#samily

Author’s Note: Hey, sorry for not updating in nearly a year. 

I was focused on other stories; mainly finishing up Mission to Silas. That and juggling other stories meant I was a little distracted. (I'm still trying to get back into working on Love's Sacrifices). 

This chapter and the next will mark the end of “Act One” as this mystery goes from Maryland to New Jersey.

This chapter is called “Casting Call”, because despite being the main character, Kirby and Sam end up a little out of focus. Instead, the supporting cast - Sidney, Dewey, Gale, the Life is Strange cast - end up getting the spotlight as they get roped into this.

As a result this is a real Chasemarsh, (Amber)Pricefield focused chapter, as well as the Legacy trio. 

Anyways, sorry to have kept you waiting, and hopefully this'll be worth the wait for now.

Sam’s been talking to a guy for a while now - his name’s Elliot and he’s on the swim team and the track team like herself. While he’s sweet and patient and doesn’t mind that she’s rejected him more times than she can remember, there’s still something in her brain that tells her she shouldn’t be with him. When they had first started talking, he had asked her to go to the movies once after school. 

“I can't,” she said. “I need to visit a friend in the hospital.” 

What she likes about him is that he’s understanding and patient. He had asked her again the week after. 

“I can’t,” Sam said again. “I have swimming and track after school every other day.” 

He had joined the track team to see her more often, which she had rolled her eyes at. If it was Josh, she would’ve secretly thought it was endearing. There’s no reason why she should be thinking about Josh this much; she hasn’t spoken to him in ages. There’s no real reason why she shouldn’t reject Elliot anymore - she doubts Josh even thinks about her, and she figures she needs to get over him at some point.  So she had accepted Elliot’s invitation to the school dance in two months, and she realises that she wouldn’t mind going dress shopping. 

It makes her glad to know that Em thinks so highly of her, that she actually cares what Sam thinks. She’s also excited to feel like a normal teenage girl - something she always forgets to do amongst all her duties. It’s been back and forth from her mother and father’s houses every few days and she hasn’t had time for herself since god knows when. 

“Do you like this?” Em runs her hand down the train of a navy blue dress and cranes her neck in the mirror. Sam’s conscious of the fact that Emily is significantly cooler than her, with her glossy black hair and her perfect manicure. And it’s obvious, from how natural she looks in the dress. 

“It’s gorgeous ,” Sam gushes, eyeing the glittering beads. She takes a look at the tag - $2,000 - that’s worth more than probably all of the clothes in her closet.

“No. It’s disgusting,” she resolves, and crosses her arms over her chest. 

“What? Em, it looks beautiful!” 

“Not the dress. It’s me.” Emily rolls her eyes and begins undoing the back. “I need to be perfect .” 

Sam can’t believe that she doesn’t consider herself perfect . When she thinks of her, perfect is all she can see. Sam’s seen the tests that litter her desk - Emily’s a genius - she doesn’t think that her GPA has dropped below a 4.0 ever since high school started. And she’s drop dead gorgeous too (and it wasn’t a matter of personal opinion either, because all the guys in their grade seemed to think so as well). 

Emily unloops the dress from her shoes and stuffs it into the hands of the store attendant. She’s only in her bra with the curtain open, but she seems so confident in her body that she doesn’t even care that there are other people around them. Sam blushes and her head reflexively turns away like it’s being pulled to the side by a string. 

“Wait,” Em calls to the store attendant, who’s half running back to her the moment she hears the younger girl’s voice. Emily’s looking Sam up and down with a hand on her hip, and her insecurities suddenly feel glaringly obvious. “This might look good on you , though.” 

Sam instantly wraps her arms around her body. “No, today is for you !” But Emily doesn’t listen, and she’s pushing her into the change room, and stuffing the dress into her arms. 

“Turn around,” Em says, and her cold hands on her back makes a shiver run up her spine. When she laces up the back of the dress up for her, the tips of her nails graze her bare skin and it makes Sam’s hairs stand on end. Emily stands close beside her, their faces next to each other so that they can both have a look in the mirror. Sam can feel the warmth of her cheek on hers, despite them not physically touching. 

“You’re really pretty, you know,” Emily says, running a hand through her hair. 

A memory of Josh pops up in her head against her will - the two of them on the porch at Mike’s birthday last year. “ You’re like, the most amazing girl I know, ” he says, and she feels like her heart has expanded the size of an elephant. She can feel her cheeks burn red and she can’t tell whether it’s because of Emily or the memory. 

It’s crazy, but she thinks that she actually agrees with Em, because the blue looks nice on her skin and it makes her realise that maybe she actually is pretty. Sam doesn’t recognise the girl staring back at her, but she’s convinced it’s not the same one who’s grown man shoulders from four days of swim practice a week. 

“Are you joking?” 

Emily looks at her like she’s got another eye growing in the middle of her forehead. “Don’t lie to me right now bitch, you know you’re pretty.” She’s standing close to her now, her face right up beside her so they’re both looking at her in the mirror. She can feel the warmth of her cheek burning against hers. With one of her hands, she pulls Sam’s hair into a low ponytail, and with the other she pulls two strands out. 

“Do your hair like this, okay?” She uses her finger to tilt Sam’s head to the side so they can look at the hair with the dress. Her hands graze the back of her neck and goosebumps run up her arms. When she spends time with Emily, Sam’s always self-conscious of being perceived. It’s much like the way she feels when she has a crush. “And wear drop earrings. You’ll look hot. ” 

That’s how she feels when she spends time with Emily – she feels hot , and cool , and everything that a teenage girl is meant to be. She’s turning sixteen soon, but in her head she’s still an awkward twelve year old - although she can’t be that awkward if she’s here with Em. 

Sam feels her phone buzz and there’s two texts: one from Hannah - hows the dress hunt going? and another from Elliot - What you doing today Sam? 

She snaps a quick pic and texts it back to her: Would love to get this dress if it wasn’t like a billion dollars :( She ignores the other. 

Emily sees her take a photo and she pulls out her phone. “Hold on, I need one of us too.”  

That night when she gets home, there’s a photo of her biting her tongue into a smirk while Em kisses her on the cheek posted on @emdavisxo. It’s amassed 200 likes and it hasn’t even been an hour yet. It makes her blush when she notices that Em’s chosen that one. It’s funny - she has to pinch herself when she thinks about the fact that she went out with Emily today. Their relationship is immortalised on her Instagram account, and it makes her feel like she’s special to Em - she doesn’t even have an Instagram post up of her and Jess. She thinks, maybe it wouldn’t be bad if she liked girls - maybe it wouldn’t be bad if she liked Em . But before that thought materialises, she scrolls through the likes to check whether there’s one from @joshwashington.

Since their shopping trip, Sam sees Emily more times in a week than she has ever seen her since middle school started. Em texts her during classes that they don’t share and sits with her in the classes that they do share, doodling pictures on Sam’s notes and swapping jackets (because they’re the exact same size!). After school, they hang around the mall and sip smoothies and Sam tells her about her parents’ messy marriage and Emily tells her about her love/hate relationship with her mother (she loves to hate her). It feels different, intimate and tender, not like her other friendships with girls. 

“Since when were you and Em so close?” Hannah asks, and she doesn’t know what to say. Jess is in the same boat, because she’s blowing up Emily’s phone every day, trying to figure out why she feels like she’s intruding whenever she hangs out with Sam and Em in a group. 

She’s eager to please, responding to each of Em’s texts immediately and never missing a FaceTime from her. She’s scared for the moment that her friendship (relationship?) will inevitably fall apart when one of them gets a boyfriend. But in the meantime, they share beds like children and swap clothes and Emily sends her i love you ! at the end of every night and she’s not sure if she means love or love . 

It seems all her thoughts are consumed with Em, because she’s beginning to send Elliot one word responses and it almost doesn’t hurt when she sees Josh walking around with a girl at school.

During spring break Em takes her on rides in her Lexus and they play loud music and pretend that they’re famous, honking at boys on the side of the road and sticking their tongues out when they call back to them. They shop down Rodeo, and despite being able to buy out a whole store with her dad’s credit card, she stuffs clothes in her bag and flirts with security guards to get away. It’s exhilarating being friends with her, like a drug with an endless high. Friends - maybe more. She doesn’t know. She’s never loved a girl before, but this is coming close to it. 

Sam doesn’t tell anyone that it’s her sixteenth birthday, but the twins know anyway. Hannah and Beth invite her for a sleepover, pretending like they have no idea, but surprise her with balloons and streamers strewn around the living room. They’re not doing much, just a girls night at the Washingtons’, but Sam’s heart still swells at the gesture. Emily and Jess make her a chocolate cake in the shape of a heart and We Love You Sam in bright red frosting, and they eat it together on the living room floor with plastic spoons. Something about the fact that Emily wrote her the words We Love You is flattering. She can’t tell whether she loves Emily too , or it’s just the fact that she’s so in awe of her that she doesn’t seem real. 

It’s the end of spring break, and Josh is nowhere to be seen. She didn’t expect him to come - obviously - it’s not a big party or anything anyway, just the girls sitting around and watching movies. Josh has an on-and-off girlfriend now – “I think they’ve been together the entire spring break,” Hannah says – a pretty girl named Liz who he’s always on the phone arguing with. He’s been with lots of girls, she’s sure, so Sam doesn’t know why this bristles her so much. 

They exchange texts every now and again; though not enough to constitute conversation - sometimes he sends her trailers to new horror movies he thinks they should see, and she sends him silly Instagram posts she imagines him chuckling at. Sam notices that whenever she texts him first, it’s with bated breath, only finding herself exhaling when he responds. It was nothing, though, she assured herself. Conversations between friends, if anything. When the conversations thin out to maybe a couple texts every few weeks, she realises it’s probably best to let it go. 

These days, she prefers to ignore him rather than get her heart riled up. They haven’t spoken in person lately. She can’t speak to him, not able to return his witty banter like she once used to. Sam can’t tell what’s between them, what’s wrong with them, why she hasn’t been able to talk to him properly since she got suspended last year for claiming his cigarettes were her’s. Sometimes when she feels her affections growing stronger for him, she piles over the feelings with overexertion. She’s been bouldering to take off the stress. 

The other day during her track meet, she saw him sitting on the bleachers and smoking a cigarette. His girlfriend, presumably, was next to him, arms crossed over her chest, each finger decorated with dark red nails. She’s so cool, in an effortless way, with a sheet of long dark hair down her back, so long that she could sit on it, and a cigarette in her own hand too. Josh is different now - he’s elusive and aloof and every time she sees him it’s like he’s on a completely different planet. Sam immediately runs a self-conscious down her shirt to smooth it out - she was comparably not cool, in her track team t-shirt and baggy shorts. He raised a hand to wave at her. Sam kept running. 

They’d run into each other at the Washington house last week - she was on her way out while he had just arrived home. 

“Sam-my!” he calls, raising a hand to high five her. He seems reinvigorated from the last time she saw him; his eyes are brighter and he’s got a wide smile plastered on his face. “I haven’t seen you in ages.” 

She doesn’t know why, but she ducks under his hand, mentioning something under her breath about needing to wake up early for track tomorrow. 

On the other hand, she can’t tell whether randomly thinking about a girl all the time means you have a crush on them. But she finds herself thinking about Emily every now and then, wondering what she’s doing and whether she’s thinking about the late nights they spent during spring break together. Sam doesn’t think she knows how to separate platonic love from romantic love. Actually, she doesn’t even know if there’s a difference. But whenever Em passes her by in the hallways and blows her a kiss or squeezes her on the arm, or sends her a snap of her outfit of the day, it makes her heartbeat quicken. Attention from Emily is different- it makes you feel special and chosen , like you’re the coolest girl in the world . Nonetheless, whether crush or not, she's glad because it puts Josh out of her head for a while. 

Jess sneaks a bottle of her mother’s red wine in her handbag, so they drink themselves to giggles - sans Sam, of course, who only has a couple, making sure they’re all being safe and tucking them into bed at the end of the night. By one in the morning, all the girls are tangled in each other in front of the TV, Jess and Emily sharing the couch and the twins and Sam on the pull-out mattress. Emily’s on her phone while Jess and the twins are fast asleep. Sam clears out the empty pizza boxes and glass bottles and makes her way to the kitchen, being sure to sweep the crumbs off the floor before she gets to bed. 

She’s cleaning up the kitchen counter and Emily drops a big black Saks bag in front of her. “I didn’t get to give you your birthday present.” 

Sam laughs. “Aw, Em, you shouldn’t have.” 

She sifts through the tissue paper and then, in protective plastic, she sees it- the navy blue satin of the dress she tried on. It's like there are magnets behind her lips, sticking her hands to her mouth. It’s the most expensive gift she’s ever received - and probably the most beautiful one too. Sam has to run her hands over the fabric once more to confirm to herself that it’s real. 

A twinge of guilt echoes through her stomach. She’s not like the other girls in the Hills, in the sense that she can’t so simply drop two thousand dollars on a dress for a friend’s birthday. She’s not like the other girls who can just get their father’s driver to pick her up from school instead of having to walk to the bus stop. It’s times like these that she feels so alien to the twins, Emily and Jess. “Emily. I can’t take this.” 

“It was nothing. It’s your birthday .” Em picks at her nails and shrugs. Sam’s suddenly aware of how the Tiffany bracelet that hangs off her wrist glints in the light. Sam doesn’t say anything. 

“ God, Sam. It’s a token for how much I care about you, or whatever, okay?” 

It’s something about this sentence that makes hot tears well up in her eyes. Sam reflexively wraps her arms around Emily’s shoulders and squeezes her tight. “You’re crazy . Thank you Em, seriously.” 

Emily only pushes her off softly and laughs. “Don’t be dramatic.” 

Sam sits up on the barstool beside her and crosses one leg over the other. Em’s phone is lying face down on the counter, but it buzzes every few seconds so that the vibrations are like a steady drum. She looks annoyed, and puts her phone on silent before stuffing it into her pocket. 

“Okay, miss popular,” Sam jokes, kicking her foot lightly. 

Em rolls her eyes. “ Ugh . Please. High school boys are losers.” 

“So you’re going to the dance alone, then?” Sam figures she would much rather spend time dancing with Emily all night than standing around in awkward silence with Elliot. 

“I don’t know, that Mike guy from French is kinda cute.” She pulls out her phone and opens up his account. There’s not much, just a mirror selfie of him shirtless and a picture with some friends by the pool. Sam doesn’t know what everyone sees in him - Em could do so much better. “He’s such a whore though. Anyways, what about your boy toy?”

Sam shuffles in her seat and pulls her legs up close to her so that she’s hugging her knees. “If I tell you, will you promise not to judge me?” 

“Bitch. Have you met me?”

She hesitates, for a bit. 

“ Sam ! Come on, you have to tell me now.” 

Sam takes a deep breath. She’s still a little woozy from the alcohol, but whatever’s left of it in her system gives her the courage to say things that she would never usually admit. “I don’t even think I like Elliot that much.” 

“Oh my god, you tease ,” Emily slaps her jokingly. “Okay, so who were you talking about when we played Never Have I Ever?”

Earlier that night, her only finger down in Never Have I Ever was for Hannah’s question - never have I ever loved a guy before. Typical Hannah, the hopeless romantic. Sam didn’t mean to, but her finger went down reflexively. She still loved Josh, despite every moment they spent not talking – the feelings were still there, no matter how hard she tried to separate herself from them. Jess and Em started teasing her about Elliot, but the twins, all the wiser, raised their eyebrows at her.

Hannah corners her in her bedroom that night, when she’s grabbing her stuff. “Tell me you don’t love my brother.” 

Sam stops what she’s doing and looks at her, mouth agape. She’s come to realise that she’s never had this conversation with her before. “ Well- -” 

“There is no chance the guy you love is Elliot, you don’t even know his favourite colour!” 

She’s worried that Hannah would be annoyed, but she’s looking at Sam with the biggest smile on her face.

“ Han !” Sam groans, and covers her face with her pillow. “It’s not like that. Not anymore. It was like, ages ago. He has a girlfriend now anyway.” 

Hannah rolls her eyes and smacks her on the head with a pillow. “He only got a girlfriend because he was getting over you, dummy!” 

When she says that, Sam feels like her heart has frozen up and then been smashed to a million pieces. It feels like pins and needles have covered every surface of her body, crept up her spine and into her head. “He liked me?” 

Right now she’s not thinking about Emily, but thinking of him. 

“I thought you knew !” 

Sam stuffs her face in the pillow and groans. “Oh my god , I’m such an idiot.”

“Stop. For real? I knew it.” When she tells Em that it’s Josh, her hands fly to her face and she gasps. “You guys always act so weird whenever you hang out.” 

“And you know what’s even more insane?” Sam giggles and closes her eyes, tilting her head back. “I haven’t even kissed anyone yet.” 

“Sam! No way.” 

“Like I have no idea — how do you know your teeth aren’t gonna clash or anything?” She feels a little stupid, but it makes her happy to tell someone. Sam’s been pretending to Jess and Em that she kissed someone back at summer camp when she was fourteen for the last two years. 

Emily raises her eyebrows, and looks down at her lips, then back at her eyes. Of course, she’s probably thinking about how childish it is that she’s sixteen and never been kissed. Em’s probably kissed tons of guys, in the back of cars or in bedrooms at parties, things that Sam could never have the courage to do. Sam braces herself for the reaction - she’s always thinking about what Emily’s thinking, thinking about whether she’s judging her secretly or not. What she said next is the last thing that Sam expected. 

“Let me show you, okay?” 

Sam is at a loss for words. It’s like her heart beat has stopped and steadied to a slow, agonising pace that makes her feel like she’s submerged under water. She’s trying to formulate something, but Em quickly adds —

“But don’t get all lezzy up on me bitch.” The word makes her grimace. Her breathing is all that her brain can focus on. “I’m just showing you how it is.” 

She doesn’t want to confront whatever feelings might be there for Emily. It’s all muddled up in her head, and bringing another person into the equation would only make it worse. She can’t even make sense of her feelings for Josh or Elliot. But her pull is so strong that it makes her entire body feel like it’s on fire. 

“Okay, show me,” she says quietly.

It’s slow and soft and the world seems quiet, like it’s stopped to make time for this moment. They lock eyes before Emily leans in and drags Sam’s hair out of her face. Her lips are sweet with the taste of alcohol and lip gloss, and it’s like flowers have bloomed out of her heart and up her throat. When she pulls away it’s abrupt and Emily’s looking into her eyes like it was the funniest thing to have ever occurred. 

“Oh my god , Sam!” Emily’s giggling and tossing her hair back. “I can’t believe we just did that.” 

After Emily kisses her, there’s nothing else she can think about. It takes her everything not to grab her face and do it again. She’s not sure if she likes Emily or if she likes kissing, but she finds herself replaying the memory over and over in her head until it’s burned into her brain. 

She gets a phone call a couple of days later, it’s nine o’clock at night, and she’s getting ready to go to bed. Sam picks up the phone and sets it down on the table as she changes into her pyjamas. 

“Hey, Sam,” Emily’s voice crackles through the phone and she feels her heart quicken. 

“Hey Em,” she tried to appear nonchalant and occupied. “What’s up?” 

“I just wanted to say… I’m seeing Mike now.” 

It’s like the universe doesn’t want Sam to win. Like love isn’t in the cards for her, like it’s never been, not for girls like her who have to pick up the pieces of shattered hearts all around her and stick them back together.  

“Oh… Oh, okay. Wow, um- that’s great Em!” She tries her best to sound enthusiastic for her friend. Yes, her friend - that’s what she was. 

“No hard feelings, right Sam?” she says. “I just … Like, I don’t like girls like that. I just wanted to see what it was like… You get it, right?” 

It feels like somebody has shot her a million times. 

“Oh, um, yeah- No, totally, I was thinking the same thing.” 

“Yeah, we were so drunk the other night, right?”

Sam tries to bite back the sting of rejection. “Mm, yeah, soo drunk.” 

The sound of her fan hums in the background. It drags out the pause between their conversation even longer.

“Anyways, um. We’re still getting ready together at Hannah’s on Friday, right?”

“Yeah, I’ll see you there!” It takes all of her to infuse enthusiasm into her words so that Em can’t hear her voice cracking. 

“Okay, well… I’ll talk to you later.” Another long pause. “Love you, Sam.” 

She hangs up. 

How do you tell someone that you’re heartbroken, without there never being a relationship in the first place? She can’t confide in anyone – nobody knows about her and Emily except Emily, and she can’t bring herself to verbalise anything that happened. It’s like their time together was sacred, and bringing it to light will only destroy it. Sam needs Hannah. She FaceTimes her, and then calls her, and then calls her again and no answer. She wants the ground to swallow her whole, she wants the walls to close in on her and give her a hug and tell her it’s going to be alright. 

Her phone begins to buzz and she quickly picks it up, wiping the tears from her face with the back of her hand. “Han?” 

“Sam?” It’s not Hannah, but Josh. “Sorry, Han’s in the shower. I hope you don’t mind that I picked up, I just, uh, thought it was important because you called a few times.” 

He looks at her closely, and his face morphs into concern. “Oh shit, Sam?! Are you okay? Why are you crying?” 

She can’t say anything, just stuffs her face into her arm. “No, no, I’m fine. It’s fine. Just tell Hannah I need her.” 

“Fuck, Sam,” his eyebrows are furrowed, and he runs a hand through his hair. “I’m coming over there, okay?”