"Oh, hi! I'm in 56B, one of those annoying ones with a void floor?"

That's your first complaint? goes to war with Well it's not like there's a shortage of them. "Oof, yeah, I'm in 55B, I have a wall. I assume they have grates over them or something and you're not just stuck on the bed?" 

"They have grates and I'm going to put down a rug first thing but I bet it's going to be a really ugly rug, because it's going to be such a bitch finding a rug. I think when they next improve the procedures for this place they should let us pre-select rooms, so people can room with their friends and not just be thrown in with complete randoms."

Many people who found themselves saying that sentence would follow it with "no offense" but it hasn't occurred to Julia that complete randoms might find it offensive to be referred to as such.

None taken, he would say if she'd said 'no offense,' but since she didn't he finds himself very slightly offended. Not enough to leave, though, because now he's curious, is he somehow talking to a space alien from the planet Jupiter? Did space aliens from the planet Jupiter become a thing in the last five minutes?

"I'm not sure that'd be my top priority, honestly, if I were going to make improvements I'd raise the weight limit before anything to do with rooms."

"I think that's really expensive?" she says sort of uncertainly. "I guess it sucks if you're like Zeke - he's my classmate, he had a growth spurt and was almost too big to fit - and if it was a really high weight limit we could bring, like, televisions, and my pet dog Trisket...I think I'd take the rooms over that, though? If you live near your friends you can endure hardship together. But what's a television worth if you have to walk half a mile over to whoever's room it's set up in? And Trisket might get eaten, he's a dumb little fluffball and would chase all the mals."

????

Seriously, how do you even get to the Scholomance saying things like that???

"Well, yeah, but improvements at all are really expensive and haven't happened in decades, I figured if we were talking about unrealistic pipe dreams we might as well go all out and talk about unrealistic pipe dreams, and if you've got a high enough weight limit for a television you could bring medical supplies. And a higher weight limit would benefit everyone, not just the people who already have friends here.

--sorry, I don't think I got your name?"

"Julia! Julia Sanderson. I don't think it's unrealistic for the adults who put all this effort into us to do some more improvements now that it's the 21st century! I know we can't have internet because information malia blah blah blah but we should certainly expect better than this!" Gesture. "This is depressing! Though if you didn't bring medical supplies, that's, uh, more depressing, you're totally supposed to bring medical supplies."

Julia. Julia is a perfectly sensible name that space aliens from the planet Jupiter seem unlikely to have. This is inane. It is not more inane than pet dogs named Trisket running after mals.

"I mean, I brought as many as I could carry and still be under the weight limit, but it's not like there's a shortage of things that are important to bring, unless you feel like wearing nothing but bandages and storing your mana in an IV bag for four years which would also I think be fairly depressing."

"I brought six outfits and my makeup and art supplies and my potions and my power-sharer and some decorative lighting for my room and some enchanted spices that'll make the food taste better. And certainly I'd like to have more than six outfits, I bet I'm going to be sick of them all in a month - they are reversible fabric, so it's really twelve, and you can do a lot with accessories, and my mom said maybe I can have some of Annaka's stuff she outgrew, but still... anyway, would I love to have brought my entire travel wardrobe, yes, but I don't know that the current weight limit has us wearing nothing but bandages! New York, uh, shares with each other? So Chloe has the med-kit, and Magnus has the generator, and then we all share? That way you don't have to bring in everything you might want. Except Chloe and I can't share outfits because she's a tiny bit plus sized."

Ah. New York. Almost a space alien from the planet Jupiter, really.

(Should he expect the other New Yorkers to be like this? Probably not, this is new and exciting varieties of definitely doomed. ...he has GOT to stop having these thoughts or he's going to get himself in real trouble. Has already gotten himself in real trouble. God. Fuck.)

"The principle's familiar but I don't have an enclave and my only surviving sibling graduated six years ago, so I'm kind of on my own."

"Well, maybe you should get an enclave? It's a lot safer. Or if you don't have an enclave, you know, maybe you should get Facebook and find other kids who don't have an enclave and, like, partition out all the nice-to-haves? This place is dreary enough without having to completely go it alone!"

I am so goddamn curious what kind of world you think everyone else lives in, he does not say, because that's rude.

"Scotland doesn't really do enclaves," enmity for England echoes in his ears and does not get further than that, "and while I have ever encountered the internet it is not as easy as you would think to successfully guess who's going to get in years in advance and start on forming groups early."

(This gives the impression that he gave it a serious try, and didn't just idly consider the idea for four seconds at the age of nine, consider his father's likely response to it, and scrap it entirely. It's whatever, lying isn't the kind of sin that means anything.)

"They even have the internet in, like, Africa these days, you can do it speculatively if the official lists aren't out yet. If Zeke turned out too tall we had a plan for how to reallocate stuff and knew who was on the waitlist!"

--you know what? Trying to convince Julia that 'just form a mini-enclave over the internet with people you don't know and don't have any ties to and just trust that they'll act like the New York enclave acts, enough to not bring your own necessities' isn't a plan that works, sounds way more frustrating and pointless than just not doing that.

"Yeah, it would have been really good if I had managed it," he says instead. "But I focused on languages and combat training instead, so here we are." 

"Didn't we all, ugh. What've you got, I have English, Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, Greek, Latin, Nahuatl, and Njerep."

"English, Mandarin, Spanish, French, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Italian, Latin, Classical Chinese, Gaelic, Portuguese, Catalan, and Esperanto. In approximate order of fluency."

"Wow, someone's parents are hardasses.Or do you really like languages or something?"

It's the first real smile she's seen from him.

"Both of those. --According to me specifically they're the best and most interesting thing in the world, I'd have picked up five more if I'd had the time to learn them properly." 

(They're also the only damn thing he has ever been better than 'good enough that you don't need to spend the next six hours drilling the same motion over and over' at. These facts are not unrelated.)

"Well, do what you love, I guess. Do you want to do my language homework, I've been planning to find someone to do my homework."

He almost just agrees. He does in fact want to spend more time on languages, the ability to spend as much time as he wants on languages is easily the best thing about this place, which does not have a lot of upsides as a place.

"What'll you trade me for it?"

"Apparently you're short on first aid kits? What else are you short on, pants? Shampoo?"

Yeah, no. Not everyone has priorities from Jupiter.

"I have the necessities but there are things it'd be nice to have more of." What do you think you can get from a New Yorker who has no idea how rich she is? says the part of his brain that speaks in his oldest brother's voice. "A couple of those healing potions you mentioned?"

"Most of that's communal property, the seniors decide if we trade it. I've got some stuff that's just mine, though! Two tubes of lipstick that alert you to poisons, mascara for seeing life-force - so, seeing mals - moisturizer that also makes you feel more awake and alert..."

Holy shit. "The moisturizer, then."

"You could use it," she agrees, and pulls out one of her little two-ounce bottles - "don't use it like sunscreen, a little goes a long way. And if you fail my classes you'll owe us twice that, back, for being a liar and dealbreaker."