Alright! Just finished this one! So this chapter may or may not be that good, but tell me what you think at the end!
It had been a few days since Clary had moved to Nowhere (her official nickname for her new home). She'd been hanging out a little with Maia and Isabelle, who weren't bad, but she wouldn't consider them friends. She didn't have friends in Nowhere, and she didn't plan on it. All she wanted to do was go back to her real home, where Simon was.
Jace had been getting worse. Since what had happened in the forest, he'd started doing or saying obnoxious things, and afterwards, he'd say: "What? I'm not charming."
God, how Clary hated him.
Clary was in her room now, sketching Jace is all his devilish glory. In the picture, Jace was sprawled out on a stone table, grinning his grin. She had given him devil horns and a tail, wearing no shirt. Somehow, he looked like a sexy badboy, which was unconsciously intensional.
Clary heard a knock on her door, and immediately slammed her sketchbook shut. The door opened, and Jocelyn poked her head in.
"Clary, could you help bring the groceries in?"
Clary sighed, putting aside her sketchbook and following Jocelyn out to Luke's pickup truck. It was dusk outside, and the orange-pink light transformed the sky into something beautiful.
"We got apples," said Jocelyn as she took a large paper bag out of the truck, "among other things."
Clary was still a little mad at both Luke and Jocelyn for making her move out here, but for this moment, she was grateful. She even smiled.
"Thank you so much." She took the bag- which was rather heavy- in her arms, and carried it back toward the house. As she started up the front porch steps, she heard a voice.
"Need some help with those?" Jace. He didn't actually mean to help her, she knew, so she declined his offer.
"No thanks." Her tone was laced with ice. When she got to the door, she tried to grab the handle, but couldn't, or the bag would slip. "Can someone get the door?" she called, though the only one near her was Jace.
"Oh, I'm busy."
Clary glanced around the bag to look at Jace. He was standing on the porch off to the side, leaning against the outside of the house and looking at something on his phone.
"You get reception out here?" she said without thinking.
Jace shrugged, not looking at her. "I have verizon. They have a tower near here."
Clary didn't have Verizon; she had AT&T. She found herself extremely jealous or Jace suddenly, and hating herself for it.
She grabbed at the door handle again, desperate to get away from Jace, but her hand slipped, and she nearly dropped the grocery bag. She caught it before it went down, but some of its contents spilled out: apples, onions, a bag of coffee beans, and a carton of milk, which burst open.
Jace started laughing, and Clary gritted her teeth. "Shut up," she snapped. She got down, and started putting things back into the bag, then opened the door before picking up the bag again.
The Next Morning...
Clary poked distastefully at the scrambled eggs on her plate with her fork. She'd never really liked eggs, but she didn't want to be rude. She weighed both options, and decided that being rude was fine. She set down her fork next to her plate, and took an apple from the fruit bowl.
She looked at the bruises on the apple, and thought of yesterday. That was not Jace's fault, but she couldn't help but be mad at him for it. She took a bite of the apple, not liking the mushy texture.
"We should go to the mall today." Isabelle said loudly enough for all the kitchen's occupants to hear. There was a lot of agreeing, and Clary was relieved. She preferred being alone in the house rather than being in the chaos of all the teenagers.
"Clary, you should come!" Isabelle grinned. Everyone looked at her, and she shrunk into her shoulders, embarrassed.
"Um, no thanks. Shopping isn't my thing," Clary said.
Isabelle looked slightly disappointed. "Oh, okay."
Later, after everyone left, Clary sat on the couch across from the staircase with her sketchbook. Clary was, yet again, trying and failing to find her creativity, so she started touching up the drawing of Jace.
Clary had never seen Jace shirtless, so she only drew how she'd imagined it. She figured since his arms were muscular, his chest would be, too. She traced over the contours of his muscles with her pencil, trying to copy what she saw in her mind and put it on paper.
"What are you drawing?" A voice asked from the hall.
Clary gasped, dropping her sketchbook. She'd thought she was in the house alone, but sure enough, Jace was leaning against the wall, a smirk plastered to his face.
Clary gathered up her sketchbook and closed it so he wouldn't see, managing not to look at him.
"So, what, you're ignoring me now?" he sounded amused, making Clary furious, but she still ignored him. "Is this about the milk yesterday? That wasn't my fault, you know."
Clary didn't want to be near him anymore. She stood up swiftly, and left the main room, retreating to her bedroom.
Clary dropped her sketchbook on her bed and threw open her window. She felt like she wanted to scream at the top of her lungs, but resisted the urge. Why did her mom have to take that stupid job? Why did they have to move?
Clary took a deep breath of fresh forest air, trying to calm herself.
This was ridiculous. A teenage boy was trying to mess with her. Bid deal. Clary's life you be like this all the time if she had an older brother, right?
Clary checked her reflection in the mirror over the bathroom sink. She looked fine, she supposed. Today, her hair behaved slightly better than it usually did, and her skin looked more healthy. Why though, she wondered? Maybe because she'd gotten more sleep here because there was little else to do.
She walked over to the bathroom door, and took the handle, but it broke off. Clary gasped, trying to stuff it back in, but the door wouldn't open.
"Jace!" she shouted angrily. "Jace, what did you do to the door?!" She pounded on the door, not wanting to be trapped. "Jace!"
"What?" she could hear that he was calling from down the hall.
"What did you do to the bathroom door?!"
"Oh, did the handle come off again?" he sounded like he was getting closer. "Yeah, not my doing. That happens occasionally." Jace was right outside the door now.
"Well can you let me out?" Clary wasn't sure whether or not she believed him, but she didn't want to be stuck in there. There weren't any windows.
"Sorry." Jace was obviously smirking again; Clary could hear it in his voice. "I'm not charming."
Clary's nostrils flared, and she pounded her fist on the door. "Jonathan Herondale, let me out of here right now!"
"That isn't my name," he said, then walked away.
Clary growled. She was probably going to be stuck in here a while.
It was a while before Clary got out. She must have spent an hour trying to fix the door handle before Max opened the door. Clary stayed frozen for a moment, unsure of what to do.
"Did the door handle come off again?" asked Max.
Clary composed herself and stood up. "Uh, yeah."
"Here." Max took the door handle from her hands, then took a screwdriver out of one of the wicker baskets on the shelf, then loosened a screw, slipped the handle back in, then tightened it. "There," he said, "fixed it."
"Thanks," Clary said before retreating back to her bedroom.
Jace's little tricks didn't stop there. The next morning, when Clary was showering, she heard the bathroom door open.
"Someone's in here," she said, but the person didn't leave. "Hey." Clary poked her head out from behind the curtain and saw Jace at the sink, brushing his teeth. "GET OUT!" She yelled. "What the hell is wrong with you?!"
Jace spit out the toothpaste and shrugged. "I'm not charming."
Clary, enraged, grabbed the bar of soap and chucked it at him.
"So what's up with you and Jace?" Isabelle asked when they were eating lunch together on the couch by the stairs later that day. "He's constantly asking where you are, and whenever he comes around, you get all... angry." Isabelle shrugged.
Clary gritted her teeth just thinking of him. "He's an asshole." She stated as she twirled her fork into her spaghetti.
Isabelle laughed. "Yeah, he gets like that sometimes. What did he do?"
"There's a list," Clary muttered around her noodles.
"Oh." Isabelle giggled, and Clary shot her a glare. "Well I think he's just like this because of what happened to his parents." Isabelle's tone had taken on a hint of seriousness, and this made Clary curious.
"What happened?"
Isabelle forked up more spaghetti. The look in her eyes said that it was serious. "Are you sure you want to hear this?"
Clary hesitated, but curiosity got the best of her, and she nodded.
Isabelle sighed, then looked at her pasta. "When Jace was ten, some muggers broke into his house. His parents called the police, but they were already inside, so they told Jace to hide. So he hid under the bed and watched both his parents get murdered."
Clary gasped involuntarily. "That's awful," she whispered.
Isabelle nodded slightly. "We adopted him soon after that. He's always used sarcasm to hide behind, so we forgive him when he acts like an ass."
Clary turned her gaze to her tomato sauce covered noodles. Was that why Jace was the way he was? Because his parents got murdered?
Clary felt extremely guilty now.
Clary was sitting inside the hollow log now with her sketchbook, attempting to draw Jace the way she saw him now: with a solemn expression. She couldn't seem to manage it.
The rain drummed rhythmically on the outside of the log, signifying that it was pouring, but she was completely dry where she was.
She scrapped the page, unable to draw Jace in that way, and started drawing him as he was: just a person. She drew that smirk that he always had on, but she somehow made his expression seem as though he was actually kind. Was he, she wondered? Could he actually be kind?
She realized suddenly that it was getting hard to see, and looked outside the hollowed out tree. It was getting dark, though she couldn't tell if it was sunset because of all the dark clouds in the sky.
She put her drawing things back into her green messenger bag, and pulled up the hood of her thin, gray jacket. The second she left the dry safety of the hollow tree, she began running back towards the house. When she got to the door, it was locked.
She knocked a few times before she heard a voice on the other side.
"Who is it?" Jace asked, tone playful. He obviously already knew who it was, and he probably was the one who locked her out, but for some unknown reason, Clary couldn't bring herself to be that mad at him. "Jace, it's me," she said. "I'm really wet, and it's cold. Can I come in?"
"Sorry," he said, and Clary knew exactly what was coming next. "I'm not charming."
"Okay fine, you win," she heard herself say, and was unsure of where it had come from.
"I'm sorry?" Jace had obviously thought he'd misheard her.
"Whatever you're trying to prove, you win," she said to the door. "Just... just stop pestering me." She managed to gain some of her anger back- just enough to make her sound like herself again.
The door opened suddenly, and Jace was there, looking at her with a slight smile on his lips. "So I'm charming then?"
"Sure," Clary said flatly, "you're charming."
Jace held the door open, and gestured her inside.
She walked past him, pushing her hood off and taking off her squishy, muddy sneakers.
"We're hanging out downstairs," Jace said, "you're welcome to join us if you want."
Clary glanced up at him. He was smiling slightly. It was a bit of an amused smile, but also a tad it sincere. She looked away. "Sure."
She hadn't realized she's answered with a yes until Jace said: "Alright. See you downstairs."
When he walked away, Clary's eyes followed him. She considered the possibility of just going up to her room and staying there, but then thought twice. Why?
She heard the faint sound of the music start to play, and sighed. They were playing Everlong by The Foo Fighters. She actually liked this song. She apprehensively opened the basement door, and started down the stairs. She went down painfully slowly, her damp socks making no sound on the wooden steps, but she listened.
The band was actually pretty good, and as much as she hated to admit it, Jace's voice was pretty good, too.
She finally got to the bottom, and paused. Did she really want to surrender? Jace was still rude; the only thing that was different is that Clary had heard some story that might not even be true.
She turned around, and went back up the stairs, but sat at the top, and listened.
So there you have it! Clary finally warming up a bit!
How did you guys like the chapter? Was it too... I don't have a word, just tell me what you thought.
So can you guys start requesting stuff? Because I'm running low on ideas, and I'm working on writing some other stuff, too.
See you soon!
