Claire stood in the middle of the purple shag rug in her new dorm and looked around. The room was far too Massie-esque. She felt like she'd just moved to Westchester again and was re-living those first few months of terror, in a house that was stiff and impersonalized.
Blech.
Improvements were needed. Badly.
She started by putting up a row of four white metal hooks in her corner of the room, in the same corner as the mini-kitchen. She hung her camera on one, some jewelry on the next, a red plastic Chinese takeout box (filled with Hershey's Kisses in wrapped different colored foils) on the third, and a Betsey Johnson tote bag that Massie had bought her on the last one. Then she put pictures of her and her friends, both Florida and Westchester, on her nightstand and desk. She put her old pale blue fleece blanket on her bed, violating Massie's strict purple-pink-and-white-only rule. She began introducing new touches of blue everywhere she could: blue "Seabreeze" candles on her night table in place of a lamp (that got moved to her desk), a pad of blue sticky notes on her desk, blue letter magnets spelling out "Massie, Alicia, and Claire's Room!" on Massie's purple magnetic dry erase board. She sighed and sat back on her bed, surveying the room.
Massie burst in. "Kuh-laire!" Claire flinched. She'd forgotten that Massie would probably be furious with her. "Massie, I-""Finally! You unpacked. God. I thought you were actually going to leave the room in its Massified state!" Massie laughed at her improvised word.
"Told ya," Alicia said from behind her.
"Where were you?" Claire asked, relieved that Massie seemed to like the new decor.
"Oh, there's a new Ranch 99 around the corner," Massie said airily. She and Alicia were loaded with brown paper bags, looking calm, as though they always shopped at lower-end Asian markets.
Claire fought the urge to laugh. Massie and Alicia, shopping at the grungy Ranch 99 shopping market? The image was almost too much for Claire.
"We got food!" Alicia added, and set the bags over in Claire's improvised kitchen. "See?" She tugged them down to reveal ready-made sushi, loads of strawberry Pocky, some shrimp dumplings (Massie was starting to not eat meat), and tons of seaweed-wrapped crackers.
"Um…I know what those are"-Claire pointed at the sushi, Pocky, and dumplings-"but what the heck are those?"
"No clue," Massie said, and looked at Alicia.
Alicia grabbed Massie's bag, which had little packets of seaweed and small rolls with cheddar cheese baked into them. She unloaded those too before explaining, "Those are crackers, sort of. They're wrapped in nori."
"And nori is…?" Massie asked.
"Nori is the Japanese word for seaweed." Alicia rolled her eyes. "Am I the only one who signed up for Japanese?"
"Yes," Massie and Claire said at the same time.
"The rest of us were in French or Spanish, like normal people," Massie said, smirking.
"Oh, yeah. You're reeeeeaaal normal," Alicia shot back, drawing out "real."
"Yup," Claire and Massie said back.
"Well, I am," Claire corrected herself. "I don't know about you guys…"
"Shut up!" Alicia cried automatically, shaking her head like there was a fly in her hair.
"Kuh-laire! That was so mean, and totally…un-Claire-ish." Massie's eyes shone wickedly.
Claire panicked for a moment. Was that too much? She'd heard the things they tossed at each other, and hadn't thought her comment was too bad, but…
Then Massie broke out in a smile. "I love it."
Claire exhaled in relief, her white-blonde side bangs blowing up. "God, you scared me!"
"Mmhm. I believe that was the point." Massie nodded and got up. She stalked off into the bathroom, where she dropped down on the pink-cushioned bench and began to unpack a black Coach makeup case. "Kuh-laire? Leesh? Get your butts in here! I'm not unpacking alone!"
Claire looked at Alicia before she got up. "I don't get it. Did I piss her off or not?"
Alicia shrugged, and walked off to join Massie.
Claire sighed, and her bangs flew up again. Claire smoothed her hair before joining them.
"Hey! Don't you dare throw out my GAP lipgloss! MASSIE!" Claire stomped her foot.
"Point one for Massie!" Alicia drew an invisible number one.
"Kuh-laire, we need to take you shopping ay-sap if you panic that much over GAP gloss."
"Point two for Massie!" She drew a two in the air.
"MASSIE! They don't make that color anymore!" Claire shouted at her friend, staring at the trash wistfully.
"Point one for Kuh-laire." Alicia drew another one.
"And they shouldn't. It was absolute eye-poison."
"Point three for Massie!"
"Still…"
"Kuh-laire, build a bridge-"
"And get over it. I know, I know."
"Point four for Massie! She wins, with a four-three advantage!"
"Don't I always win?"
"Point five! Kuh-laire has been Massie-kurred!"
"Okay, Leesh, that was lamer that Kuh-laire's GAP lipgloss."
A/N: Eep! Suck-tastic ending…sorry. -.- My ending was lamer than Massie's diss AND Kuh-laire's lip gloss all rolled into one huge ball of sucktasticality! Okay, I'm just making it worse. I'll shut up now. PS, a hidden significance: TPC was supposed to make the newbies unpack their room as part of the hazing! They're slacking off…
