Last Hero
Chapter 02: Meeting With Elves

his long and deft fingers did not want to move.—tapped the chair, flicked the hair behind the ears, fiddled buttons on the loose army jacket he was wearing. Either the child is actually hyperactive or he has consumed enough sugar and caffeine to make a buffalo have a heart attack.

“By the way,” says Leo, “I hope you keep your worksheets, because I used them for spit cloths many days ago. Why do you see me like that? Is anyone poking my face again?”

“I don't know you,” said Jason.

Leo gave her a big smile. “OK. I'm not really your best friend. I'm his evil twin.”

“Leo Valdez!” Coach Hedge shouted from the front. “There's a problem back there?”

Leo blinked to Jason. “Talk this.” He's turning forward. “Sorry, Coach Sir! I did not hear the voice of my father. Can you please use megaphone Mr.”

Coach Hedge sir growled, as if he was happy for a reason to use his megaphone. He removed the megaphone from his belt and continued to give directions, but his voice sounded like Dart Vader. The children laughed out loud. The coach tried again, but this time the megaphone was echoed: “But said moo!”

The kids were spinning, and the coach slammed the megaphone. “Valdez!”

Piper was holding back a laugh. “Yes God, Leo. How do you do that?”

Leo took out a tiny flower screwdriver from his sleeve. “I'm a special boy.”

“Serious nih,” pinta Jason. “ What am I doing here? Where are we going?”

Piper frowned alus. “Jason, are you kidding me?”

“No! I don't know—“ at all

Jason looked at her dumbly.

“No, I think he's serious.” Piper tried to grab Jason's hand again, but Jason pulled his hand away.

“I'm sorry,” said Jason. “I tak—I can't—“

“It's enough!” shouted Coach Hedge from the front. “The back row just volunteered to clean up after lunch!”

The other kids cheered.

“Wow, surprise,” grumbled Leo.

But Piper kept looking at Jason closely, as if he couldn't decide whether to be hurt or worried. “Did your head hit or something? You really don't know who we are?”

Jason shrugged helplessly. “More severe than that. I myself do not know who I am.”

***

The bus dropped them off in front of a complex of museum-like red-plastered buildings perched in the middle of nowhere. Maybe it was the National Museum of the Land of the Disputant, Jason thought. A cold wind blew in the desert. Jason didn't pay much attention to what he was wearing, but his clothes were less warm: jeans and sports shoes, a purple sweatshirt, and a thin black windbreak jacket.

“So, a short lecture for those with amnesia,” said Leo in a pretentious tone to help that made Jason think that his talk would not help at all. “We are students ‘Liar Nature School’”—Leo make quotes in the air with his fingers. “That means, we are ‘bad boys.’ Your family, or the court, or who knows, decided that you were too troublesome, so they sent you to indah—sori prison, ‘dormitory school’— here at ‘America’, Battle Mountain, Nevada. Here you learn useful skills in the wild, such as running fifteen kilos between cacti or weaving daisies for hats! And as a special gift, we go kie kisawisata ‘educational’ with Mr. Coach Hedge, who keeps order with a baseball bat. Do you remember everything now?”

“But.” Jason glanced at the other children with misgivings: maybe twenty guys, roughly ten girls. None of them looked like repeat criminals, but Jason wondered what they had done to get thrown into school for this delinquent, and he wondered why he was placed with them.