DISCLAIMER: Popular and its characters are the property of Ryan Murphy and Touchstone. No infringement intended.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Naked
By carpesomediem
Naked. That's how she felt. Naked and exposed for everyone to witness. All her flaws, vulnerabilities laid bare like an open wound. She hated feeling so exposed. But she always felt exposed around Sam; her brunette soon-to-be stepsister was meant to be a journalist. She had this glint in her eye that when she looked at you, she saw you and at the same time saw right through you.
Brooke felt as if Sam didn't see her at all, because all the walls built up around here were the kind made of superficial Plexiglas popularity that just seem to shatter when those eyes glanced upon her and she caught them looking. So when the glass shattered, there was nothing left but the sunlight of her soul, which was hard for her to even burn bright as herself.
"Brooke," Sam tapped her on the shoulder which sent the blonde into a frenzy of anguish. It was as if a knife had sliced through her, and now she bled from surprise. "Are you going to continue walking or do I need to draw you a medical diagram on how to use your legs?"
Sam was now trapped behind Brooke, who had stopped while turning a corner at Kennedy High School. She didn't really intend to come to a full-stop, but in those few seconds, her mind began to wander to the one thing it kept getting lost on in the past weeks: Sam. Not Sam like how Mary Cherry called her Ashley Simpson behind her back for an incident in Bio Glass' class where the brunette was asked to recreate a ritual mating dance of some African mammal and, of course, she wasn't paying attention so she kind of jigged around like Simpson did on Saturday Night Live. Hilarious.
But, no, that wasn't the Sam she was thinking about lately. The Sam who stuck her tongue in her cheek when she lost her train of thought. The Sam who always had a witty comeback. And all the rest of the little idiosyncrasies that made up the enigma that was Samantha McPherson, her polar opposite, her crush...
"Why does that girl keep looking at me?" Sam asked when she noticed a blonde a few lunch tables down staring at her. "Does she not get enough attention at her table so she wants me to cater to her every whim and desire?"
Harrison just smiled. He knew the answer to the question and just threw his cornbread down to his plate in a fit of laughter.
The End