Lance was an enigma.
He just didn't make sense.
Not even to Piper and Leo who considered themselves to be rather the experts on the abnormal.
There were so many things about him that exceeded the boundaries of strange. The first being his apparent lack of a surname. It was different from Piper who just did not particularly like hers and the link it drew between her and her father, she loved him, sure - she just didn't like being 'Tristan McLean's delinquent daughter'. He genuinely appeared to be lacking one.
They were addressed by the teachers by last name - Mr. valdez, Miss. Mclean - but he was just Lance.
Secondly, there was the cast. It probably should have been of by that point in the year but Piper, in a moment of overwhelming clumsiness she had apologised for profusely again and again, had fallen from the stairs before him, landing in the support of his broken arm as he lashed it out without thinking, further damaging the healing limb.
But that wasn't the issue. The issue was the fact that, whenever asked about it, he would stutter and stumble before pretending to have forgotten the proposed topic, picking another completely unrelated one, to which he could devote himself until he was sure they had forgotten just what they had meant to say.
Third was the peculiarity of his knowledge. He knew very little of modern or classical literature. His history was all skew-whiff. But his knowledge of science, physics especially, flight dynamics even more so, was so thorough he would sometimes manage to stump the science teacher or overpower her in some type of hypothetical argument about air, and to an extent, space travel. Those arguments were always taken to Google at the end and Lance always ended up being right.
To Leo's delight, he also seemed to know a lot about mechanics, again, the knowledge leaned very drastically towards flight as well as tracking. He had mumbled a couple of times under his breath that Leo reminded him of someone but there was never a name or much of an identity. Sometimes it would seem he was trying to think of a name, but the sound usually made when doing so was the repetition of the consonant sound 'p' but there were a few instances when that changed into a sharp 'k'.
Fourth was a though confined to only Leo's mind. School uniforms. Lance had mentioned offhandedly on their first morning at the school as he dug through his drawer trying to find the t-shirt he wanted - all the ones he had were pretty much the same, why did it even matter?! - his surprise at the lack of uniform. Leo had paused, head halfway into a jumper that stayed over his head, unmoving, as he stared at lance through the gaps in the stitching.
"What?" Most schools in the country did not have uniforms - why would he be particularly surprised at such a thing as that?"
"Oh-" He looked around, struggling to get his shirt over the cat on his arm "Nothing. I didn't say anything."
But he had.
Last was just how familiar he looked at some points in time. Especially, Piper couldn't help but think, when he was in dim lighting. When his face was drowned of colour, as it was when she looked at him as she considered just how much of an oddity he was, plunged into a monotone visage she refused to believe could possibly have belonged to anyone else. But where had she seen it?
He was leaning back on his elbows, face tilted skywards, eyes half closed as flashes of light burst above on occasion, illuminating his features and diminishing that familiarity by a fraction. A shower of blue sparkles rained down, travelling below the spectacular view provided by their vantage point as they fizzled and died out.
It was pretty, really something to see. The velvety sky was littered with stars like freckles spattering across the face or paint flecks on an elegantly carelessly painted canvas. Those little gold flecks often became part of the show, when the attractive explosions matched them in colour.
It was quite astounding to think the desert, barren, dusty and desolate when beneath the sun, was so pretty at night. It was just as astounding that the imposing building that seemed so utterly draining to stay in was so exhilarating to be atop.
Piper had forgotten whose idea it had been, but they had all agreed to sneak out that night and watch the firework show they had caught news of.
But piper was distracted.
She got so tired of being in the dark, she surrendered herself to straight out asking.
"Hey, Lance?" He hummed a response, not taking his heavy-lidded eyes off of the night sky "Why do you never seem to answer us when we ask you about yourself?" He froze, eyes widening and limbs tensing as she continued "I doubt there's much you have to hide here - it's not like you're the only one who has stories to share that don't paint them in the best light. You know I stole a car, you know Leo has an extensive history of running away, what do you have that's so bad you have to hide it."
"Nothing."
"Then tell us!"
"No - I have nothing to tell. Literally nothing."
"What?" Leo asked, suddenly very bewildered "What do you mean you have 'literally nothing'?" He made air quotes with his fingers around the words, dropping the little device he was tampering with into his lap for a moment to do so.
"Ugh." Lace wasn't feeling all the great about telling. He dug his hand into the corresponding pocket on his jacket, pulling out a flimsy clipping of paper. He placed the crumpled sheet in Piper's ready hands.
She lifted it to her face as he watched unsurely. Of course! She practically slammed the sheet on the ground as she used her hands to haul herself to her feet, standing over him, a triumphant smile spreading across her face, growing wider by the second, hands placed on her hips as she stood in an exaggerated stance that made Lance chuckle besides himself.
"Miracle boy!" She declared, voice perhaps too loud seeing as they were blatantly disregarding the rather strict curfew supplied to them and were well aware of the consequences of being caught as well as the high probability that they would be. He nodded.
"No way," Leo said in awe, staring from his friend to the paper in piper's hand. The image present was definitely him, even if there were more cuts and bandages and plasters present, alongside a lack of colour "I thought they'd sorted that out! When the picture disappeared from the news!"
Lance shook his head "I think they might've just given up - we were getting nowhere."
"You're amnesiac." Piper confirmed. "You don't remember your last name, and everything else that's weird about you is probably some barely-there memory you can't gather up enough of to make sense of!" She exclaimed in her realisation.
"That's pretty much it." Lance nodded complacently until… "Wait? Weird?!"
Leo looked at him as though he were losing his mind, hands splayed and used to add emphasis to his expression "Obviously." He extended the word for much longer than he should have - another point of emphasis. "You show up out of nowhere, knowing nothing at all. You literally don't have a last name and are now going to a school for delinquents without a proper reason. Apparently, no one else knows who you are, either."
"You know, I do have a reason for being here." Lance deadpanned.
"Which is?" Leo was sure he already knew the answer.
"Nowhere else would accept me without proper papers, let alone with nothing more than a name, not even a definite age."
"Exactly!" it was Leo's turn to be triumphant. "How is amnesia synonymous with delinquency?"
"Did you just all yourself a delinquent?" Lance asked.
"Yes." Leo did not hesitate "Wait…" he did then, though "You don't actually know your age?"
"Nope." Lance popped the p, suddenly feeling much less awkward than he had upon the original emergence of the topic.
"So you might be in the wrong grade?" Leo checked.
"Quite probably. At the hospital, they just had a stab at guessing and decided sixteen was about accurate."
"So they can tell how long ago a body ceased to be a person but not how long a person has been one?"
What odd wording Lance thought as he snorted "What are you planning on measuring? Rigor mortis or carbon decay?"
"Fair enough."
"Is it weird?" Piper wrung the hem of her nightshirt in her hands.
"What?"
"Waking up and not remembering a thing? Is it weird?"
"What else could it be?"
"Well, I hardly doubt it's natural." Piper agreed absentmindedly. She was thinking back to the time she had reportedly stolen the car that guaranteed her a place in this hellhole. She wondered if that's what it was like for the car salesman, though to a much less drastic extent. He had given her the car, she didn't know why, but had later denied all knowledge of doing so and in such a convincing manner no one, hardly even she, believed her on the matter. Had he suddenly come to full consciousness to be met with a sinkhole in his memories, a gap in the film of life.
"But what did you do afterwards?" Leo asked between asking a few minor questions on flight dynamic for the miniature device he was currently assembling.
"Mark was assigned to me - he looked after me and found me this place."
"He found you this place? Some great guardian you've got there!"
"It was the lesser evil." Lance chuckled, laughing even more as the little contraption in Leo's hands sputtered to life, whirring in his hand for moment before, slowly and gradually, rising as it travelled in a forwards motion. Then it circled back on itself as it sped up, speeding straight into the side of Leo's head.
"Ow!" He yelled in pained protest as he mad wildly-off snatches and grabs at his little creation as it continued to buzz around his head incessantly like a particularly diligent mosquito
But then there was a noise, like a heavy boot on hard floor (presumably, that was what it was). They silenced, their laughter ceasing in a second, Leo's movements and outrage stopped mid-action. Another step. Then another. Another to follow that. And then, after a few minutes, the heavy footsteps slowly lapsed back into complete silence.
Simultaneously, Piper and Lance let out relieved breaths, slumping back so they were supporting each other's backs as they slid down to the floor. Leo made another grab for the contraption, lunging forwards in an attempt to confine it to the hollow between the palms of his hands. At the same time, in a sudden burst of speed, it too lurched forwards, flying straight for Leo's face before he could register its approach.
It drove itself straight into his eye.
"Son of a-" He yelled as he clutched his wounded eye, shaking his other fist like an angry old man. Lance fell about himself laughing as Piper began to laugh so hard she was merely gasping for breath, throwing her head back and gulping in air greedily.
She noticed, as she looked at the dark sky above, that the fireworks were over. She wasn't sure when they had finished - she didn't even know the time.
"Somehow," She said to Lance as the devious little machine took jab after jab towards its creator who began to curl up on himself as he finally resigned to his loss "I feel like you had something to do with this."
He chuckled again, making a face of mock disbelief, clasping a hand over his heart, scrunching up the front of his jacket and the nightshirt beneath "How dare?" he gasped in singsong falsetto. He then paused, looked from left to right as he screwed up his face, and said "You can't prove anything." So fast she barely caught it.
She didn't remember going back to her room or falling asleep that night but she did remember laughing so hard her stomach hurt for days afterwards.
A/N
And here we have the other update I hinted to.
Does anyone else ever just look at their search history and wonder what people would think if they saw it? I do. What are the last few things I searched?
Let's see…
-Common Indian surnames (It's for a character, but the search doesn't tell you that)
-Small towns in Arizona (setting for that same story)
-Holbrook Arizona (see the previous)
-How can the process of rigor mortis be prolonged (I promise it was for writing, not murder or plain, morbid curiosity!)
-Petrified forest national Park (going back to the story setting…)
What would you think if you saw that with no context? Probably just that I've gone crazy (I live in the UK, by the way - I suppose it would make a bit more sense if I actually lived in Arizona)…
Right! Someone asked me whether or not Jason would be in this. He will! He should be showing up next chapter.
Thanks to everyone who has read, reviewed, favourited or followed!
All the best,
~We'reAllABitOdd (apparently this is inclusive of my search history…)