SAM AND ELENA
After Caroline left, Sam and Elena continued manning the sales booth until she returned, making sure to keep track of every payment they acquired. As they did so, Elena couldn't help but think back to a few moments ago when Sam and Caroline were wrapped in each other's arms. They both seemed so comfortable and at ease. Looking at them together, you would have thought that the last handful of weeks hadn't happened with how naturally peaceful they looked in each other's arms.
Especially Sam, but, who knows? Maybe she was just imagining that part. Besides, she's two years older than him and they're just friends. Right?
"A penny for your thought," Sam chimed, breaking her out of her trance. "What? Oh, sorry. It's nothing," she replied. Sam gave her a look. "When has it ever been nothing with you?" he retorted. Elena pursed her lips and blew a raspberry. "Okay, the truth is I was worried about you..." she trailed off for a moment, debating whether or not to say the last part before deciding that she would. "And Caroline."
Sam tilted his head in curiosity. "How do you mean?" "I mean that I have just noticed recently how close you and Caroline have been getting," she stammered out. "Especially since the whole D-A-M-O-N situation." Sam nodded in understanding before letting out a soft chuckle. "Elena," he started. "Yeah?" she returned sheepishly. "Caroline was my best friend before all of you. She was the one who introduced me to you, Matt, and Jeremy," Sam sighed. "Bonnie was more of a sister to me when we first moved in, and of course, I had my brother, but sometimes siblings aren't enough, you know. And outside of them, Caroline was the first person who put in the effort to make me feel like I was at home, like I was safe and normal. I just wanted to make her feel that way, too, especially since she hasn't felt any of the above recently."
As she heard Sam conclude his statement, Elena gently placed a comforting hand on Sam's shoulder, letting out a breath she didn't know she was holding. "It wasn't your fault, Sam. It wasn't any of ours," I declared. "The only person at fault here is Damon, and whether he's here or not, the things he did to Caroline are his actions to be burdened with. And despite her previous outburst at you this morning, Caroline knows she can trust you."
Sam let out an airy laugh as he ducked his head away to look at the cash register even as his ears turned bright pink. Elena almost felt tempted to call him out on it, when a gentleman came up to the teenagers asking for a car wash service. She nodded in and took one of the yellow tickets from the ticket box, and handed it to him as he began to go through his wallet and fished out some cash. "That'll be $20," she said. The man pulled out the appropriate amount and handed it to her, and it was only when she looked at him to grab the money that she recognized him.
"Hey, I saw you last night. You were talking to a friend of mine, at the grill," she beamed, drawing Sam's attention to the man in question. The man seemed to recognize her, but he seemed unsure about whether he should say anything. "Well, I thought it was somebody I knew," he replied. "You thought you knew Stefan Salvatore?" Sam interjected warily, a sinking feeling settling in his stomach about where this conversation might lead.
"Nah, it can't be. It was just my mind playing tricks on me," the man answered with a shake of his head. Sam inwardly sighed in relief. If the old man had said the wrong thing that would have opened up a whole new can of worms that neither Sam, nor his brother, nor Stefan was ready to open. But of course, leave it to Elena to poke her head into things she doesn't need to mess with.
"Where did you think you'd seen him before?" she inquired. Sam looked between the man and Elena anxiously as the man told his tale. "When I first moved to this town, I stayed at the Salvatore Boarding House," he began. "Stefan was just passing through to visit his uncle. I mean, none of us even knew he was here until the attack."
Elena furrowed her brow. "The attack?"
The man nodded. "His uncle got killed," he answered. "Mauled by an animal in the woods." Sam could already hear the gears turning in Elena's mind as she processed this new information. "His uncle, Zach?" she questioned. "Mm-mmm. Joseph," the man corrected. "Uh, well, it must have been hard for Stefan. I mean, I can't speak from experience but it had to be hard for him to lose one of his uncles," Sam chimed in pointedly, emphasizing the last word in hopes to derail Elena. But it was no use. Elena was lured in hook, line, and sinker, and all Sam could do was watch as all the normalcy he and Dean tried to build for themselves slowly unraveled before his eyes.
"Oh, how could you?" the man continued. "I mean, this happened years ago." Before Sam could come up with a way to salvage the situation, Tiki came up to the booth, breaking up their conversation. "Grandpa, you gotta go. Mom wants you home," she interrupted. Despite knowing Tiki wasn't exactly a nice person, Sam still felt as though he could kiss her at that exact moment for saving him from what was bound to be a disastrous attempt at covering his tracks.
The man nodded his goodbyes and just to hurry things along Sam volunteered to get him back to his car, earning a thankful grin from Tiki. As he left the booth, he overheard the tail-end of Elena's brief exchange with the other cheerleader, as Elena got up to follow them. "Elena, someone needs to guard the cash register. You know Caroline will be pissed if something happens to that money," Sam urged to no avail.
"Tiki's got it, for now, Sam," Elena huffed. Then she turned her eyes towards the man again and asked, "I'm sorry, sir, are you sure that the man you saw, that you knew, his name was Stefan Salvatore?"
"Elena-" Sam started.
"One second, Sam!" Elena gritted out. "Yes, I'm sure," the old man confirmed. "I remember his ring and his brother-" "Damon?" Elena finished. "Yeah," the man nodded in remembrance. "Stefan and Damon Salvatore."
Not good. Not good. Not good! Sam panicked internally.
At this rate, he could intervene again without garnering Elena's suspicion toward him, and while Dean may be good at being a pathological liar, Sam wasn't nor was he good at it. So the less he spoke, the less he incriminated himself. Oh, but he knew that Dean and Stefan were going to have some explaining to do. And this ended the way he believed it was going to end, Sam might end up getting roped into it regardless.
"And when was this?" Elena asked, drawing back Sam's attention. The man took a while to gather his thoughts, and for a brief moment, Sam hoped that maybe Dean would show up and put a stop to this somehow. Or that maybe this happened a few years back instead of a few decades. Unfortunately, that hope was short-lived when the man cleared his throat and answered, "It was early June... 1953. Yeah. It was June 1953." Then the man walked over to his unwashed car and left.
Sam and Elena walked back over to the cash booth frantically. "Okay, Elena. Just to be clear, you don't believe what that man said back there, right?" Sam spoke, hating himself for backlighting her. "Because what he said sounds utterly insane." Elena paused in her strides, causing Sam to stop, too. "I don't know, Sam. I mean, there's a lot of mystery around Stefan, don't you think?" she exhaled. "We don't hear about this guy for 3+ years and suddenly, he turns up and he and Dean claim that they have been best friends for most of those aforementioned years, and he has all these secrets, and we find out that Dean dated his brother for all three of those years. Don't you find that kind of odd?"
She had him there. But it still didn't change the fact that she couldn't find out about the supernatural. Nobody should ever have to find out. Hell, it shouldn't even exist! He must have been quiet for too long, because a few seconds later, Elena said, "You agree with me, don't you?" "Okay, yes," he admitted. "I agree that there are some things that don't add up, but believing that Stefan and Damon Salvatore are somehow, what, traveling through time? Taking a swim in the Fountain of Youth? That's impossible."
The tension that had been coiling up in her body finally sprung loose, as Elena realized that Sam was right. What she had been pondering, had been quite infeasible. "You're right," she conceded. "I guess I really let myself go there, for a second." Sam gave her a small but easygoing smile and nodded. "Yeah, well, I gotta keep manning the booth, but how 'bout you take five to clear your head," he offered. "Yeah, I think I'll do that," she agreed. Then, she got up and left the booth to go to the concession stand they had set up. But even as she went, her eyes sought out Stefan who was washing another car, and she still couldn't help but wonder... even just a little bit.
JEREMY AND VICKI
"Come on!" she smiled, as she led Jeremy through the woods. "Where are we going?" Jeremy asked. "We can't hide out in your room all the time," she replied with a chuckle. "Welcome to my other favorite party place." They entered into a clearing that just so happened to be in the graveyard, making Jeremy give Vicki a questioning look. "The cemetery?" Vicki looked back and grinned, "Yeah. It's cool, huh?"
"VICKI!" a boy called out, as the couple approached a group of teenagers huddled near the mausoleum. "What's up, Jared?" Vicki yelled back.
"You baby-sittin', Donovan?" another boy queried. "This is Jeremy, he's cool," she responded. The boy nodded and passed her a cigarette saying, "Smoke up." She took the blunt out of his hand, sliding it in between her lips, and inhaled a puff of smoke, before strutting back over to Jeremy and exhaling it in his mouth.
Great. This was sure to be fun.
SAM
After the last ten customers had paid him at the booth for their car wash, Sam was ready to collapse. All the while, he wondered where Caroline had gone, as she never returned from getting the towels from the janitor's closet. He wasn't able to dwell on it for very long before his stomach started growling.
"Looks like someone is hungry," a voice that he swears he heard before laughed as the person approached him. When he looked up to see who had said that, his heart did a back-flip when he saw the person standing in front of him. "Hi, Sam, I'm not sure if you remember me, but I moved here a few weeks ago, and we have the same science teacher," the same young boy with dark brown hair and blue eyes from his dream this morning greeted kindly, stretching out his hand. "Andy," Sam nodded in recognition.
Andy gave him a curious look. "You remember me?" he asked genuinely.
"Yeah, you were one of my partners for that Biology project," Sam nodded, remembering, what he had said in his dream. "How could I forget?"
"Well, I mean, we barely know each other. I figured I might want to reintroduce myself to you," Andy reasoned. "Anyway, I was going to say that you can come over and take a break with me and my friends and get something to eat if you want."
Sam looked down at the cash box and he looked around for any sign of Caroline. "I don't know," Sam wavered. "Hey, if you want, then you can put someone else on cash duty while you take a break," Andy suggested.
"But Caroline-" "Isn't even here, right now," Andy continued over Sam. "Plus, you've been working hard ever since you got here, and haven't taken a break. Let someone else do it and relax. After all, you can't spell "fundraiser" without "fun"." Sam snorted at his classmate's terrible pun and smiled.
"Okay, okay," Sam relented. "Let me call my brother over, and I'll be right there." He called Dean over to the table and told him to watch the money while he went on break, and Dean nodded in acceptance. Then Sam took off with his new friend Andy Gallagher.