Death's Reason

Chapter 21

(Jason-)

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Jason's day continuously got worse despite how bad it originally started. A centaur telling him he should be dead was just the peak.

Back up, right? The furthest he could back up to was mid-day, waking up on a school bus with no memories, a coin in his pocket, and only one thing he knew for sure: his name was Jason. Besides that his mind was blank, he had nothing, no cobwebs or stored away ideas, nada. Not even his age.

And if that wasn't enough to create the worst day in history, some more came.

Apparently, he had a best friend named Leo Valdez, who seemed pretty hard to forget. On top of the ADHD teenager, he had a girlfriend who was pretty as hell, whom he would have definitely remembered despite whatever happened to him. Did he hit his head? Have some kind of memory-sucking brain tumor? Why could he only remember his name?

Everyone knew his name, knewhim, knew more about him than he knew of himself. Leo apparently had pranked him with shaving cream and Jell-O, Piper had apparently kissed him on a rooftop. And according to Leo, they were in "Armpit, Nevada", which Jason still couldn't be sure if it was a joke or not, on a school bus heading to...somewhere. They still hadn't told him that part.

And Leo had messed with their teacher/coach's megaphone somehow. All Leo offered up as an explanation was a screwdriver from his pocket, but the megaphone blared out lines such as "the cow says moo", nothing about what they were in the middle of Nevada for.

Then they were dropped off at a museum they were supposed to be at for schoolwork, but Jason couldn't concentrate on anything to do with school when he didn't even know where he went to school, if he went to school, because something in him said that he wasn't supposed to be there.

Well, it could have been the amnesia talking.

Then he was standing in front of glass doors, Leo by his side and Piper somewhere else with a different boy that sent shivers down his spine.

"All right, cupcakes," 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."

Yeah, that made him feel better.

Then there was standing on the skywalk, looking down at a worksheet he still didn't remember getting, watching Leo throw a paperclip-helicopter off the edge. The stupid thought of "was that considered littering?" broke into the amnesia-panic, but then it was gone and the anxiety was coursing through his veins again.

If this was life, it was shitty and confusing and nothing he probably signed up for.

Or was it dreaming? Could you dream about not having any memories? Was that in any way possible? If he knew anything about dreams, he couldn't tell you.

Standing with Leo, thinking about the coach's dirty looks directed at him, he thought maybe, maybe he wasn't crazy, maybe the coach knew what was going on. So he continued to look back at him, contemplate going over, saw him talking to another boy he had never seen before, but that was kind of the theme of the day, wasn't it? But then the boy disappeared and he thought okay, maybe I am crazy, but he took the chance and went over to Coach Hedge because he didn't know what else to do.

Then he found out Coach Hedge didn't know him. Had never seen him before. He used words like 'monsters' and 'halfbloods' and 'mist', and something about them caused Jason's headache to grow, but the confusion didn't last long because the storm hit.