*Disclaimer: Sadly, I still have yet to claim ownership of iCarly.

xxx

Ice Storm

Freddie's mother still made him take tick baths, even though he was already twelve years old.

He had never thought much of it before, but ever since being around Carly and Sam, the baths seemed increasingly juvenile. He was the only one he knew whose mom did things like that. And he didn't have ticks.

Tonight, after the bath, she asked him if he had a crush on Carly. Freddie didn't bother wondering how she had figured it out, because his mom figured everything out. She told him that he could be sure it was a real crush if he saw fireworks when he looked at her.

Freddie liked this idea at first, but then he went to his room wearing his red pajamas and looked at the jewelry box on his dresser which was luckily empty but that he'd had ever since he was a baby because his mom had wanted a girl, and he got a little nervous.

He got a little nervous because the truth was that thinking about fireworks when you saw the love of your life seemed awfully girly. His mom tried to convince him otherwise.

"It's perfectly natural, Freddie," she said, tucking him into bed with the covers up to his chest (she refused to let him pull up the blanket any farther in case he suffocated in the middle of the night). "All boys develop crushes on girls. Carly should consider herself lucky that she has such a dapper young man after her."

Her lips felt warm against his forehead. "But she doesn't love me back."

"I think any girl is crazy not to love you."

"Sam says Carly will never love me."

"Somebody needs to teach that Samantha Puckett a lesson. I can't understand why Spencer Shay allows Carly to hang around with her so much."

His mother went over to the side of the room, where Freddie's shell-shaped nightlight was situated against the wall. She flicked on the switch and it began glowing dully, soft and yellow, a savior that couldn't fully be appreciated until the rest of the lights were out.

"I love you, Freddie."

"I love you too, Mom."

She left the door open, as always, and he fell asleep to the rhythmic whacking sound of cucumbers being cut in the kitchen: his mother preparing the next day's afternoon snack.

"I'll tell 'ya what, Fredward. You put a paper bag over your head every time I see you, and I'll consider being nicer to you."

"Sam, stop it. It's his birthday!"

"What?" Sam scowled over a huge mouthful of chocolate cake. "I'm offering a theriouth thuggestion! I fink he'd be doing the world a favor if nobody could thee hith fathe."

Freddie narrowed his eyes and hated Sam because she was Sam, but really he didn't expect anything different from her.

"Whoo wants more cake?" Carly's brother sang, placing the tray of already half-eaten cake enticingly on the table. It had been shaped like a camera, with blue icing for the lens and a yellow shutter.

"Gimme," Sam said immediately. She speared her fork right onto the tray.

"You know, a lot of people would ask the birthday boy first before they ate his cake off the plate," Freddie shot at her.

"Yeah, and I'm telling the birthday boy to shut up before I shove the cake up his—"

"Here we go again," Carly sighed, rolling her eyes.

"Yeah, layer off him, Sam," Spencer added delightedly. "You only get out what you pudding!"

He held up the cake and laughed while the three kids looked blankly at him.

"Sorry, sorry," Spencer gasped. "What a half-baked joke!"

Spencer heaved and left the kitchen, doubled over in hysterics.

"Anyway, Freddie," Carly said. She reached down and brought up a silver plastic bag with ribbons tied to the handles. "I got you this. Happy birthday!"

She slid the bag across the table and Freddie rustled into the tissue paper. It was a book entitled Sweet Zooms: Tips On Film and Camera Work. "Wow, thanks, Carly!"

"No problem," Carly looked pointedly in Sam's direction, who had nearly finished the chocolate cake.

"Sorry," she shrugged with her fork in midair. "I got nothin'."

Freddie wasn't surprised. "Well, why would you have? You're always asking us for money."

"Hey, watch it, Fredward!"

But after they finished filming iCarly that day, she pulled an envelope that had been folded up four times out of her pants pocket.

"I forgot," she said, thrusting it at him. "I have this card."

Beside them, Carly smiled to the tips of her ears.

"For what?" Freddie asked.

"For your birthday, whiz pants."

Freddie opened the envelope. The card inside had a picture of Santa Claus on the front, and read Merry Christmas! in huge block letters. Sam had crossed out the word "Christmas" with a marker and written "Birthday" on top of it.

Fredward,

Happy birthday. Keep being dorky and annoying, kid.

Luv (not really),

Sam

"See?" Carly said, still smiling. "I knew you didn't forget, Sam."

When Freddie was home, he placed the book Carly had given him neatly on his bookshelf. Sam's card went on top of that, because he had nothing else to do with it.

Freddie still remembered when he had first met Sam.

It was the first day of seventh grade. His mother had effectively made him so nervous for the change of pace that he'd taken all three maps of Ridgeway Middle School to class on the first day of school—one in both pockets of his backpack, and another secretly folded up into quarters and stashed in his calculator cover in case a bully were to steal the others.

That hadn't been his mom's idea. He'd just figured that the calculator was a safe hiding place—he was prepared to lose his backpack or his chocolate milk box, but his calculator? That wasn't on the specified list of Items Bullies Might Take.

It was first period, and Freddie's first day of seventh grade, and his first time going to school in Ridgeway. He'd been living in the Bushwell Plaza in Seattle for approximately three days, ever since his mom's job transfer. He'd been friendless for approximately three days, ever since moving to the Bushwell Plaza in Seattle.

Except for Carly Shay, who he was already in love with. But at that point he didn't think she even considered him a friend.

And, okay… it wasn't as if he'd had all that many friends before. Back in Bellevue, he hadn't exactly been Mister Popular. He guessed that Ricardo (what was his last name again?) had probably been the best friend he'd ever had, and Ricardo liked to bite the erasers off pencils and attach them to the back of his pet tarantula with Gorilla Glue and pretend it was a soldier in the army carrying missiles.

That wasn't really Freddie's cup of tea.

Still, Ricardo never made fun of him, or called him a Teacher's Pet, or Hey You, Short Kid, or…

New start. You're starting fresh, Freddie.

It was first period, and the first bell had just rung, and Freddie was the first one in his social studies class. The maps had really been helpful, because he hadn't had any trouble finding Room 304 West.

And now he was waiting… waiting… waiting… waiting for anyone else to arrive.

The teacher, Mrs. Holloway, was sitting at her desk on the other side of the room. "We'll just relax until some more people show up," she said, smiling sweetly, but Freddie was too nervous to be comforted.

And then the door opened.

And she walked in.

She was wearing a sweatshirt with stripes on the sleeves and cargo shorts. Freddie could see, though partly obscured by her thick, blonde curls, that she had the headphones of a Pearpod in her ears.

"Good morning!" Mrs. Holloway said cheerfully. "Another beautiful new student on a beautiful first day of school!"

The girl's eyebrows shot up to her hairline. "Um… uh-huh."

"What's your name, darling?"

She haphazardly pulled her earphones out and slid into a desk a few seats away from Freddie. "Sam."

"Okay, Sam. Well, you just make yourself comfortable with Freddie while we wait for our other students."

"Right."

Should he introduce himself? Maybe. Maybe in a few minutes. Slightly anxiously, Freddie turned to his writing utensils and began laying them out in a row on his desk. Two blue pens to the far left. Black ballpoint pen. Three highlighters: yellow, orange, green. Three pencils, freshly sharpened with perfect tips.

Freddie looked up to see Sam staring at him, her eyebrows raised again, the way they had been when Mrs. Holloway welcomed her. "Dude, what are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm, uh—I'm organizing my writing utensils."

"Why?"

"'Cause, you know—'cause I don't like when they're out of order—" Freddie stopped, getting the feeling that it would be useless to explain. "I'm, uh—I'm new here, by the way. I'm Freddie. Benson."

"Wow, welcome to Ridgeway. It's awesome here. Everyone's really cool and nice."

Freddie felt a happy little tug in his chest, like a valve opening, pressure being released. "Really?"

"Nope."

Bam. There went the pressure valve.

"Well, a few people are okay," Sam corrected herself.

"Yeah? That's good. I like okay people. Ha." Smooth, Freddie.

Sam stared at him. "You seem kinda like a… what's the word? A dork?"

Freddie narrowed his eyes, taken aback. Okay, what the heck? This girl was making him wish he was back in Bellevue. "Yeah, well… you seem kinda rude."

"I am rude."

"Children, is everything alright over there?" Mrs. Holloway called from her desk.

"Fine," Sam called back. "As long as you stop talking to me," she added to Freddie.

"No problem," Freddie replied. He was sure he would never talk to her again.

He didn't know yet that she was the girl he was in love with's best friend.

Or that by this time the next year he would be spending practically every day with her, trapped like a bug in a spider web of her emotional and physical abuse, lending his time and technical skills to a web show that she would insist he wasn't even important to.

"I just can't understand. I don't understand it."

Freddie could tell his mother was nearly in tears. She grasped Doctor Sturza's clipboard so tightly that her knuckles whitened, as if she could change what it said just by squeezing it hard enough. "I proportion all of his meals so that they're in line with the daily Food Pyramid. I never let him drink soda. I periodically call his gym teacher to make sure he wears a helmet to class. How could this be happening? Why is he shorter than ninety-one percent of thirteen-year-old boys?"

Freddie shifted uncomfortably in his plastic chair.

"Now, now, Mrs. Benson, this is nothing to get upset about," Doctor Sturza said. "Freddie is a very healthy boy. He just happens to be developing a little more slowly than most."

"Do most thirteen-year-old boys have leg hair?" his mother asked, her voice growing shriller with every syllable.

"Many do, yes."

Freddie felt his right leg being lifted up before he saw his mom's hand reaching desperately for the bottom of his pants. "Why? Why doesn't he have any leg hair yet?"

"Mom!" Freddie groaned, covering his face with his hands. He just wanted to disappear off the face of the earth.

Really, if the earth had decided to swallow him whole right there, he wouldn't have complained.

"As I said before, Mrs. Benson, everyone begins exhibiting the signs of puberty at their own—"

"But my son should be normal. I don't understand why my Freddie has to be delayed."

"Well, it's often related to genetics. Can you recall about how old you were when you entered the pubescent phase?"

"I was an early bloomer! I was the tallest girl in my class! They called me Mondo Marissa!"

"What about his father?"

The expression on Freddie's mother's face suddenly turned blank. Her upper lip curled down over her lower one. "I don't know. I have no idea."

"If you had that information, it could be a good indicator of when—"

"We have to go get ready for Mother-Son Aerobics, Freddie. Thank you for your time, Doctor Sturza."

She pulled him by the hand out of the doctor's office, through the waiting room, outside, and into the car. She breathed in his face while she watched him buckle his seatbelt.

Freddie's eyes followed a yellow Volkswagen on the road, driving at about the same pace as them. Their Mother-Son Aerobics class wasn't for another two hours.

"I don't have a dad either, 'ya know."

Sam was lying backwards on Carly's beanbag chair, her hair scattered out all over the floor.

Freddie began powering up his laptop. They would be starting iCarly as soon as Carly came back upstairs with the bucket of rubber ducks and mayonnaise the girls would be using for that day's segment. "What happened to yours?" he asked her.

"I dunno. He left a long time ago. My mom says it's because I was a terror child."

Freddie felt a crashing sensation in his stomach as he considered the possibility that his father had left for the same reason. But it wasn't fair. He wasn't a terror child.

"What happened to yours?" Sam asked.

"I don't know either."

"Oh. Well hey, don't worry about it. We're all in this messed up world together."

Freddie opened his mouth to tell her that that didn't help him much.

But then he closed it again, thinking that maybe, in some weird way, it did.

If Carly made Freddie feel fireworks, Sam made him feel the opposite. What was the opposite of fireworks? Snow? An avalanche? An ice storm?

An ice storm. That was as close as you could get to the opposite of fireworks, and that was what Sam made him feel.

Freddie decided this while he was in his room alphabetizing his Galaxy Wars card collection. They still smelled like guacamole from when Sam had poured a dish of it all over them. Just to make him mad. Probably she thought he would throw them out.

Well, he wouldn't throw out his Galaxy Wars cards for anything. Nope, not happening.

Right as he got to Nug-Nug, he thought he heard sniffling coming from somewhere in the apartment. He stood up, following the sound to his mother's bedroom.

His mother was leaning against the foot of her bed with her hands wrapped tightly around a book, tear marks staining her cheeks.

"Mom, what's wrong?" he asked, puzzled, observing the several wads of crumpled tissues on the rug. His mother never left anything on the rug. She disinfected it with bottles of Mr. Steam Cleaner every night.

"Nothing, Freddie," she blew her nose and wiped her eyes. "I'm just close to finishing this wonderful Franz Lavish novel. Ceres just discovered who his true love is. 'And their love was like an ice storm," she read in a wobbly voice. "An explosion that was terrible and relentless, but filled with beauty. He despised and adored everything about her.' "

She must have noticed the dismayed expression on Freddie's face.

"You'll understand when you're older," she said.

"Uh, okay," Freddie moved towards the door. "I'll be in my room."

He went back to his room. He pushed the thirteenth birthday card Sam had given him further back on the bookshelf, so that he couldn't see it behind his light-up globe.

Then he returned to the stack of Galaxy Wars cards, determined to finish alphabetizing them before his mom remembered that it was past his bedtime.

xxx

*Author's Note: Okay, I know that was a little weird and random. I kind of wrote it on a spur-of-the-moment thing. I'm almost done with something much longer for iCarly, and I needed a break from it.

As always, I would love, love, love and appreciate any feedback you guys have. Reviews absolutely make my life, even if they are negative, seriously. And I will gladly return the favor. :)