A Pack Of His Own (Ch. 01)

Chapter One

Everyone had told Will Bowland that the University of Colorado at Boulder would be a great place to get an education, and while he'd felt that they were right from the very moment of his arrival on campus years ago, nobody had told him that it would also be the place where the wheels came off on what he thought he knew about life, and where everything seemed to go in an entirely different direction.

When he'd gone off to college, his first thought was that it would be a chance for him to have a completely new start away from all of the baggage that had hounded him for most of his high school year, but it seemed like for all that was new, some things hadn't changed all that much.

In high school, he'd been a bit of a loner, but he'd gotten along with people well enough. All of his friends, however, had big plans that were on the other side of the country, and so he'd shown up at UC Boulder with the intent on starting over and finding a new place to fit in.

He'd gotten it half right.

What he hadn't anticipated was that there would be large swaths of students coming en masse who already knew each other, and that meant they had brought all their cliques with them, none of which Will fit into from the start.

Much like he'd been in high school, he was adjacent to a bunch of the groups without really being invited into any of them. He was smart, but not smart enough to hang with the nerds. He was athletic, but not athletic enough to hang with the jocks. He could play guitar, but not well enough to be in a band, not that anyone seemed like they were looking for guitarists anyway.

He wasn't tall enough to stand out, but not short enough for it to be unusual. His mom, before she'd passed away anyway, hadn't really talked much about his dad other than to say he hadn't wanted to stay around after he was bored and that he'd been from Eastern Europe, although she was reliably vague about that any time she was pressed on the issue. Based on the sort of features he'd inherited from the man, he would've guessed his dad was Polish or Ukrainian.

Will's hair was short and deep black, his skin also having a bit of natural tan to it, although he certainly could suntan. His face was long and lean, with a bit of a sharp nose, and eyes that were some odd combination of brown and green, although the coloration never seemed consistent enough for them to be faithfully called hazel. He was a little too doughy to be an athlete, as if that last layer of baby fat had just never grown off him, and yet he also didn't seem like he was especially overweight. He just sort of looked 'thick,' according to classmates. He also tended to grow facial hair a bit faster than he cared for. While other senior boys in high school had been trying to let their facial hair grow in, Will had practically needed to start shaving nearly daily before winter had turned to spring. It had also sprung up thick on his arms and chest in the two years since high school, with even some starting to sprout on his back, much to his annoyance.

He also wasn't what anybody described as good looking, although he wasn't really considered ugly either. One of his few friends in high school liked to joke that Will had won "Person Most Likely To Be Forgotten About" for the Yearbook, but that nobody had remembered to include the category. In fact, there had been a number of times when Will had been hanging out with a handful of people, and they'd decided to change locations and everyone had forgotten to let Will know where they were going, not out of any sense of malice, but because genuinely everyone had forgotten that he was there.

His mom had been third- or fourth-generation Italian-American, but she had sort of been the end of her family line, without any real relatives to speak of. But she'd been proud of him, proud that even though he hadn't really had that many good friends, he'd been a hard worker, and was determined to go to college, to get an education and to do something with his life.

While he'd never felt comfortable with the idea of becoming a doctor, the idea of helping and supporting doctors seemed like a good use of his time, so he'd gone to college with the intention of learning what it took to get into health administration, so that he could help coordinate and manage a hospital once he got out of school. It wasn't something a lot of people felt drawn to, but Will felt like he'd be a good matchup for the job. Administrators needed to be able to see the big, big, big picture, and to be able to look past the individual pain and troubles with patients to the underlying systems that would help them tend to as many people's needs as possible.

His mom had been so happy that he was dedicating his life to helping people. He still had the last voicemail she'd left him - almost two years ago now - telling them that she couldn't wait to tell all her friends about her son's first big job at a hospital as soon as he graduated.

She'd been killed by a drunk driver about a week after she'd left the message.

It had shattered Will in half. His mom had left everything to him, but with the express intent that he put everything into building his own life, going in his own direction. It was clear from her will that she had expected it to be decades before it was needed, but that she'd wanted to be prepared for everything. She'd always been smart that way.

So after he'd laid his mom to rest in a local cemetery in Denver, he'd followed his mom's wishes. He'd sold the house, liquidated all of her possessions, and put everything she'd saved up towards his education and his continuing survival. The one thing he had bought was a condo on the outskirts of UC Boulder. Once he graduated, he'd sell it back and turn a profit on it, but he knew his mom didn't want him living in campus housing forever, and having a place to call his own let him have somewhere to get away from it all.

Whether he wanted to admit it or not, for the first year or so after his mom's death, Will was hiding, trying to bury the loss of his mother by just being head down and focusing on his schoolwork, oblivious to social interactions, which meant his crucial freshman year of showing up to mixers and interacting with fellow freshman was completely lost, and Will was without a support network.

His freshman year disappeared in a blitz of feedback, noise and struggle, keeping his nose to the grindstone so much that he couldn't see the forest for the trees, and so he was never entirely sure if he was going a thousand miles an hour or simply just one. He was doing well in his classes, and he took comfort in that, and told himself that he just needed to get through college, that he just needed to graduate and that once he was out of school, he'd be in the real world, and that was when he could get his real fresh start, because the death of his mother had prevented him from getting one in college.

He didn't leave for summer, because where would he go? This was all there was for Will now, and so he'd picked up a job as a fry cook at a local diner. He didn't need the money but it gave him something to focus on and didn't let his mind stay at rest long enough for the trauma of losing his mother so suddenly come bubbling back up at any given moment.

In many ways, his sophomore year was very much a case of 'second verse, same as the first,' with him being so laser focused on his classwork and his studies that he didn't even register with the social groups around him. He didn't make friends and he didn't really talk to people that much outside of classes. Having his own place off campus had been especially enabling in that regard, letting him keep himself segregated from other students, just in terms of social gatherings. He didn't have to hear about the mixers or the parties or know about any of the general hangouts where he might have gotten to know some of the other students. It wasn't like he was actively trying to avoid everyone; it had just sort of become second nature so that they didn't see the emotional burden he was carrying with him.

By the time the second summer happened, he was so set in his habits that he hadn't even really thought about it in months. School, work, rest. School, work, rest. It was a nice, predictable pattern, one that was keeping his finances above water, his grades in good (although not exceptional) standings, and his mind away from the solitude he'd enveloped himself with, but somewhere deep inside, he knew that he wasn't living a fulfilling life. It was simply wasting time and doing the work needed to get him past this particular phase and up towards the next phase of his life. The loss of his mother still stung, but it was no longer the all-consuming void it had been for the previous few years. People had told him that eventually he would wake up and feel like it was time for his life to keep going again, but for years, it had been impossible to believe them, but now it felt like maybe that might have been true, and maybe, just maybe, he was nearly ready to start the next phase of his life.

What he didn't know was that the next phase of his life wasn't what he thought it was, and it was done waiting for him to arrive. It had decided to start up without his knowledge, consent or even understanding. That meant he was going to be off guard for quite some time as he caught up to the status of his life, which was starting to change and morph in ways he couldn't possibly imagine.

For a few months, it was lots of little incidents, none of which would've been much on their own, which was how he was looking at them, rather than the slowly escalating pattern that they were. In hindsight, Will would be able to build the correlation out of them, but when they happened, they all just seemed like one-offs.

The first came within the first week of his junior year's fall semester. He was starting to get into some of the more specific classes he would need to eventually run a hospital, but he also had to take a number of classes that everyone else had to, including that one class that typically sent nearly every sane student running - Intro to Statistics.

Stats was the class that broke spirits and lined tutors pockets for the rest of the year. It was the class that many students took twice, or even three or four times to get through. The professor didn't help. The running joke was that Dr. Bruskin didn't speak great English, had a lisp and had terrible handwriting and awful typing skills. Communicating with him on any level took at least three or four times longer than it felt like it should have.

Will knew all that going into it, and that meant he was planning to work twice as hard, with a digital audio recorder brought along to record the lectures and make sure he could replay them later if he couldn't quite understand what the professor was talking about. He figured several students would do that sort of thing, but there weren't any other digital recorders up at the front when the class finally wrapped up its first session.

As he went up to pick up his recorder, he saw there was a big hulking mass blocking his path, dressed in a letterman jacket from some high school, blonde hair and rippling muscles obstructing his ability to get his property. He was sure he'd probably had classes with this prick before, but Will liked to stay focused on his classes, so he hadn't really bothered to learn much about his fellow classmates for the previous years.

"You're a fucking suckup, aren't you nerd?" the jock said to him, stepping to one side at the same time Will did, making sure to keep himself between Will and the recorder. "You're the kind of asshole who's always going out of his way to make life harder for all the rest of us who are just trying to survive this shit."

"I'm just trying to do my best," Will said, trying not to look up and into the wall of flesh's eyes. He'd learned early on that engaging in confrontation was often just asking for more trouble. "My education is important to me. That's all."

"That's all?" the jock said, pushing a hand out to shove into Will's shoulder. "That's all? You're gonna be a fucking pain in my ass, aren't you, shithead?"

"I'll stay in my lane and you can stay in yours," Will replied. "Just move out of my way and let me get my recorder."

"No way, bitch," the jock laughed, shoving a hand back into Will's chest once more. "Maybe I'll just take this recorder for myself and then I'll be the one the teacher thinks is hot shit. Last year, I had to deal with other students fucking up my ability to look good, and I'm done letting someone else fuck up the grading curve."

"Maybe you should try doing the actual work then," Will said, finally looking up, "instead of trying to bully other students into doing worse so you don't look like shit."

"The fuck did you say to me, fuckstain?"

"I said get the hell out of my way, shit for brains!" Will said, his voice rising, feeling like there was a hint of a growl in it.

The next minute was something he would find himself thinking about a lot in the coming months. It was only sixty seconds, and everything was over before he could really give much consideration to any of it. In fact, while it was all happening, he wasn't entirely sure he was actually doing much in the way of thinking. It all felt like it was just instinct, like everything was happening purely on reflexes.

The jock started to take a swing at Will, but it almost felt like the punch was coming in slow motion, and Will felt his body moving easily out of the path of it, his arms both lifting up to grab the jock's arm and shove it off to one side before his right arm dropped down and then windmilled in a solid punch to the jock's solar plexus, punching him hard in the guts. While the jock's swing didn't connect, Will's made the guy at least half a foot taller then him collapse to the ground, clutching at his stomach as he coughed, clearly not having expected to be the one taking the punch instead of the one dishing it out.

It all happened in the blink of an eye, so Will wasn't entirely certain what had just happened. His body had moved entirely on its own, and he almost felt like he blacked out in the center of it, except that he'd been awake and aware of what was happening - he simply felt like he hadn't been the one to initiate his actions. He'd heard stories of people's reflexes taking over, but generally that was after years of training and practice, not just on a whim some random day in some random classroom.

Once the jock, whose name was Tanner, started coughing loudly, though, it snapped Will back to the here and now. He hadn't gotten up yet, and was still groaning at Will's feet, as a bunch of other students in the class were sort of pointing and laughing at Tanner now, a few of them moving to pat Will on the back, something he did not want, but it felt wrong to push the other students away, as they cheered him and scoffed at the jock.

Will, for his part, just grabbed his tape recorder and headed out of the room, wondering what the hell to make of any of it. When the class reconvened a few days later for the next lecture, Tanner was doing his absolute best to stay as far away as he could from Will, like he was afraid Will was going to come over and punch him again at any moment without warning.

And God help him, Will liked the feeling of the jock being afraid of him.

It made him feel like he'd somehow exerted dominance over the classroom, like Tanner had been a rival somehow trying to push forth the idea that he was in charge, but the minute it had turned to blows, the jock had taken one punch and backed down, and now he was having to content himself with being in Will's shadow, no longer the star of the room.

There had also been a certain shift in the way the rest of the class had treated him, one that Will was less sure of. It was as if the rest of the room had felt like Will needed paying attention to. People made it a point to say hello to him, and telling him to have a good weekend. A number of other students had suggested to him that if he needed a group to study with, they'd be happy to have him join theirs. It was unnerving, the sudden rush of popularity he felt, even if it was a bit fleeting. Within a few weeks, people had mostly gone back to ignoring him, although Tanner was still keeping his distance, and one time, Will had actually started moving toward Tanner, just to see the reaction. The jock had gone skittering, almost like a cockroach running when the light had been turned on. Will had only moved a few feet in the boy's direction before he'd made a break for the door, just a few steps shy of a full run.

That seemed to be reflected in some of his other classes across campus, although he never heard anyone specifically reference the incident with Tanner, and in some cases, it was clear they hadn't even heard about it. He'd been able to stay out of the way of people and as such, people hadn't paid him much mind, but now it seemed like he was starting to draw some attention for whatever reason. He wasn't trying to get it, but the attention just seemed to be flowing his way.

It was October when things started to get even stranger.

As a shy and someway pudgy guy, Will had grown accustomed to not being the focus of female attention. It was something he'd made peace with long, long ago, and when his mom had passed away, it had been easier to just lock himself down mentally and not spend any time thinking about it. That had been pretty consistent up until recently. Since his junior year started, he'd begun to feel like he was getting notice more by the fairer sex, and in some ways, the attention was a little distracting.

It wasn't regular and it wasn't predictable, but at least once a week it felt like some girl would come up and just start randomly talking to him. He thought it felt like they were flirting with him, but he was never quite sure about it, so he never tried to push anything. He tried to engage in conversation, but he never pushed them to continue the conversations at other times, and even a few times he'd sort of politely turned down a girl asking him out for drinks, because he felt like the sensations couldn't be trusted, like maybe it was all some sort of prank where they were going to try and get him to do something he'd regret.

One girl in particular, however, managed to keep pushing the matter again and again, much to his complete surprise and confusion. Her name was Lacey McGuinness, and she was something of a controversial figure around campus.

Lacey stood only 5'4" or so, but the minute she walked in a room, all heads turned her way, both men and women. She dressed to provoke and to draw attention to herself, tightly stretched clothes ripped in strategic places to offer glimpses of slightly paler flesh, like a trailer for a coming movie that everyone has to stop and stare at. She was busty without it being too much, and certainly she enjoyed wearing low cut tops designed to give people a focal point for their eyes. She typically wore her long scarlet red hair in a high ponytail, always in the center, never off to the sides, and she liked to wear short skirts with long, thigh high leather boots (generally with a couple of inches in the heels), so that only a thin strip of flesh beneath pantyhose was visible. The whole look sort of gave off a weird combination of local pep squad girl and leader of the 1^st go-go stripper battalion regiment.

One of Lacey's favorite past times was reeling men in only to throw them back. She'd made it known quite publicly that she enjoyed getting men to fawn all over her, but once she had their attention, she usually bored of them quickly, tossing them away to go looking for someone newer, shinier, sparklier. She also generally had a type - she liked them rich, she liked them good looking and she generally liked them to be in nearly insane physical condition.