Hello Loves!
I'm terribly sorry that I haven't updated in a long time but I want to let you guys know that I am still keeping up with this story.
I have been so busy lately with my dance classes but I will try to keep updating as regularly as possible.
I hope you all enjoy!
Also my private messaging still isn't working so here is my response!
To the guest that suggested that everyone watch Clarys dance video during dance classs. It was a great suggestion and it definitely made me think but I have had a plan for this story since I first started it and I hope after you read this chapter you will see why I did what I did! Please leave me more reviews and suggestions because I could definitely use them! I love guest, who ever you are!
Chapter 4
After everyone is done eating we all get up to walk outside, something about how if all of us 'heathans' are congregated into one place we will cause trouble. The courtyard is just as beautiful as the rest of the school with lawns that look like they should be right out of a cliché highschool movie, with freshly mowed lawns, marble tables, stairs everywhere, and kids doing there various talents around it.
We move under a large oak tree that shades the middle of the lawn. Jon sits next to Jace at the base of the tree, while Isabelle and I sit across from them in the grass. There talking about something, I cant quite make out, because I'm distracted by music across the courtyard.
There's a group of boys and girls that are gathered in a circle and, what it sounds to be, rapping. The girl is really pretty with dark skin and even darker eyes. She sounds pretty good too from what I can hear. Her cloths are baggy like the stereotypical thug, but her hair is in pretty curls that don't match her thuggy appearance.
"That's Maia", Isabelle says in my ear, "She got in this school for singing obviously"
"Yeah I gathered that considering that she is amazing", I exclaim, "But shes not really singing, shes just rapping?"
I say this as more of a question.
"Oh honey, she can sing everything and make I sound amazing. All the way from Celine Dion and Ariana Grande to the Beatles", she replies with a knowing smirk.
Isabelle just grins when Maia hits a high note in the back ground and turns back around to watch her.
"Who are the boys?", I ask her.
"The taller boy with the dark hair is Jordan, while the boy who has more beef on him is Bat."
"Bat?", I ask with a confused look on my face.
"It's a nickname, they have called him that since freshman year and it kind of just stuck", she replies, "They're both total hunks tho huh! If I could get with that I would"
I must look at her like shes crazy because she rolls her eyes and says, "Yes I realize I could get any guy I wanted but those two only have eyes for Maia. It kind of causes problems."
I nod, because Maia is a beautiful girl and I can totally see why two hot guys would fight over her. The bell rings all to soon so everyone groans and files in the school. I look over to the group again and notice that the crowd is filing away but the girl and the two boys stay. There gathering there stuff but they don't seem like there in a rush. I want to go over there and tell them that there really good but then Jon reaches down to help me up and rubs my head.
"Oh shove off", I say while pushing him. He just grins and starts to walk off. Isabelle links arms with me and sets off towards the school.
I look ahead to Jon and see that Jace is giving me a look. I shrug my shoulders as if to say 'can I help you' but he just shrugs his head and goes back to talking with Jon. I shake my head and come back to Isabelle.
"…Ya know?', she asks.
"Sorry,", I say looking at her sheepishly, "I didn't get that"
"I know you didn't because you were to busy staring at my brother", she says with a smirk. I've come to notice she does smirks quite a lot.
"Whatever", I tell her with an eye roll.
We get all the way inside before Jace makes a smart ass comment. I really thought he was just going to ignore me… I guess that was to much to ask for.
"Hey I can tutor you with math if you need help", Jace says with a smirk, "We could add a bed, subtract your clothes, divide your legs, and…-"
"That's enough Jace!", exclaims Jon punching him in the shoulder, pretty hard from what I can tell.
"Besides", Isabelle says, "She has advanced math like you do Jace so it wont look like she will be needing your help", she says all this with a once over and then adds as an after thought, "Or your sexist comments"
Jace responds, with something witty i'm sure, but I realize that Izzy just said that I have advanced math like Jace.
Kill My Self.
"Wait you mean that I have math with him?", I all but yell.
The second bell rings which means were late. Jon ushers us past the marble arch ways and fountains, so we can get deeper in the building. I'm once again, probably not for the last time, shocked by how amazing this school is. My mother would have loved this. She always talks- talked about how she loved the beauty of the Effiel Tower, the power of the Russian statues, and the strength of the Colosseum. That was her favorite part of taking us around the world with her, so she could show us what she loved.
I feel the all to familiar pang of guilt stab through me… again.
"Clary, are you alright?", Jon asks.
"Yeah i'm fine", I say snapping out of my self pity. I make a mental reminder to stop feeling sorry for my self. I don't deserve self pity.
"Alright", Jon says, "We should probably head to class since we are already late."
He turns to Isabelle and offers her his arm with a grand gesture.
"I'll see you guys at dance class", Jon asks everyone even though he's looking straight at me. I know its his way of asking me if i'm going to skip out on dance. He has an almost guilty look on his face that I know is associated with helping Luke put me in dance. I nod and turn in the direction that the map shows.
"Well it looks like its just you and I red", says Jace right behind my ear.
I feel my self tense up. The last time I was this close with someone it didn't end well.
"Hey are you alright?", asks Jace. He actually sounds concerned. I turn around and green meets gold. I have literally only known this guy for a day and it looks like there's concern for me on his face but in a flash its gone.
I nod and start to walk in the same direction I was going in before. He just follows me, all the way talking about how good he is at math, how fast paced the pace is in the class and if I ever get lost that I need to just let him know.
Yeah that's not happening. Its guys like him that make me hate, well, him. He's so arrogant and cocky. He thinks he's the best and doesn't realize that he is only compensating for something else. Something quite small judging by the size of his ego.
We get to math class and everyone looks up.
"Im so sorry", says Jace before I can even open my mouth to speak, "I was showing her around and we lost track of time but we practically sprinted here."
I have never heard Jaces voice sound so sweet and innocent before.
"Well, alright, but never let this happen again, Understood?", she asks. This lady has brown hair and seems relatively young. She's wearing a maroon pencil skirt, and a white blouse, with her hair pulled back in a messy, but professional looking bun.
She tells me to sit down in the chair next to a really pretty light haired girl named Kaelie. She has pretty blonde hair and startling blue eyes.
Is everyone beautiful here?!
She smiles at me and gestures to the seat next to her. I smile back and go and sit down. I don't even have time to say hi to her before the teacher is talking again. We were working on algebra equations, they were pretty hard to, so I leaned over to ask Kaelie for help.
"Hey what did you get for-", I was saying before she cut me off.
"Stay away from him", she says with a sneer.
"Who?", I ask. What the hell is her problem.
"Jace. He is mine, and he only has eyes for me", She says like she knows it's a fact.
"Um- alright", I say not in the mood for her shit.
"Good", she says as she gets up and grabs her Michael Kors purse, "Catch you later"
What a bitch. I couldn't just find one nice girl, could I? With a role of my eyes I go back to doing my work. I'm not sure if I actually get anything right on my homework because i'm to busy thinking about how I could not possibly like Jace at all. All I want is to be normal, after everything that's happened, I just wish I could have a normal highschool experience.
I remember my mother would always say that traveling the world would be a much better experience then actually going to a high school. At the time however she was just avoiding Luke because she tried to kiss him when she was drunk and he said he wanted to wait. Of course she doesn't think Jon and I know this because I was only six and Jon was only seven. We were in Rome at the time and the next thing we know were packing our bags and leaving so we could beat the traffic.
Luke is in love with my mother, that's why he's paying all of her medical bills while shes in her coma. That's why he's taking care of Jon and I, and some how that makes me feel even more guilty. I mean after my biological dad took all of my moms hard earned money and ran, Luke was the only man that ever tried to build a relationship with Jon and I. I just had to go and get my mom in a car accident and fuck up her relationship with Luke.
One month before the accident we finally met up with Luke again, I mean we had only been apart for two weeks so it wasn't that long. My mother was dancing Swan Lake for the sixth time and Luke just happened to be dancing the prince. They dance beautifully together and have since they were younger. The press say that 'Fairchild' and 'Graymark' (Those are the names they use with the press since they cant use there real names in public while dancing with The Masked Company) have the chemistry of a life time. I guess in a way Luke feels like it was his fault for not protecting my mother and letting her get in the car accident even though everyone knows there was nothing he could have done.
I ruined there happy ending, its kind of fitting in a way.
"Ohhhh Red?', Jace says in sing songy voice, "Are you daydreaming about me again?"
I jump, startled out of my thoughts.
"The bell rang red, and unless you want to be late to our next class then I would hurry up and pack your things."
"You have advanced art?", I ask while packing up my things.
"Well no, but Isabelle and Jon made me promise to walk you to all of your classes.", he says with a shrug and a smirk as we walk out the door.
"You don't have to be nice", I sigh suddenly fed up with everyone's bull shit.
"I'm not", He replies simply as we walk up to another door down the hallway. I walk into the room and turn around. I see Jace leaning up against the door in all of his Godly glory, I mean douche-baggy glory.
"Try not to miss me to much Red", he says with a wink. With that he was gone.
The teacher was an older man with a hunched back and grey hair with a Dumbledore beard. He wears glasses, and those overalls you see all old people wearing in movies.
"Oh hi there young lady", He says, "You must be Miss Clarissa Fray"
"Yes sir", I say with a smile.
"I'm Mr. Wayland", he says with a warm smile.
"Wait, are you related to-"
"Mrs. Wayland?", he says, "Yes, she's my wife"
I laugh, then realize that that must have sounded rude. I open my mouth to apologize but he just says, "That's quite alright dear, she is a little extreme at times"
I just nod and laugh. He tells me what the class has been doing lately and asks me if I think I can catch up. I tell him of course and he shows me where to sit and tells me that we are working on this project for the next three weeks.
We're supposed to draw something we love, whether it's a picture of something we do or a painting. I'm painting about nature because everything else that I love is currently not being talked about.
The rest of the class I spend doodling on my notebook. When the bell rings I thank Mr. Wayland and walk out of the door. I don't see Jace so I just start to walk in the general direction that everyone else is. I try to squish down the little feeling of disappointment of not seeing Jace, I mean I don't really know him at all. All I know is that he has a big ego.
I get to chemistry just fine, which im pretty proud of. Jace walks in ten minutes late and makes up some excuse as he tries to hide the new hickey that's forming on the bottom of his neck. I just roll my eyes and get out my notebook to take notes.
At the end of class, Jace walks me across the courtyard to a separate building that apparently is the dance building. When I walk in I see a grand walkway that leads into a large ceiling to floor high way. We walk into the hall and down pass some doors before archway. He stops me and tells me we're at the lockerrooms.
"Girls is on the right, boys is on the left.", he says.
"Okay but why would I need to know where the boys locker room is?"
"So when you are looking for a good time you know where to find me"
I walked straight into that one. I shove him, roll my eyes and walk through the doors without so much as a glance at him.
My nose burns with the smell of hairspray and expensive perfume. They are just getting ready for practice so im not sure why they are spraying so much hairspray
The locker room is comprised of lockers up against the wall to the left of the doors and three more rows facing away from the walls in the middle of the locker room. The mirrors are behind a wall along with some bathroom stalls. The locker room is actually pretty nice, with metal benches and granite counter tops by the sinks.
"Hey! There you are!", Isabelle says behind me, "I've been looking everywhere for you. I thought you had gotten lost."
"I wouldn't have gotten lost, I mean you made Jace promise to show me around"
She looks at me with a confused face, " No I didn't"
"Really?", I ask, "He said you and Jon both made him promise."
"Interesting", she says with a raised eyebrow.
Dammit! Of course she can do that. I mean she already has the looks, of course she can raise her eyebrow too. A bell rings and she pulls me out into the hall and into a room a little way down the hallway.
Holy crap! Let me just tell you, I have seen some pretty big dance studios in my life but this one was amazing.
It's a large wooden room, with capacious ceilings and archways. There's ceiling to floor windows that look out into a large field, which we drove by on the way here. Since dance has its own building I guess they had to make it at the edge of the school zone. There are mirrors on the wall opposite the windows with movable bars set up in rows in the middle of the room, and God.
Oh God.
That smell. It is so familiar, with the mix of sweat, new pointe shoes, and freshly waxed floors. It almost makes tears come to my eyes. Suddenly its almost all to much and I hear the distinct sound of screeching tires against asphalt and glass shattering. The worse thing of all though would have to be the scream I hear of my name in my mothers voice. I'm about to turn and leave when I almost get shoved to the floor.
"Oops sorry. Didn't see you there", says Kaelie (of course shes in dance).
"Wow, wait to be a bitch Kaelie", smirks Izzy.
She opens her mouth to speak but is cut off before she can say, what I'm sure would be something intelligent, by the doors on the opposite end that we came through opening. The male dancers walk in. If 'walk' is the right word to use, they are actually, what girls these days would call it, 'swaggering' in. Getting hit by Kaelie knocked me out of my pity party that I don't deserve.
Jon sets his bag down and looks over at me and starts to walk over to me briskly but I just shake my head before he can reach. Him being the sweet brother he is understands that need my space so he just nods before he goes over to the bars. I, however, don't think he sees me catch the look of pity in his eyes. That seems like the only thing that I see in people now when they talk to me.
The door bangs open.
"Shit", Isabelle mutters under breath.
I look over and see that she is scrambling to get her strings tied up on her pointe shoes while she attempts to hop over to the bar. I wonder what makes her so anxious but soon get my answer when I look over and see a man with dark hair, tights and a white shirt that matches what all of the boys are wearing now. I cant really see anything else about him since this practice room is so big and im on the opposite side by everyones bags.
"Why is everyone not warming up. What is our motto? What do we want?", he snaps with a sharp clap of his hands. His voice is warped from bouncing off he high ceilings and walls.
"To be so good they cant ignore us", everyone answers in unison. Its kind of creepy.
"So I ask you again, how can we not be ignored when you start practice ten minutes late?", he all but yells, "We all know that someone, somewhere is practicing and when you meet them they will be better then you"
"Yes sir, Sorry sir.", they all say.
"Tondu, pase to fifth position", he says as classical music starts. I recognize it as Mozart.
As everyone dances I just stand there awkwardly. Im not sure if I should try to introduce myself to the teacher or not since he is so hard core. I mean he doesn't really know I can dance at all since Luke pulled strings for me. While I was thinking this I look over and make eye contact with him.
It cant be. Theres no way.
He smiles at me with familiar eyes. I walk across the room before I can register what I am doing and straight into his arms.
His arms are so familiar and I never realized how much I missed him. He danced with the Masked Company for five years from the time that I was 10 all the way through 15. He left after he met his girlfriend turned wife and I was crushed but I understood. He was like a second father to me. and mentored me all the way through my time with the Masked Company. He always gave me such good advice with wisdom from way beyond his years.
"Jem", I say as I breath him in. He smells just like he used to, so familiar.
"Hey Clare bear", he says with a laugh as he pulls away, "I've missed you kid"
" What are you doing here?", I cant help but almost shout.
"I have been teaching this class for the past year Clary", he says.
"What!", I say, "Jon never said-"
"I know, I asked him not to tell you. Same with Luke. I didn't know how you were holding up.", he says with a small smile.
"Im….", I start but cant seem to finish the sentence. I look behind me and see that the whole class has stopped and is staring at Jem and I. at first im confused, with all of my emotions running wild but then I realize that this must look weird. I mean Jem is tan, well built and good looking and im the new girl that didn't have to try out in front of everyone to get into the advanced class. Not only that im also all over there teacher even though its not like that at all.
I look over and make eye contact with Jon's green eyes. He looks guilty, hmmm, wonder why, my brain suddenly brings back up the image of Jon looking guilty right after lunch.
"Everyone this is Clary Fray. I have known Jon and Clary since they were little and have known there mother for even longer", he says as he puts his hand on my shoulder and gives me a comforting squeeze when he mentions my mother, "I have seen Clary dance and I can vouch for her and say she can, in fact, dance. She has torn her ACL and wont be dancing until it heals completely. If I hear of any shit coming her way we will all run. Understood?"
From the sound of it, running seems like they do it a lot. In any type of dance, whether it's contemporary, hip hop, or ballet, you do extensive cardio. So I am assuming that they will run even more after there standard three miles. It takes them a couple seconds to recover but they eventually say, "Yes Mr. Carstairs"
"Good", he says with a sharp clap of his hands, "Well don't just stand there. Everyone knows we go to the corner so we can warm up turns. Did we turn into beginner dancers overnight?"
Everyone grumbles and walks to the corners. Some have confused looks on there faces while others are simply just looking at Jon and I. I look past him and see Isabelle standing there with a hurt expression in her dark brown eyes. I quickly turn away and look at Jem again.
"We will talk later", he says reassuringly.
I nod and suddenly it feels like im swallowing knifes.
"Go get one of the bands and start stretching that injury of yours", he says with a wink as he walks over to the corner and starts to yell instructions.
I walk over to the bands and start to stretch. I shut all of my emotions off because I can feel them start to over whelm me. Starting my first day of school at a new school in a new town, finding out that I was in dance, meeting Isabelle, lying about my injury, and everything that has happened with my mom has shot my emotions up way past the limit that I can handle.
Oh and how could I forget… Jace.
Speaking of the devil, everything has been so hectic since I got to dance that I haven't had a chance to even look at him. Im not even sure hes in here right now. I look around and make almost immediate eye contact with pure gold eyes. Hes looking at me with a smirk on his face, that doesn't quite seem right. It almost seems like its forced.
"Jace, pay attention", Jem snaps. He winks at Jem and continues to do his Grande Jete into a double pirouette. Flawlessly of course. I roll my eyes at his.. well everything. The black tights he is wearing does great things for his thighs and ass. Don't even get me started on the way his white shirt looked around his biceps and the way his hair looks wind swept, but it doesn't matter because he is an arrogant douche bag that cant walk a foot in fornt of him without tripping over his ego.
The way he dances truly is flawless and the only person I have ever seen get close to his level is Jon. Jon steps up to the X that is duct taped to the floor and does the exact same thing Jace and all of the other guys did before him. In the middle of his turn I catch his eye and that's it.
I fell the dam that is holding back my emotions start to crumble, slowly but surely. The way his eyes look is exactly how my mothers eyes look. They have always had the same emotion filled look when they dance, that I have always envied. When he reaches the other corner he turns to me and motions to his bag and somehow I know he is motioning to his keys in his bag.
I try not to rush to his bag so I wont draw attention to myself. I grab my bag and keys and as soon as im outside of the dance room im running. I get to the car and throw my bag in the backseat and climb into the passenger seat. I play a game that I have played since I was a baby when I felt alone. I count the clouds in the sky and when it gets dark I count the stars.
When Jon comes out sweating and panting he gives me a hug right away.
"Im so sorry", he says quickly as he cuts off my air circulation, "I was going to call Luke but Jem wouldn't let me-"
Before he can continue I cut him off, "I know Jon, im a dancer too. I know how long these practices go, I just couldn't be in there anymore."
He nods and is about to say something but I think he senses I don't want to talk.
As we get back into the city the stars dissapear and I have nothing to keep me distracted. We cold not get home quicker. As soon as we pull up the driveway, im out of the car. I run directly to my room and slam the door just as the dam bursts open and the first tear runs down my face.
I Know I have been gone lately and im sooooooo sorry!
I know there wasn't a lot of Jace and Clary action in the dance studio but fear not there will be more in the next chapter that I swear wont take nearly as long as this one did!
I love you all and hope you like it!
XOXO