Author's Notes: This is actually a repost of the first chapter of a story I deleted previously, but I decided this would work well as just a oneshot. I came up with it on the idea of how Piper's first interaction with Jason in her false memories from The Lost Hero might have gone. Sort of implied Jason/Piper.

The air was muggy, almost syrupy with the smells of desk wood and eraser tips. The temperature had to be at least ninety degrees. But there was no thermometer around to check, so Piper could only guess.

She guessed a lot of things. Correctly, most of the time. Her being in this school at all, some godforsaken place in the middle of a desert, was proof of it.

This time, she had to try. Try, please, Pipes, won't you, as her father had asked her on the first day while Jane had given that cold little smile reserved just for her from over his shoulder. Try not to steal something, again. Mess up, again. Widen the distance between her and her father, again.

But she'd bitten her tongue, swallowed that bitterness in her throat. She'd agreed. And that'd gotten her in this too-sticky chair, in front of a desk stuck with colorful wads of gum on the bottom, in the back of a classroom full of constant runaways and delinquents and screw-ups like her.

The teacher, some balding man with horn-rimmed glasses she never can remember the name of, was droning on at the front over something on the whiteboard. It involved numbers, some square roots, things no one was paying attention to. Piper could see Isabel and her gang, giggling in their corner and swapping pretty, pastel-colored notes among themselves like no tomorrow. Some boys were throwing spitballs, one had fallen asleep against his chair, another was texting something on their phone.

And Leo, in the chair beside her, was fiddling with a megaphone that he stole—or borrowed, as he put it to her, from Coach Hedge—under his desk. She could hear the little clicks as he fiddled around, his curls stuck up every which way and his brow furrowed in this intense concentration that she knew for a fact he didn't apply to schoolwork.

To everyone else, he was just the clown, the one who messed around with the machines. To her, he was her best friend. The only one here she had, and the only one she needed, as far as she was concerned.

Piper blew a strand of hair out of her face, her glances at the clock becoming less and less discreet with every passing minute. Once again, she had to fight the urge to lean back in her chair; that wasn't a good habit and the first time she'd tried it here, it'd shot out from under her and she'd landed flat on the floor. Isabel had had a field day with that, she remembered bitterly.

Only ten minutes into class, and she was bored out of her skull. Wasn't the teacher going to do anything new for once? It was the same thing, day in, day out. First a lecture, then calling on people who didn't know what he'd said, then lather, rinse, repeat.

Piper propped herself up against her chair, head tilted back. At this rate, she'd kill for a fan, or at least some form of air conditioning. Or rather, charm for it.

She still wasn't really sure what was up with that. Whenever she'd used a certain tone, using certain commands, she could get whatever she wanted. It would be cheap to call it just from instinct, but there seemed to be no other explanation for it. How else had she been able to steal that BMW?

There was a squeak as the classroom door swung open on the perpetually creaky hinges. The droning stopped. She glanced up.

A boy had come in, glancing around as if uncertain that he was in the right place. He looked new, with his dusty purple shirt and even dustier pants. His hair was too neat for a typical Wilderness School delinquent's; cut in the military style and as tidy as if he was going to Sunday school. And the eyes—they were blue, a shade that she couldn't identify, that reminded her of more than the sky or the sea.

If she looked twice, maybe squinted, she could see something on the corner of his lip. A mark, a scar too little to be noticeable at first glance but too distinct to be missed again.

His expression could only be summed up as an attempt at looking stoic, while failing to disguise the nervousness. One scan around the class was enough to tell Piper that no one recognized him, and she could hear whispers in the back—probably from Isabel and her cronies, but she wasn't betting on it. Even Leo was looking up from his megaphone.

"Ah...yes," the teacher drawled, the words oily as he peered over his glasses at the boy. "Our new student. You are John Grace, correct?"

"Actually, it's Jason," the boy replied, and Piper nearly jumped. His voice was less quiet than she'd been expecting, a little firmer. Steelier, but with a hint of uncertainty.

It reminded her, almost, of how she'd sounded to herself when talking the dealer into giving her the car.

"Jason. Right." The teacher turned to the class, gesturing to the boy—Jason—with one pale, wrinkled hand. "Class, please welcome our new student, Jason Grace."

Unsurprisingly, there was no chorus of "welcome". There were only some half-hearted echoes of it, accompanied by some snickering and a spitball that missed its target. Jason didn't look very fazed, but then again, he didn't look all that assured, either. Piper found herself wondering what such a formal-looking guy like him was doing at a school like this, where the staff didn't care and field trips were a rarity and the state's unwanted troublemakers stalked the halls on a regular basis.

"You're late, Mr. Grace, but because you are new, you're excused. You may take a seat." The teacher waved him off, away like some unwanted dog. Jason blinked, once, twice, confusion written in his face as plain as graffiti on a wall. He took a few steps, this way and that, before he finally moved to sit down in one of several desks that some boys usually sat at on the rare days—this not being one of them—they weren't skipping class.

It wasn't that far from the back, almost exactly in front of hers. As the teacher resumed his droning and Isabel and her gang continued their gossiping, Piper found herself watching the boy as he propped his arms up on his desk. She had to admit, he didn't look half-bad. Not as if she would judge him on that alone, but she couldn't help thinking he'd look better if he smiled. The confusion had gone from his face as quickly as it had come; his jaw now set, those blue eyes inscrutable and his mouth in a thin line.

He seemed to be trying to look serious, almost intimidating. A perfect statue, to be seen but not heard, nor touched.

"Hey." She swiveled her head. Leo was looking back and forth, from her to Jason and back again. His eyebrows were scrunched slightly together, scrutinizing, while his fingers were still occupied with the insides of the megaphone. "What's his name? Didn't catch it."

Piper paused. When she spoke, the words were strangely sweet on the tip of her tongue, sugary and hard through her teeth like candy. The kind that could only be popular on Valentine's Day, with perfumed flowers and boxes of chocolate and glittery cards.

"Jason." The name sank in, a stone breaking through murky water. "Jason Grace."