Disclaimer: iCarly belongs to some other guy I don't know.
The next day. squeaking footsteps made their way along the freshly mopped floors at Ridgeway High. But three students were standing still, in a semi-circle around a locker close to the front entrance. The iCarly team looked no better for wear than they did the night before. A good night sleep only served to ingrain the memories even deeper.
"You had a nosebleed for two hours?" Freddie asked. Sam stood a little to the side, observing, with an unusually serious look on her face.
Carly nodded, eyes planted firmly on her shoes. "Not just a two-hour nosebleed. It was just… it was leaking out almost like a faucet. I thought I was going to die. For a few minutes, I felt like I was."
Sam stepped closer to her friend. "Do you think it has something to do with-"
"Yeah," Carly said quickly before Sam could finish her sentence. "I don't know how, but I think all of that… 'information,'" Carly used air quotes for the last word, "just got to me. It hurt my brain, I guess."
For the next thirty seconds, they were silent until the first bell rang. They had never felt so awkward being in a group together. Everyone, including Carly and friends, left for their individual classes.
()()()
Period two. Carly sat towards the front next to an empty chair while the health teacher droned on and on about nutrition. She remembered a few years ago, when she was a freshman and her science class had a day teaching STDs. Just these horrible pictures of… god damn it!
She could not- could not- stop thinking about last night. Fuck.
Rubbing her achy head, she turned for what was probably the tenth time since class started to look at Freddie. He'd eschewed his seat next to Carly to sit next to that weird kid from hers and Sam's math class. She wasn't really sure how to feel about that; angry, jealous, slightly weirded out? The only thing worse than feeling one emotion was feeling three and having no idea which one was right. Even worse, this happened to be the day after a very traumatic night.
The other kids in school that also watched iCarly had been pestering the three of them all day. They were asking a bunch of questions about what happened that caused the webcast to go off air so much. As much as Carly hated being rude, she had to tell a few of them to buzz off. The last thing she was willing to do at a time like this was relive the events of last night.
()()()
"Guys, we can't keep taking these suggestions!" Carly exclaimed after recovering from the shock of looking at a threesome between old men. "I feel like I'm going to puke!"
"What is wrong with these people, anyway?" muttered Freddie to himself.
"Oh, come on, you two!" Sam blurted out, giving both of her friends a scare after the long, awkward silence. "Let's get the show back on the air and just do a few more websites!"
"What?" Freddie exclaimed, stunned that, after all of the stone-cold horrible shit they'd just seen, she wanted to continue. "I'm going to catch a virus on my laptop if I keep looking this gross stuff up for these guys!"
"So?"
"He has a point, Sam," Carly chimed in. "We need his laptop to do iCarly."
Sam groaned, and the room fell silent for a few seconds as everyone in room had their own inner debate.
"One more website," Sam spoke up. "If one more disgusting website shows up, we'll stop."
The next suggested was a page on Encyclopedia Dramatica.
()()()
What was he saying to that kid, anyway?
It was near the end of class and Freddie was whispering something into the pimply kid's ear. Carly couldn't make out words- mostly because she was trying not to look obvious to Freddie that she was listening. The other kid just sat there and, finally, nodded his head.
When the bell rang, Carly tried to get to Freddie before he left, but he was out in a flash. Like he just vanished.
()()()
Lunch period. Carly and Sam met at Carly's car and waited for Freddie so they could all go off campus for lunch.
"It's been ten minutes," Sam growled in the same tone that her stomach did, "where the hell is that nerd, anyway?"
"I think he might be mad at me. Or us."
"Why would he be mad at you?"
"I don't know. He sat next to Jake in our health class today."
Sam's eyes widened. "But that kid freaks him out! Why would he go sit next to him?"
"I know! Much less talk to him!"
"What?" laughed Sam. "He must be trying to give that kid hygiene tips or something. Like, 'step one: don't eat your own pimples until after you brush your teeth at night.'"
Carly and Sam had a giggle, but when Freddie didn't show after another ten minutes, neither of them were laughing. He wouldn't respond to either of their texts. As time went on, Sam became more and more willing than she usually was to just leave the guy behind. Or, at least, she was willing on the surface.
Sam once had a crush on Freddie, and she considered him a close friend regardless of whether she acknowledged it. For the three years the group had done iCarly, it became harder to hate someone she saw nearly every day. They knew each other too well, been through too much together, for Sam or Freddie to harbor any genuine resentment.
That's why Sam was, in a rare showing of selflessness, mildly concerned about Freddie. The girl didn't have to hear what Carly had told her to know that something was very odd about him. Something unsettling, something very wrong; it was as if he had become cold rather than his usual geek self.
This morning, she had put around ten or so minnows in his locker. Half of them she had hung from the top, the other half she had just stuck all over the inside. It was like a prank from a few years ago where she stuck an enormous fish into the locker. It was for old time's sake and some revenge for being so desperate to stop the show the night before.
She didn't understand why it affected them both so bad. Well, she DID, but only in the same way someone "understands" what a person with PTSD is going through. Frustrating as the situation was, it had given Sam a little burst of nostalgic irritation at her nerdy cohort. She had that old feeling of annoyance from when Freddie would whine about his shirt being cut up or something. He really was growing up lately, and certainly growing out of his mother's shadow. By extension, he was drifting away from the old humorous way he went about from day to day.
Anything that reminded Sam of old times- more carefree days where real life wasn't looming over the horizon- was welcome.
When he opened that locker, everything was different from what Sam expected. His eyebrows rose slightly and his mouth did curl a little bit. But then he looked over at where she was standing across the hallway and, smirking, pulled out his books. Shutting the door and walking past Sam, all he said was "good one." He wasn't even close to tantruming or at least expressing displeasure like any sane person would have done. There was no bile or sarcasm in his voice; it had taken on a mono-tonal quality.
Maybe he was just tired. That's what she tried to convince herself.
Finally, the two decided to walk into the cafeteria and maybe eat something there. They added "maybe," of course, because the school's food ranged from "borderline tolerable" and "less edible than human feces." When they got there, they looked at food and decided that it fell to the latter half of that spectrum. They opted for two cartons of milk and some seats next to a window.
Sam peered across the room and noticed something else peculiar. "Hey, Carly, look," she pointed toward the desk where all of the nerdier kids sat. Usually, that was where Jake from math class sat. In fact, that was always where he sat. But not today.
"Do you think maybe Freddie decided to go get lunch with him today?" Carly asked.
"That's it!" Sam declared. "That chiz-head ditched us to go eat pimples with that fucking kid!"
Carly nodded slowly, but her face betrayed some uncertainty. Unless Freddie was absolutely furious like never before at both of them, it seems unlikely that he'd just ditch them. Freddie was a lot of things, but he'd never really been immature. Or all that passive-aggressive… but then, who knows? It didn't seem like there was any other logical explanation that didn't involve him being seriously injured or something.
"Hey, don't worry," Sam said, "he'll be at home after school and we'll kick his ass then."
"Yeah…"
()()()
It was seventh period computer class and Carly sat in the back doing some project with a Wheaties box cover. The room was quiet with little whispers and occasional shuffling of paper, making this Carly's favorite class for the moment. Being able to think and not have to listen to a teacher or work on a paper was great. It was an opportunity to reason things out.
She'd decided that she was acting way too paranoid about this whole thing. Freddie was bound to have a perfectly reasonable explanation for what he was up to in health class. As for the horrors the three of them had to subject themselves to last night… time would heal those wounds. And leave no scars.
She thought about writing that one down for a song or something.
Thirty minutes elapsed, and Carly discreetly left the project to surf the Internet, like most kids in the class. One could get away with it, as long as they made it look like they were researching for their project. "Come to think of it," Carly thought to herself, "this pretty much is my favorite class." After all, it took place at just the right time, near the end of the school day. It was refreshing after a long series of boring classes to be able to relax and do something more creative. For the first time that day, the intensity that had the teenager's mind in its grasp was gone.
But it came back in the form of a hand on her shoulder.
"Hey Carly," Principal Franklin said quietly, "can I see you for a second?"
Carly, going from relieved that it wasn't the teacher to worried, looked up and nodded.
()()()
Carly's anxiety was made no less slight when they walked together into Principal Franklin's office. The atmosphere of the room was clearly trying hard to be friendly and relaxed. But the pervasive dark brown of the place somehow felt inorganic and distant.
The principal sat down at his desk and forced a very brief smile toward Carly. He could tell she wasn't feeling too well. That was too bad, but he was definitely too far in the same boat to help her with that. "Don't worry, you aren't in trouble," he began warmly, his calm voice contrasting with his face, which had never looked so deathly serious before. "But there's something really important I need to have a talk with you about."
"'K-Kay."
"Have a seat."
Carly sat down in the chair that was clear across the room, staring expectantly at Franklin.
"I don't know if you were already aware of this or not, but your friend, Freddie Benson, has been involved in a serious altercation with another student-"
"Jake?"
The principal nodded. "Jake Malloy. So, I guess you already knew. Well-"
"I- I didn't know… they were in a fight."
"Okay. Regardless, what I called you in here for is to ask you some questions. But, first, I think you need to know the seriousness of this assault."
He sat up in his chair a little bit, clearing his throat and trying to find the right way to tell Carly what had happened. "I'm going to be frank about this, because I think you deserve to hear what your friend… seems to have turned into. We found the two of them in the men's bathroom during lunch period, Freddie was inside a stall and had pinned Jake against the door. He was screaming so loudly that kids several yards down the hall could hear it. We… we aren't sure why, but Freddie seemed to be trying to tear the other boy's face off."
Carly shuddered involuntarily; a numb feeling of falling invaded her gut at that very moment.
"And he nearly succeeded, from the looks of things. Jake had bleeding wounds all over his face; Freddie himself had Jake's blood smeared all over him. All over his mouth and chin. It… could arguably be because Freddie was trying to… eat the kid's face."
"Why?" Carly exclaimed, far louder than she had really intended, before standing up and practically launching herself towards the desk. "Why would he do that? HOW could he do that? That doesn't make any sense! It couldn't have been him!"
"I'm afraid it was, Carly. As to why he did it, that was what I called you in here to ask you. Is there anything at all that could have triggered this… completely off-the-wall behavior?"
Carly slowly backed away. A part of her inside was saying that it couldn't have been the incident last night. But… she couldn't think of a damn thing else that could have acted as such a sudden catalyst.
"Y-Yeah… I think."
TO BE CONTINUED…