"I'm going to end up jumping off a building if I have to stay in that room. I'm going to fail all of my classes. I'm not staying there." Comments like these were just some of the many empty threats that Juliette had made over the past hour. Finding out that she was supposed to spend the year sharing a dorm room with Jazmyn Clarke, Michaela Vaughn and Natalya Volkova was what Juliette would claim, was the worst thing that had ever happened to her, in her life. As if sharing a dorm with three rebels wasn't bad enough, two of them were close friends of Charlotte's, and always proved themselves to be annoying, at best. Additionally, and this was probably what had pushed Juliette into the crying that had ensued after reading her roommate assignment, was that she had done something stupid with Jazmyn only the summer. It had only been a quick make out, and in Juliette's defense, she had been drinking a lot that night, but she had been sure that she would be able to completely forget about it. What were the chances that she would end up sharing the same room as the girl this year?
"Come on, Jules. It's not that big of a deal, especially considering that you're gonna fail them all either way," Nolan joked, and although he got a smirk out of Charlotte, the glares that his mother and Juliette sent him, told him that maybe now was a good time for him to go. "Joking, joking!" he defended himself, hands in the air in a surrendering manner. Growing up in a house full of women meant that Nolan knew how especially when the girls got emotional, their claws liked to come out (sometimes even in a literal manner), and he liked his face arranged just the way it was. "But I guess this is a good time to see myself out. If you need the muscles of the family any longer, I'm just a phone call away." He gave a two finger salute to signal his departure, leaving in only enough time to catch Charlotte's eye roll, but not long enough for anyone to ask him to stay. He had done his part by carrying almost all of the girls' belongings upstairs before bringing his to his dorm, and now, he felt like his job was done, considering that Juliette's dramatics were too melodramatic for him to be of any assistance.
"I'm not staying there! Mom, I'm not staying there, make them let me switch. This is so unfair and it always happens to me and no one else! Did you see who Charlotte's living with? Some weirdo, and Victoria! She only has to have two roommates and one of them is Tori!"
"Juliette, sweetheart, you know that you have to start to learn to adjust to change. When you go off to school next year, who knows if you'll be able to choose your roommates. We know Michaela and Jazmyn, and we know that they're nice girls, aren't they, Charlotte?" Jacqueline looked to Charlotte with a "you better agree with me" look, and only because Charlotte could tell that her mother was growing impatient with the tantrum that Juliette had been throwing for the past hour since they arrived on campus, she nodded. She didn't even allow herself to smirk at Juliette and add in a comment about how Juliette had first hand experience with how nice Jazmyn could be. "Yeah, of course they're nice. They're just gonna mind their own business Jules, just chill out for a minute. This isn't an issue that you have to freak out over."
"Yeah, that's easy for you to say! You're not the one living in a room full of druggies!" Juliette snapped, shoving Charlotte as if it the girl had just come for her, with her reasonable, and pretty supportive, comment.
Charlotte sighed, here she goes again, being the nicest thing that she could think as she watched Juliette grow emotional and dramatic again. Hitting Juliette back would have been an instinctive response for Charlotte, but with her mother sitting right there, she held back and only glared in her twin's direction. Nolan had managed to wiggle out of this little family meeting, and Charlotte was pretty sure that her tolerance for her sister was growing thin enough where if she didn't excuse herself, she was going to end up giving Juliette a real reason to be crying. "Can I please go now?" she said, clearly annoyed, but doing her best to maintain the attitude as she looked to her mother with a pleading look.
"Yes, and Juliette's going to go with you," her mother responded, her tone taking a sudden, sharper turn following Juliette proving that she wasn't going to even attempt to be sensible about this. "You're going to bring Juliette up to her room, and then you two can go on your separate ways. I don't want any calls from Holly this year about anything, involving either of you." Her eyes looked to Juliette first, since she was proving to be the more problematic of the two girls today. "That includes you pestering her about changing rooms, since we've already established that it is not going to happen," she said, before looking to Charlotte, "and I swear to God, Charlotte Lena Arnault, if I hear that you've skipped class or missed curfew one time, we're going to have a problem."
"But Mom! There's no way I--" A finger in the air was enough to cut Juliette off, though it didn't wipe the pout off of her face, even as her mother stood up from the bench that the three had been sitting on, outside of the dormitory building. "This is so unfair," she mouthed to Charlotte, the pout turning into a strong glare when her mother's back was to her, as she hugged Charlotte goodbye. Juliette didn't know what her logic was, in trying to blame her horrible roommate assignment on Charlotte, but she somehow felt like her sister could be responsible for it. The smirk and cheeky wink that Charlotte sent back at her, still while clutching their mother, only ensured that feeling in Juliette, and when it was her turn to hug her mother goodbye, the emotions attached to it were less heartfelt than they normally would be, given how she actually was close with her mother. "You two remind Nolan to call me every once in a while, would you? And remember what I said - no trouble this year," Jacqueline said, before forcing both girls into a shared hug, and then turning back down the walkway that led to the guest parking lot.
"I know you're behind this," Juliette said, being the first to speak up when there mother was only just barely out of earshot. She spun around, forcing Charlotte to jog to catch up with her as they headed into their dormitory. "You just love to see me in pain, don't you? It's another one of your weird freak things."
"Yup, Juliette, you got me!" Charlotte shot back, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "All I do is think about you and how I can ruin your life, and I thought it would be really funny to pair myself up with your bitchy best friend and put you in the same room as both of my best friends, because me having the power to do that in the first place, and then me actually doing that anyway, really makes a lot of sense. Fuck, I've gotta be more discrete next time, because you're obviously the modern day Sherlock Holmes with these detective skills."
When the girls approached the elevator, they hopped onto one that was going up, and being in a small space with at least two other families, parents included, forced them to keep their bickering on mute for the moment. When they got out on the second floor, and the rest of the people continued up, it started back up just as quickly, though. "You're going to come to my room with me, just like Mom said, and you're going to tell your weirdo friends that they're not even allowed to look at me, nonetheless talk to me." Juliette continued to speed walk while talking, and only stopped abruptly in front of her dormitory door, allowing Charlotte the second she needed to catch up, when she nearly banged into a woman who she soon realized was Michaela's mother.
Charlotte had only just read Mickey's text, and taking the second to read that was what left her a few seconds behind Juliette, in arriving at her dorm. "Hey Mickey, hi Mrs. Vaughn," Charlotte said, speaking up for both of the twins, as she knew that Juliette was going to remain silent, yet not outright rude, in the face of another adult being present. "Nolan brought Juliette's things up earlier, but I'm going to help her get settled in," she said, smirking in Michaela's direction. "So, I'll see you in a bit?" she added, not wanting to keep Mickey with her mother standing right there.