It's probably been a year since I've been thinking of this story. I finished writing it a few weeks ago, kept it waiting, I don't know why. I think that it'll be a three part story, if not it'll just be two parts. It depends on how I feel about Part Three's importance. Anyways, I really hope you enjoy it!

Disclaimer: I don't own the character of Will Solace

Dedication: To the guys who've changed for the better, and to those who changed for the worst.

Poet's Soul

Who can tell me what a poetry anthology is?" Mr Evanson asked the class. This one girl – Briana Fay- who raised her hand only when nobody else knew the answer raised her hand.

"Yes Briana," Mr Evanson said.

"An anthology is a collection."

"So a poetry anthology is…" Mr Evanson said.

"A collection of poems," the guy who had no filter on his mouth, Caleb Miller, said.

"Yes," Mr Evanson said. He plopped a pack of purple sheets in front of Will.

"So William here is going to- why does everyone snicker when I say his name?" Mr Evanson said. He looked over at Will expecting answers.

"Because people usually don't call me William," he explained. 'William' wasn't even written on the attendance sheet for crying out loud.

"Oh I'm sorry- I'll call you Bill now. Or Willy."

"Will's okay too." He said. A few people snickered and Will passed out the papers from table to table. He pushed through dyslexia and caught the title;

POETRY ANTHOLOGY ASSIGNMENT

Oh man- please no…

But sure enough, that was the project that Mr Evanson explained to the class. He went over seven different types of poetry that they'd have to write. Yeah; seven poems with an obligatory format and then one au choix which was either French for Latin for 'at the choice'. His choice was personally not to write poetry.

The sonnet, the acrostic, a haiku, a tanka, an alphabet, a diamante, a free verse, and one of them au choix. None of which Will had ever heard of except for 'sonnet' because his musty old namesake wrote them. Stupid Shakespeare.

"The sonnet's more complicated to write than the next, so I think I'm going to talk to some students who aren't going to write one." Mr Evanson explained.

Sweet, Will thought. That's me. Mr ADHD/dyslexia. Second row sir, sign me up for a sonnet-free project.

"I'll talk to you before tomorrow's class if you're one of those students," Mr Evanson said. "And there's also going to be an oral communication that will be evaluated with this. Remember, your poems aren't just words. They're feelings. The strongest poems have the strongest feelings so I rather none of you pick your subjects randomly."

The bell rung and everyone jumped out of class. Will didn't get that. You raced out of English like you were trying to outrun a bullet, just to go sit in math for 75 minutes.

He hung back and waited before making his way out. A girl called Jane Clark Green was the only one behind him. She was a head shorter than Will and her long black hair fell in waves past her shoulder blades. She wore rimless glasses like picture frames to her pale green eyes, a bunch of bracelets- one was a Medical Alert bracelet, another was a metal bangle with a bunch of names on it. She was balancing a pile of books on top of her binder. Will frowned a bit when he noticed that no one was holding the door for her, so he accepted the extra ten second stay in the class to help her out.

"Thank you Will," she said.

"No problem," Will said before walking on to his class' lockers.

Bruno and Duncan caught up with Will right behind him as he pulled stuff out of his locker.

"Yo, can you believe what Mr Evanson's making us do in English?"

"I know," Will said rolling his eyes. "8 poems- really? What's the point? It's not like we're ever going to actually need to write poem."

"That's if you don't want to impress a girl," Gemma said. She pushed her blond hair out of her eyes. "It'd be so romantic to have someone write a poem for you."

"Well, lucky for us we're not going to try and flirt with you." Will said.

"You're so dense," Esmeralda said. She was a Hispanic girl that'd emigrated from Spain a few years ago. Can anyone say really cool Spanish accent? "It would be romantic."

"I'm already good-looking," Will said.

"But you're about as attractive as a slug." Gemma said.

"You tell my girlfriend that, and I'll talk to your boyfriend. Oh wait, there isn't one." Will said. Bruno and Duncan laughed as she shoved him.

"Where is Bella, anyways?"

"You tell me," Will said.

"Haven't you talked to her?"

"I texted her during class," Will shrugged.

"See? Like a slug." Gemma said.

Mom was already home when Will walked in. Her school finished two hours before his, so unless she had to stay to monitor extracurricular activities or something, she was always sitting at the kitchen table, grading tests or whatnot.

"Hey," he said swinging his bag off his shoulder and flying into the mudroom.

"Hi Sweetheart," she said as he walked past her and into the kitchen. He pulled the fridge open and examined the content.

"Global warming Will, close the door." Mom said not even looking up. He grabbed some leftover Chinese food in a plastic container and closed the door of the fridge, picking out the eggroll.

"How was school?"

"Like school," Will said.

"Where did you go after?"

"To Duncan's," Will said, more interested in the food than in the conversation Mia Solace was trying to have with him.

"What did you do?"

"Who are you, the FBI?"

"Will," Mom said looking up frowning. "What's wrong? You're a bit sappy right now."

"Sorry," he said.

"Did something happen at school?"

"Not really. We've got a stupid writing thing in English again, but you know." Will shrugged, stuffing the rest of the eggroll in his mouth.

"What kind of stupid writing thing?"

"Poetry," Will said. His Mom looked up, an eyebrow raised.

"And you're not interested at all?" She asked. Will shook his head.

"Why? I never care about English."

"I know, I was just thinking…" She said looking back to her pile of papers. Will gulped down the eggroll and stacked cookies in his hand before heading downstairs to his room. He'd nearly passed the doorframe down when Mom let out; "Your father was a poet."

Will froze in the doorframe. He could basically hear the Xbox calling out to him, but this was a once in a month kind of shot he had there. He backed up.

"Dad?" He asked.

"Mm-hmm." Mia said with a smile. "He was amazing when he found a subject he really wanted to talk about in a poem. He could paint you a picture of a rock and make it look like a diamond."

"Did he write you a poem?" Will asked, remembering what Mr Evanson had once said.

"Mm-hmm." Mia nodded again, still with the smile he'd come to recognise and label as the 'thinking about Dad smile'. "He blurted out haikus all the time, most of them were horrible, but the sonnets were the ones that got to me."

"Cool," Will said, not sure he wanted to hear this much into it. He hiked back down.

See, Will Solace knew zilch about his father. So over the years he'd come up with a very specific idea about who this bozo was to fill in the blank. In Will's head, no matter what pieces of information Mom had let slip, he was a disgusting slob. He drank beer a lot, didn't care about anything, and Mom was totally exaggerating when she said that he had his father's eyes and features because Will was the most beautiful thing ever to happen to Orlando and his father was repulsive and ugly and horrible.

On kinder days when Will didn't mind the fact they were living on a teacher's salary and that everything looked like a struggle and Mom had to work all the time to make ends meet; his father was a lawyer. A lawyer posted somewhere in a nice town with a nice house and a nice family. There was a wife –but not as pretty as his mother was-, perfect little children- blond haired, blue eyed, rosy cheeked the whole thing, and even a dog when he was feeling particularly generous (it took a fair bit of generosity to give someone a dog). And then the very next day, in Will's head that house would burst into flames.

He loved his mom more than anything on the other hand, and he understood why his father may have fallen in love with her. She was a very soft person, with a soft voice, soft hands, a soft touch. She was calm and patient like an angel, and she was very honest. She was incredibly smart, she could come up with facts at any time of the day.

But if his mother was going to start giving him the differences between haikus and sonnets, Will was out of the place.

Will had to collect an extra copy of the math homework for Jane- since she sat next to him and it was a class rule. He didn't pay attention in math, ran around in gym which was his merciful course of the semester, messed around in the workshop big time, and blew off a period of work in English because Mr Evanson had let them choose their seats in English so he, Bruno and Duncan got nothing done.

After class Will stuck around and lingered awkwardly at Mr Evanson's desk.

"Can I help you William?" He asked.

"Just Will," he replied annoyed. "And… well, yeah. I was wondering if you wanted me to write a sonnet."

"I believe your instruction paper said both," the teacher replied.

"Yeah, but, you said that some of the kids with learning disabilities…"

"I said that I'd go talk to the students in question," Mr Evanson said looking up at Will with his disturbingly clear grey eyes. "I don't believe having approached you on the subject."

"But… but I can't write both, I suck at poetry."

"Have you ever tried it?"

"No but I spell like a third grader and-"

"William, I'm fully aware of your obstacles but I want eight poems from you," Mr Evanson said. "I expect great things from you."

Will's jaw dropped. "That's not fair!"

"Has nobody told you that the world wasn't fair yet?" Mr Evanson worried.

When he ranted to it about Mom, she didn't have much pity for him.

"I think that Mr Evanson is a good enough teacher to judge what you can do," she'd said tucking a strand of hair behind his ear.

When he ranted to Bella about it after supper, at least she had pity for him.

"That's horrible," she said over the phone. He could picture her lying on her bed, her curly blonde hair spread out around her like a fan. It was so pale it nearly matched her complexion. Her heavy brown eyes would be focused on her always intricately painting nails while she talked. "I hate Mr Evanson, he's such a jerk. He took away my phone just because I texted that one time."

"I know," Will said. "I don't know what he wants from me."

"Nothing, he's just too much of an ass to chill," Bella said. "He must just have a thing against you. That's what he had against me."

It didn't make him feel much better and he always got restless talking on the phone, so he told Bella that he had to go write an email to Jane since she hadn't been in math class.

"Later," he said.

"Love you."

"Ditto," Will said before hanging up.

He wrote an email to Jane telling her that he had her homework and that she hadn't missed anything they hadn't done the day before, with an obligatory 'feel better' thrown into the mix.

He was looking through the latest NBA stats when Mom peeked into the office and knocked on the wall. Will turned around. She was at her prettiest when it was late at night and she was just walking around wrapped in a shawl, her hair held up by a pen she'd twirled her long hair around, and holding a mug of tea between her fingers, the tab on the pouch dangling over its edge. He felt like he wasn't just seeing Mia Solace from the inside, but this was the way to see Mom's soul too.

"Hi sweetheart," she said walking up to him. She put her mug down and passed her fingers through his hair. Will expected a comment about getting a haircut, but she cut him some slack.

"I'm sorry I may not have said what you wanted to hear earlier," Mom said. "About your English project… If you ever need any help with it I'm right here, alright? I'll be glad to work on it with you."

"Thanks Mom," Will said.

She looked at his computer screen.

"Will, you know I don't like it when you spend that much time on the computer," she said.

"Basketball is important."

"I'm sure that it is, but you know I don't like it. Speaking of basketball, you have a very early practise tomorrow morning. Time for bed, sweetheart."

Will never made it to his practise. He got out of bed, took a shower, stepped out and puked his guts out. Thankfully he was already in the bathroom.

Nobody emailed him about missing math homework, so he assumed that Jane was still sick. Great. That made two of them.

The next day he found out that a project had been assigned in history, and that since they'd both been missing he and Jane were partnered up. She wasn't there anyways, but Will didn't really care. He just pretended to read about Pearl Harbour for the whole class.

The next day, Jane still wasn't there so Will pretended to look up Pearl Harbour on the Internet. Her siblings were still at school- Will recognised her brother Matthew, who was in a chair but still fair enough at basketball.

The next day was the same and Will pretended to highlight a Wikipedia article about Pearl Harbour that he'd printed out from the Internet. But he was getting concerned because he couldn't really just do a project by himself- that was crazy.

He emailed Jane that night.

To: Jane Clark Green janegenuinecg

From: Will Solace willso

Subject: history project

hey jane,

we kind of got stuck together for a history project on pearl harbour. think we can meet up this weekend and work on it because its due on monday.

will

Coach made him do suicides since he'd missed the last basketball practise when they were getting so close to a big game against a very foul-playing school. Will hated suicides, but he'd live. He got shoved around a lot by Duncan and Bruno, but also by a bunch of the older guys.

He was on fire at practise- which was saying something because even on a bad day Will was fantastic at basketball. He had amazing aim- he could dunk a ball from nearly anywhere on the court. As much as he got teased by the older guys for being a freshman, they respected that. That was another reason why basketball felt so good, because Will could get respected for something.

To: Will Solace willso

From: Jane Clark Green janegenuinecg

Subject: Re history project

Hi Will,

I'm in and out of the doctor's all weekend; it's going to be horrible. I don't think I can come to school either, but maybe after school at the library?

Jane

Bella had gym class, so Will walked her over to the change rooms. Right outside the locker room she turned and looped her eyes around his neck.

"I miss gym class where boys and girls were mixed," she said.

"Me too."

"That's how we hooked up, right?"

Will remembered. A dodge ball had been aiming right for her in eight grade gym class. She'd defaulted to the very common 'let me see if curling up in a ball will divert the ball's track' position, and so he'd jumped in front of her and caught it. Of course they'd been flirting for a few weeks now, so Will said:

"I saved you. Save me a couple of hours on Saturday so we can go watch a movie?"

Because Will Solace might be a bastard, but he was a smooth and attractive bastard.

Bella had giggled and said yes and poof, a full year later they were still going strong.

"Yeah," Will said. Bella kissed him and Will kissed back of course. They kissed past the first warning bell and the girl's gym teacher, Mrs. Dion, coughed and said 'excuse me'. Will pulled back and she starred daggers at him.

"Now is not the time, especially since you only have two minutes to get to class," she said strictly.

"Sorry ma'am," Will said.

"Sorry," Bella chirped in. Mrs. Dion didn't move so Will only got to wink at Bella before running off and cutting across the gym to get to math.

To: Jane Clark Green janegenuinecg

From: Will Solace willso

Subject: Re Re history project

its a long story but im not allowed the library anymore. how can i get to your house from school?

will

In class Will was balancing on the back legs of his chair. Mr Evanson grabbed the back of his chair and straightened him out, startling Will so suddenly that he nearly fell anyways. Bruno and Duncan tried to pretend that they weren't laughing.

"William, can I see what you've been working on so far?"

The only thing Will possibly had to show him was a doodle of a cyborg rat, but he decided to keep that for himself.

"I haven't gotten anything."

"Your muses aren't cooperating?" Mr Evanson asked.

"I'd have to start by knowing what a muse was," Will said.

Bruno and Duncan cackled like witches.

To: Will Solace willso

From: Jane Clark Green janegenuinecg

Subject: Re Re Re history project

Hey,

You don't want to come to my house, it's complicated.

Jane

"Is Bella pissed at me?" Will asked Esmeralda.

She looked at him with warning eyes like 'don't go there'.

"Seriously, she doesn't even want to look at me." Will said. "What did I do?"

"What did you not do is the better question," Esmeralda said. Will didn't get it at all and so he played dumb. Girls had this habit where whenever Will did that, they felt forced to enlighten him. "Will, her birthday was yesterday."

"I know. I said happy birthday and had a brownie with a candle for her and a necklace and everything." Will said. "What, was the candle supposed to be lit?"

Esmeralda sighed.

"For three years straight you've given her charms for her bracelet on her birthday. She thinks you forgot."

"But I did something else," Will said. "I'm just completely broke right now."

"Don't get mad at me, Will, I'm not your girlfriend."

To: Jane Clark Green janegenuinecg

From: Will Solace willso

Subect: Re Re Re Re history project

its not like we have a choice. just let me know. ill bring info I printed out and stuff.

will

He was waiting at Bella's locker when she came in.

"Hola," he said.

"Hey," Bella said. She spun the dial on her lock with too much force in it for it to be casual.

"How are you?" Will asked. He felt like an explorer of the fifteenth century- forced to sail, but pretty sure he was going to fall off the edge of the world if he did.

"Fine," she said.

"You don't look fine."

"Well then the appropriate way to start this conversation would have him 'good morning Bella I have noticed that you do not look fine on this day'." She hissed at him before slamming her locker door open and nearly hitting his fingers.

"Are you mad at me because of your birthday? Look, I'm really sorry. I didn't think the charm was so important to you." Will said. "I was too broke to get the only one I thought you'd really like and…"

"Of course they're important to me, Will," Bella said. "They're our thing. Even before we were dating you always gave me these charms." She raised her hand to show him specifically what charms she was talked about. Her charm bracelet jingled. "I thought that… well, I thought that since there was no our thing you were… I don't know, going to dump me or something."

"Bell, I wouldn't do that," he said. "You know I wouldn't."

"Sometimes I don't, Will. Sometimes I get scared."

He kissed her nose.

"Don't," he said.

When the door was opened to Will it was by a long and lean Asian girl with a prosthetic leg, so he was nearly completely sure that he had the wrong house.

"Hello?" She asked.

"Umm- hi," Will said. "Is this, I mean… is Jane around?"

"Sure," she said. "Hold on a second."

She turned and yelled out into the house: "Jane! Butt down here! Someone's at the door!"

The girl turned. She was college-aged and wearing jean shorts with the pockets sticking out from the hem. "She'll be right down."

"Thanks," Will said.

Jane peaked from the girl's shoulder.

"Oh, Will. Hi, come in." Jane said. Will let himself in and Jane closed the door behind her. She didn't look really sick, just tired.

"How are you feeling?" Will asked.

"Alright," she said. "By the way, this is my sister Lily. Lily, this is Will. He's in a bunch of my classes."

"Hey Will," Lily said smiling. "Is this school related?"

"Yeah, a history project Mr Le Geyt was too stupid to email Dad or me about." Jane said.

"Fun," Lily said. "Love those."

She parked herself in the living room, on a couch already littered with the essential materials of studying –highlighters, textbooks, notebooks, loose leaf papers and a bag of Doritos. Jane dragged him over to the kitchen, where a bunch of history books and sheets of paper splashed with brainstorm ideas littered the table.

"Is your sister at Orlando U?" Will asked.

"Yeah, she's studying criminal justice," Jane said. Her glasses were crooked on her nose. It was cute. "Anyways, here's some research I've already done. I thought that for the angle of our presentation we should do something like an alternative history of whether America would have joined WWII if it wouldn't have been for the attack."

"What?" Will asked. "How does that make any sense?"

"I think it'd be cool," Jane said. "It would show the impact that Pearl Harbour had, and the impact of the American troops."

"That sounds complicated."

"That means that it's a good idea if you're aiming for an A."

"I'm just aiming to pass."

"Then let's both get what we want," Jane said. She explained it to Will and he had to admit that it sounded cool. Like, really cool. So they got to work.

Of course Will was horrible at focusing on things even when she was talking to him. While Jane bent over her part of the project to do, reading and never looking up- Will couldn't stop looking around at the kitchen, the other books, thin air, out the window, at her, at the bracelet she'd taken off and put down on the table a while earlier… It had a bunch of names on it. Will picked it up and played with it, reading the names. Jane, Matthew, Lily, Adam, Dad, Daddy, Matthew, Adam, Lily… They were all engraved in different fonts and sizes.

"Don't," Jane said taking the bracelet from him and putting it down on the table again.

"Sorry," Will said.

A while later, someone opened the front door. Male voices flowed through the house, and Lily called out hellos from the living room.

A little boy, about nine, ran in. He was dark skinned and very short. He had stocky limbs and a short wide neck. His eyes were slanted, his ears were small and his tongue stuck out a bit from his mouth. A backpack was strapped onto his back.

"Hi Adam," Jane said cheerfully. She opened her arms and he hobbled towards her and accepted her hug without returning it.

"Who that?" He asked pulling away and pointing towards Will.

"That's Jane's friend Will," she said. The patience in her voice was unsettling to Will- he'd never heard anything like it before. It came with ease and encompassed an awful lot of love and caring. "Can you say hi?"

"I Will."

"Hello," he said.

"You have a friend over Janie?" Someone asked. A man with red hair and bright blue eyes walked into the room. He put a hand on Adam's shoulder.

"For a project," Jane said.

"Hello sir," Will said.

"Tony," he said holding out his hands. He turned to Jane.

"Your father said he was going to pick up milk coming home from the office."

Your father? So this guy wasn't Jane's dad?

"-Did he call back asking for the grocery list?" Tony asked.

"Phone hasn't rung since you called, Dad."

No, he was her dad…

"I'll call him to remind him," he said. "Has Matthew shown so far?"

"I think he's still at school," Jane said.

"Okay. Thank you sweetheart, I'll leave you alone. Adam, let's go upstairs and do your homework."

"No," Adam said stamping his foot.

"Yes, yes, yes," Tony said, with an expressive voice. He held out his hand, Adam took it and they headed upstairs.

Jane chewed on her lip for a while before caving.

"Okay, so I guess I need to explain my family to you."

"Sure," Will said. He was wondering what was going on.

"My dads are gay. They adopted a bunch of disabled kids- because we're the ones who have the most trouble getting into foster homes, or getting adopted." Jane said. "Lily was injured in the accident that killed her parents. Matthew was a druggie's kid and they think that that's why he has all his muscle problems. I was given up by a teenager. Adam was abandoned because he has Down's Syndrome."

"Ah," Will said. He didn't mean anything by it, but he realised that it sounded bad the second it left his mouth.

Jane didn't even blush; she just looked at him fiercely. "I'm not ashamed of my family."

"I think your family's great," Will confessed. "Your parents chose you. My mom ended up stuck with me. Like, I love her to bits and everything but I was an accident and my dad could be in Tokyo for all I know."

Jane shrugged. "I'm sure your mom doesn't see it that way."

"Maybe not anymore," Will said scribbling down something about the life of Japanese-Americans living in Hawaii.

Jane shook her head. "Families are built the way they are for a reason. People are too. If it wasn't perfect, then something would have happened to change it."

On Monday after school the basketball team loaded itself into a school bus that smelled like farm animals. Coach took attendance; they had to wait for Ollie who was always late to everything, but too good and funny to get kicked off the team.

Will was texting Bella promising that he'd call her after the game. She had dance class tonight and therefore couldn't come watch. He stuffed his phone as far into his bag as he could to avoid further conversation, turned around and started talking to another guy.

The other school was across town and therefore it took forever to get through rush-hour. Ollie had appeared just as they'd all about given up on his showing up, with a box of pizza which was nice.

They got to the school a few minutes before the game and left all their bags behind the benches pulled out for them to sit on. Coach gave them a pep talk, they shed their team track suits and went over the game plan one more time.

Will was going to hang back and take shots from the side, which he excelled at. There was a bunch of stuff other people would do, but Will had to focus on that particularly.

"Play hard," Coach said slapping the team captain, Leon, on the back before the ref blew his whistle.

For the first quarter things went well, and they scored 12 points leading the other team by nine points. They were on fire. Will had gotten two three-pointers in.

The second quarter: things started getting ugly. Will had been draining his water bottle and watching the other team's coach from the corner of his eye. He was gesticulating widely and slapping his fist on his clipboard. They were a rough school, Will knew. Wrestling, football, soccer, hell- even in badminton they were known for that.

Will had two players tailing him from nearly the first time he set foot on the court. They were closing in on him, Will got a fair share of elboingw, but he managed to put in another three-pointer about five minutes in. The crowd was booing since they were the visitors, but Will wasn't listening to them. The ball bouncing against the wooden court, shoes squeaking as the owners ran, panting players, gruff words exchanged among teammates… those were the sounds that Will chose to listen to. They were the sounds that could wake him up and put him to sleep at night and cheer him up and distract him completely.

Ollie yelled his name and passed him the ball. Will caught it and just as he was about to throw, one of his newly aquired shadows elbowed him in the ribs. Will folded over and with a twist of his knee in between he fell right on it, hitting the floor.

The ref blew of course, and the crowd booed that too even though the call was obvious. The official stayed oblivious, and Will limped back to the bench with Leon's arm under his shoulder.

"You okay, kid? You good?" Coach asked.

"I'm fine," Will said grimacing.

"We'll ice your knee and see how that feels, alright? Okay?"

"Sure," Will agreed.

He got a free throw and missed. He sat out the rest of the quarter.

Half-time came and went. Coach warned them that the other team was feeling the heat and becoming violent.

"Take it as a compliment," Coach said. "We're creaming them. Just play, alright? Okay? Play."

Will's knee was no good, but he still spoke up during the third quarter when they started losing their lead. Everyone was mad, and the other team was brutal.

"Coach, I want to go."

"Not a chance, kid."

"Coach, please."

"Will-"

"My knee's fine," Will said. He'd have hell of a bruise, but he could tough it out for now.

Coach let him go on next time the play was stopped, and nearly immediately Will scored. His blood was boiling, his head was in it…

His two shadows came back. Will managed to make a few passes and another three-pointer. It was his best game yet. Leon slapped him in the back a couple of times.

They were at center now, and only seconds after the jump ball, a player rammed right into Will. He was literally thrown off his feet. He hit the court hard, falling on the same side as the knee he'd hit earlier. Pain shot through his leg, and there was a cracking sound in the elbow area. Conveniently, pain exploded in that area too.

Will heard whistles and a crowd uproar of some sort and swearing players and a sound like a punch before the pain took over his senses, and he blacked out.