forced to hang out with. I'd had to endure her as a lab partner all year so far, and while Amelia was hardly the best partner of all time, she was leagues ahead of Sam simply on the mere fact that she actually tried.

And so after a little loosening up it didn't turn out to be such a big deal either when I walked Amelia to her locker, probably coming in at somewhere between the top of my game and Don Juan material as I carefully maneuvered the conversation towards what she was doing this weekend.

Sam opened her locker from a few down the row.

I said it. Or asked it. Whatever, I did it.

Amelia looked at me. For that moment all I could see were her eyes and the way they widened. She was probably surprised that I would ask so soon. I was sort of surprised that I would ask so—

She said yes. And smiled. Beamed, really.

My breath came out in a whoosh of, "Great!"

We both relaxed a little and the conversation turned to details. Of time, what sort of food she liked—

There was an abrupt hand on my shoulder, applied force, and then I was flaying into the lockers. It wouldn't have been so bad if Sam's aim had been just a little less perfect, and I hadn't stumbled into Amelia's open locker.

There was some stumbling on my part as I tried to regain my balance without pulling all her books down, and a whole lot of exclamations on Amelia's part as she tried to steady me.

But with all the practice I'd had over time with this sort of thing, I was able to keep from totally making a scene and making it look passable too, given the circumstances.

"Oh, my gosh, are you okay? Who was that?" Amelia tried to look down the hall, but evidently Sam was out of sight already. "Who would do a thing like that?"

I forcefully straightened out my shirt, utterly regretting any guilty feelings I'd ever had about Sam.

"No one."

--

AN: I'd just like to take the time to thank all the people who left such awesome reviews for this.

Also of note, yes, Mr. Kinney is my sad attempt at making a funny iCarly teacher (nothing measures up to their computer teacher). Also, Spencer has been absent thus far, but he is coming.

And yes, Freddie is acting like a jerk. But it'll get better, I promise! I promise! I think ...