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Sam is well and truly a LaRusso, which means she doesn’t get mad. It’s not that she doesn’t want to. It’s that she’s not allowed.
Sam is well and truly a LaRusso, which means from birth she’s been raised with a one-word mantra: Balance. Her childhood was her father reciting meaningless lines that she was expected to internalize: endless variations of, “Remember, Sam: if your whole life has balance, everything will be better.”
Balancing physical and mental health. Balancing her school and social life. Balancing her emotions. Don’t get angry, don’t get overwhelmed, don’t get fiery; Sam is well and truly a LaRusso, which means she is supposed to be ice.
Somewhere along the way, balance becomes stagnation, becomes repression, and Sam starts hauling around a frozen core. The thing about being ice: it comes with inevitable numbness.
She is no longer just Sam. Her name becomes worth only as much as the appellation that follows it. She is “Sam the Peacekeeper” to her family, “Sam the Prize” to the boys, “Sam the Floormat” to the people she calls friends. She doesn’t do anything about it. Not because she doesn’t want to. Because she’s not allowed.
Her subconscious hums a little tune when the red creeps into the edges of her vision. (Yasmine, I told you you shouldn’t be on your phone—we have to call the police!) A little incantation that keeps her grounded, (Sam, you shouldn’t lie. Kyler told everyone what happened at the theater) just to remind herself not to lose her temper. (“The enemy”? Do you even hear yourself? I-I don’t even know who you are anymore.) Don’t get angry, Sam, remember: your life is better with balance. Keep your cool and everything will work out exactly the way it should.
She doesn’t get upset, doesn’t get passionate, doesn’t want change, doesn’t want revenge; she doesn’t want.
(Tory wants.
She always has. And what she wants, she takes.)
Sam has been a LaRusso her whole life; she has been ice for longer than she can remember. With seven words, she starts to thaw.
“Listen, I didn’t rob your mom, bitch.”
Seven words chip a hole right out of her center, drop a burning coal in and leave it to smolder.
She is no longer just Sam. She is “Princess,” or “LaRusso,” or “Bitch,” and with every word, Tory is driving her mad. It’s the way she shows up out of the blue, taking everything that used to be Sam’s: her best friend, her boyfriend, her self-control. Tory doesn’t give a shit about balance. Tory is hot-headed and stubborn and impulsive and everything Sam has forgotten how to be. Tory is an IV drip of gasoline driven deep into Sam’s chest, making her volatile. Combustible.
Tory knocks her down; Sam fights back. She’s not supposed to. She’s not supposed to, but there are floor burns on the heels of her hands and a fire sparking somewhere inside and she’s been skating since she was six, so she sweeps Tory’s legs in a move so very Cobra Kai it would have made her father cringe.
Tory challenges her; Sam accepts. (Except, it might be that Sam challenges Tory, after all.) “You sure you wanna do this?” Robby asks, all sweet and noble and concerned.
And Sam snaps, “What, you don’t think I can beat her?” because he doesn’t get it. She’s not trying to prove herself. This isn’t an honor thing. There’s a heat spreading along the length of her spine, and Tory smirks at her, and this is, wholeheartedly, a spite thing. She wants to see Tory fall.
For someone who’s spent their life frozen, heat is intoxicating. (Only, it’s not quite heat, but something more like hate. It feels good.)
Fact: Sam doesn’t drink. Not much, not often.
Fact: this is a goddamn balance game and Sam isn’t about to lose.
She steels her face against the bitter taste of each swallow, crushes the Solo cup a little more forcefully every time. One. Two. Three. She starts to feel it by four, but, How you doing over there, LaRusso? And, well. She’s not about to stop.
“I could do this all day,” she says, slurring only slightly, and Tory tilts her head like she doesn’t believe it, and someone hands her a shot of vodka.
The smell throws her—sharp, like nail polish remover—and she starts to shake. Tory watches her, smug, expecting her to fall and that’s all Sam needs. She draws on a lifetime of practice to center herself, meets Tory’s eyes, and downs the shot expertly. Tory’s smirk disappears, and Sam’s just thrown a significant amount of alcohol directly onto the nascent blaze starting to spread through her body, and it feels really good.
Tory falls. The fire starts scorching Sam’s skin.
“Guess somebody couldn’t hold their liquor, huh?” and Tory’s eyes are staring unadulterated hatred, and God, she wants to feel like this all time.
She’s winning, that’s what this is. She’s striking harder. The world is spinning and her vision’s blurring, but whatever, she knows enough about winning to know you have to press the advantage when you have one.
Of course, that’s when she goes too far.
She’s drunk, and Miguel is there, and that would be the ultimate final point, wouldn’t it? Stealing Miguel away, taking him back? Showing the whole world he never loved Tory, and because Tory never really had Miguel, she never really had anything in the Valley. It would destroy her. It would destroy her. Sam kisses him.
And it feels wrong.
It feels cold.
Cold like all-too-familiar liquid lead sinking from her lips to her stomach, sapping the heat from her bones. It’s not Robby who she thinks about when she pulls away. It’s not anybody, at first. She’s just focused on the way her fingertips have suddenly stopped tingling, why her limbs feel heavier, why her thoughts are sluggish and her face feels like stone.
Robby comes next: sweet and noble and concerned, yes, but also handsome and trusting and steady and funny and what has she done?
Miguel has time to say, “We shouldn’t have…” before she thinks about Tory. (It would destroy her.) Tory, and how she doesn’t want to end it—this, whatever this is, that’s made her feel alive for the first time in years—she doesn’t want it to end. Not truly. Not permanently.
What have I done?
She doesn’t know it yet, but her regret comes too late.
(Tory hates. And when she hates, she fights.)