Sophomore Year

Words cannot really describe what my sophomore year was like, but that sure hasn’t stopped me from trying. I don’t want to make it seem like it was torture—it wasn’t—but it was hell. Or maybe my memory was lying to me a bit. But time numbs pain so I’m going to say it was pretty bad.

Jessica and I had gotten up at 6:30 to get to school at 9. An hour early. Yes, school started at 10, and yes it was very nice. The first day of school was a process for me as an incoming freshman, and my sister seemed to be repeating the process.

“How do you remember where everything is? This place is endless!” she exclaimed. The fourth floor of this cafeteria was slightly less packed then the one directly below. It was actually weird how empty it was compared to downstairs, considering that anyone would be hard pressed to not realize that it was here. There’s an open area that everyone went through in the line and there’s like four sets of stairs up to it. There is the second cafeteria on the other side of the kitchen too, but still it’s weird.

“You get used to it.”

We were going through her list of classes to make sure she knew where they all were. She was given a booklet which contained information that ranged “this really should be told to students directly instead of being in a book” to “why would anyone ever need to know this”. It also contained a map of eight of the nine floors of the building. The second basement wasn’t included because students are very rarely down there. It’s just a bunch of storage and things like the electrical, plumbing, network, etc.

Jessica flipped through the pages as she tried to optimize the route from her first to second period. Transitions are ten minutes. It can be tough to make it sometimes but it’s absolutely doable from any room to any other room after a few weeks. Teachers are generally lenient for that time.

I remember doing this process by myself. I had some help from the staff that was available before the first day of school, but it wasn’t enough. This building

The building had seven above-ground floors. The first floor was mostly car and bike parking, with the rest being the lower half of administration and security offices, and the six entryways. I never figured it out exactly, but based on the building’s footprint most people I talked to estimated the building to have something around one and a quarter million square feet of space including all of the parking and the second basement floor.

The second and above floors all had a ring of hallways giving way to nearly a hundred rooms each around the outside. The second, third, and fourth floors had things like the basketball courts (plural) and the cafeteria Jessica and I were in on the fourth floor on the inside; and there was a hallway cutting through the center on all three. All the classrooms have windows, which is nice. Things like computer and chemistry labs were also in the inside of the building. The fifth, sixth, and seventh floors were hollow in the center. There was a park on the fifth floor in the middle.

It’s so much simpler than it seems. She’ll get used to it very quickly.

I made Jessica write down the exact turns she would take. Her first period was a math class in room 634. Rooms were numbered clockwise starting from the Northwest side of the building with odd numbers on the outside of the bulding, and even numbers on the inside. Her second period was in 472, pretty much opposite corners. She had finished with her route. It was a list with only a few items that went something like:

1. Exit room and turn right.
2. Turn left to middle Eastern stairwell
3. Turn left and go down hallway, turn right at corner
4. Turn left into 472

She didn’t know it but the middle stairwells were better because there’s two of them. There’s six stairwells in the building—one in each corner, and then one in the middle of the East and West sides, which are about 50% longer. There’s more elevators there too - six instead of four each.

“That’s correct.” I said. Like I told my sister, you get used to it. I don’t need to make a list. I just know where any room number it is. The rooms in the center of the building can be confusing sometimes because they usually have multiple doors but only one number, but there’s very few of them. The numbers even perfectly cut off on each corner of the building. Each short side has 20 room numbers and the long sides 30.

“Now do the afternoon one.”

“Okay.”

This one was easier. Both classes were on the third floor. She only had to do two of these. There were four class periods per semester, two in the morning, and two in the afternoon, with two lunch periods in the middle. Students with an elective usually had one of the two used for that. Jessica had theater but that was after school due to time constraints. I had basketball practice four out of five days of the week on the second half on top of traveling to other schools for games. Theater class is in the smaller theater up on the fourth floor. It’s real easy to get to.

“That’s also correct,” I said after she finished her list.

“I don’t see why I needed to do that.”

“You’ll see when you do your first transition.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’ll see.”

It meant that up to five thousand students all trying to get from one arbitrary point to another all at the same time in ten minutes can be a bit hectic, especially when a quarter of them haven’t been in the school before today.

“The first day is just busywork. Each of the four classes goes over some section of that book.”

“Sounds fun.”

“It actually is.”

The fall semester of Sophomore year, I had Computer Science II, Literature I, Calc I, European History. First up was computer science. It was way on the 7th floor—714.

There was only one CS II class that semester but it had around 70 students in it. 714 was a very large room with round tables and screens on every wall. Each class usually follows the same format. Mr. Fletcher shows a presentation or coding demo on his laptop and the 15+ screens. The second half is time to complete our assignments, which are the majority of our coursework. Every student is also given their own laptop, so a computer lab isn’t needed, and the round tables have great elbow-room.

Everyone in that course had attended the school before, so Mr. Fletcher didn’t need to go over the first quarter of the binder, and instead he ensured everyone had their IDEs set up. He then talked about the assignments for the semester. I thought they were hard at the time but I would finish them in a quarter the time if I did them today.

Literature was way down on the second floor. All of the classes that semester were arranged from most favorite in the morning to least favorite in the afternoon. And yes that means I enjoyed Literature study more than calculus. The first half of the class was taken up by reading through the second quarter of the binder; then Ms. Lori went over the course syllabus. The reason I liked the class so much is that it wasn’t just reading and analyzing old books. No Shakespeare in sight—I CTRL+F-ed it. A sizable portion of the class was analyzing current news articles and media literacy.

I met up with Jessica on the third floor of the other cafeteria. She was under strict instructions to find a table and stay there. I knew how to look for her way better than she knew how to look for me.

“How are your first two classes?” I asked.

She looked up from her at me.

“Great! I made a friend,” she stood up.

“That is great. Who is it?”

“Her name is Jewel. She’s in my math class. The first period.”

“Do you have her number?”

“No.”

I frowned, “If you did I could meet her after we get food.”

“Oh, yes, how does that work?”

Between the two cafeterias was a three floor tall kitchen that serves three meals a day to students. Faculty and staff have their own kitchens. Jessica and I had to pay a hundred or so dollars a meal because of how much money our family makes, but most students get meals for a couple dollars or free. Breakfast isn’t served on the first day of school.

And yes, three meals a day. Students can stay in the building until 9 PM.

“You just go up, grab what you want, and swipe your ID.”

“Go up where?”

“The end of the line,” I motioned.

“That’s really long.”

“It is, but it goes fast.”

And it really did. The line formed around the edge of the cafeteria. It was over a hundred and fifty long but it took about fifteen minutes to get to the front. It usually takes less than that. Jessica wasn’t particularly chatty so I people-watched. I watched freshmen nervously get in the back of the line after finally finding the cafeteria. I remember being so confused this time last year. It took me several days to understand there was two cafeterias. It blew my mind when I learned that.

Student IDs are swiped on entry to the buffet. It’s way faster like that. You can then fill up a single tray with whatever you want, provided you have at least one fruit or one vegetable. Then you just walk out and eat. Jessica and I got split up at the entry, but I overheard the cashier attending to Jessica explain the process briefly. I guess that’s why the line was slower.

I grabbed a panini, some oven-roasted broccoli, and some mac and cheese. Jessica got a burger and fries and some strawberries. We found a table on the floor above. It was quieter up there. I noticed a lack of freshmen.

The mac and cheese the cooks make is really good. It is probably my favorite thing they make. I’m not a fan of velvety mac and cheese and this is the opposite of that. They must use really sharp cheddar.

Jessica asked me about the classes I was taking this semester. I answered.

“Oh right, Computer Science II, I remember you telling me and Josh about that.”

I gulped, “I certainly did.”

“Barely though. We drank so much.”

I ran into Tyler on the following Wednesday after school. I wasn’t old enough to drive till the spring so I had an apartment downtown where I would usually stay after school, sometimes overnight. Took some stress off my mom. Jessica had theater class every day after school, and my mom would usually pick her up after that, I would come along if I wanted to come home that night.

He saw me in the stairwell.

“Anthony?”

I turned around to see him, “Oh hey, Tyler.” It took me a second to remember his name.

He caught up to me and walked with me down the stairs.

“How have you been?” I asked.

“Fine. Haven’t seen you in a while.”

I apologized for that. His face told me he didn’t care too much.

“So where are you headed?” He tailed me down the stairwell, dodging all of the people in the way.

“Nowhere.”

“Well you have to be going somewhere.”

“Nowhere in particular then.”

“Do you wanna grab a coffee?” he asked.

I genuinely didn’t know if I wanted to.

“I was going to go to the library and catch up on some homework, but I’d rather do that, if you’d come along.”

I shrugged, “sure.”

Tyler told me that all of the coffee places anywhere near school were always way too busy after it got out, so we ventured West and ended up at an average, and no offense unmemorable, coffee shop fifteen blocks away. I’m not a coffee person so I got a “coffee” with half and half and a lot of sugar. He got a caramel something complicated that I also didn’t remember along with some fruit. We sat at a two seating high-top next to the window.

“So how have you been?” he asked after sipping his coffee.

“Decent. Managing my sister.”

“Oh right, Jessica, she’s a freshman. How is she faring?”

I scoffed, “Remember when you were a freshman?”

He chuckled and took another sip.

I’m not a coffee person, so Tyler was done with his drink before I had finished half of mine. We talked. A lot. I apologized for never getting back to him on portal and he said it was fine. We talked about school and what classes we were taking. He was in two math courses at the same time, somehow. We talked about other games he was playing. He played so many games; I just stuck to Rocket League and a few miscellaneous tidbits here and there. We talked about his girlfriend Beverly. There are so many more topics. I lost track of them all.

We talked so long that we had to leave when the coffee place closed at five. A few quick sentences yielded an agreement to continue hanging out at my apartment.

We talked so little twenty-five minute walk you’d think we were purposefully staying silent. I tried to start up conversation once but it just tapered out. He didn’t seem to interested in talking while walking. I don’t know why.

He threw himself on my couch after making a lap around the common spaces of my apartment. It was a relatively small space. The whole apartment was 1300 square feet. It had two bedrooms. Sometimes my sister or a friend would stay over.

“I’m so sleeppyyy,..” he groaned.

“I don’t remember you ordering decaf.”

“Caffeine makes me sleepy sometimes.”

“How so?” I sat on the floor leaning up against the television stand.

“It happens if I’m already tired.”

“Huh. Never heard of that.”

I was awake but caffeine and drugs in general don’t affect me too much.

Tyler jolted upward a bit suddently. It felt like he was staring at my head.

“Is your TV hooked up to the network?”

“Uh, yes, do you want to watch something?”

“If you have controllers we can play Portal.”

In saying “network,” Tyler was referencing a network that connects almost every device used by people in The Insurance Company, which is sort of half an insurance company, half crime syndicate. Don’t worry, you’ll understand more in later chapters.

“Is your XBox compatible with the remote desktop system?”

“It sure is.”

“I think my sister has some,” I turned around and dug through some of the cabinets in the TV stand, and sure enough Jessica, my sister left three Xbox One controllers there. I grabbed two and handed one to Tyler. I grabbed the remote from the TV stand as well before sitting next to Tyler.

This process is so cool. The Insurance Company set up a system of hardware and software that allowed for nearly seamless remote access to any system. My desktop computer was located at my parent’s house, but I could remote into it from this apartment. I had a three monitor setup in my room. The hardware to support this is usually in the graphics cards of computers and in the displays themselves. That included this television and apparently Tyler’s XBox.

The first step was connecting the controllers. I didn’t even know if this would work. Would it emulate the controllers on the Xbox end somehow? Maybe using a fake USB device? There wasn’t an Xbox in the TV stand so Jessica has to be connecting them somehow, but she could be using them a computer somewhere. I forgot if she had one that she used for gaming.

The process was rather simple. I just had to turn them on and the screen showed an overlay that the peripherals were connected. I handed the remote to Tyler who typed in the domain name of his Xbox, which prompted him with a password. It took about thirty seconds of him ungracefully using the unfamiliar remote to put the password in.

The home screen of his XBox came up. His last played game was some kind of medieval looking thing I don’t remember. He navigated for a bit and opened up Portal 2.

If he was sleepy before he was certainty awake now.

We ended up playing that game for several hours, then we ordered a pizza and played a couple hours more.

I do have to say, I didn’t expect to like that game so much. Not that I thought it would suck, but I was very pleasantly suprised.