Jace

About a week later, with official news of my spot on varsity weighing heavily on my shoulders, Clary started crying in physics class. It had been in the very middle of a lecture being projected onto the front board, slicing the air and Mr. Anderson's droning voice with the single stroke of a knife, rendering the class silent to stare. I sat across the room from her, but the heads discretely swiveling to look at her, and even a girl suddenly reaching out her arm to rub Clary's, confirmed that the whisper-like sounds coming from Enigma Girl weren't just my mind playing tricks on me. She had been hunched over in her desk at first, as if trying to suppress any noise, but the lightness of the atmosphere came crashing down when she all but buried her face into her hands, careless of the people around her, and fell apart for everyone to see — and subsequently talk about during passing period.

Mr. Anderson, admittedly small but full of enough "knowledge" to make up for it, as he'd put it, had merely stood at the front of the room, trying to keep the lesson going but also pausing frequently, averting his eyes to the crying girl in his class, rocking on his feet and tugging at the collar of his shirt. I had wanted to fling a stapler at his head and tell the man to dismiss her or do something, but more so found myself overwhelmed; Clary was a composed shell, like a pistachio with a seamless outer-layer. Her indifference was what made her into the enigma I wanted to crack. But she had done it all on her own, and I was there to witness it.

She just broke from the inside out.

The teacher had grabbed his clipboard — I'm sure to find her name on the seating chart because, up until today, Clary Morgenstern had never made so much as a sound — and uncomfortably raised his eyes to look at the class. "Would anyone care to escort Miss Morgenstern down to the office?" he'd inquired, his voice with flawed amplitude and child-like uncertainty.

I had very well nearly raised my hand, but Clary had beaten me to the punch, jumping from her chair and hastily grabbing her things. Without so much as another glance over her shoulder, she'd disappeared into the hallway.

I had then fallen back against my seat, school be damned because she was all I could think about from that point moving forward. And then, I did something amazing or stupid — I didn't bother to care — and abruptly rose to my feet: I had decided right then and there that I would follow her.

And so I had.

Mindful of my footfalls with careful determination, I found her at her locker. Clary was crying freely, groping at the lock on her locker and looking up to the sky at once, slamming her hand against the metal in frustration and dropping her things to the ground. They crashed against the checkered tile, binders coughing papers and folders landing disfured and pathetically bent, suffocating under the weight of her physics textbook. I stopped where I was, my brows absently furrowing as she released a ragged breath and hugged her elbows to her torso, defeatedly resting her forehead against, what I imagined to be, the cool surface of the wall.

Her normally kempt hair was free of any bands, curls a many curtaining some of her too-pale face and gathering around her shoulders in heavy, hanging ringlets. The red of it even suprassed that of her burgandee-reddish cardigan sporting St. Xavier's crest, in fact, it was the brighest thing about the dimly-lit hallway; blood against the snow of her skin. She was upset, crying and breathing to release whatever was pent up inside of her, and, unaware of my eyes trained exclusively on her, she was magnificently animate. Yet, I was left with more questions. She was more of a mystery than she's ever been to me.

I didn't know why I still bothered, and I could tell myself that she wasn't anything to me — because I still didn't know what the hell she was other than a distancing, porcelain girl — but, God help me, I would, without a question, empty my pockets right on the spot to pay a bus fare to travel across the country to find her. There was something wrong and every fiber in me told me to help her; she was something I unconsciously needed to be around. To help, maybe — I didn't know.

I didn't know anything when it came to Clary Morgenstern, just that she was an enigma and that I wanted to be the one to solve her.

"Clary," I said, my voice carrying across the hollowed space. She didn't even jump, as if she'd sensed my presence long ago. The earth stilled and even the trees stopped their dancing to listen, but she only lifted her green eyes to look at me; an exchange was shared between the both of us. Either I made a move or I walked out of her life forever and she'd always be just the girl that drove me insane and grated my insides, intangible and alluring, a beacon that moved a mile further away at my every advancement.

There was no question because I was done asking. I strided the distance between us, diminishing it forever, and even before my arms went around her she was melted against me, crying into my chest and clutching the fabric of my shirt. I held her close, never having been so lucky to even touch her, madly drunk — for whatever reason, it would remain a mystery. I was intoxicated and nothing like myself, reacting to her every minuscule human effect. I whispered her name endlessly into her hair; it was the only sound aside from her loud, broken cries that filled the empty hallway.

I would hold onto this moment because I couldn't fathom whether there would ever be one again. Just me and Enigma Girl, embracing like longly departed friends or invested lovers, and the rest was all a beautiful blur.

Sweetness. I wanted to put this chapter up as a thanks for the overwhelming response to last chapter. I feel as if I've built this up from nothing and now I'm so invested and I'm always thinking about when I'll have more time to add to it. Just the thought of more people other than myself also being invested is enough to make me die a little bit inside — in a good way, of course(;

Please keep reviewing. There's more Jace and Enigma Girl to come...

Until next time, peace(:

Needs to be edited, but what the hay, right?