Hello!
Here is the deal: First of all, I am very sorry for the humungous delay with the update. I really hope you like this chapter enough to make up for it, and I could explain why there was such a gap, but I won't bore you when you could be reading exciting Seddie-related things, instead!
In any case, I made a special arrangement for this chapter. I've already written the two chapters that follow this one (I wouldn't let myself post this one until I knew I was set for a short while), and I do, of course, plan to post them. BUT, with all of the delays in my posting, which I feel terrible about, I need to know that someone's actually going to continue to read My List of Firsts so that I know my effort is worth it.
I truly love this story, from creating it and writing it to sharing it with all of you. This is why I need your feedback. Please please please comment and let me know what you think of my story, where you think it should go, and if you want it to continue. Any and all feedback is ALWAYS welcome, but that last option is most important at the moment.
If at least five people comment that they want me to continue posting my chapters (you don't have to be a member of to make a comment!) by November 27th, then I will post the next two chapters soon and get to work on the chapters that follow those. I have no intention to stop writing this story, but I just want to know that making an effort to be timely with my replies will actually be worth it.
So just take five seconds (or five hours if you want to write me a long essay - that's welcome, too!) and please let me know if you think I should continue MLoF. You are, of course, more than welcome to add in your suggestions and any other thoughts you have, as well.
Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy the chapter. :)
Chapter 25: My First Time on Girly Cow
I meant to get to my list and update it after leaving Carly's. I really did. But Sam Puckett is rarely motivated if meat isn't involved, and the Shay fridge generally has a much better stock than mine.
My lack of enthusiasm probably started when I woke up, or, I should say, when I was jabbed awake by some stray limbs in my area. The problem with everyone falling asleep in Carly's living room is that we all kind of end up in a messy heap and no one knows what arm belongs to who. Confusing, man. Very confusing.
Anyway, by the time the four of us had somehow managed to drag ourselves into the kitchen to drink some juice (which, by the way, is always the best juice, and I keep forgetting to ask if I can take some home with me. Who am I kidding? I should just take it), no one was awake enough yet to do anything.
So we sat.
This wasn't unusual, but normally someone broke the silence before too long, which apparently no one was inspired to do.
But, finally, it happened, and, unsurprisingly, Carly was the one to do it.
"Guys," she groaned, something she didn't do very often. We all turned to her, our eyes full of sleepiness. "I know it's late and I've normally showered and done my hair and made myself all pretty by now, but being stuck in an elevator is exhausting."
It took us minute before we even realized what we said, but there was a sudden buzz of noise between Freddie trying not to laugh, Spencer reassuring his sister she looked great, and me remaining quiet and just sipping my juice.
By the time our conversation had somehow turned to llamas and why their noises sounded so much like sheep, an hour had passed. Just as we were listening to Spencer's theory, the phone rang and we all jumped in our seats.
"Holy chizz," my tired head was so not ready for that surprise.
For a minute we just stared at it until Carly finally hopped up and grabbed it.
"Hello?"
Apparently the person on the other end thought they had the right to talk Carly's ear off, because other than a couple 'mhmm's and 'uhhuhhh's, she barely said anything for a good ten minutes. Okay, maybe just three, but whatever.
Spencer, Freddie, and I all just stared at her, too tired to care about manners. Not that I ever cared about them, but Fredward had been rhymed to a few too many times by his mother about not to stare and let his mouth hang open. The woman's a whacko, I tell you.
"Really?" If there was anything that could wake me up, it was the sound of Carly squealing, and I realized she had started bouncing slightly in place. What could be that exciting? It wasn't her dad coming home, because the greeting would have been much friendlier and none of that rambling nonsense.
"Do you think she found out about Socko's cousin's goldfish farm?"
Freddie and I turned to Spencer with weirded out expressions.
"I think you've been spending too much time in Socko's van because those fumes are definitely getting to your head," I gave him a look.
Before he could say anything in response, Carly shrieked again, and we all wheeled our attention back around to her.
"Thank you, thank you so much," she was grinning, despite the fact that the person on the other end couldn't see her persuasive smile. "Yes, thank you, I promise we'll be there."
There were several more enthusiastic nods and then she said goodbye again and placed the phone in its charger thing. Within an instant, she had leaped around to face us, practically bursting with excitement in a way that was so purely Carly Shay.
When she didn't say anything, Freddie spoke up, "please tell us it doesn't relate to a goldfish farm."
Carly was too distracted to register how insane that idea was, instead just squealing again. It's a miracle none of us need earplugs when dealing with this girl.
"It was the television people!"
"The television people?"
All of us looked at her in confusion.
"You know, the people who organize the television!"
"Electricians?" Freddie offered, but Carly seemed unfazed.
"The people at the studio!"
"Which studio?"
"The one where they record the voices for Girly Cow!"
That caught all of our attentions. Why would the Girly Cow people be calling Carly's apartment? And why was she so excited about it?
"What, are they modeling a cow after you since your hair's so perfect?" I snorted, though meaning it in a loving way, of course.
"Better!" she grinned. "But my hair is nice, isn't it?" She stroked it for a moment until returning to the point. "They want to model cows after all of us!"
"What?!" The three of us shifted onto the edge of our seats.
"Well, kind of," she gestured downward as if trying to calm us. "Basically," she put on her informational Carly tone, but there was still clear excitement on her face. "They're planning a special two-part episode and asked if we would voice some of the characters!"
There was a communal gasp that was so loud I don't know how it didn't make the building shake. Lewbert was probably woken from one of his naps by it, which he would deserve, the nub.
"No way!" I leapt up. "True chizz?"
She nodded vigorously and none of us were quite sure what to say.
"Well, when do we have to be there?" It's not like I had anything better to do most of the time, but Frednub probably had all sorts of techy meetings that he would have to tell people he had to miss ahead of time because they were lame.
The look that spread onto Carly's face implied that she felt guilty for some reason, though none of us knew why until she spoke. "In two hours."
Silence. Then more silence. Then Spencer jumped up, "I'm grabbing the keys, everyone make sure they have all their toes and then get in the car!"
Filing quickly out behind him, Carly made sure to lock the door, something which only Freddie would ever remember other than her. It's not like I owned anything worth stealing, and had already taken out enough people to be confident I could attack anyone trying to break into my house.
None of us were entirely sure how we located the studio, let alone how we arrived within two hours, but one pee break, one hair brushing, one forced hair brushing (surprise, surprise), one fancy Pear Phone mapping, and a heck of a lot of disagreeing later, we had arrived. The first thing that happened after we were greeted and offered water was a snippy lady in a scary suit ushering us into a humungous conference room.
Our meeting with the people who were apparently the bosses of the people who had called Carly was brief, but I think it went well. There are two reasons for that, really. The first is that Carly did all of the talking, and the second is that I wasn't dragged from the room trying to kick anyone. Quite the accomplishment, really.
I'm pretty sure there was a lot of waiting after that while official people spoke about official things and, as usual, we were left to just sit around in confusion. This is what adults do to kids. It's rude, but I wasn't upset enough about it to make a point. Plus, Carly told me that if I yelled at anyone who worked here, she was going to put me on suspension from her fridge for the next week, which was a frightening thought.
So I shut up. Well, for the most part. I still had enough to say to the three people I'd come here with. Or, more precisely, I had enough to say to the two Shays. I barely spoke to Fredward, and he didn't seem to notice or care, which was more than fine with me. It's not as if I wanted to speak to him anyway.
Eventually, someone came in to give us an update, and Carly straightened up as if she was in the military and under inspection. Far too obedient and polite, that one.
As it turned out, they gave us the scripts for the episode. Spencer had two short yet important lines, and Freddie's part was already selected, too, since he was the only boy, but Carly and I were told we were allowed to choose which one of the parts we each wanted.
Not even opening the thing, I told Carly she could choose, but, in typical Carly fashion, she said that we should both read through the scripts and really consider it, and the assistant let us know we had forty minutes to make a decision.
Once we were alone again, Freddie and Spencer started talking, figuring they might as well leave Carly and me to do this thing. Not that it was particularly easy to do anything with them jabbering in my ear, but Carly was all business.
It barely took her any time to read what we'd been given, and she looked up at me seriously. "Both of these roles are good ones, Sam. What do you think?"
I muttered out something and then she gave me the disappointed Carly look. "Sam," darnit, how was her gaze able to make me feel so guilty? "Sam you have to actually read it. I don't want you getting stuck with a part you don't like."
"You know me better than anyone," I shrugged. "I bet you could choose and get it right."
"Yes, but neither one's blatantly obvious; there's no ham-eating or snarky comments – kids do watch this, after all."
I grumbled, rather disappointed by this fact.
"And neither one has many fewer lines than the other, so we both have to do just about the same amount of talking." She sighed, not pleased with being stumped.
"Which one has to interact with Frednub's character the most?"
"Annie the Squirrel," she said after reviewing the script for a moment to find the answer.
"Then you can be Annie the Squirrel, and I'll be Bertha the Hippopotamus."
I said it as if the answer held no meaning, but it was harder than I had hoped to ignore the skeptical look on Carly's face. I was, however, in luck for three reasons. The first being that Spencer and Freddie were in their own little world, so I didn't have to deal with any comments he might have thrown my way. Not that I couldn't handle them, obviously, but who wants to waste their time deflecting lame insults? Not Sam Puckett, that's who. The second was that my best friend, while basically a super genius, is too nice to think bad things about people for very long, no matter how horrible they are. That's probably why we get along; she tolerates me somehow. And, last of all was the fact that our forty minutes were apparently up, because Mr. Prompt Assistant Man returned and shuffled us through several hallways, questioning us about what parts we had chosen as he herded us like we were cattle. Unfortunately, even with all of the meat I've consumed, I will never be as tasty as a fat and well-fed cow.
Recording your voice for an animated show is actually a lot of effort. You don't have to memorize lines, but you have to practice them so you get them out with the right tone and all sorts of crazy chizz like that.
On the upside, we were rewarded with a break that included food. Lots of food. As in, a table that looked like Heaven.
As I was reclining in a nice cushy seat and snacking on a plate of more foods than I cared to name, someone plopped down on the seat next to me, and I was glad when I turned my head to see that it was none other than the small brunette with the last name Shay and the first name Carly.
"Hey Carls," I said, swallowing a large mouthful of something delicious.
She looked at me in amusement, but I could tell there was something on her mind. Another look around the room revealed the fact that for some reason, no one else was taking advantage of the mind-blowing buffet right now. Crazies.
"Hey Sam," she smiled, letting out a sigh. "Having fun?"
"Please, I am sitting here with an unending array of food before me. Momma is very happy."
"I meant with the recording, but it is good to see you in your natural habitat," she laughed slightly.
"Well all of this is really cool. And not in a nerdy tech way, but more in the endless food and being on TV way." I grinned before taking another bite.
Carly cleared her throat, though my attention still remained on my plate. "Speaking of, uh, nerdy tech ways," it was evident she was nervous about bringing up what she was, and I dreaded where this was going the minute she started talking.
"What? Don't tell me you want to attend router conventions or whatever, too. I'm going to have to rush you to the E.R. for a head check if that's true."
"No, no, I'm pretty sure I would get kicked out for not understanding what was going on," she admitted with a chuckle. "But," her serious expression came back and I started fidgeting in my seat, not too happy with where this was likely headed. "I do know someone who would love an invite to such a thing."
"My mom?" I suggested, licking a bit of sauce from my finger. "Maybe she could find another boyfriend there who could give us a new computer." At this point, I wasn't very bothered by my mom's many suitors. It's not like she was around much even when she was single, so I figured it was better to just embrace the stuff we got and let her to her own thing.
I could tell Carly was trying her best not to laugh, but she was too nice for her own good and managed to hold in most of it. "No, Sam, I mean Freddie."
"Shocker."
It's not like I meant to be snarky with my best friend, in fact that was the last thing I wanted (or, well, it was near the bottom of my priorities, if not at the very end), but I didn't want to talk about Freddie. I didn't want to talk about him, especially not with Carly, who now knew too much. I didn't even want to think about him.
All that did was make me angry. My stupid feelings made me weak and silly and I hated it. If I had to like some boy and kiss him without meaning to, I would have chosen anyone before Frednub. But, of course, it had to be him. It just had to. Because he was just so frustrating and dumb and techy and cute and- ugh, I did not say that.
I've never felt quite so lame.
"Sam," she was probably trying to warn me from ranting, but I swore she sounded a little hurt. That never went well, and I turned to her more fully, feeling sorry already.
"Sorry," I murmured. "Didn't mean to snap."
"It's fine. I just-" she hesitated and I looked down, picking at the edge of my now empty plate. "Well," I didn't have to see her face to know what it looked like at the moment. "There are certain conversations we said we'd finish, and this is the first time we've had alone since then."
"No, there are conversations you said we needed to finish. I never agreed to that." I still couldn't bring myself to meet her gaze.
She sighed again. "I suppose you're right, but," there was a short silence. "Please," her tone made me too sad. I didn't like when she acted like this because it just made me want to cheer her up, which was behavior that only came out with Carly. "It's just, you know you can talk to me about anything, Sam. Right?"
At that, I did look up, and when I saw the sadness in her eyes, I nearly broke and said everything. What was it about her being sad that was able to make me feel so bad? Ugh.
"Of course I know that, Carls," I reassured her with what I could muster of a smile. "And even if you did have to force it out of me by reminding me of your impending doom, I did tell you about the most terrible thing I've ever done."
"It can't have been that bad," she offered. Unfortunately, her effort to make me feel less bad about it did just the opposite, because it reminded me of the fact that I hadn't hated it.
"Awful, Carly, awful," I shook my head, putting on an air of utter despair, which I knew she could tell was a bit of a joke. "But, in any case, we are not discussing this," I held up my hands.
She nodded, muttering several 'okay's before looking at me curiously again. The curious Carly look didn't hold much more promise for my sanity than the sad Carly look did. This woman was going to cause me so many problems.
"Wait a minute," now she was piecing things together. I didn't know what she was piecing together, but it likely held my grave on the other end of it.
"I'm not headed anywhere at the moment, Shay," I teased her, even though I knew my efforts wouldn't get her off the topic.
"Why did you tell me about something I already knew as if I didn't?"
Dang Carly and her intelligence. So inconvenient. Not that I was aware of what she was saying yet, but it still seemed to be heading in unpleasant directions.
"What do you mean?"
"You told me you kisse-"
"Keep your voice down!" I shushed her urgently, not wanting anyone to hear.
"Sorry, sorry," she settled down in her seat. "Anyway, you told me what you did." It was so Carly-like to keep persisting at a topic like this.
"Unfortunately."
When she got into her sleuthing modes, as I liked to call them, she became so in the zone that her apartment catching on fire probably wouldn't disturb her, so my voice definitely didn't. Then again, her apartment catches on fire a lot thanks to Spencer, so that's probably a bad example.
"But on your birthday, that news came out, and Freddie explained the whole thing to me and I get it. So as nice of you as it was to try to comfort me in my possible last moments by telling me some deep secret, it was something I already knew."
There was a pause and I shifted uncomfortably again, hating this analysis more and more each second.
"Yet you really did seem like you were hiding it, which means you thought I didn't already know. But you were there when I found out on your birthday camping trip, because that's what made you go for a walk. So then why-" For a second, confusion clouded her face. I was fine with that. She was more than welcome to stay confused and in the dark when it came to this.
But, of course, Carly just had to be her smart self, and instead her eyes lit up with the sudden clarity I had been dreading.
"There was anoth-"
A loud buzz rang through the room and we clamped our hands over our ears. "Holy crab!" I leapt from my seat, not sure if it was an earthquake warning, a bomb alert, or the most obnoxious lunch bell, ever.
As it turned out, it was the entire cast and crew of Girl Cow being told they had to return to their jobs. Maybe this whole recording studio thing wasn't such a walk in the park, after all. People started ushering us into our individual booths again, and I heard Carly's voice calling after me.
Not sure what she said, I just turned to her and yelled out, "not up for discussion. Ever. Go back to being a squirrel." I wasn't entirely sure what I was saying, but I was currently cursing the buzzer. Had it sounded only seconds earlier, maybe it could have disrupted her thoughts and she wouldn't have been on my case.
Okay, so, she probably still would have figured it out because she's Carly Shay and she's smart and she's my best friend, but still. This dumb feelings thing was just stacking up disaster after disaster in my life.
The next time I ran into Freddie without Carly to stop me, he was going to get it. If it wasn't for the nub, I wouldn't be in this situation. I would be free of the weird girliness and the caring about what other people thought and all of the things that were piling together in an attempt to ruin my life.
Now I was even becoming an overdramatic teenager, apparently.
Yep. An arm-breaking should be sufficient.
So Carly's onto Sam... I hope you liked the chapter. ;)
There are even more exciting things in store (at least I think so), and, more specifically, more Seddie! I know this is a Seddie story, so don't worry about their lack of interaction. I think it's important to establish the friendship between Carly and Sam since they are best friends, but, as I said, this is a Seddie story, and Seddie's certainly the focus, and they'll feature much more prominently in the coming chapters, so get excited!
One last note: If you didn't read the A/N at the top, or even if you did, please comment and let me know not only whatever your little heart desires, but also whether or not you think I should continue this story so that I know being timely in my updates will be worth it. Thank you SO MUCH for sticking with My List of Firsts, and I promise to try to reply to all of the comments I get, despite my short lapse with that. :)