SATURDAY, 9:35 AM: THE 4TH FLOOR LOUNGE OF THE WEST WING OF THE RESIDENCE HALL
"Now that all of you signed in, let's go over the floor rules." Carmela presided at a podium from the front of the room, leaning her elbows into the wood, gazing at her subjects. Seems like mostly freshmen this year, not a weight over 250. Nice. Freshmen are fun. What a blessing for her senior year. "As you may already know, my name is Carmela Márquez Mencia. I am your RA. This means I run things around here. THAT is the first rule." Carmela turned to the white board behind her and grabbed a blue dry-erase marker from its tray. She wrote "#1: I AM IN CHARGE" in big letters on it. As she wrote, her rump and armflab jiggled slightly. She liked that. She turned back to the congregation. "This is the most important rule. You do what I tell you, and I do what I want. For example, you may have noticed that I've taken all of your muffins from your welcome baskets. I did this because I could, and because I like muffins. I'll be eating all of them. You can't have them back. Now, while I am the person in power and my power is absolute, this will be the only time I abuse that power unprovoked. But understand that if you break the rules, ESPECIALLY rule 1, I will not hesitate to requisition your property, put you under indentured servitude, or mete out your punishment in any other way I see fit. Is that understood?" The room grumbled with "yes"es and "yeah"s as Carmela put her hands on her hips. "Good." She picked up a clipboard from her podium. "Now here are the other rules straight from the Buttercombe student handbook..."
As Carmela paced across the front of the room like a navy general, reading out every minute syllable of the residence hall rules (boring shit like "the trash cans must never be more than 85% filled" and "showers must only last 20 minutes maximum") Catie Ranganathan and Dee Saurel whispered to each other in the back of the room. "I hate this fuckin' bitch." "I know right? We just got here and she's already getting on my nerves." Both were the only seniors in the room other than Carmela, transfers from out of state. Catie and Dee were best friends and essentially sisters from a young age, attached at the hip since elementary school. After, let's say, an "incident" involving her parents' in-ground swimming pool, underage drinking, and lots and lots of green Jello mix, Dee was sent off to Buttercombe as a means of straightening her out and getting her away from the "bad influences" she'd been hanging out with. Of course, Catie was heartbroken to find this out and begged her very permissive folks to send her away too, a request they happily obliged. And so here they were, both far away from home, getting lectured about how much dust they can let accumulate on the tops of their wardrobes.
"So now," Carmela started, pulling a padded rolling chair from beside her and sitting and straddling it, back to her chest, "we're gonna get to know each other. Your floormates are going to be great friends of yours, I'm sure of it. We're gonna go around the room and you're gonna tell us your name, your year, where you're from, and three facts about yourself. Three facts, you ask? Why three? Because I said so. I'm not letting you off the hook. Who wants to start?"
...And silence. A thin freshman with dyed blue hair coughs, but says nothing.
Carmela clears her throat and rolls a little on her chair, which creaks under her bulk. "I guess I'll start and we'll go clockwise. Ahem, I am Carmela Márquez Mencia, which you should know if you were paying attention, God help you if you don't. I am a senior, but I want to try and go for a fifth year because I love it here so much." Dee looked to her friend and made a mock gag motion with her finger and her mouth. They giggled silently. "I'm from Philadelphia, but I was born in Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic. Three facts about myself: my favorite food is empanadas, but the idiots in the cafeteria can't make Latin American food for shit here so I haven't had one in a looooong time, when I graduate I want to pursue either criminal justice or law in my higher education, and if you want to get on my good side I DO accept bribes. Okay, that's me. You next."
Eventually the finger turned to Catie. She put on a faux-"happy to be here" voice, but everyone could tell she wasn't too jazzed. "Hi, I'm Catherine Ranganathan, but you can all call me Catie. I'm a senior, transferred from Ohio, which is coincidentally also where I'm from. I, uh, I guess I wanna go into culinary school or business or something so I can own a restaurant like my oldest brother. I used to play softball at my old school. And… Oh! My family on my dad's side is Bengali." Carmela's ears perked up at the word "culinary". She looked the girl over: she was about her height with dark hair that complimented her tan skin, styled into a long ponytail that rested on her left shoulder. She had big brown eyes and angular, groomed eyebrows, very much on fleek. She was a little pudgy, mostly on her broader than average hips, but very small for a senior. Carmela made a mental note to keep an eye on her. Those cooking skills could come in handy…
Then was Dee's turn. "Do I have to?", she muttered to her friend, who elbowed her without looking, smiling a big fake smile. "Fine." She made no effort to conceal how much she didn't want to be here. "I'm Dee Saurel. My transcript says my name is Mary Saurel, but it's wrong. My name is Dee. I'm also a senior and I also transferred from Ohio. Do I have to say three facts? Can't I just say one?"
Carmela looked unamused. "Three facts." This chick looked like a troublemaker. She had a late-2010s alt-girl look to her: dyed blonde hair messily done up into two pigtails, a black choker, wireframe circular glasses that probably weren't prescription, a septum piercing rotated out of symmetry, strong eyeliner, black lipstick, pale white skin. She wore a black leather jacket over her uniform and was stick thin, a few inches shorter than her friend.
She ran through quickly, to get it over with. "Ugh. I'm here because I turned the pool into jello. I didn't come to this school on my own free will. When I graduate I don't want to do anything."
Carmela made another mental note: this girl's gonna break a lot of rules. She'll have her worshipping her 24/7 by the end of all the punishment she'll have to mete out. She couldn't wait.
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