Had Sam's friends been asked to describe her, they would have done so with a small smile and a loving expression. Beth would have described a quiet, somewhat shy girl with an odd love for debate and competition. Jared would lean back and close his eyes, chuckling at the time he and Sam had sent rolls of toilet paper streaming down a rival dorm hall. Nathan's cheeks would turn red. "She reaches out to you," he murmurs contemplatively. He stares at the wall and his brow knits as a small, abashed grin steals the corners of his mouth.
Katie would dissolve into laughter, recounting tales of flirtatious boys and Sam's polite but scathing responses. "She has this way of smiling at them, as though she's letting them in on a private joke, and she'll slip out this comment that freezes the grin on their faces and makes them wonder what hit them. If you go out clubbing Friday nights, bring that girl with you!"
Sam's best friend, Jesse, will describe her passion for sketching, writing, and analyzing people. "Most people don't realize she's reading them like an encyclopedia," he'll remark. "She's very pleasant, very engaging to talk to. But she knows within the first few minutes whether that person is trying to feed her a crock of shit. It was a talent she developed after I met her in high school."
Every time Sam's friends receive questions about her, they do their best to answer and direct the inquirer to Jesse. He was the one who met her in 10th grade English class, and Sam was family to him. "She's like my sister, so I wouldn't describe her as 'hot', but from an outsider's perspective, she is," he would explain. "Sam and I were the big nerds on campus. Guys would swarm her, but only in secret. She figured out within months that any guy who will talk to her behind closed doors but shun her in his friends' company is a guy worth flushing down the toilet. There were lots of guys like that, so she learned quickly."
Sam's only high school boyfriend, Donnie, would agree. "She looked fantastic under the dumpy clothes and Coke-bottle glasses," he reminisced. "Sam told me a couple times she stayed away from the trends on purpose, so she could tell what guys were really after. When we were alone, she would put on these outfits..." he would pause. "The tiniest shirt you could ever imagine. She told me she was confident in her body, and I don't blame her. I don't mean to sound like an asshole, but she wasn't really gorgeous. She didn't have anything like a rack, a butt, or even legs, but she carried herself humbly, unaffectedly, but confidently. She only cared what she did for the world, not how it felt about her."
Samantha Mallory never asked her friends outright what they thought of her. She knew that if they were her friends, then she had worked hard for them and that was all that mattered. She loved Donnie very much, but dumped him when he was jealous of Jesse's friendship with her.
She and Jesse went to different colleges but they kept in daily contact. Their dorm rooms provided free cable Internet, so they used AOL Instant Messenger to communicate.
"Hey, you!" she typed to him. "How was your day?"
"Eh," he responded. "How was yours?"
"Craig and I had a hot one last night," she typed.
"A hot what?" he teased.
"Date," she replied, not in the mood for teasing.
"Did you use protection?"
"I'm on the pill, dude."
"Sorry, I don't mean to prod."
"No prodding," she assured.
"So how'd it go?"
Sam closed her eyes, reminiscing.
She raked her fingers through Craig's long, silky, dark brown hair. It flowed all the way down to his waist. Smoothing it out with her fingers, she let her hand trail down to his rump and settle there.
He looked over at her. "You're forward," he remarked.
Sam gave his roundness a squeeze. "I like to get to the point," she replied. "I might tease a little, but that's only in leading to the inevitable."
"You're so predictable," he said with a mock sigh. The corners of his mouth twitched.
Sam snorted. "You don't know me."