Chapter Text
Even before he got electrocuted, Jason was having a really shitty day.
He woke in the backseat of a school bus, not sure where he was. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, trying to think. A few dozen kids sprawled in the seats in front of him, on their phones, talking, or sleeping. They all looked around his age … fifteen? Sixteen? Okay, that was scary. He didn’t know his own age.
The bus rumbled along a bumpy road. Out the windows, desert rolled by under a bright blue sky. Jason was pretty sure he didn’t live in the desert. He tried to think back … the last thing he remembered …
A girl sitting next to Jason glanced over. “Jason, you okay?”
She wore faded, baggy jeans, combat boots, and a dark-blue fleece snowboarding jacket. Her chocolate brown hair was cut choppy and uneven, with thin strands braided down the sides. She wore no makeup like she was trying not to draw attention to herself, but it didn’t work. She was quite pretty. Her eyes were a warm brown, a few shades darker than her hair. Next to her sat another boy who glanced over at Jason then resumed his fidgeting with something that looked like a toy helicopter.
Jason blinked rapidly. “Um, I don’t—”
In the front of the bus, a teacher shouted, “All right, snowflakes, listen up!”
The guy was obviously a coach. His baseball cap was pulled low over his hair, so you could just see his beady eyes. He had a wispy goatee and a sour face, like he’d eaten something moldy. His buff arms and chest pushed against a bright orange polo shirt. His nylon workout pants and Nikes were spotless white. A whistle hung from his neck, and a megaphone was clipped to his belt. He would’ve looked pretty scary if he hadn’t been five feet zero. When he stood up in the aisle, one of the students called, “Stand up, Coach Hedge!”
“I heard that!” The coach scanned the bus for the offender. Then his eyes fixed on Jason, and his scowl deepened.
A jolt went down Jason’s spine. He was sure the coach knew he didn’t belong there. He was going to call Jason out, demand to know what he was doing on the bus—and Jason wouldn’t have a clue what to say.
But Coach Hedge looked away and cleared his throat. “We’ll arrive in five minutes! Stay with your partner. Don’t lose your worksheet. And if any of you precious little snowflakes cause any trouble on this trip, I will personally send you back to campus the hard way.” He picked up a baseball bat and made like he was hitting a homer.
Jason looked at the girl next to him. “Can he- can he talk to us that way?”
She shrugged. “Always does. This is the Wilderness School. ‘Where kids are the animals.’” She said it like it was a joke they’d shared before.
“This is some kind of mistake,” Jason said desperately. “I’m not supposed to be here.”
The boy next to the girl leaned forward and laughed. “Yeah, right, Jason. We’ve all been framed. I didn’t run away six times, and Piper didn’t steal a BMW.”
The girl blushed. “I didn’t steal that car, Leo!”
“Oh, my bad, I forgot, Pipes. What was your story? You “talked” the dealer into lending it to you?” He raised his eyebrows at Jason, smiling.
Leo looked like a Latino Santa’s elf, with curly black hair coming down to his neck, pointy ears, a cheerful face, and a mischievous smile that told you right away this guy should not be trusted around matches or sharp objects. His long, nimble fingers wouldn’t stop moving—drumming on the seat, sweeping his hair behind his ears, fiddling with the buttons of his army fatigue jacket. He was kind of cute, Jason thought. And then he immediately began to question the thought. Am I gay or something? He didn’t have much time to ponder when Leo spoke again.
“Anyway, I hope you’ve got your worksheet, because I lost mine days ago,” Leo said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I don’t know you,” Jason said.
Leo gave him a grin. “Sure. I’m not your best friend. I’m his evil clone.”
“Leo Valdez!” Coach Hedge yelled from the front. “Problem back there?”
Leo beamed at Jason. “Hey, watch this!” He turned to the front. “Sorry, Coach! I was having trouble hearing you. Could you use your megaphone, please?”
Coach Hedge grunted like he was pleased to have an excuse. He unclipped the megaphone from his belt and continued giving directions, but his voice came out like Darth Vader’s. The kids cracked up. The coach tried again, but this time the megaphone blared: “The cow says moo!”
The kids howled, and the coach slammed down the megaphone. “Valdez!”
Piper stifled a laugh. “Dear god, Leo. How did you do that?”
Leo slipped a tiny Phillips head screwdriver from his sleeve. “I’m a special boy.”
“Is that a euphemism for your neurodivergency?” Piper deadpanned.
“Guys, seriously,” Jason pleaded. “What am I doing here? Where are we going?”
Piper knit her eyebrows. “Jason, are you joking?”
“No! I have no idea—”
“Ah, yeah, hes joking,” Leo said. “He’s trying to get me back for that shaving cream on the Jell-O thing, aren’t you?”
Jason stared at him blankly. Shaving cream on Jell-O?
“Think he may be serious, dude.” Piper said.
“That’s it!” Coach Hedge yelled from the front. “The back row has just volunteered to clean up after lunch!”
The rest of the kids cheered.
“Yeah, because that’s surprising,” Leo muttered. He kept his eyes on Jason, like he couldn’t decide whether to be unserious or actually worried. “Did you hit your head or something? You really don’t know who we are?”
Jason shrugged helplessly. “It’s worse than that. I don’t know who I am.”
The bus dropped them in front of a big red stucco complex like a museum, just sitting in the middle of nowhere. Maybe that’s what it was: the National Museum of Nowhere, Jason thought. A cold wind blew across the desert. Jason hadn’t paid much attention to what he was wearing, but it wasn’t nearly warm enough: jeans and sneakers, a purple T-shirt, and a thin black windbreaker.
“So, a crash course for the amnesiac,” Piper said, in a helpful tone that made Jason think this was definitely not going to be helpful. “We go to the Wilderness School, which means were bad kids." Piper made air quotes with her fingers. "Your family, or the court, or whoever the hell, decided you were too much trouble, so they shipped you off to this lovely prison—oh, sorry, boarding school—in Armpit, Nevada, where you learn valuable nature skills like running ten miles a day through the cacti and weaving daisies into hats! Yippee!"
"And for a special treat we go on “educational” field trips with Coach Hedge, who keeps order with a baseball bat." Leo added. "Is it all coming back to you now?”
“Um, no.” Jason glanced apprehensively at the other kids: maybe twenty guys, half that many girls. None of them looked like hardened criminals, but he wondered what they’d all done to get sentenced to a school for delinquents, and he wondered why he belonged with them.
Leo sighed dramatically. “You’re really gonna play this out, huh? Okay, so the three of us started here together this semester. We’re totally tight. You do everything I
say and give me your dessert and do my chores—”
“Leo.” Piper rolled her eyes.
“Fine. Ignore that last part. But we are friends.” When Jason continued to look blank, Leo’s brow furrowed. “He’s got amnesia or something,” he said. “We’ve got to tell somebody.”
Piper scoffed. “Who, Coach Hedge? He’d try to fix Jason by whacking him upside the head.”
The coach was at the front of the group, barking orders and blowing his whistle to keep the kids in line; but every so often he’d glance back at Jason and scowl.
“I mean, we could talk to him,” Piper relented. “Maybe Jason’s got a concussion or—”
“Yo, Piper.” One of the other guys dropped back to join them as the group was heading into the museum. The new guy wedged himself between Jason and Piper and shoved Leo to the side. “Don’t talk to these losers. You’re my partner, remember?”
The new guy had dark hair cut in the classic messy style as if that made him look cool or something, a deep (fake-looking) tan, and teeth so white they should’ve come with a warning label: do not stare directly at teeth. permanent blindness may occur. He wore a Dallas Cowboys jersey, Western jeans and boots, and he smiled like he was God’s gift to juvenile delinquent girls everywhere. Jason hated him instantly.
“Go away, Dylan,” Piper grumbled. “I didn’t ask to work with you.”
“Ah, that’s no way to be. This is your lucky day!” Dylan hooked his arm through hers and dragged her through the museum entrance. Piper shot one last look over her shoulder like, 911.
Leo sighed. “I hate that guy.” He offered Jason his arm, like they should go skipping inside together. “‘I’m Dylan. I’m so cool, I want to date myself, but I can’t figure out how! You want to date me instead? You’re so lucky!’”
“Leo,” Jason said, “you’re weird.”
“Yeah, you tell me that a lot.” Leo grinned. “But if you don’t remember me, that means I can reuse all my old jokes. Come on!
He followed Leo into the museum. They walked through the building, stopping here and there for Coach Hedge to lecture them with his megaphone, which alternately made him sound like a Sith Lord or blared out random comments like “The pig says oink.”
Leo kept pulling out nuts, bolts, and pipe cleaners from the pockets of his army jacket and putting them together, like he had to keep his hands busy at all times.
Jason was too distracted to pay much attention to the exhibits, but they were about the Grand Canyon and the Hualapai tribe, which owned the museum.
Some girls kept looking over at Piper and Dylan and snickering. Jason figured these girls were the popular clique. They wore matching jeans and pink tops and enough makeup for a Halloween party.
One of them said, “Hey, Piper, does your tribe run this place? Do you get in free if you do a rain dance?”
The other girls laughed. Even Piper’s so-called partner Dylan suppressed a smile. Piper’s snowboarding jacket sleeves hid her hands, but Jason got the feeling she was clenching her fists.
“My dad’s Cherokee,” she said. “Not Hualapai. “Course, you’d need a few brain cells to know the difference, Isabel.”
Isabel widened her eyes in mock surprise, so that she looked like an owl with a makeup addiction. “Oh, sorry! Was your mom in this tribe? Oh, that’s right. You never knew your mom.”
Piper charged her, but before a fight could start, Coach Hedge barked, “Enough back there! Set a good example or I’ll break out my baseball bat!”
The group shuffled on to the next exhibit, but the girls kept calling out little comments to Piper.
“Good to be back on the rez?” one asked in a sweet voice.
“Dad’s probably too drunk to work,” another said with fake sympathy. “That’s why she turned klepto.”
Piper ignored them, but Jason was ready to punch them himself. He might not remember Piper, or even who he was, but he knew he hated mean kids.
Leo caught his arm. “Be cool. Piper doesn’t like us fighting her battles. Besides, if those girls found out the truth about her dad, they”d be all bowing down to her and screaming, “We’re not worthy!””
“Why? What about her dad?”
Leo laughed in disbelief. “You’re not kidding? You really don’t remember that your girlfriend’s dad—”
“Look, I wish I did, but I don’t even remember her, much less her dad.
Leo whistled. “Whatever. We have to talk when we get back to the dorm.” They reached the far end of the exhibit hall, where some big glass doors led out to a terrace.
“All right, snowflakes,” Coach Hedge announced. “You are about to see the Grand Canyon. Try not to break it. The skywalk can hold the weight of seventy jumbo jets, so you featherweights should be safe out there. If possible, try to avoid pushing each other over the edge, as that would cause me extra paperwork.”
The coach opened the doors, and they all stepped outside. The Grand Canyon spread before them, live and in person. Extending over the edge was a horseshoe-shaped walkway made of glass, so you could see right through it.
“Man,” Leo said. “That’s pretty sick.”
Jason had to agree. Despite his amnesia and his feeling that he didn’t belong there, he couldn’t help being impressed. The canyon was bigger and wider than you could appreciate from a picture. They were up so high that birds circled below their feet. Five hundred feet down, a river snaked along the canyon floor. Banks of storm clouds had moved overhead while they’d been inside, casting shadows like angry faces across the cliffs. As far as Jason could see in any direction, red and gray ravines cut through the desert like some crazy god had taken a knife to it.
Jason got a piercing pain behind his eyes. Crazy gods... Where had he come up with that idea? He felt like he’d gotten close to something important—something he should know about. He also got the unmistakable feeling he was in danger.