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Really. Really?! Did she really have to stay in the dorms, at the school? And all of this because her father had caught her sneaking off to find Sue? ... It just wasn't #$*#ing fair. Amara scowled, and adjusted her weight from one foot to the other, shifting how the little cat carrier on her hip. Classy was mewling, confused and disoriented by their journey. It was a $*#% good thing that she was not carrying her luggage, as she might have thrown something at this point. There was an entire case full of shoes (not all of her shoes, of course... just a tiny portion of her collection), three wardrobe bags full of dresses, sarees, and the like, and a couple of cute little suits, and assorted luggage filled with necessities and everyday wear. Which, as it happened, unfortunately included her uniform.

'Mara sighed. At least the uniform was no change. Moving into the dorms seemed a little extreme, but daddy dearest was feeling fussy. ... That meant that if she didn't go along with his crazy scheme, she would be $%$#ing forced to get another job, and she didn't want one during her senior year. Luggage dropped off in front of the appropriate room, she dared to venture inside. ... Well, venture wasn't quite the word, so much. Venture would have involved not squeezing through the door with carrier on hip, but this did. So it was more like oozed through the door. ... Kind of.

"What the $#@? ... You're my roommate?" They'd given her a roommate? Really? All of these indignities and she had to share a tiny, miserable room... with Khalla? Khalla of the sweet, dulcet tones, and bambi eyes. ... Okay, maybe that wasn't sounding so bad, except that there would almost assuredly be prissy, goody-goody attitude attached to those bambi eyes. Bleh. The servant who had accompanied her set her luggage inside, and departed without so much as a goodbye, and she felt her mood worsen by the moment. Oh it just $%$@ing figured. Sue was going to pay for this, somehow. Somehow he had brought this all on her, despite being nowhere near Crystal, and out of reach. Obviously, this was his revenge for the gift of kitten; a gift which currently resided in the carrier, and mewed.

Okay, see, there was no way to get mad at that without coming off as a major #$*@#, and while Amaravati might well be considered a $@$%@, she didn't really want to start things off with her roommate that way. So, instead of freaking out as per standard, she calmly set the cat carrier down on the unoccupied bed. "... Yes, I have a cat. She's a kitten, actually. A Mau kitten. Her name is Classy." Sue had named her, and Amara had decided that the name would suit her as well as anything else. Certainly, the kitten was classy. She'd remembered not to feed her before taking her in the carrier this time, so Classy wasn't going to barf all over the floor. The last time, the kitten had barely missed her shoes, narrowly avoiding disaster on an epic, hitherto unseen scale.

Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and tsunamis could not compare to kittened shoes. They truly #%#*ing could not. Oh my god, was the kitten making that hacking sound again? "NO! Bad kitten! You do not have a hairball, $*@#it, you do not! Do not pretend that you do. That is not okay, Classy." Staring at horror at the little monster who masqueraded as a cat, Amara shook her head. "... I swear to god, kitten, if you end up puking in my shoes..." If she puked in her shoes, she was going to Sue's, and there was no two ways about that. ... She might be going to Sue's anyway, but hey.

This was Important, with a capital I. Kittens Did Not Puke In Shoes. ... And if they did, there would be hell to pay. "Eh? Wh-- Oh, uhh, yes. I think I might need help unpacking," she said, realizing that given the space involved, she might have overdone things a little. But really, she'd packed barely anything at all. If the Crystal Academy could not cater to ladies of quality, then it needed to reconsider its priorities, and set itself straight. Or rather, they needed to give her another room all to herself. See, that would have been a perfect solution. Was the girl smiling at her again? With a purely internal sigh, Amara tried on a smile of her own. If it came across as anything but sincere, that was not for lacking of effort on her part.

Blinking, she remembered something from their previous conversation. "So, did you ever try that recipe out?" Yes, yes... good. Make friends, yadda yadda, make her father proud-- check. Except she wasn't so sure that that look on Khalla's face meant friendship. The smile looked strained, and that was probably a bad sign. $%#*it, she just wasn't good at this kind of thing. Show off, okay. Dress nice, okay. Socialize? ... That was where she was running into trouble. To date, Sue was her only friend, and a somewhat indifferent friend if she were to be honest with herself. Sure, they were going to the Prom together (he had better #%#*ing remember that, #*@$it), but beyond that he had no plans to meet up with her.

From the carrier, Classy mewled pitifully, and 'Mara sighed, closed the door, and retrieved the kitten, holding her carefully away from her shoes just in case.

But... but she hadn't been yelling. Amara didn't yell at her kitten. ... Okay, maybe there had been a slight raising of voice, but that wasn't the same thing, was it? She was pretty sure it wasn't the same thing. "I wasn't yelling," Amaravati said, quite suddenly feeling sullen and sulky. Getting chided for doing something which she felt she hadn't done did not put her in any sort of mood to be friendly. Of course, the kitten was now purring and rubbing up against her hand, so maybe everything would be all right.

She ignored Khalla in favor of Classy for a moment, giving the tiny Mau scratches behind her ears. "That's right, kitten, I wasn't yelling, was I?" Amara had the embarrassing habit of talking to her cat. ... Hey, cat owners did that, didn't they? She wasn't alone in it, that was for $%$% sure. One thing about being sulky is that she didn't swear quite as much. That had to do with the fact that most sulks followed her mother chiding her.

Khalla used that precise chiding tone, if perhaps softer than her mother might have. Debating whether she ought to follow the girl's advice, Amara eventually settled on plopping the kitten onto her shoulder. The kitten, unprepared for such a move, dug her little claws in. Scowling at Classy for a moment, she waggled her finger at the kitten. "Hey, cut that out. Just hold on, all right?" Kittens could $#*#ing learn to cling in reasonable ways, $*%$it.

"... You forgot?" Somehow, that was disappointing. It figured, but it was disappointing. Oh well. It wasn't like she'd expected the girl to remember, had she? Miss goody-goody appeared to masquerade quite well as Miss Airhead. Right, see, that was probably unfair. She needed to learn to be fair, except... she kind of didn't want to. Fair meant that she had to relax her temper, and that was like asking snow to fall in Southern California. Yeah, not happening.

Glancing around the closet, she debated how well things would fit, and decided that she could install a shelf at the top, and a hook on the inside of the door, and be okay. "Eh, it should fit in here okay, I guess. Maybe I should get some drawers." Not a bad plan, there, really. The chest of drawers could probably go between the bed the the desk, or possibly the desk and the lamp. ... Hmmn. "We can just hang the wardrobe bags in the closet first... save us time. I can take things out as needed later on." Through it all, the kitten clung to her shoulder, and burrowed into her purple hair as though she had a right to be there.

Bloody kitten.

The kitten was going to drive her ^%#@ing crazy. Apparently Classy seemed to think that she belonged with Amara. ... Well, probably only because Sue wasn't around to prattle at. Not that Amara had any idea that Sue could be prattled at by a kitten, but hey, the kitten did tend to be a lot more noisy when he was around. ... She sort of regretted that train of thought when the kitten made a plaintive mewl into her ear. "... $#%#it, cat!" Ooops. Inside voice.

She had to remember to use her inside voice. "I mean, stop that, Classy." Sigh. This wasn't getting any better with practice. As much as she could put on a veneer of gentility and civility when she was actively in class or interacting with a classmate, there were limits. Classy, apparently, was one of those limits personified. Plucking the kitten off of her shoulder, she deposited her on the bed. "There. Settle down. We'll get something set up for you in a minute, okay?"

Heaven knew Sue would raise a fuss if she mistreated the cat. One mutinous look and a barely suppressed sound of frustration later, she was back to the task of getting her clothing into the space provided, assisting Khalla. "Don't sweat it. It's not like you promised, or anything." Who promised to use a cupcake recipe anyway? Amaravati was pretty sure that it took a certain level of insanity to do that. Honestly, as unstable as she might appear to be, she was also convinced that she was one of the very few sane students at the Crystal Academy.

That was probably because a good majority of the rest felt the need to have a stiff upper lip about everything. All the god$#@$ time, even. They tended to also get this look like they'd smelled something unpleasant every time she so much as hinted at some sort of swearword, or another. "Eh, the dresser is going to be essential," she said firmly, deciding that she would need to take care of that really, really soon. "I hardly took anything with me, and look how little space there is?"

Right, so... first order of business: retrieve the cat, and do something useful with her. In this case, look her over and try to figure out if there's something visibly wrong with her. "So, where should the litterbox go? I know it's unpleasant to have one in general, but I don't really have much of a choice. If I leave her at home, they'll forget to feed her." Her parents had this alarming tendency to just simply overlook pets. That was the thing about small animals; they didn't live through being overlooked in quite that way.