Clary
"So how was the gig?" Jocelyn asked her daughter, taking a slice of pizza from the greasy cardboard box that Luke had brought home from his bookstore with him. Clary shrugged, and Luke, who was on his fourth slice of pizza, poked her in the arm.
"C'mon, Clary. Something interesting must have happened. There's no way a performance by a band called Green Tinted Loins was boring."
Clary suppressed a snort as she remembered Eric yelling loudly into the microphone in an imitation of what Simon called metal music and Clary called scream-o. Isabelle, the dark haired girl, had collapsed into laughter while Alec picked at his fingernails and Clary had attempted to draw. All in all, it hadn't been as bad as she had expected. Isabelle and Alec were fairly nice people, she supposed, even if Isabelle did tend to get a bit rambunctious. She'd offered to take Clary to the mall sometime, and Clary had reluctantly agreed. And then there was Jace...
Jace, with beautiful, strange golden eyes and an attitude that made her unsure whether she should applaud or slap him across the face. Jace who watched her as she drew, gently detailing the feathers on the angel's wings. Jace, whom she couldn't forget no matter how hard she tried.
Clary shook her head and asked to be excused.
To keep herself preoccupied so that she wouldn't think of Jace, she took out her precious sketchbook and worked on the angel drawing. But no matter how hard she tried otherwise, the angel always seemed to end up with Jace's features.
The sketchbook had been a present for her fifteenth birthday from her mother and Luke. It was beautiful. The cover design was a letter from the Scottish Book of Kells, and she took it with her almost everywhere, and even slept with it under her pillow some nights as if the drawings could somehow take life in her dreams. It was her precious, her escape, and she guarded its secrets jealously. It was like a journal, she thought, except in pictures. And right now, she wanted to draw Jace.
She sighed and flipped on her iPod, furiously tracing over the lines she'd erased just a minute ago. This picture was turning out to be her best yet; the angel held a sword in one had and a cup in the other, and had perfect details, with the exact angle of Jace's jaw and that same curly hair. The music filtered out through the speakers, low and sweet:
"I saw a picture of you
Hanging in an empty hallway
I heard a voice that I knew
And I couldn't walk away
It took me back to the end
Of everything
I tasted all I tasted all
The tears again..."
She dropped the pencil for a minute and leaned back against her pillow. This song had always intrigued her, because of the mystery of what love did to people. It affected everyone in a different way, and although she had never actually fallen in love it seemed to her wild and unpredictable, a beast in hiding.
"Outside the rain's fallin' down
There's not a drop that hits me
Scream at the sky but no sound
Is leavin' my lips
It's like I can't even feel
After the way you touched me
I'm not asleep but I'm not awake
After the way you loved me..."
Loud shouts and laughter sounded from outside, and Clary shut off the music, rolling onto her stomach to look out the window that sat just above her bed. It was dark, and drizzly, but Clary could clearly make out the figures in front of Simon's house. One was Simon, of course, apparently saying goodbye to Isabelle and Alec. And the other boy, she realized as her heart did a crazy flip, was Jace.
With his arm hooked through that of another girl's. They were standing very close, too close for Clary's comfort. He said something that made Simon roar with laughter, and then leaned down and kissed the unfamiliar girl.
It was starting to rain in earnest, and water ran in rivulets down the glass of Clary's bedroom window. She slowly slid the curtain back so it blocked out the image, and closed her eyes in despair.
Of course, he would have a girlfriend.
She tore the drawing from the sketchbook, crumpled it up, and hurled it against the wall, wanting desperately to weep hot, bitter tears for a boy she'd only just met.
That was about when she decided that she would have nothing more to do with Simon's hot friend Jace Herondale.
REVIEW! OR ELSE!