Blood, Sweat, and Schradieck

Chapter Five - Will

It's been a long day, Will reflects as he unlocks the door to his, Horace's, and George's room. He flicks on the light. He's not surprised his two roommates aren't there. George's had extra quartet practices every night for the past two weeks, and last time Will saw Horace, the bigger boy was holed up in the library, frantically cramming for their upcoming Geometry test. Which, Will thinks ruefully, he should also be studying for. But not right this minute. He just wants to relax right now.

He spent all day in the Conservatory building. Between classes, his piano lesson, and practice, he didn't have time for lunch. On his way back to the dorm, he stopped in at the dining hall to grab a late dinner.

Will dumps his heavy backpack on the floor next to his desk, rubbing his aching shoulders, and kicks off his shoes. He clambers up onto his loft bed and opens his laptop. Will's never been able to afford a computer before, and he has to admit it's nice to have one. After collecting his share of the prize money from the Ensembles competition the month before, he'd decided to invest in one.

Will quickly logs into his email, scanning the screen. He clicks open an email from Halt, reminding him that his lesson tomorrow has been changed from 1:00 to 2:30, because Halt has a faculty meeting. Gilan has sent him a list of personal questions that he insists affect his composition. There are several email reminders from his academic teachers about assignments and papers with upcoming due dates - including the Geometry test Will is currently avoiding studying for.

There's also an email from the Conservatory. Will clicks on it and reads it curiously. It's announcing a new feature on the school website. According to the email, students can log in and access chat rooms. The Conservatory is hoping it will promote inter-student relationships and networking. You can create your own chat rooms for classes and things like that, if you want to study as a group or if you have questions during homework, or you can just talk online to other students.

Following the instructions in the email, Will accesses the Conservatory website. He clicks on the chat room feature, which takes him to a screen that asks for his student ID number. After he enters it, the website invites him to create a username.

This takes Will a while. He can't seem to come up with anything. 'theappleandthearrow' is already taken, and everything else he thinks of seems lame, so he just ends up using 'willtreaty50.'

After he decides on that, the website admits him to the chat rooms. Scanning the lists of users, Will's surprised how many students are using it, considering it's a brand new feature. He glances through the Geometry class chat room, where there's a whole group of students bemoaning the upcoming test and quizzing each other on formulas. He sees someone called 'theoakleafknight' right in the thick of the complaining. He's pretty sure that's Horace. The old legend is one of his roommate's favorite stories.

Will's German class has its own chat room, and one of the other students has decided to start a discussion completely in German, so Will quickly clicks out of that one. Then Will enters one of the open chat rooms. He spots a conversation completely made out of seemingly random combinations of numbers, capital letters, and lowercase letters. After looking a little more closely, he realizes it's chess notation, and he's watching a game in progress. 

A few minutes later, he spots 'gilanthegreat' and gets into a short online sarcastic argument about how the answer to the personal questions Gilan sent him actually will affect the composition. 

Then, Will sees a conversation with just one line.

evanlyn12: Anybody just want to talk? Looking for a new friend.

Will shrugs. Why not?

willtreaty50: Hi evanlyn12.

The response is almost immediate.