Chapter 3 — Those Things That Happened That Year
Marcus recognized Kevin the moment he spotted him by the classroom door.
Five-ten, built like a guy who'd played offensive line in high school and hadn't quite lost the mass since, with a wide, easy grin that made him look like he found everything at least mildly entertaining. Kevin Park — his roommate since move-in day, and one of the only two people in the dorm Marcus had actually connected with. The kind of guy you could sit in silence with for an hour and not feel like you needed to fill it.
After graduation — in the life Marcus was trying not to repeat — they'd lost touch the way everyone does. Different cities, different trajectories, texts that got shorter and then stopped. Marcus wasn't going to let that happen this time.
"Webb," Kevin said, falling into step beside him, expression hovering between worried and exasperated. "Dude. You got called out in class. Professor asked where you were, and your academic advisor showed up to do a head count at the exact same time. Hundred and twenty kids in that lecture hall and you were the one empty seat." He shook his head slowly. "The class rep already texted — Hargrove wants you in his office."
Marcus considered this for about two seconds.
"That's it?"
"That's — yeah, man, that's the whole thing — are you not worried?"
"Kevin." Marcus stopped and put a hand on his shoulder. "We're in college. Nobody's calling our parents. Worst case I lose some participation points. As long as I don't actually fail the course, I keep my credits."
Kevin stared at him. "Oh."
"Freshmen don't know that yet. Hargrove knows freshmen don't know that. That's why it works."
Kevin let out a long breath. "Okay. Yeah. That makes sense."
"Don't stress. I'll go see him after class."
Kevin relaxed visibly, like someone had talked him down off a ledge he hadn't needed to be on. Marcus turned toward the classroom door before Kevin could find another angle to worry about.
They grabbed seats near the back. The next lecture was a few minutes out.
Marcus pulled open his Calculus II textbook and picked up where he'd left off. The system's counter resumed its quiet tick in the corner of his vision, logging comprehended words against the daily total.
Kevin lasted approximately four minutes before he leaned over.
"Okay but — real talk — have you actually looked at the class roster for this major?"
Marcus didn't look up. "Eleven women. Out of a hundred and twenty."
Kevin blinked. "You already know."
"It's Mechanical Engineering."
"Ten to one, man. I did not do enough research before I declared." Kevin propped his chin in his hand and stared toward the second row with the expression of someone contemplating a long series of poor decisions. "Out of eleven, maybe three are actually — you know."
"You're eighteen," Marcus said. "You have time."
"Easy for you to say. You have a girlfriend."
Marcus said nothing and kept reading. Kevin eventually gave up and opened his notebook to a fresh page, where he wrote the date and then nothing else for the rest of the period.
The lecture ended. Marcus had logged a solid block of focused reading time and felt the clean satisfaction of the counter ticking upward. The class rep caught him in the aisle on the way out and confirmed that yes, Hargrove had asked about him specifically, and yes, he should probably go sooner rather than later.
He went.
The advising offices for the College of Engineering were on the second floor of Whitmore Hall. Marcus knocked on the half-open door of Room 211.
The office held four desks. Only one was occupied. A man in his late twenties sat at the far desk, posture carefully upright, wearing a button-down shirt with the collar fastened all the way to the top button. He was rotating his neck in small increments, like he was trying to work out a pinch — which tracked, given that the collar was clearly one size too small and slowly winning a war of attrition against his windpipe.
Marcus watched through the gap in the door for a moment and felt the corner of his mouth twitch.
His academic advisor was Daniel Hargrove. Marcus remembered him now, the details coming back in layers. Mid-to-late twenties, Lakewood State alum, had worked his way into an advising role a few years after graduating and treated the position like a stepping stone to something larger. He wore dress shirts to a job that didn't require them. He had a habit of speaking in complete, well-constructed sentences that sounded slightly rehearsed. He liked the authority that came with advising freshmen, specifically because freshmen didn't yet know how limited that authority actually was.
He wasn't a bad person. He was just a guy trying to make himself feel important in a job that didn't offer many opportunities for that.
Hargrove glanced up from his desk, recognized Marcus, and stopped fussing with his collar. "Come in."
"Hey, Mr. Hargrove." Marcus stepped inside, unhurried, hands loose at his sides. "Heard you wanted to see me."
Hargrove studied him for a moment — clearly recalibrating, since most freshmen came in here with at least some visible anxiety — and then shifted into a different register. "Marcus. How are things going? Settling in okay?"
"Really well. Honestly, I've been looking forward to this for a long time."
"Good." Hargrove laced his fingers together on the desk. "A lot of students show up here thinking the hard part is over. They worked themselves to the bone in high school, got in, and now they're ready to coast. That's usually when things start to unravel." A meaningful pause. "College gives you freedom, but freedom without direction isn't freedom — it's drift."
He went on. Marcus stood with his hands in his jacket pockets and let the speech run its course. In another life he'd sat through dozens of conversations like this one — performance reviews, client check-ins, vendor meetings where someone needed to feel heard before anything useful could happen. The technique was the same regardless of context: let the person finish, don't push back on anything structural, find the one thing they actually want and give it to them.
Hargrove's voice took on a slightly inspirational quality as he warmed to his material. Marcus nodded at the appropriate intervals.
After several minutes, he glanced toward the hallway. "I don't want to hold you up — I've still got class this afternoon."
Hargrove checked his watch and refocused. "Right. So — where were you this morning? The professor noted your absence."
"Actually, I ran into Professor Caldwell on my way over," Marcus said, keeping it conversational. "She'd dropped a whole stack of handouts on the stairs and I helped her collect them. We talked for a few minutes — I mentioned you were my advisor. Told her you were one of the more engaged advisors I'd encountered, that you actually followed up with your students instead of just waiting for them to come to you." He shrugged lightly. "She seemed like she agreed."
This was, technically, not entirely fabricated. He had passed Rebecca Caldwell in the stairwell that morning. She had been juggling a precarious armload of papers. He had helped her pick up the ones that slipped. The part about the extended conversation and the specific compliments was, charitably speaking, a creative reconstruction.
What Marcus knew — and what Hargrove had no idea he knew — was that Hargrove had been quietly, persistently trying to get Rebecca Caldwell's attention for months. She was a year or two younger than him, sharp, well-liked by students, and so far completely unmoved by his efforts. Hargrove had not taken the hint. You had to give him credit for persistence, if not for reading the room.
In his previous life, Marcus had learned — years later, through the loose network of alumni group chats that somehow kept running long after everyone stopped caring — that they'd eventually ended up together. Hargrove had climbed to some associate director role in academic affairs by then, partly through genuine competence and partly through the right connections at the right time. He'd done better than most people from his graduating class. Honestly, more than Marcus would have predicted.
Right now, though, Hargrove's expression had shifted. The official face softened. Something warmer moved through his eyes. "Caldwell said that?"
"More or less."
"Well." Hargrove cleared his throat and made a small dismissive gesture. "Don't make a habit of missing lectures. But — come by if you need anything. Door's open."
"Appreciate it."
Marcus walked out into the hallway, already sorting through his afternoon reading list in his head.
Leave requests are going to be a lot easier going forward.
It cost nothing to be thoughtful about small relationships. Before he had enough leverage to operate entirely on his own terms, a little strategic goodwill was just common sense. You never knew in advance which connections would end up mattering.
He made it back in time for the afternoon block and spent the next ninety minutes reading steadily, switching subjects during the ten-minute break between periods without losing his pace. By the time the last class let out, the system had logged a meaningful day's work. He ran the mental math and felt a quiet, solid sense of momentum.
Progress. Actual, measurable progress. He could work with this.
At dinner, Kevin appeared beside him in the cafeteria line and watched with open suspicion as Marcus loaded his tray with a real meal — grilled chicken, roasted potatoes, a cup of soup — instead of the usual budget plate.
"Okay," Kevin said. "Who are you."
"I've been reading all day. I wanted actual food."
"You were reading at lunch. And between classes. And I'm pretty sure you were reading while we walked over here." Kevin narrowed his eyes. "Are you secretly pre-med? Because that would explain a lot."
"Engineering."
"Then why are you studying like someone whose scholarship has a GPA minimum?"
"I just like it," Marcus said simply, carrying his tray toward an open table.
Kevin followed, still skeptical. "You like advanced calculus."
"I like getting better at things." Marcus set down his tray and picked up his fork. "The subject doesn't matter that much. It's the progress that's satisfying."
Kevin sat across from him and appeared to genuinely consider this for a moment before arriving at a verdict. "That's kind of weird, man. No offense."
"None taken."
"Okay, different topic." Kevin leaned forward. "You want to hit the computer lab tonight? There's a server event in this game I've been playing all summer — I'm level seventy-nine, I've got decent gear, there's a big PvP battle tonight—"
Marcus set his book down. His focus was starting to fray at the edges anyway. He'd pushed hard today and there was a point past which additional reading produced diminishing returns — the system seemed to track genuine comprehension, and his comprehension was beginning to slip.
"I'll come," he said. "I'm not playing though. I want to look some things up."
"Like what?"
"News. Company stuff. Market stuff."
Kevin raised an eyebrow but didn't push it. "Sure, whatever."
Marcus kept his explanation at that. What he actually wanted was to sit down at a computer, pull up financial news from the past eighteen months, and let the headlines wash over him — stock prices, corporate moves, product announcements — and see what the context shook loose from his memory. There were things he knew were coming in the next few years. He just needed the details to sharpen up enough to be actionable.
The financial crisis was already underway. The federal bailout conversations were happening in real time. He remembered that much. But there were other things — smaller pivots, product launches, company acquisitions that he'd heard about years later in hindsight and thought: I should have seen that one coming.
Maybe this time he could.
Kevin was talking about his character build. Marcus nodded along, only half-listening, his mind already ranging forward through the years ahead, sifting through everything he half-remembered, looking for the pieces that still held their shape.
The computer lab closed at midnight. That was probably enough time to find something useful.