Chapter warnings: cursing. Put on your big person panties.

Sweeter Things

ONE

~xx~

So far, senior year had been a bust.

And no, I was not just bitter about the whole Casey falling-out.

It was actually a lot of things. College apps were killing me (seeing as how my GPA was apparently pretty below average), and I spent almost all my time with Marissa and her druggie-hipster boyfriend, Miles. Plus, I was working nonstop just to pay off my shitty car, and then on top of that, there was "the incident."

Okay. Maybe that was the biggest issue. Based on my GPA, Casey had certainly been a distraction the past four years. Marissa said that I should just focus on school now, when I had nothing else to waste my energy on. But somehow I was finding things. All my energy now just went toward dwelling on "the incident," and what I was going to do about it.

"I'm thinking Colorado," Marissa was saying, "I don't want to end up at Santa Louisa like everybody else. Maybe that's an accomplishment for Danny, but I think I can do better."

School had just let out, and I was walking (okay, maybe sort of sulking) beside Marissa and Miles through the school hallway and out to the amazingly small parking lot at Santa Martina High School. Miles was nodding along to everything she said, and I was just rolling my eyes and toying with the fabric on my shirt sleeve.

"Sammy!" Marissa exclaimed, "have you even finished your application to Santa Louisa yet?"

I sighed. "What's the point. You just said it's not an accomplishment. Plus, I don't want to be there."

"Oh, shut up," she said, "You need to go to college. It's not about Casey or what happened. It's about the future."

Marissa had been talking a lot about "the future" lately. She had big plans. She wanted to be an environmental engineer and save the planet. She was looking at all these schools in weird, mountainous places where she could be at one with nature. Miles was very supportive of this, although he would not be applying for anything until next year since he was a junior. What's sad is the despite the fact that he's a freaky stoner who is obsessed with trap music, he has more shit figured out than I do.

They started talking about all the great things there were in Colorado and ignoring me completely. I wish I could say this was an uncommon occurrence, but over the past month and had turned into the ultimate third wheel. And the thing is, I always thought I was an independent person. I thought all I needed was myself and something cool to figure out. I guess all that changed when I spent four years with Casey.

We finally got out to the parking lot, and I bid them both a very half-assed goodbye and headed toward my barely-functional saturn. The car was loud and it did not get as great of gas mileage as I was hoping, but I was stupid to hope for anything when I bought a $1500 car.

I saved all my earnings for that piece of shit too, and believe me, that is not easy when you make a solid eight dollars an hour working in the mall food court. I have always hated the mall, but it happens to be just about the only place in Santa Martina that will hire 16 year olds with zero work experience.

I honestly thought that I could not hate the mall any more than I already did, but boy I was wrong. The worst thing about it is that nearly every kid in town works somewhere in the mall, and I was lucky enough to be right across from the Taco Bell where Danny Urbanski had been employed.

Now, this used to bother me a lot. When I first started working and noticed him over there, serving people tacos and acting all jovial and shit, I was ready to quit. But then something amazing happened. Danny turned out to be. . .not an ass. I know, it sounds unbelievable, but I had been keeping my distance from Danny ever since my sophomore year, when Casey and him started punching each other in the hall and I had told him off in front of more people than I would have liked.

What's funny is that Danny and Casey reestablished their friendship about eight months after that. In fact, now they're college roommates.

Anyway, every day on his break, Danny would come over to the very unfortunate cookie shop where I work to get his $1 mall employee soda. Seriously, every day. I'm surprised that he even survives ingesting that much high fructose corn syrup. It was funny, because at first he would just end up insulting me and reminding me how I'm totally not good enough for Casey. But then it changed. We started joking with each other about things that were not Casey, and I started thinking that maybe Danny was not actually as insufferable as he had been in the eighth grade. We would talk for so long, that a girl I worked with asked if we were dating. I had laughed hysterically. "No! I'm dating his roommate!"

What a fucking joke.

The weird thing was that Danny was not the only one who had put aside all the bullshit from middle school. When I had mentioned him to Marissa once, she just said "You talk to Danny? How is he? I feel like we haven't talked in forever!"

I felt it would be unnecessary to remind Marissa that they really hadn't talked in forever. Or at least since they dated for two weeks when we were in ninth grade.

Honestly, besides Danny's little visits, my job was amazingly boring. Actually, my whole life was. It was basically just an endless cycle of: school, work, Casey. What's funny is that I liked that. I liked being bored because it was easy.

But now, as of the current situation, I did not think things could get any more complicated.

Of course, I was wrong.

A/N: Okay kids, so I know this one is even weirder than my other, unfinished Sammy/Danny fanfiction (I try very hard to add variety to this archive. DannyxCasey is next.). It just came to me, and I know it's different, but I was really trying to invision Sammy as a senior. This chapter was a lot of setup, but that's because I feel like this is almost a different universe. It's weird, but bear with me. I'll also make sure to put warnings in front of every chapter because I admittedly have no filter. Leave a review and I'll love you forever 3