AN:

I need to stop making new stories. But I can't. Too many ideas. I'd have twenty stories to be working on now if I did not give all my ideas away to people who I know will write them. Anyway... this story is Clace, because lately I have been getting more into this pairing. One-sided Clonathan possibly. Rated it M to be absolutely safe, who knows what the future holds. There is a lot of language, maybe violence (not sure yet). First person POV.

Ten in the Morning

One: Clary

"This is it! It's over! We're moving again!"

I groan when I hear my mother's voice downstairs in the living room, frustration punctuating every word that leaves her mouth. I can hear Luke too, but his voice is too quiet and calm for the words to reach me all the way upstairs. I roll out of bed, glaring at the obnoxiously red lines displaying the time on the alarm clock, and pad across the floor to my door. I swing it open before stomping downstairs, making my presence known. My mother rarely, rarely yelled like this, except when it came to the other half of our biological family. So why she would be yelling at Luke, my step-father, the husband she was so in love with, was baffling to me. Also, who yells at ten am on a Saturday?

"What's so important that you need to wake up the whole neighbourhood," I say, wiping my eyes as I walk into the living room. I lower one hand to my hip, glancing at my mother, who was wearing plaid PJ bottoms and one of Luke's large white shirts. Luke was already dressed for the day in a plaid shirt and white slacks. "I think you guy's have your outfits mixed up."

"As comical as ever, Clary," Luke says from his spot in the arm chair, a tight smile on his lips. I frown at him, then look at my mother, who was hanging her head in her hands.

"Something wrong?" I place both my hands on my hips now, raising my eyebrows as I ask. Luke quickly shakes his head.

"Not a thing," he says, and my mom lifts her head to cast a glare at him. Slowly, she looks at me.

"We're moving again," she says, and I feel my heart drop. We were moving? We had just moved in last night. Well, no, technically it was this morning. At three am. And now it was ten.

"Moving? We have literally been here for... only seven hours," I say, crossing my arms while staring at a clock, then turning to look between the two of them. My mother shakes her head, hanging it again, and Luke casts a sorry look at me.

"We need to move," my mother says, shoulders sagging, but also trembling in a way I recognize as anger.

"We are not moving, we can work something out," Luke maintains. I agree with him. Mostly because, I mean, seven hours? Only seven hours? Surely, whatever problem it is, we can work through it.

"Someone want to tell me what's wrong?" I look between the two of them, frustrated and confused. Suddenly, I hear the tell-tale noise of a lawnmower from outside, and I groan loudly as I let my hands drop. Needing to know which new neighbours mow their lawn at ten am on a Saturday, so I can mark it down to eternally hate them forever, I walk through the other door in the living room, through the dining room, and out the door onto the backyard deck. Luke softly calls after me, but I wave my hand in the air as I march onto the deck. The sound was to my left, past a small four foot fence right beside our incompleted deck with no railing. Scrunching my nose and pinching the bridge, I shuffle over the wood, glancing at our new neighbours.

"Oh, hell no," I whisper under my breath, feeling my very soul freeze and crumble apart into tiny pieces. The person pushing the lawnmower was tall, well-built, blond-haired and green-eyed. Good looking, the kind of guy that was the best football player, got all the girls, got the best grades, was loved by everyone, and was a role-model son. But I knew, from experience, that he not exactly a role-model. Because I had lived next to him for seventeen years, a curse that was broken seven hours ago, and replaced by another one. I was now doomed to live right next to my brother Jonathan. Who lived with our biological father, and his new wife, which meant only one thing-

Feeling the pieces of my soul fly away one by one, I look around the yard next door. A deck, a pool, and of course the lawn Jonathan was mowing. On the deck was nice glass table, with fancy laid-back beige chairs, and a few nice decorations, mostly plants. Lilith likes plants. They represent life, which she could not give. The entire deck was covered with some type of small roof, elongated from the back of the house, so no table-umbrellas were required. I squint at that beautiful and expensive deck, staring straight at the couple sitting on it.

Lilith herself, holding a book on her lap, dark brown eyes scanning the page as she reaches a hand up to brush a dark strand of hair our of her face. Grace and beauty are Lilith's assets, but she is also very determined and motivated to pursue what she wants. Whore, my mother would call her. My mother's hatred, as well as my own, is fuelled by the fact that Lilith used those very attributes to win over the man sitting right next to her. The man who is (regrettably, if I may add) my father. White-blond hair, like my brother, and extremely dark eyes. Like, dark dark. As dark as Satan's soul, if he even possesses one. Maybe my father stole his. That would explain a lot in my life.

"Hello new neighbour," Jonathan's voice calls out as he smiles cheekily, but still beams with happiness at my appearance, waving a hand in the air while stopping the lawnmower. This greeting pulls both Lilith and Valentine's attention to me. My father sits straight up, face paling, and I can see Lilith frown, looking at Valentine with the most worried expression. I swallow, hands trembling and throat constricting, words dying out on the tip of my tongue. Slowly, I turn around back to my own house.

I can see my mother through the large glass sliding doors, standing near the doorway to the living room, chewing her thumbnail. I can see Luke standing against the wall of the dining room, obviously not wanting to be seen by our 'new neighbous'. His blue eyes were narrowing with apprehension, and one look at both Luke and my mom tells me that they want me inside so we can talk about this new development. All I can do though is stand here, arms dangling in the wind, legs held down by an invisible weight.

"Look out!"

It was a young boy's scream, and I whip around to see a baseball coming straight for my face. Which I duck (thank god), and I spend the next second glaring at a dark haired boy with glasses, standing in the middle of the yard next to a machine on the other side of my house, with an older boy sitting on their deck, who sat up immediately and began running down the steps and across the yard. Confused, I follow him, noticing too late a golden blond boy who had showed up and was trying to get the machine under the control. A machine that threw baseballs. Which I do not realize until one hits me straight in the face.

Squeezing my eyes together, a little dazed, the pain hits almost immediately. The force from the ball sends me tumbling back, and I reach up and throw my hands over the red-spraying fountain that is now my face. Perhaps, I should have noted, that my deck had no railings; so, over I tumble, my back painfully hitting that tiny four-foot fence separating me from the undesirable part of my family. Pain. All over my face, especially the centre, which was now a red mess. That pain was causing my vision to go wacky, so I had a slightly clear view of the wet, freshly mowed grass that was pressing up against the right side of my face. Red was still flying everywhere. Humiliated, I could only wonder to myself, did I really just get hit in the face with a ball? A baseball? By a neighbour?

Numb and embarrassed, I try to stand, wobbling and losing my footing, the wet grass sending me back. My fingers brush the fence, latching onto it. Feeling for a second that I was victorious, until gravity catches up with me and sends me sprawling back, my rib yet again hitting another painful surface, and I flop messily through the entire tumble, face-planting into chlorinated water.

It's too early for this shit, damn it.