Her shoulders loosen almost immediately as she takes in her best friend, who looks largely unscathed. Not being able to see her since she got sent to Barton has been utterly miserable. Surrounded by Stepford submissives who just want to have someone tell them what to do all the time, it makes her want to gag. But Julie is in her dorm room, looking at her with frenzied, concerned eyes and it warms her up from the inside out.
"If you keep misbehaving, I'll have to figure out a worse punishment," she teases back, lightly tapping the ruler on the back of Julie's hands as she takes a seat next to her.
"M'okay," she echoes with a similar shrug. "Cops couldn't try nothin', not with my parents right there." Quite possibly the only good thing to come out of that night and Susie doesn't want to waste time thinking about shit that never happened. "Have you talked with Frankie and Joey? Are they good?" She hasn't heard from any of her friends since her exile to the upper echelons of the city and it's been driving her stir crazy.
A ruler on her knuckles holds a particularly appealing bite, light a tap as it is. She finds herself wishing it'd gone a bit harder. She's always had a fascination with sharp pain - the scraping of skin, the sting of hot tin on the edge of a lighter. She used to drag her knuckles hard along the rough brick of her school building's exterior - it lit her brain up in a way that was as pleasant as it was unpleasant, and it was a nice shorthand for her brain - pulled two different ways always and forever.
Julie nods, a quick and quiet shimmer of movement that shakes the hair out of her eyes before it falls back into them, and she reaches one of those scabbed up hands up to brush some of Susie's hair out of her face.
Then her face darkens when Frank and Joey come up. "Joey's layin' low with me. I don't know where the fuck Frank got off to..."
She doesn't wanna come out with her thoughts on Frank - how she's pretty sure he was gonna throw them all under the bus to get out of the whole situation. It pissed her off to think about and she didn't wanna bug Susie with it.
Flopping into Susie's bed, she kicks her sneakers off and swings the artfully torn legs of her jeans up onto the bed, resting her head back into her crossed hands, making herself at home and making eyes at Susie.
"Cushy little room. Surprised you ain't got a roomate."
She tries to change the subject.















