The world passed by before Lance's eyes as he stared at it through the window of Mark's car, the bland, nothingness of the desert blurring as his lax focus continued to decline.
He had long ago lost track of how long they had spent in the car, the small, beat-up silver vehicle becoming something much more like a mobile prison in his mind. In that very same mind there was an inkling of familiarity - perhaps not with the old, busted car but certainly with the idea of travel.
It was one of the first familiarities he had stumbled across, one of the first things that had triggered an odd sense in his emptied mind.
He didn't know whether he liked it or not.
Sure, it was beyond frustrating to know nothing at all about who he was but it was infinitely worse to be so close to something yet still held tight within the clutches of that nothing.
At last, amongst all of the dust and barrenness there emerged a large, industrial looking building. He found it strange - he had been comparing Mark's car (which smelt overwhelmingly of coffee) to a prison when the building in front of him could very easily have passed as one. Perhaps it was one.
There were other cars approaching, teenagers clambering out, slouched and groaning, trudging away from parents that looked as though they weren't quite sure how to act towards their trouble causing kids. Some other kids had not exited so 'willingly'. Parents were clasping the ankles of their children, pulling as the kids grasped anything they could - they were entirely unwilling to leave.
Lance was left alone very soon after being dropped off. Mark had work to do, or so he claimed. In actuality, a rather thuggish looking boy, taller than him but perhaps an inch or two shorter than Lance (that boy never seemed to stop growing - he was lanky as it was!) was staring at him with dark eyes, his hair in an undercut, loose strands framing his square head, large arms crossed in front of his chest. He had been intimidated.
Lance was left, standing alone awkwardly in the clothes Mark had brought for him, the t-shirt, hoodie, jacket and jeans he refused to take off despite the heat - he was sure he had felt worse - as an assortment of kids, some thuggish in appearance and others astoundingly ordinary, passed by with parents that didn't quite look at them, dragging cases much larger than his.
Feigning confidence he could assure anyone who asked he was not feeling, he tucked his hands into the pockets of the baggy coat after pulling the hoodie up, the shadow shielding his eyes from the harsh glare of the sun, and walked through the doors, following a girl with the messiest hair he had ever seen and her out-of-place, overly-composed father.
The minute he walked in, he felt cold, like all the warmth had been sapped from the air, locked out of the bland, grey structure. The girl in front of him shivered too, hands reaching up to rub the goosebumps off of her arms, exposed by her ridiculous Hello-Kitty tank top. Her dad paused for a moment before signing her in and passing her bag over, leaving with a quick hug before rushing away as though he had somewhere much better to be
She stood in the corner for a moment, unsure of what to do after her father's departure, watching him as he signed himself in, her pretty, face and kaleidoscopic eyes displaying a sort of confused interest - probably as to why he was the only kid she had seen thus far without a guardian.
Piper watched as the tall boy with the dark blue eyes signed himself in, toting an unreasonably small suitcase behind him - that thing could only have contained enough to last most people a weekend, not an entire school year!
He was alone and seemed far too comfortable with the strange, unhomely surroundings that made her feel as uncomfortable as she did.
Another boy joined her, this one much shorter but sharing the same odd lack of discomfort. He looked familiar, the hyperactive boy she had seen on the 'open day' her father's assistant had taken her to. Leo, she remembered.
That was another odd thing about the boy she was watching with a type of bland curiosity as she attempted to figure out what she was meant to do - she had never seen him before, he had been absent from that awkward day, on which she had met the other 'delinquents' with nowhere else to go.
But then he turned around, staring at her and making it known to her that he knew exactly what she had been doing. Leo snickered, nimble fingers twiddling a few random objects as he deftly assembled them into some kind of odd device, as a blush spread across her cheeks.
She had learnt that a lot of the kids that would soon be her peers could be dangerous, that aggravating them was unwise. She felt uneasy as he stared at her for a moment through dark blue eyes, the colour of which she had never before seen the likes of.
Thankfully, after a drawn out minute of unsure, unsettled, uneasy staring, a funny lop-sided smile took over his face, his eyes widening and a single eyebrow lifting.
Leo snickered again and, though she had no idea why, she joined him, eyes never really leaving the stranger who looked on at them oddly for a moment more before bursting into laughter himself.
Leo had been glad when the boy he had watched Piper awkwardly watching had been assigned as his roommate for the year. It was like a little light in the darkness of the surely hellish time to come.
They had talked to the boy for a while after and he had been somewhat delighted when he learnt the boy spoke Spanish - Leo spoke Spanish! The boy was funny as well and, purely for the purpose of irritating Piper, they had spent a while conversing in the language she didn't understand, speaking about complete nonsense and laughing about nothing until all three of them had fallen apart in unattractive giggles.
He had the same sort of hyperactivity to him as Leo himself as well.
That was all Leo knew, that was all the information he could gather that he regarded as worthwhile besides a name: Lance.
Leo of all people knew how to respect that - he didn't have the best history and he wasn't all that keen on sharing it.
But it was odd, regardless. There hadn't been so much as a surname included in the conversation and Lance often skirted around conversations, almost as though he didn't know how to answer, not so much that he didn't want to. He hadn't explained the cast on his arm, either.
The rooms weren't the nicest, small and impersonal, a chest of drawers to share, a small wardrobe and a rickety old bunk bed were pushed against the frightfully bare walls, the white sheets thin, the air smelling musty and like the damp despite the air outside being so stiflingly dry. Lance had instantly claimed the upper two of the four drawers for himself.
"I'm taller!" He insisted "It's only fair - you don't have to bend as far to reach the bottom drawer!" he repeated until Leo gave in.
Once the room had been sorted and they had unpacked, in this context meaning both meagre cases of belongings had been emptied, Lance's into his drawers and, to the taller boy's chagrin, Leo's all over the floor and his bed. Again, Lance had taken the top one, the same argument being insistently used.
Leo knew already he wasn't going to win, though Lance could not convince him to pick up his stuff; he hadn't dared claim a space as his own in so long he wasn't going to miss the chance when it finally came! Besides, Lance's obsession with cleanliness and the appearance of the room was a bit strange, much like the boy himself.
A loud bell rang suddenly, deafening the boys as they lay silently on their respective beds, Leo staring at the underside of Lance's as he stared at the off-coloured, stained ceiling above him. All in all, the wilderness school didn't see like much of a school to either of them, especially Lance who really hadn't done anything that would warrant hi going there rather than a regular school - it wasn't his fault his memory had left him!
That was the bell indicating they were to meet up for dinner, the last assembly of the delinquents before their actual educations began the day after.
They filed into a line to collect the sludge that barely resembled food, Piper somehow managing to find her way up to them despite the other girls being rather far behind; they were in the middle of the group of boys their year - why had the wardens let her get away with joining them? Of course, they weren't complaining, it was nice to have a friend in a place like that.
Piper had opted for the vegetarian option but it seemed as though she was one of the only ones - they hadn't been able to do so much as identify what the stuff was meant to be! The water tasted kind of stale too, like it had been sitting in the pipes (surely they weren't very clean) for too long, or perhaps had been left under the sweltering heat of the unrelenting sun outside.
No one really cared though, they were all intent on washing out the taste of the sludge with the unpleasantly warm beverage they had been provided in small, flimsy, plastic solo-cups. The clear, ridged plastic was cloudy and Lance didn't dare look into the cup properly, he was slightly fearful of finding the water to be less than clear. Instead, he ate as quickly as he could and gulped down the water even faster, trying not to think of it as he felt the water run down his throat.
Then someone, a rather smarmy looking boy whose hair very much looked as though it had been dyed with oil before being coated in an entire container of hair gel, surely in a failed attempt to emulate that of some celebrity he liked, decided to use his spoon as a catapult to fling a glob of his 'food' at a girl sitting a few tables away.
Leo didn't know whether or not she was a friend of his, but, either way, she wasn't happy. She screamed, voice high enough to make his ears ring, as the brownish goop impacted her white top before railing its way down and onto the floor behind her. She grabbed a handful of the food belonging to the girl next to her and hurled it back, her own brightly coloured, aged, cheap food tray being empty, hitting the boy beside him by mistake, knocking his spectacles to the floor.
Then it was all out war.
Food went flying this way and that, kids not caring who they hit, as the young, seemingly inexperienced warden tried to halt the mess-making to no avail. It was loud as people were screaming in outrage or laughing to the point where they couldn't think straight, let alone throw straight.
It made perfect sense that Lance would have a headache in such surroundings but, as he lay his head on the table, feeling like he should be enjoying the boisterous surroundings rather than feeling odd in their midst, he didn't think that was the case.
It was a sort of nagging headache that, no matter how much he massaged his temples, just would not ease. The cool metal of the table didn't help either. It was like there was something sitting in a corner of his mind, cast into shadow, just out of both view and reach. Really, he felt rather dizzy.
Another thing that didn't help any was the sudden thunderous yelling of a much more senior warden, the younger, hopeless one having resorted to alerting him over the intercom after resigning to his own incapability. He groaned, unheard over the booming that had, in the space of half minute, managed to silence the entire hall of loud, problem kids; something the other warden hadn't managed to do in ten.
As they left the hall, the headache ceased but he didn't know why it had happened in the first place - a memory he was desperately trying to grasp at, perhaps? The crowd thinned as students found their roommates and/or rooms and disappeared into the place that was strictly theirs, although Lance was unconvinced it wasn't being monitored by some authority.
Eventually, he and leo had returned to their own.
Leo had had something of a laughing fit at the green face green mask Lance had put on after changing into his pajamas, a fair while before lights out. He washed off the mask a while later and just sat on the floor in front of leo as he perched on the end of his bed, clearing away Leo's disorganised mess before, of course.
"Hmm?" Leo cocked his head. He was looking at Lance slightly curiously again. With a history like leo's, he had met every odd person there was to be met - or so he had thought until he had met the boy who sat before him, blue eyes glancing at him like he was trying to puzzle him out. The blue cast, he realised, the other boy wore was a bit too clean - whenever he saw kids with casts walking along anywhere they had been signed or severely dirtied. It was almost as though he had no one to have signed it. There was the case with the pajamas and clothes as well - they looked cheap, not an odd thing on its own but, with the matter of Lance's consideration to appearance, it seemed rather strange. He could have just been unable to afford anything more expensive which may well have been the case but, even if that was true, it seemed to leo as though it were something more - the fact that all of it was new might have contributed to that at least minorly.
Lane extended a hand, marker held loosely by the tips of his fingers "Sign?"
Leo's signature was sloppy but that didn't stop him from writing his name on the barren thing. "How much longer have you got to wear this for?"
He hummed, tilting his head "Not sure, I don't know if mark even told me, actually?"
"Mark?"
"My guardian." He made air quotes around the word 'guardian'. How peculiar.
Another bell rang.
"Lights out." Leo said as he laid his head on the pillow and pulled the thin sheet up to his chin, watching as Lance climbed into the bed over his.
"It's ridiculous, isn't it?" lance said as he swung his long, thin legs out of Leo's view. Leo made another questioning noise "making noise like that for lights out - surely at least a few people were already asleep!" he clarified "Slightly counterintuitive." His voice was suddenly muffled, as though he pulled the sheet up over his lower face, perhaps his entire head.
Leo didn't have time to think as he was suddenly overcome with a wave of tiredness.
Lance, however, couldn't fall asleep. He lay awake, Leo's snoring doing him no favours, as he continued to stare at the stained ceiling as he had before dinner, desperately grasping for things that weren't there.
Why hello. I would like to apologise for how long it has taken me to get this up - I promise it isn't the standard. I spent last weekend - my usual update time - in France! It's a bank holiday today and we have half term anyway so maybe an update during the week to make up for it?
Sorry about not doing this during the actual weekend either, I've been trying to get through the entirety of Detective Conan as quickly as possible (it's incredible, by the way), but, let's be real, that won't be possible in the space of two days.
This is just something that may be helpful to me if anyone would be willing to help (if you can), but how do dress codes work? We have uniforms here and describing clothes in a bit more detail than my oblivious self is currently capable of can help to get across minor details about characters if it's done in a way that's not tedious or entirely unnecessary. I don't want to do something entirely unreasonable and the only things you ever find over the internet are very extreme and often unreasonable.
Also, I am really sorry if there are any typos in this, especially ones that make it hard to read (there probably are, there always are and you never notice until you've published) or, for anyone that speaks American English, if my British English seems strange (I hope it doesn't, but I know sometimes I'll read things in American English and it takes my mind a minute to process the fact that something isn't misspelled, it's just an Americanism).
Anyway, enough of that - I hope people enjoy this. I'm not going to lie, I was very surprised to have gotten any response from the first chapter whatsoever. I know I'm the type of person who rarely reads fics when there's only one chapter up (I tend to get scared I'll get attached and then it'll never be updated and I'll end up disappointed with this story that'll never be finished randomly appearing in my memory every now and then, especially as there's rarely enough to make a proper educated guess about at that point) and I'm aware this isn't up in the most popular of sections on this site.
So yeah, I thank you a lot for everyone who took the time to read this, especially those who have followed, favorited, and/or reviewed.
~We'reAllABitOdd