That was much shorter than I expected, I was thinking we would ask me a lot of questions. But, I was already accepted to the school, and my interview stage was over, so now that I think about it, there was no reason for the meeting to actually be longer than that. I was expecting to meet Mr.Carr outside of the door, but he wasn’t there. So I look around expecting to find him in the public washroom on this floor, but I am not able to locate him. So I walk down the long corridor and around the corner, and look down over the railing. Just as I arrived at the edge of the tall wooden railing, Mr.Carr and a uniformed man, who appeared to be an employee at the school, walked in through the double doors, carrying all of my luggage, I could tell they were. I quickly hurry down the staircase to help them get it to the elevators. I can’t hide my excitement as I am running down the stairs, soon I will be able to see my dorm, walk around campus, and meet some friends! When I reach the bottom of the staircase and catch my breath, I call out to Mr.Carr, “Why did you leave me behind at the office, I was looking all over for you?” I was surprised at my words, right when they came out of my mouth I regretted them, I was speaking to him as if he was my peer. I definitely didn’t want to disrespect a teacher. But to my surprise he said “I’m sorry, I was expecting it to go on for another ten minutes.” The fact that he didn’t perceive my comment as disrespectful made me feel quite a bit better. In a school this prestigious, if you disrespect a teacher, you could be expelled immediately! And that is only one of the many incredibly strict rules at Nordington Prep. I do not agree with most of them, but to get the best education possible, I will do anything! To fulfill my dream and become an I take two of my largest bags and wheel them down to the elevator. This time we walk past the elevators, down another long corridor, and arrive at another set of elevators, that look very similar to the last one. The elevator is only on the 2nd floor when we arrive. The elevator doesn’t take long to zip down to our floor. But, to my surprise, when it opens up, there is a girl standing there, not just any girl though. The most beautiful girl I have ever seen. It was as if the room lit up when I saw her. My eyes were locked on her. Time seemed to stop as I stared directly into her hazel eyes, until she finally walked passed me only giving me a slight smile and saying “Excuse me,” in a soft british accent. I quickly came back to reality after she had passed, and continued into the elevator with my luggage. I press the 8 button, and it lights up. “Wow, you’re on the top floor,” Mr.Carr says. “They have a nice view of the whole campus.” I nod and smile. I am still shaking, from seeing that beautiful, beautiful girl, and I don’t think I should try to speak. I elevator is quite quick. It seems to be one of the only parts of the building that is modern, out of what I’ve seen so far. The elevator came to a quick, but smooth stop and Mr.Carr, the other employee and I pulled my luggage through the hallways around corners and to my dorm, room 1486. I was about to insert my room card into the door, when Mr.Carr stopped me. “Wait, you don’t want to scare your roommate, lets knock first.” he says. So I slip my card back into my pocket, and knock on the door three times, but there was no answer. I do it again and again until someone finally comes to the door. There was a tall, lanky kid standing at the door. He wore a red and white striped t-shirt that was noticeably short for him, and a pair of blue slacks. You could tell he didn’t spend much money his street clothes. But who would blame him. Most of the time you would be wearing a uniform anyways, but since it is the weekend you can wear your street clothes, or civis as the students here would say. “How may I help you?” He says, with his teeth clenched. He could tell he was upset. I was about to open my mouth to speak when Mr.Carr said “This here, is your new roommate, Kevin.” He pointed his index finger directly at me. Still, with an upset look on his face, he sticks a hand to greet me. “Hello, my name is Morgan.” he says in a British accent much like Mr.Carr’s. I reach out to shake his hand and say “My name is Kevin, Kevin Roberts.” I murmur.
“Excuse me, I couldn’t hear you, could you please speak up?” he asks.
“My name is Kevin Roberts.” I say a bit louder.
“Well, come on in, Kevin.” he says. He opens the door wider so I can fit my luggage through the door. Once everyone, and my luggage are in. He lets the door go, and goes and sits down at what looks to be a desk. Though I can’t really tell with all of the stuff covering his desk. Including 3 computer monitors. I quickly look around the room. It is disgusting, covered with dirty clothes and food wrappers. “Hmm... where would you like us to put these?” Mr.Carr said. I looked around the room, and found a decently clean spot. “How about over there?” I say as I point to a spot, that isn’t covered in clothes and dirt. I lift up 2 of my bags and struggle to carry them over to the only spot where I can actually see the carpet. The two others follow me. The other staff member is the first to leave, followed by Mr.Carr who says nothing before he is gone, out of sight, of the room. I sigh. I turn towards Morgan and look at what he’s doing. He is working on his largest monitor. But, I can’t tell what he is doing. I squint my eyes and walk up behind his chair. By the looks of it, he is doing some computer programming. Not only just computer programming, but very advanced stuff. I have done some very basic programming, but nothing at the level of what he’s doing. “Hey, what are you doing?” I ask, as if just to confirm I’m right. But, I receive no answer. I can tell he is very focused. So I just walk over to my bed. Well I assume it’s my bed, since it is the one that is made. I sit down, and take everything in. I’m in a new country, in a new school, without my parents. And then I start thinking about that girl again. That amazing, beautiful girl. The one I saw in the elevator. I can only hope I will ever see her again. There are over 2000 students at this school, so there is only a small chance she will be in my classes, or even my grade. I look back over at Morgan. He is still, doing the exact same thing, hard at work, with what I believe is computer programming. I look at the clock mounted on the side of the wall, 9:00 am. It’s still very early. But, I still feel tired, and not up to going around on campus. So I walk over behind Kevin and tap him on the shoulder. “Hey, Kevin, what are you doing?” I asked right in his ear, just trying to get a conversation going. He turns to me with a disgusted look on his face. “Can’t you tell I’m busy?” he asks. “Why don’t you go unpack your bags.” He motions towards the pile of luggage on the floor. “Where can I put my clothes?” I ask. He points towards a closet and then towards the dresser. “And, also, couldn’t you clean up your room?” I ask. But he just ignores my comment and focuses back on his computer. I unpack my bags and put all of my clothes away. I also put my electronics on my bedside table, hang my pictures on the wall, and put my dental care in the washroom, which is a huge mess as well. It is nearly 11:00 by the time I am done. And, Morgan is just getting off of his computer. “Hey, wanna come grab some breakfast?” he asks. I’m not very hungry, and I think I need to get some sleep. But, it is important to make some friends while I’m here, and I need to go onto campus and socialize. “Yes.” I say hesitantly. He grabs his laptop, and we’re ready to go. “So where are you from?” he asks as we are walking towards the elevator. “I’m from a small city in Ontario,” I say, “Near Toronto.” He nods.Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
125,018 Literary Works • 672,855 Reviews
Hey AlexWaterfall,
I’m here with the second review!
Since I concentrated more on the technical things in the last review, I’m going to try and mainly leave those aside in this one so that I can focus more on the story. However, I recommend that you read the first one before this one. I think that quite a bit of it applies to this chapter, as well as the first. ^^
So far, we haven’t seen all that much of the story. On the other hand, I still like some of what you’ve shown me so far – Kevin has travelled across to England to get into a new school, and now he has met his guidance counsellor, Cory and Morgan. However, I do have some problems with this so far; those being that so much of this is taken up by unnecessary details, not leaving quite enough room to really define the characters and create a clear picture in my mind. I talked about this a bit in the last review, though, so I’ll leave it there.
Firstly, I want to talk about the school. So far, as a reader, I’ve been informed that it’s a particularly prestigious school in England – a boarding school with over two thousand students attending it. Yet at the same time, I don’t feel as if I have quite enough information about this school. I’d like just a little more – why does it have a ‘medieval’ corridor? How does it work? What is a little of its history? These little details could all easily be slipped in somewhere in the story, without taking up too much space or distracting the reader from the story itself.
Next, on to the characters.
Firstly, we have your MC – Kevin. I like Kevin – in some ways. In other ways, I think he still has a long way to go to being developed as a character. You’ve established that he’s intelligent, and a few other parts of his personality. However, there are a few parts of his personality/development which bother me. The first is the way Kevin acts with people. So far he hasn’t shown himself to be very social, which is fine if it’s a part of his personality. However, it seems he is antisocial to a very large extreme at the moment – he doesn’t mention ever having friends or feeling any kind of warmth or even particularly strong dislike towards anyone, even his family. I understand so far that he doesn’t have much liking towards Cory or Morgan, but surely, somewhere, a part of him seeks connection with someone, wants to make friends, or at the very least misses someone at home? Even those who aren’t particularly social are usually conscious of it to a degree.
Which brings me to the next point: that of the ‘beautiful, beautiful girl.’
You’ve made it very clear that Kevin likes this girl, but I don’t think you’ve included much description of her. To be completely honest, unless Kevin is under some kind of supernatural enchantment (and I don’t get the feeling that he is) I think this is a little dramatic and overdone. It almost gets on my nerves how Kevin sees her, does not describe her as much other than ‘beautiful’ and immediately states that he is in love with her. All characters have their flaws, but they should at least be well set out and understandable.
I have a few suggestions for what you could do to bring this ‘beautiful girl’ into the story in a more effective and interesting way.
First of all, you should be careful not to make it too cliché, or not make the character too full of angst. This generally just annoys readers. I also don’t think it’s reasonable for Kevin to declare such strong feelings about her after just a couple of glimpses of her. It’s reasonable for him to see her and think she is beautiful – but first I want to ask you this question – what is it that makes her beautiful to him? Is it the way she moves, the shadows on her skin, the expression in her eyes and on her face? The way she holds herself, her voice? Some of these things in a person can make another wish to connect to them – but still, ‘love’ is too much of an exaggeration.
If you really want to bring love into it, I suggest letting Kevin meet her. I want to see what her personality is like, whether Kevin wants to connect to her, etc. Then, maybe, if they connect well, or at least spend sufficient time together, it might be reasonable to bring love into things.
Moving on – another character I wanted to talk about was Morgan.
So far, you’ve portrayed him as quite obnoxious to the point that it’s almost not realistic. For some reason, I just can’t seem to create a clear picture of it in my mind when reading it. You can keep Morgan as the kind of character he is, but I think you need to try and paint it for the reader a little more clearly. Does he show a certain dislike and unwillingness to connect with Kevin? Perhaps he could be a little more open to friendship at first, but turn out to be quite unfriendly? I don’t know why, but to me Morgan just doesn’t seem as solid a character as he should be. Try spending a little time thinking about Morgan – what would he do in certain situations? What are his motivations, his background, his fears, his wishes? All of these things will affect how a character reacts to other characters and in different situations.
Really, I think that’s about all I can say about the story for the time being, as it only being the second chapter means there is not all that much plot to go on. I’ll go on to correct a couple of small mistakes I noticed in this chapter.
The first is that I noticed that you started to refer to Morgan as Kevin halfway through the chapter. This was only for a couple of sentences, and then you switched back to Morgan. I worked out who you were referring to, but it confused me at first and definitely needs editing.
Other than that, as last time, I noticed a few sudden and temporary switches to past tense which weren’t necessary, as well as a few grammar/typing errors and those big long paragraphs. As with the last chapter, I suggest that you run it through a word spelling/grammar check first and then take editing into your own hands and try and polish and clean it up as much as possible.
I hope this helped, and that you keep working on this,
~Niebla~