Get To Know The Six Pack Series: Brad Lawson

Moving on with my series about the Six Pack characters, let me introduce you to Brad Lawson.

Brad is 18 years old (you've probably noticed a pattern... the Six Pack members are the same age). He has a lean build, short, blonde hair parted to the side and ice-blue eyes. He is classified a "low achiever" in secondary school. Students are grouped into "achievement levels" based on their test scores. However, Brad has always shown an interest in science and nature. I think of him as somebody who is smarter than people think, but he doesn't test well.

Brad's father served in the military and was killed while overseas. Between the loss of his father when Brad was young and what Brad believes are the schools predetermining what his role in society will be, he has a skeptical, sometimes pessimistic, view of life. He finds it hard to trust other adults, thinking they have their own agendas in mind rather than what's important to him. But even though he is a "low achiever," he became friends with Tyler Ward even after Tyler was designated a "high achiever" after the two bumped into each other when they first enrolled in secondary school.

Where I relate to Brad is that I tend to be a skeptic when approaching something, though with Brad, it's more pronounced because of his life growing up and his perception that he's not allowed to explore his interests because other people have their own ideas. But what I like about Brad is that he learns to overcome his doubts and figure a way to trust people, even if he doesn't always agree with them.

Brad not only formed a friendship with Tyler, but with Jessica Harrison, who saw him on enrollment day and thought he was cute. I explored his friendships with both of them and liked how he not only learns from them and how he can grow as a person, but the way he observes how the other two act and helps them to grow as people, too.

He gains enhanced vision, which comes from his marksmanship skills. This was probably the most difficult of the special abilities to write about, because it's tough to illustrate how he's able to focus on objects from a great distance, or how he can precisely hit targets. I tried to make up for that by focusing more on who he is as a person and how good he is at observing how other people interact.