Chapter 2:

Disclaimer: Owning something is a concept forced on us by the man! And in this case, the man is Dan Schneider. Who owns iCarly.

Day One - Morning

1

Principal Franklin led Sam into the office, although at this point in her high school career she needed little help. She knew the office as well as he did. She knew the names of his kids, the names of his kids' friends. She knew he had an ulcer, and also that he ignored the ulcer while sneaking an occasional cup of coffee. Sam felt the two of them were friends. Except that their relationship was built almost entirely on Sam getting in trouble.

His secretary got up and whispered something to him before he entered the room. He gestured Sam to go on. She sat in her usual chair. She had thought of asking Ted if she could take it as a graduation present. Thinking about the prank he had interrupted, she amended: as long as I can still graduate.

Principal Franklin came into the office with a folded piece of paper in his hand. He sat down and looked at Sam for a moment, thinking. Then he got up, straightened the page he held in his hand and put the paper in the scanner and pressed a button. There was a mechanical whirring sound as the page fed through. He took the paper and came back to the desk. He didn't look at Sam as he did some things on his computer.

"So...we all good here, Ted?"

"No, Samantha, I don't believe so." Sam frowned. She couldn't really say anything about the use of her full name, since she called him Ted. "Ms. Briggs is pushing for you to be expelled."

"What?" He nodded.

"Yes, normally students get to start fresh each year. You, on the other hand, are an exception, and there have been...grumblings from certain people to remove you." Sam wasn't shocked. Besides Ms. Briggs, she knew Mr. Howard hated her. If Ted Franklin wasn't the principal, she probably would have been gone a long time ago. She liked him, and she regretted the situations that brought them to this office. Not enough to stop, but still...

"It wasn't me, Ted. I think my sister Melanie..." She stopped when Ted turned the computer screen toward her and showed her what was on it. Melanie's Splashface page. With a status of one hour ago. A picture of her in front of her school. Great.

"Sam, what are we going to do with you?" She looked at him. "You're so close to graduating. Now you're doing this prank thing. Yes, I know about that," he said, on her look. "And your grades are already low after only two weeks."

"I guess I'm just not that smart, Ted," she said.

"Stop, Sam. Both of us know you're very smart. You just don't apply yourself to the things you should." Sam hung her head. She would have preferred being yelled at by Briggs or Howard to seeing the disappointment in Ted's eyes. "I don't plan to expel you, Sam."

She looked up at him. He held a finger up.

"However." She groaned. He ignored it. "There are two things you are going to do to prevent that expulsion." Sam tensed. "The first thing you're going to do is improve your grades."

"But..." He waved her off.

"Yes, I know. However smart you are, I know you have some catching up to do. Fortunately, I know of a student who wants to improve his college resume, and assisting a mediocre student would certainly do that. Your major areas of concern are math and English, and he is one of the best at our school."

"Who is this nerd you're saddling me with?" She had a bad, sneaking suspicion.

"I believe you know him. Freddie Benson." Sam shook her head.

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no. C'mon, Ted, he's such a nub." She crossed her arms in standard Sam defensive posturing.

"I also believe he's one of your best friends. And he's expressed concern about your noted lack of scholastic aptitude."

"How..." Sam started.

"I know many things, young Puckett," he said and grinned at her. Sam's expression didn't change, but she laughed internally, thinking Ted was a bit of a nub himself.

"Fine, so there's that," she said and started to get up. He waved her down.

"There is also the second item." She sat down. "I believe you know about the literary magazine the English department is putting together?" Sam stared at him blankly. He sighed. "Yes, perhaps that's part of the problem. Well, you may have missed it, but before the end of school last year we asked students to contribute to the magazine-stories, poems, etcetera."

"I'm not writing a poem, Ted."

"Wouldn't dream of asking you, Samantha. However, fate has smiled on us and graced us with this." He held up the piece of paper. "Mrs. Taylor was quite thrilled when she found it, but we don't know who wrote it. That's where you come in. At this point, we're practically willing to take anything."

"How?"

"We need you to find out who wrote it." Sam got up.

"No problem." He waved her down again.

"Yes, I'm sure. But finding out will not involve any physical or verbal intimidation. No abuse of any kind. I will be keeping an eye on the nurse's office...and any phone calls from concerned parents." Sam frowned. "I'm going to give you a copy of this, and you will need to figure out who wrote it. We need to know within two weeks."

Sam took the page and looked at it.

"What is this, Ted?"

"A poem, Sam."

"It doesn't rhyme, though."

"Yes, it's called free verse. I'm sure young Mr. Benson will be glad to explain it to you." He waved her off. She went to the door. "Sam." She turned back around. "Two weeks, or I will have to consider Ms. Briggs' option."

She nodded and left.

2

I'm toast, Freddiie thought.

At least I didn't put my name on it. He had figured out rather quickly that the paper had been lost when he got caught between the wrestlers, but everywhere he looked in the hallway produced nothing. The important thing is that Sam didn't find out.

"You and me have to talk, nerd," said the object of his thoughts. She pulled him into an empty classroom and closed the door.

"Sam, I have to go see Principal Franklin. I'm going to be tutoring somebody." Sam smirked and waved at him. He gaped at her. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no...that's not possible."

"That sounds familiar," she said.

"Oh, man, I'm going to be stuck with you," he said, throwing his hands up.

"Well, it's gonna be fun hanging with you, too," Sam said, bottling her hurt.

"I'm just saying, you're not the most receptive to correction and guidance, Sam." She smiled at that. He had her there.

"Well, you're gonna get used to seeing me, Frednubs."

"Why's that?"

"Because thanks to you ditching me this morning, I got caught, so I have to do something for Ted or get expelled."

"Expelled?" Freddie asked. Sam took a minute step back at the real concern on Freddie's face.

"Yeah, he caught me hooking up shaving cream cans to Briggs' car, and she's pushing for me to go."

"What a-wait, how does this involve me?"

"If you hadn't ditched me, I wouldn't have been caught. So you get to help me with my little project."

Sam was pretty upset about it. She had gone to the bookworms and other nerds, but once they realized she wasn't going to beat them, they weren't much help. Nobody fessed up, and nobody pointed out who the writer might be. One of the geeks had sniffed and said the poem was much too "pedestrian" for any of them to have written it.

"Help you with what?" Freddie asked.

Sam pulled out the paper. "Help me find out who wrote this."

Sam would have admired his bravery if she knew how close he came to passing out right there. There in Sam's hand was his poem. That he had written about the person who was holding it right now. Oh, yeah, keeping a journal is much more dangerous, he thought.

"What's that?"

"What's it look like, Freddie? It's a poem." He took it and looked at it, pretending to read it for the first time.

"It doesn't rhyme," he said.

"That's what I said, but Ted said they still want to publish it in their literary club thing. But they can't do it unless they get permission from the person who wrote it. So Ted gave me the assignment of finding out who wrote it."

This just gets better and better, Freddie thought. He had once seen a movie in which a boy was killed when an airplane engine had fallen from above and crushed him to death in his bed. He envied that boy.

"Well, why don't you just ask the guys in the English club?"

"I already tried that. They said it wasn't them-something about it being 'pedestrian'."

"They said what?" Freddie burst out. "I mean, poetry's not my thing, but it seems okay."

"I kind of like it, actually," Sam said, mostly to herself. She didn't see Freddie stare at her. "Anyway, you're going to help me find out who wrote it."

"What? How am I supposed to do that?"

"I don't know. Use your nerd powers. You owe me."

"I guess I can look into it at some point."

"Some point is tonight, Fredweiner. Remember, you're my tutor now, so we can kill two birds with one stone."

"Sam, I don't know about this."

"Freddie," she said, and Freddie paused at her tone. "Please. I don't want to get expelled."

Freddie sighed.

"Okay."

"Awesome." Her mood perked up immediately. Freddie might have thought she was faking the concern just a moment earlier, but concern wasn't something Sam faked. "So we have to get it figured out before two weeks is up. Or I'll have to send you to the hospital before I get kicked out of school." Freddie paid no attention to the threat, as he was concentrating on the second part-"kicked out of school".

He was going to have tutor Sam, so she didn't flunk. And he needed to prevent her from getting kicked out of school without revealing it was he who wrote the poem.

And he was going to be spending every day with the girl with whom he was in love. He had fantasies she would return that love, but reality was more likely to end with him receiving a wedgie or, worse, gales of laughter that he would ever think she would love a nub like him.

This is going to be a long two weeks.

A/N: Okay, well, we know that Freddie's project is a poem he wrote about Sam. Don't worry (or do, dependent on your views of my poetry skill), we will eventually see Freddie's poem.

Much like my last fanfiction, this story came together for the most part at once. I was driving on my daily commute and had my iPod on shuffle. Ani Difranco's "What If No One's Watching" came on. Although that song is essentially about religion/spirituality, the title stuck in my head (it is actually in Freddie's poem). Secondly, I thought about a episode of Joan of Arcadia, "Anonymous", in which Joan's friend, Grace, did not want anybody to know she was the person who wrote a poem. A third cog in this story came from the Futurama episode "Lethal Inspection", in which Hermes assists Bender in trying to find Inspector #5, only for it to be revealed at the end that Hermes was Inspector #5 and was thwarting Bender each step of the way. I think you can see how that last one might play in this story, as Sam wants Freddie to help her discover the poet, while he will try to prevent her from finding out it is him, all while trying to tutor her and keep her from being expelled.

I think there is probably another chapter for day 1, before we move on to the next day. Again, each day of the 14-day period will be covered, but I can't say for sure how many chapters will be included in each day.

Thank you for reviews from Alwayswrite, Geekquality, afanoffanfic, and ForteEXEMaster.

Sorry, afanoffanfic, only one new update today.