Clary shifted on the bed because the sunset had positioned itself so that the pinkish light was the brightest coming through Simon's window, hitting her in the face. Simon had no curtains, just open windows that let in as much light as possible. He had Seasonal Affective Disorder, he said. Fall was going to come to an end soon, so that a harsh New York winter could take over, all grey and dirty and ashen.

Simon hated the winter, and really, he hated anything that signified death. It was understandable.

Simon sat cross-legged against a bunch of pillows that his mother had insisted he lay upon in his bed. They were hospital issued, with hospital emblem stamped pillowcases, meant for his sore muscles. He was crushing weed in his fingers, making a neat little green hill on a textbook.

The textbook was for his Sociology unit, and Clary recognized it as a part of Hodge's curriculum. Simon went to school part time, and had a tutor, Clary's tutor, to help him keep up with the work. He was still officially enrolled in his high school, but he saw Hodge more than he went to his classes.

A few years ago, Clary a problem where getting to school was a major and rare occurrence because of constant appointments, constant sick days. At school, her friends were all so sentimental, and so careful around her, and then the rest of the school sneaked glances at her, because somehow they had all found out that she was sick. On top of that, Clary was never a very good student.

She didn't go to school anymore. She convinced her mother that it made sense for her to get a full time tutor instead of braving the hallways of her high school. They were referred to Hodge Starkweather by the hospital. He taught sick kids who were in and out of treatment too often to learn on their own. She liked her weekly meetings with Hodge. His office was basically a library and it smelled like Luke's store, like old books. She liked learning history from him because he was so passionate about it (he had his doctorate in History, but you would never catch him calling himself Doctor).

"Do you ever think about going back to school?" she said suddenly.

"I am in school," he said. "I showed up for gym last week."

"I bet you just stood around and yelled at the rope-climbers."

"I still went," he said, shrugging. Simon liked school for one reason; socializing. He used to have a pretty tight-knit group of stoners and nerds in his old classes.

"Do you still see you're old friends?" she asked. Simon had gone back to breaking up his stuff, and he shrugged again.

"I make guest appearances now and again."

Clary never saw any of her old friends. She wondered if they missed her. Did she even miss them that much? Honestly, she was so used to solitude and Simon that she couldn't tell the difference between alone and lonely. Now that she was with Jace, she felt like she was starving for friends and fun. She straightened her legs, thinking about her old art class with Danielle and Erica. She'd laughed more than she painted, but it was always the most fun out of her day.

Simon pinched a bunch of weed and spread it out in the paper, using his finger to even it out before rolling it with one hand. He licked it close and stuck the unlit joint in his mouth, let it hang there while he packaged his weed and stored it back in the old snuff tin that Clary found at an antique market. When he lit it, he offered it to her. She shook her head.

"Come on, Fray, you're allowed to now."

She could never get past the feeling of burning lungs. But then again, she always willingly breathed in spray paint fumes without a care. On that notion and with a bit of apathy, she took the joint. She still only puffed on it, but it felt thick and rank in her throat. She involuntarily coughed out a plume of smoke and shook her head, steadying herself. Simon chuckled at her and took his weed back. He played with the joint, rolling it in between his knuckles. He was quiet for a while before saying,

"You know there's this dessert toad in the west, and it's got this wicked venom, right? And there are these cults of people who collect the venom and smoke it. It's a crazy hallucinogen and they just lie out in the middle of the dessert, tripping. They're out of their minds- like convulsing, and seeing all kinds of shit. They go into this trance and when they come out, they say that everything is, like, crystal clear. It shows them all the secrets of the universe." Simon said this while smoke escaped his lips in pretty wisps.

"That sounds kind of grotesque," said Clary.

"They think they're seeing God," Simon said with a look on his face, almost like longing. Clary shifted, uncomfortable with Simon's expression.

"I don't think I'd like losing my mind like that."

Simon drew his legs out and stretched them on the bed. He leaned back and let the pillows swallow him up a bit.

"You know what they say, Fray. You gotta let go and let God."

Clary raised her eyebrows at him, unsure for the first time, whether Simon was being sarcastic or not. She snatched the joint from his hand, her fingers passing over his cool skin. Did Simon long to escape so much that he would consider something like magical toad venom? She was suddenly too scared of the thought of losing him to hard drugs, she just said,

"I think you watch too much Discovery Channel."

"I know."

After a long moment, Simon pulled off his hat and scratched the top of his bald head. Clary was hit with a familiar pang of dread as she was reminded that in two days, she'd have to go in for her second round of chemo. The past two weeks had been someone else's life entirely. Someone else was in Clary's head, driving her to pull her tired limbs through her fire escape window. It was someone else on the subway at one in the morning, someone else playing with cans of spray paint. Someone else was being bent under Jace's thumb and finger. Someone else was letting him put his hands on her, on her ass, and on her chest. It wasn't her who shoved her tongue down his throat like all her sustenance came from his mouth.

The real her was the one who had appointments to keep. This other Clary belonged to the night. This other Clary would never have seen the inside of on Oncology floor.

"You look too good to be back on the juice. They got you on some kind of experimental drug or something?" Simon asked after a long while. He was looking at Clary with narrowed eyes. She pulled at her shirt collar. His eyes looked accusing and she hoped he didn't see the remnants of the hickeys on her neck.

"I don't know. I don't feel that sick, I guess." The minute she said it, a terrible voice in her head told her, you will feel it, sooner or later.

"It's that guy, isn't it? You're new boyfriend," he said, also accusingly.

"He's got a name, you know." Inside, she was turning the word boyfriend over and over in her hands.

"Where's he go to school?"

She didn't even think he went to school, by the way he stayed out all night with total disregard for the time or date. She could see Jace as a high school dropout. She would add that question to the list.

"I don't know," she admitted.

"Well…how old is he?"

"I don't know…" It was like personal things always went on the back burner when they were together. She wanted to ask him how exactly old he was, where exactly he went to school, but he never asked her any of these things either. Last week she'd been introduced to his world and his friends, which was one small step for man, one giant step for Jace Wayland and Clary Fray. How long had she known him now? Three weeks, give or take?

"Where's he live?"

"I don't know," she said, dropping her facial expression. Now she felt like she was being interrogated. She didn't know the answers to these questions, and Simon was making that point very obvious. Her stomach felt heavy with discomfort.

"What do you know about this guy?" Simon said.

"I know he's a hell of a good kisser," she said, almost spitting it at Simon. He took his eyes off her to look at a loose thread on his jeans. He didn't seem to like hearing the truth. Maybe it wasn't kosher to shove your new boyfriend into your old boyfriend's face.

"Alright, I get it," he said in a gentler voice.

"You sound like my mother." That wasn't exactly true. Jocelyn didn't say much about Clary's sudden night life, except when she was forbidding her to go out. This was strange because Clary thought she'd receive the Spanish Inquisition from her, or that she'd demand to meet Jace. Not a peep came from her mother, though, and Clary couldn't decide if this was a good or bad thing.

"I just think it's kind of weird," said Simon, looking down.

"It is kind of weird. But I like him."

"You more than like him."

She thought about this for a moment. It was a thought that passed in the night when she felt a little flutter in her chest that reminded her there was someone to think about. When thinking about him, Clary kept dancing around the word. The L-word. If she said it out loud, if she even thought it, she imagined it would be like flipping on a switch. She had no clue what the switch controlled. Despite of all this, she had to admit that Simon was right; she more than liked Jace.

Biting her lip, she got up from the bed. Her muscles still felt sore, and fatigue followed her like a curse, but her body felt mostly in her control. She stretched her arms out in front of her, looking through the smoky air at Simon's messy bedroom. She wondered what Jace's bedroom looked like.

"Does he know?" Simon's voice made her turn around.

"Huh?"

"Does he know you have cancer?" Simon said, and Clary felt like she'd been slapped in the face. That was the other word she'd been dancing around, less pretty and beginning with a C instead of an L. Cancer and Love. She felt her heart quicken.

She twisted her shirt in her hand. Her eyes stung a bit. Shit, don't cry, she thought. Simon must have known the answer to his question, but she told him anyway, with a thick voice,

"He doesn't know anything,"

Simon crossed his legs again. He rubbed his head with his hand once more, and looked up at her with something like genuine hurt in his eyes. He said,

"You can't pretend you're not sick. That's not very fair. To anyone."

It wasn't fair that Clary was acting like their cancer was something to hide away, like it was wrong.

"I'm not…I'm not ashamed or anything, it's just-" she started, but Simon's voice cut through hers.

"Of course you're ashamed of it, Clary. Don't pretend that you don't hate how it feels. How everything feels. We all fucking hate it, okay?"

"Okay," she said quietly. She sat back down on the bed, and was surprised to feel his hand on her shoulder. She took a big, shaky breath of second-hand smoke, wishing that the air was clearer. "Don't be mad at me," she told him.

"I'm not mad. I'm disappointed."

"Now you really do sound like my mother."

She felt him shrug, and when she turned back to him, his face was softer than it had been before. This was comforting. She needed comfort from Simon- it might have been the basis of their friendship. He was her comfort, and as much as she loved Simon, she just couldn't look at him without thinking about her own sickness. She could look at Jace and forget about the whole goddamn world.

"I think he'll leave. If I tell him. Who wants to be with the dying girl?" she said. Her brows knitted as she willed her face not to pucker and her tears not to come. She rarely cried in front of Simon. All of her wallowing and tears were reserved for her pillow.

"I wanted her," said Simon. "But I don't count, right?"

"You count, you always counted." She gave him a light punch on the arm. It might have been a too-obviously friendly gesture, but she didn't want to get into the Simon/Clary dating territory again. It was awkward enough to think about, let alone talk about. She let Simon put his arm around her so she could rest her head on his shoulder. He smelled like hospital brand industrial cleaner and weed.

"I can't really promise you anything. You might have to break up with him if he doesn't take it well. It's just how it is," Simon said after a minute.

It was nothing that Clary didn't know, but it still hurt to hear.

"Is that what really happened with you and Mia?" she asked tentatively. She really hoped she wasn't tearing old wounds up. She felt Simon's chest rise as he inhaled.

"She knew I was sick. I think she thought she could…I don't know, make me better? It was all bullshit."

It was the other way around with Clary and Jace; she thought Jace could make her better. Maybe he would ruin her, make her worse. In her life, things changed so quickly. The effect he had on her might turn sour if she added anything to their mixture. Their little thing, whatever it was, was like a careful cocktail of tagging and music and kissing, and she had no idea what it would be like when she suddenly became the sick girl. Her worst fear was that it would disappear altogether, he would disappear altogether.

Simon stubbed out the roach and tossed it into a nearby ashtray. She still didn't know what to say about Mia.

"I'll tell him," she said. She fought off the urge to cross her fingers behind her when she said this. Kids at school used to say that if you crossed your fingers while doing it, it was okay to lie. She wanted to lie. She'd gotten very good at lying about why she was so tired, or why she felt sick, or why she looked so pale. She'd gotten so good at lying to herself about what she was doing. "I know I have to tell him and I will," she said, mostly to convince herself.

"For the record, I'm sorry," Simon said. "For bursting your bubble."

"It was a nice bubble." She ran her hands through her precious hair tiredly. "The past few weeks have been…hardly real, you know? I've felt so normal."

She thought of last night, in the back room of The Steele, watching Jace strum on his guitar while he was sprawled out on the couch. His head had been in her lap, and he was letting her run her fingers through his hair. Behind her, she caught bits of Isabelle and Magnus's conversation. They'd been talking about how adorable Clary and Jace were, and it sent shivers through her to think of herself with him. Alec had just seemed amazed that Jace was keeping her around. She thought of the warm interior of the bar, and how it was like a new home away from home, and Jace's friends seemed to be part of her new regimen. Everything had just fit in place. Everything felt normal.

"You are normal," said Simon. "You're just sick."