iMakeover (an iCarly Story)

20. There Was a Reason For That...

What could that be about?

Carly's POV

"We need to talk," I say after I slam the door in Freddie's face. I'll have to apologize for that later. But I needed to have a talk with Sam now.
"No we don't." Sam says with a bored look on her face. I know she just wants to get out of a heart-to-heart with me. I groan and drag Sam up the stairs by her hair. There's a ham in her mouth and it's probably mine but I don't even care.
I pull Sam into my room and throw closed the doors.
"Okay," I say huffing. "What is going on with you two?!"
Sam immediately gets fidgety. "I don't know what-"
"Don't give me that!" I yell. Seeing Sam's this-chick's-crazy face, I take a deep breath.
"You promised that you'd tell me what was going on later. It's later." I say, trying to calm down.
Sam sighs.
"It's complicated, Carls. Even I'm not sure what's going on."
"Well then tell me what's going on as far as you know, but you can't just keep me out of the loop!" I exclaim, angry and exasperated.
She sighs and for a minute, silence suffocates the room.
"Where do I start?" she finally asks.
'Yes!' I exclaim in my head.
"The beginning is always a nice place," I say with a straight face, happy now that she's finally telling what's going on.
"No shit, sherlock," she mutters under her breath, her eyes deep in thought. I don't even bother reprimanding her for her unladylike words.
"Well, I guess I should start out by telling you what happened after I went to go find Freddie," she starts off. "I stared at his door for a while before realizing that I knew him well enough to know he wasn't even in there..."

My feet lead me down the hall and I walk out onto the fire escape. I don't knock like last time. His eyes are closed and his pearphone is playing softly. "She's Killing Me" by A Rocket to the Moon fades out and a new song starts playing.

"She's cold and she's cruel but she knows what she's doing....."

The deeper Sam gets into the story, the more excited and shocked I am, and the more she seems to completely exit reality, falling headfirst into her memories.

He stares at me for a moment, his eyes unfocusing.
"And last but not least, you are the most-"
But he doesn't get to finish.

"Freddie, there you are!" Mrs. Benson interrupts him. "I'v been looking for you everywhere! I saw the show end so abruptly and then you never came home and-"
"Oh my god, would you just stop?" I say exasperatedly. She just never shuts up!
She ignores me and gasps.
"Freddie! What are you doing out here alone with that delinquent?!"
"Mom, I-" Outraged, she grabs his arm and drags him back in the building.

"And that's it?" I ask. It feels like something's missing.
Sam shuffles her feet.
"Pretty much,"she says, head turned downcast, uncomfortable with sharing her feelings.
Then it bops back up. "On second thought, he did leave his computer out there. I have it in my bag. It looks different from the one he brings woth him to iCarly practices though."
She goes downstairs and retrieves it.
"It's purple," I say, surprised.
"Yeah. I think it's kind of cute." I smile a little when I see her run her hands over the case affectionately. The next best thing to cuddling up to it's owner I suppose.
"So what's on it?" I ask.
She shrugs. "I don't know. I didn't look."
I laugh, thinking she's joking but stop when she doesn't join in.
"Wait, you were serious?"
"Um, yeah? Why wouldn't I be?" Sam tries to play it off casually but I know that even she knows its weird. And I also know that she knows that I know she's only pretending her respecting someone's privacy, especially Freddie's is totally normal, because we both know it's not. 'Wow, that was kind of a mouthful,' I think to myself.
"Because you're Sam. Now what's on that computer?" I ask again, in a slightly threatening tone.
"I really don't know! I didn't look!" My jaw drops because, for once in her life, I think she's telling the truth about not doing it. She actually respected her nub's privacy.
"Okay, who are you and what have you done with the real Sam Puckett?" I ask, placing a hand against her forehead. She must be sick.
Swatting my hand away and rolling her eyes, she replies, "I'm not sick. I just let my conscience and what Freddie said before his deranged mother dragged him away, probably for rabies testing."
"What on earth could have stopped you from opening that computer?" I ask her. Disbelief colors my tone.
"He told me I was a good friend and my conscience talked me into leaving it be, at least for a while."
"Well, it's been a while. I want to see what's on it!" I say, proud of her, yet too curious to pass up this opportunity.
She still hesitates.
"Sam come on. If Freddie thought you were a good friend before, even after you did all this crazy stuff, I'm sure he wouldn't think less of you for this, especially since I'm having to actually talk you into it! This is a moment to go down in history. Me having to talk you into invading someone's privacy." I say.
Slowly, she sighs and smiles at me.
"Okay. I guess you're right. But I'm blaming you if anything goes wrong."
I ruffle her hair and she bites my thumb, trying to stop me.
"There the Samantha I know," I say laughing. She just looks at me.
"I know, I know, if I were anyone else, I'd be dead right now. Yada, yada, yada, don't care."
Throwing grins at each other, we both look at the computer laying on my bed.
Sam picks it up and, after a second, opens it.
"Okay, it needs a password to get in." She tells me. "It's a little late for me to go wandering the alleys back to my house to get my tools for this, so what do you wanna do?"
"Let's just guess, I guess. We know Freddie pretty well." I tell her. "and we need to get onto it today."
"Okay, okay," Sam says. "Well, Freddie's not usually very creative with passwords and he loves technology. He's also a fan of reusing names and codes. It's the only rule he breaks from what he learned in computer class, which was never use the same passwords because it makes it easier for hackers to get in. Freddie's a hacker himself. He doesn't really -"