I have nothing constructive to say here...uh, I don't own anything...including iCarly or its characters....

Freddington? That is a new one. I mean, I have gotten my fair share of Freddorks and Freddos, and even Fredilinas, but Freddington…that one is new.

“Three hours detention,” I tell her solemnly.

“Hey! You got off easy. That’s not so bad.”

“Maybe not for you. You practically live in room 209.” That’s Mr. Martin’s room and also the after school detention room. Though we are only halfway through our sophomore year, Sam has to hold the school’s record for most time spent there.

She scowls at my remark. “At least I don’t have to label my underpants.” She crosses her arms over her chest with a triumphant smirk.

“Hey! I thought we agreed that when arguing, the underwear thing is not fair game!”

Sam laughs. “No, you decided that Fredward!”

It’s my turn to scowl this time. “I’m late for class,” I say, pushing past her toward the Biology room. She yells something after me, but I’m already too far down the crowded hall to hear it.

I bet you’re wondering how I, Freddie Benson, managed to receive a detention. Well, today after second period like every other day, I pass Sam in the hallway. Not just any hallway…Coach Jeffreys’s hallway. Now everyone knows that in Coach Jefferys’s hallway, there is zero tolerance. Even Sam knows this. Any other time I see her during the day, she usually gives me some rude remark about my dorkiness or my attire or the dorkiness of my attire. Sometimes she will just yell at me for no particular reason (she needs some way to let off steam when teachers don’t let her sleep in class). But when she is especially angry, she will shove me into a locker or quickly sucker punch me then take off the other way. Actually, she doesn’t even have to be angry to do this. She sometimes causes me pain under celebratory terms. Like the time she shoved my face into a trashcan after giving me the news that she had gotten a D on her biology test (which was actually good news for Sam). I’m not really sure why these things happen. She’s not an easy person to understand.

Anyway, what I was getting at is that none of these ever happens in Jefferys's hallway. Well, not normally. But today, after second period, we passed each other like every other day. We were the only two in the hallway, like every other day. I expected her to make a face or stick out her tongue, like every other day. She can’t actually verbalize her hate for me at this time in fear that Jefferys will hear. He’s not a fun guy to mess with. Even Sam knows her place around him. Sam! As in Sam-screw-authority-Puckett. The guy was the real deal when it came to discipline. Okay so back to my story. I was getting ready to sneer at her in return of the hateful glare that was I was sure would come when she laid out in midair, tackling me into a locker. I let out a surprised yelp as my books scattered across the floor.

“You told Cooper Smith that I like him!” She punched my face. “Didn’t you?” She hit me again. I tried to answer her, but every time I opened my mouth she’d just punch me. Then suddenly she stopped beating me all together. She shot up and looked around attentively. She took off down the hall and around the corner. I stumbled over to where my books had fallen, and tried to gather them as quickly as my shaking hands would allow me. Sam didn’t have to worry about her books. She stopped bringing them to class a long time ago. When I had all of my books, I darted down the hallway. And I almost made it out. Almost. Coach Jefferys burst through his door, saw me, and handed me a pink slip. Then came the yelling. The man is down right scary. He kept walking toward me through hiswhole lecture about how to behave in a hallway. Soon he had me backed up against the wall. His face was red, his bearded cheeks were quavering. All I could think was Thanks a lot, Sam. And that is how I found myself with three hours of detention after school on this dreadful Monday.

So after the final bell, I make my way to room 209. I enter the room and find myself caught in the middle of an all-out paper wad war that I'm not surprised to see Sam in the middle of. I duck and dodge my way over to her. I sit next to the desk she’s standing on. Mrs. Rodman, the teacher on detention duty, is not in the room yet. I glance at my phone. It’s 3:07. In two hours and fifty three minutes it would be six, and I would be free. I take a few deep breaths as I try to take in my surroundings. Aside from Sam, I don‘t know anyone in here. I usually don‘t associate myself with the detention regulars. Once again, aside from Sam. She defines the term detention regular. There is one kid I recognize. His name is TJ, and I think he’s a junior. He and Sam have come to know each other pretty well because he’s in here almost as much as she is. Almost. The two are in the middle of a paper wad crossfire when Mrs. Rodman walks in.

“Samantha Puckett! Get down from that desk!” Sam smirks, and jumps off the desk she’s standing on.

She sits next to me and nods. “Freddo.”

“Sam.” I nod back. It was no surprise that she was in here as well. We have History together, and today when Mr. Ordway ordered her to stop harassing other students, she yelled something like“Arrrggghh…” in response. Mr. Ordway said that there were no pirates allowed in his classroom. So, naturally, Sam got up, took a bight of the sandwich on Mr. Ordway’s desk (she had been eying it for awhile at that point), and left. She didn’t return for the rest of the hour. And here she is now, in detention. Surprise, surprise…

“How you liking room 209 after hours?” She asks.

“Is that what you call detention now?”

“I’m actually sorry that I got you in here.” She gives me a genuine smile. I can’t believe I’m hearing this. It’s almost too good to be true. “But not for your sake, for mine. Now I have to hang out with the techgeek for three hours.” Ah, thought so.

“Oh, and I am just totally enjoying your presence,” I scoff. I look at my phone again. “Just another two hours and forty eight minutes.” Sam shakes her head and mouths ‘pansy’. I decide to ignore that one. I’m still not exactly great at picking my fights with Sam, but I like to think I’m getting better. “Two hours and forty seven minutes now. That’s only four of mom’s Microscopic Bacterial Awareness videos. I can do this.” Wait, did I just said that out loud. “Wow, I am a dork,” I mumble quietly to myself.

Sam seems to pick it up. “Don’t say that Freddie!” Okay, that caught me off guard. She lets me mouth soundlessly like and idiot (enjoying every second of it) before saying, “You’re not a dork. You’re the dork.” There’s the Sam I know and sometimes love.

“I’m still not very happy with you. You do realize that it's your fault I’m here, right?”

“You have no one to blame but yourself, Benson. It’s not my fault that you told Cooper I liked him.”

“He’s my friend! I’m sorry, but the guy needed a warning!”

“A warning?” She crosses her arms over her chest, the first sign that she’s getting pissed off.

“Yeah, I mean, you can…uh…be a little…foreword at times.” All the time.

“Whatever.” She exhales angrily then glares back at me. “How did you even find out?”

“I swear Sam, you are the most unobservant person I have ever met! If you aren’t teasing me or hitting me, you’re just completely oblivious to the fact that I’m in the room!”

“So?”

“You told Carly about it yesterday after rehearsal. I was sitting on the couch with you guys the whole time.”

“Oh, right,” she says quietly. I can tell she's still mad, but for now she drops the subject. She reaches into her backpack and pulls out a plastic bowl with a blue lid. It’s filled with waffles. She grabs a fork and knife from her pocket. She takes a bite, then stops. “I almost forgot!” She gets up and walks over to the bookcase in front of the room. Mrs. Rodman glances up at her, but by now she is used to Sam’s crazy antics, and doesn’t pay much attention. Sam rummages around the top shelf. She moves a few books, revealing a bottle of syrup. She sits back down. “For emergencies, of course.” She shakes the syrup and pours it over the waffles.

“Of course,” I repeat. Naturally, Sam would have a spare bottle of syrup in room 209. She takes a huge bite, and gives a satisfactory sigh.

I decide to finish up some of my homework. Sam then steals it and won’t give it back until after she’s copied it all. “Thanks Fredweird.” She hands me back my history study guide, almost completely covered in syrup.

“Yeah, sure.” I sink back into my chair, pulling out my phone again. It’s 5:21. Just another thirty nine minutes, and I was out of here. To my surprise, nothing really bad had happened. I was expecting detention to be some life-changing event. I didn’t think I could go back to being the same person, the same respectable student, after experiencing room 209 after hours. But other than the lack of Carly’s presence, it hadn’t been much different than any other time I’ve spent with Sam. It was the usual really; Sam ate, we fought, she smeared a sticky substance all over my things. I’m thinking detention is not so bad, when TJ stands up.

He says, “Mrs. Rodman, can I show you this magic trick?”

Mrs. Rodman sighs. “What is it this time?”

“Well, I just wanted to show you this trick I learned with these handcuffs. I bought em’ yesterday. They are the kind that magicians use when they get out of traps and stuff. There’s supposed to be a trick-lever or something-,”

“Okay, okay, go ahead. Just please stop bothering me. I have to get these graded before report cards go out.”

TJ smiles. “Anyone want to test them out?”

Sam walks over to him and eyes the handcuffs. She then proceeds her investigation by sniffing them. I would find this action strange if it was from anyone but Sam. She finally comes to a conclusion. “I know who wants to try them on.”

I guess TJ thought she was talking about herself, because at the same time she shoots me a sly smile and cuffs my right wrist, TJ cuffs her left. “There, dork boy can be the first to try-,” She sees the cuff around her wrist and follows the chain links to my wrist. Her sly expression suddenly changes to one of total despair. “NO! I’m going to catch his nerd disease!”

I’m not exactly happy about this either. “Can you unlock us?” I ask.

“Don’t worry guys,” TJ says reassuringly. “These are made to come undone easily.” He reads the directions on the back of the blue box they came in. Now almost everyone in the room is crowding around us. Most of them find this quite amusing. “Oh, I got it!” TJ exclaims. He grabs my wrist and turns it over, examining the bottom side of the metal ring. There is a tiny silver lever. He pushes it down. When nothing happens, he pushes it down harder. Then something does happen. Snap, the lever breaks off. “Shit,” TJ says under his breath.

“No!” Sam and I say together. Sam falls to the ground dramatically, forcing my top half to bend over as out wrists are now attached.

“Don’t you have a key or something?” I ask desperately.

TJ seems to lighten up. “Maybe.” He rummages around inside of the box and his hands surfaces clutching a small golden key. He turns back toward us quickly, but his foot catches on Sam’s arm where she still lay sprawled out on the floor. He falls to the ground in a heap. The impact causes him to drop the key. We all watch in horror as it slides across the room and into the air vent in the floor next to the filing cabinet.

Sam stands up slowly. Her eye twitched once, then a small strangled yelp escaped her throat.

“Oh no! No, no, no, no, NO!” This time I fall to the ground. But I can’t force Sam’s torso to bend like she had mine. So I lay on the ground, my right arm extended up into the air, attached to Sam’s left arm.

She glares down at me. “This is no picnic for me either, Benson. Now get up!” She yanks me up into a standing position. Then she turns to TJ. “You better find us a way out, and fast!” TJ nods nervously. It was interesting to see the tall junior cowering in the small blond girl’s presence.

“What if she gets hungry?” I ask. “What if I’m the only thing around at the time? What if she eats me?” My voice is cracked and desperate sounding. Sad thing is, I’m seriously concerned about this.

“I’m not gonna-,” she pauses in thought. “I probably won’t eat you. Just keep me fed.”

Mrs. Rodman had been ignoring us up to this point. But when she finally saw the predicament we were in, she didn’t seem to care. “It’s six o’clock. Go home.”

The room emptied quickly. I’m pretty sure TJ was the first to leave, eager to get away before Sam released her wrath. I stay behind and saunter over to Mrs. Rodman’s desk, pulling a reluctant Sam along behind me. “Can you help us?” Sam is standing behind me with her arms crossed, forcing my right arm to be twisted behind my back and extended toward her. I’m doing my best to ignore the pain because I know there is no way I’m getting Sam to budge.

Mrs. Rodman pushes past me impatiently. “The janitors will be here after school tomorrow. They can help you find the key. For now, just go home and bother your poor mothers.” She pauses. “Your poor, poor mothers.” After this thought, she seems to brighten up a little. She’s humming as she leaves the room.

Sam and I walk to the bus stop in silence. At least she wasn’t crossing her arms anymore. Now my hand hung comfortably at my side, but very uncomfortably close to Sam’s hand. “So, I guess you can sleep on my floor,” I suggest timidly. “I will just let my right arm hang off the edge of my bed. I think my bed’s close enough to the ground.” The bus arrives, and we clamber up the stairs, Sam leading the way. We receive a few amused stares from our fellow passengers as we make our way to the back of the bus, our handcuffs clinking with every step. Sam slides into her usual seat in the far left. The back of the seat in front of us has some letters scratched into the leather. It reads, ‘Sam rules!’ “Wow. Do you never get tired of defacing public property?”

“Nope.” She pulls a pocket knife out of her bag, which is against the rules to carry at school but then again, I’m sure eating waffles during detention is too. She then begins to carve, Freddie is a queer next to her earlier masterpiece. “I am not sleeping in your room.”

“Where are we supposed to stay, your room? I’m sorry but I don’t want your mad cow diseased-cat-type-thing to eat me in my sleep.”

“You are very afraid of getting eaten.” She smirks. “What makes you think your so tasty.”

“Oh, I’m sure I’m more than satisfactory,” I joke.

“Really?” She stops on the q in queer and bites my arm.

“Ow! Sam! Ew! Stop!”

“You're not bad. Not the tastiest, but not bad.”

“You are a psycho,” I say, rubbing my throbbing forearm. She bites hard. It leaves a big purple mark.

She smirks again and finishes the word queer in the leather seat. “So if your too pansy to stay at my house, and I refuse to be around your insane mother for more than five minutes at a time, where are we going to sleep tonight?”

“How about we get this thing off,” I shake the chain attaching our wrists, “before it comes to sleeping arrangements?”

“How? Are you volunteering to cut off your hand? Because I wont stop you-,”

“I’m not cutting off my hand. Maybe Spencer has something that could help us.”

Sam seems to think this is an okay idea. She nods and within a minute, she is asleep. Or she appears to be. I know for a fact that when Sam gets bored with a person or conversation, she will play opossum and act like she’s asleep. It’s an easy way out of her least favorite activity, that being interaction with people. I smile as I too lean my head back and close my eyes. All to soon the bus comes to a stop in front of my building. I drag Sam off with me and we enter the lobby. Lewbert yells after us that there was no being handcuffed in his lobby. I swear he just makes up rules so he can scream. We make our way to the eighth floor. I immediately turn to my apartment as Sam reaches for Carly’s doorknob. We are both pulled back abruptly by our cuffs before we reach our destinations and collide into each other.

“Carly’s?” I ask, rubbing the spot on my head that hit Sam’s.

“Your mom home?”

“Yeah.”

“Carly’s it is.” Sam knocks a few times before she grows impatient and pulls a clip out of her hair. She kneels down (forcing me to go down as well) and picks the lock. She opens the door to see Carly standing right in front of us with a Peppy-Cola in one hand and the other outstretched to where the doorknob had just been.

“Oh please,” Carly says, “just let yourself right in.”

“Okay.” Sam drags me into the living room.

Carly eyes follow us and she suddenly does a spit take. I wipe the sticky pop off of my face with a grimace. “Are you guys-oh wait, are those handcuffs?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, falling back onto the couch. I do my best to remain standing. My arm is outstretched uncomfortably behind my back toward her again. She picks up the remote with her handcuffed hand, causing my arm to move up and down painfully every time she clicks a button. I finally drop down next to her.

“I won’t even ask,” Carly says, shaking her head slightly.

“Good,” Sam says. “Hey, Spencer wouldn’t be home by any chance, would he?”

“No, he’s hanging out with Socko tonight. I think they’re working on a car.”

“Damn’t,” Sam huffs angrily.

“We we’re hoping he could help us with our predicament,” I tell Carly.

“You could catch him early tomorrow morning,” Carly suggests with a shrug.

“Early? Morning? No thank you,” Sam says.

“You are so pathetic Sam,” Carly says sitting down. Then she laughs nervously. “I thought, well, I thought you guys were holding hands when you first came in here, but I see the cuffs now.” Sam and I both look away from the TV, give each other a disgusted look, then turn to Carly.

“With nerd boy?” Sam asks. “Icky.”

“I’d hold a giant squid’s hand before Sam’s.” Though, in my mind, there wasn’t much of a difference. But I don’t think I’ll put this last thought into words. I am going to be stuck to her all night,and I like my head right where it is just fine.

Okay, I realize that Sam could easily pick the cuffs, and the story would be over. Don't worry; that is addressed in a later chapter. So please, bare with me. Uh, review....help me out with your critiques and suggestions...thank you....

Oh, and if you can't tell, this would fall under the catagory