Dear Karma

Excerpt: It's a car.

Written by: Mein Benutzername and A Humble Reader

Note: Greetings. We thought we'd pop in a little quick-fic for those waiting for the next Chapter of Dear Karma to come out. Again, enormous thanks for all of the support and patience. We promise; the next chapter is coming soon. But in the mean time, please enjoy a little flash to the past in Sam's personal history.

"Okay...so what exactly am I looking at here." It was a Saturday. She had been dragged off to some random car lot by Anna, who, by the way, wasn't even old enough to buy a car. Or drive one. Which was probably the more important factor...but the point was, she had no idea what she was doing here. Sure, Anna had a strange fascination with cars, most likely that was directly involved with her Transformers stuff she was getting into.

But that did not answer Sam's question.

Why was she even here.

She could be doing so many other things...like...homework! Yeah, that was a good excuse. But she didn't really wanna do her history right now. The section they were going over was kind of a drag. She could be...petting Sweetie Pie? She had been neglecting her precious Golden Retriever as of late...

But wait. Her mom had taken the pet to get groomed today.

Damn it.

Alright, so maybe she didn't have anything else she could be doing. She still didn't know why Anna had dragged her here to stare at fancy sports cars neither of them would ever have any chance of owning. The heat was making her hair frizzy; as usual, and she could practically feel the tiny well of irritation forming in her chest.

The brunette sheilded her grassy eyes from the bright glare of the sun and put one hand on her hip as she turned to glare at her likewise haired companion.

Who may or may not have been salivating.

Could we please have a chorus of resounding "ew's?"

"Anna, did you here me?" She called again. The girl practically had stars in her eyes. "Anna? Hellooooo! What are we doing here, Hopkins? Anna?"

Just when she was beginning to think the other girl had gone into a vehicularly induced coma, she spun around and planted both hands firmly on Sam's shoulders.

"Isn't it obvious!" She squealed. "We're checking out this fine piece of metal!"

Either she was suffering brain damage from the violent shaking from one of her best friends, or Anna had finally taken that last step into insanity.

"What did you just say?"

"I said," the girl repeated, "we are checking this baby out. Do you see those rims? And oh god, I really wish they'd let us open it up, look at that leather! Doesn't just make you want to swoon?" By now Anna was clasping her hands to her chest dreamily and staring at the glaringly yellow paint job through half-lidded eyes. Sam took a step back.

"Uhm. No. Say, are you feeling all right? Here, let me see if you have a fever and-" abruptly cutting herself off, Sam punched Anna -maybe with a little to much force - in the arm.

Instant reaction.

"Hey! Jeez, Sunshine! What was that for, huh? I didn't even do anything that time! You're getting too violent; I think Pens and I need to take you to a professional where we can all have a serious talk about your anger management issues."

Anna herself took the opportunity to give her friend and obligatory return punch with just as much - if not more - unwarranted force behind it before rubbing her now tender appendage.

Thus the plan kind of backfired. Just a little.

Nobody ever accused Sam of being a genius.

"Ow! God, Anna! You don't have to hit so hard! I can barely feel my arm anymore!" Sam waddled away from her, wincing and hesitantly poking at her own arm.

Anna didn't say anything, opting to just stick her toungue out instead.

Once both teens had recovered they resumed their task of staring at the terribly, blindingly bright yellow Camaro sitting in front of them in the lot.

In the hot, hot heat of the Arizona sun.

Sam might as well have had an afro, damn it.

"As I was saying." Anna began again, this time not without an indignant sniff. Sam rolled her eyes. "We are here to observe this absolutely gorgeous Chevrolet Camaro, this years newest model. It's...so beautiful..." She murmured at the end. Sam began to wonder if she was going to cry.

"Anna...it's a car."

Sudden furious brunette in her face. Alright, wrong thing to say.

"Heathen!" The girl snarled. "How could you say that!? It's a piece of art, practically! It's-"

"Okay," Sam cut her off. She held up her hands in surrender and backed away slowly. When dealing with wild animals, make no sudden or threatening movements, lest they attack. "It's a nice car." She shrugged, lowering her hands again. "What's so special about it?"

Wrong choice on what to say.

Again.

There was suddenly a feral gleam in her friend's eye.

She had opened the floodgates.

Rabid ranting, foot stomping, yelling, righteous fury against the uneducated in the way of the automobile, crazy hand motions - the whole shebang. Eventually they got kicked out of the car lot for disturbing 'actual customers' and being an overall nuisance. Luckily, they didn't do anything serious like go and press charges for them 'disturbing the peace' or whatever, but afterwords Sam and Anna did get into a miniature verbal (and occasionally physical) scuffle that ended in an enraged mother Pens having to slam their heads together.

Thankfully Anna seemed to get a grip on herself after that, unless you counted the bumblebee - camaro - woman incident. But that happened much later on, right before Sam learned how big of a pain in the butt a giant alien robot was.