Here is the full chapter of Missing! Excluding the last chapter as an actual chapter, I'm hoping to make this short story last four more chapters. That being said, the finishing product, after I delete the teaser chapter, will be ten chapters(: Now that Jace has his feelings all sorted out, and he's finally unblinded by Emily, there will be a lot of focus on Clace—but don't think Clary will forgive Jace that easily(; And there's still a lot of feelings that need to be revealed and there's still a certain Sebastian Verlac that needs to be worried about.

So, with that being said, here's the next chapter...

(If you've already read the preview of this chapter, and you really don't want to have to reread it, then skip everything until the 'announcement' that tells you you're past the preview)

~Jace~

It's not as simple as saying it felt like I was missing something, a part of me. It'd never be that simple—at least not when it came to Clary. The girl with the crazy, red hair, bright eyes, infectious smile, and nothing but kind words, thoughts, and ambiance to offer; she'd always been a giver, a forgiver, a person, a rare, beautiful person, that never judged anyone else on his makeup now, rather the potential he'd have later on in life. She was observant, almost too observant, and only she could paint a butterfly out of a hornet. Her uncanny, effortless ability to have trust in the worst of people was both admirable and innocent, as well as dangerous and distressing. She'd never know when to run away, she'd never know when to scream, she'd never understand the evil that surrounds her. It was everywhere and Clary, whether she shields herself away from it, simply ignores it, or has convinced herself that she can stop it, will forever be endangered by it.

When it's storming, she only sees the nature growing around her, the light from the lightning, the opportunity to wear her rain-boots. Snow, in her mind, doesn't cause accidents or pass around colds, it's as simple as white crystals falling from the sky that she can mold into snowmen and use as an excuse to drink more hot chocolate, sit by the fire and draw 'till her hand aches. She took the exhaustive 'finding light in the darkness' to a whole different level; she was too good for this world, and yet, without her in it, there wouldn't be, well, there wouldn't be...a Clary. A difference. A new way at looking at things. Conformity would rule, no one would dare to stand against it; there'd be a division among a friend that plays football and another that's a shoe-in for becoming valedictorian.

My friend, my best friend—since before even our diaper days—never ceases to amaze me. She'd been there for me when my parents had gotten a divorce, had invited me in addition to all of the girls in our first grade class to her birthday party, has never once pushed me away or deprived me of her comfort; she's been my everything. Someone so categorically perfect, infinitely sweet, and persistently present doesn't deserve to lose her mom when she's not even ten years old, or to receive merely a pack of colored pencils from her father for her sixteenth birthday, or to have to put in double, triple the amount effort of everyone else because she has to rely on a scholarship to get in to a descent school. Someone like Clary, who makes you smile and laugh, even cry because she's this splatter of color in a black and white world, doesn't deserve anything but the absolute best—hell, the girl deserves a kingdom.

She deserves to smile because she wants to, not because she has to to make so-and-so feel better.

She deserves a partner, one that's almost as brilliant as herself, to comfort, to love, to protect her as she does me.

She deserves new shoes—no, about a hundred pairs of new shoes.

She deserves...she deserves so much more than what I have to offer her.

Her glasses, now hidden inside her tiny, curled fist, were broken. Destroyed. Irreparable. And I knew—I knew—that it'd take her months to get them replaced. That thought alone made me want to buy her a damn pony, and maybe even half a continent. Something as simple as breaking your glasses, something that most people would be able to take care of easily, was made insurmountably impossible for a girl that was already struggling enough; she didn't deserve her glasses, her old ones, she deserved gold-fucking-rimmed glasses.

And her eyes, pooling with tears—enough to make me want to stab the nearest guy in the throat—were piercing, accusing, so hurt and angry and upset and uncharacteristically Clary—and all because of me. Me. It wasn't Sebastian that did this to her, it wasn't some petty guy that had nothing better to do than to make other peoples' lives miserable, it wasn't a self-absorbed bitch that was jealous. It. Was. Me. I did this to her. I knew her better than anyone else, I grew up with her, I was loved and trusted unconditionally by her, and it should've be so easy to choose her; her twinkling laughter, witty sense of humor, instinct to praise and cherish rather than turn her head the other way—those little, individual things alone about her should have been enough.

Why couldn't have I just said "I choose you"?

There was something wrong with me, something seriously wrong with me because while she was crying, reaching, begging for me to believe her, I just stood there. I just watched as tears slid down her flushed cheeks, listened, it seemed, to everything she was telling me from behind a closed door; I was stone cold, closed off, completely apathetic. Ironically enough, as I showed her no love, I thought about how much I loved her, I thought about all of the things that made me love her; how she never used to play with Barbies like the other girls, how she claims she loves scary movies but whenever we'd watch one together she'd hide her face behind a pillow, how she found the simplest of things amazing. How she shrugged off a compliment so easily. How she was completely oblivious to everything everyone else saw in her. I still had all of the drawings she'd made for me stashed in the top drawer of my dresser; I still had thousands upon thousands of pictures of the two of us growing up; I still had my history journal from back in the sixth grade because it'd been the only class we'd had together that year and we'd filled the pages from top to bottom with secret notes.

I still remember our first day of elementary school. I remember being her potty-buddy on our class field trip to the zoo in the third grade. I remember hearing my mom's voice at two in the morning, finishing a call with Clary's father with a sob. I remember hearing her footsteps getting louder. I remember seeing the shadows her feet cast through the light between the bottom of the door and the ground. I remember her turning on my lights, taking me into her arms, rocking me back and forth and just crying—Honey...Clary's mom...Her mommy was in an accident. She, she d-didn't make it...—and I remember driving to Clary's house that very morning and sleeping with her in her bed, her little hands clinging to the front of my shirt like a lifeline, my arms wrapped suffocatingly tight around her trembling frame.

I remember when she got the hiccups for two days straight. I remember laughing with her until I was hysterical, tears streaming down my face, my throat aching, my back tightening up painfully. I remember all of the staring contests we'd competed in. I remember playing UNO in the car with her on our way to to visit my grandparent's lake house for the entire summer. Her smile was committed to memory, her eyes would forever exist inside my mind, her voice was practically the first thing I heard every morning when I woke up. Jace. Come on, come on, come on.

The faster you get up, the faster you can see me. Her. Clary.

She—how could I even compare her to someone else? To Emily?—was being betrayed by my resilience to answer her, by my lack of knowing what to say, by my hesitation. I couldn't get the right words out; I couldn't focus, think, breathe with Clary, my Clary pouring her heart out to me. It was as if she'd finally discovered what a scumbag I was, how she spoke to me, it was as if she'd found the last puzzle piece to finish one of those hundred-piece sets that take months to complete. She was done, and she was done without me. She was leaving me behind, and, as I thought about all the times I'd thought I needed to protect her, I myself realized that it wasn't because she ever needed me, rather it had always been me that needed her. I've always guarded her so vehemently because I couldn't ever imagine what would happen if she was hurt or upset or broken; and now that she wouldn't let me guard her, she was hurt and upset and broken.

Who would've thought her shield would end up being the reason why...

You chose her. You know me. You know me. You know me.

You're just going to throw all of that away.

And then she was walking away. Maia and Jordan called after her, but not before Jordan called me an 'asshole' and Maia gave me the most menacing look I'd ever seen, and then they even went as far as to shove past me, pushing me back a couple steps, and breached through the crowd that had formed around us. And disappeared like her. Like Clary. Maia and Jordan didn't understand me. Clary didn't understand me—no one understood me because I couldn't answer possibly the most simple, life or death question out there; Who do you choose? The girl you've known your whole life, the girl you love more than anything in the world, the girl you can't live without or the girl I met not even a week ago that doesn't know me, that will never know me? Don't ever talk to me again. Don't ever look at me again. Don't ever rely on me again—because I am done. Have fun with Emily. You two deserve each other. No. No. No. No. No. I needed to move, to run after her, to tell her that I choose her, that I'd always choose her, but I was still frozen, still silent, still horrified. She couldn't have meant it. She didn't mean it, Jace. Clary's your best friend. She didn't mean it.

And because I knew that I was wrong, I was extravasated. I was so close to losing it. "Clary!" I suddenly shouted, strangling my voice and forcing it to say something. "Clary!"

I took a step towards her, only to be stopped by a hand on my chest. "Jace."

Inattentive and blind to anything, anyone that wasn't Clary, I grabbed the hand's small wrist and threw it off of me, pulling at my hair like an idiot; there were too many complications, too many people, too many voices, and the one person that I wanted around wasn't with me. And even if she was, it wouldn't really matter because I basically destroyed a lifelong friendship, because she told me that she never wanted to speak to me again. Look at me again. Have me rely on her again. I choose you—it was that simple. Three syllables, infinite meaning; lost from my vocabulary and glued to the back of my throat. Why couldn't I just say it?

"Jace..." It was that voice again. It wasn't Clary's.

Clary. Clary. Clary. Clary.

"Jace—come on, you don't need her."

But I do need her. I need her more than anything.

"Let's go back to my place and I'll make you feel better."

But I didn't want to go back to her place. To Emily's place.

I didn't want anything to do with Emily because it was her fault, her entire fault that Clary hated me. She should've never moved here or invited me over for dinner or kissed me—I should've never let her. It wasn't her fault, it was mine. It was all mine.

"Come on, Jace. I'll take you to the movies; my treat."

I whirled around. "Shut up! I don't want to do anything with you, Emily. Shut up—just shut up. Leave me alone."

Her blue eyes widened marginally—so much smaller than Clary's, coated with too much makeup, not the right color. "Excuse me?" she said, her voice razor sharp and dangerous—too high pitched to be Clary's, so much more forceful and demeaning, not even a little cloying. Her hair was wrong, too. Too short, too prim and assembled, to brown, not even a little red. No curls. No nothing. Her nose was wrong. She didn't even smile, and when she did it was more bewitching and trying too hard to be enticing than genuine and inviting. She didn't have freckles, she was too tall, she wasn't Clary.

"Did you break her glasses on purpose, Emily?" I said, ignoring her anger and trying to push down all of mine. It wasn't working; steam was practically rising out of my skin. "Did you approach her in the library and threaten her? Have you been lying to me this whole time?"

Her lips stitched together and her eyebrows shot up. "W-what?" she said, laughing breathlessly. "No, of course not—"

She was lying. Of course she was lying.

She hesitated, she was put on the spot—caught off guard and left to rely solely on her words rather than her charm and ease to let lie after lie escape past her lips. She probably expected me to fall right back in line with her, to continue being her silly putty, to reward her for her menacing and cruel behavior; as if I wasn't even my own person, as if she controlled me. I was seeing her in an entirely new light, one that wasn't so pretty and enthralling, but dark and unveiling.

"I can't believe you—"

She reached for me, cooing my name, and I jerked away from her, my temper this close to boiling over. "Don't touch me. I can't believe you—I can't believe I ever went out with you. You're dirty and sneaky and unbelievably insensitive; how could you do that? How can you be like that? Clary is my best friend, Emily. She means more to me than," I broke off, letting out a pent up sigh. "I don't know what, but she comes first. She will always come first; she's nothing but nice, and before you she would've talked to me about anything. But you had to have—you must have said something or done something to her to keep her quiet. Am I right?" I laughed disbelievingly. "Did you actually think you could remove her from my life without me caring?"

Emily arched a brow and crossed her arms over her chest. "Well," she said, twisting her smile into that of an unrecognizable, entirely different Emily. "It worked this far."

I scoffed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

She smirked. "Are you really that oblivious, Jace? And to think I was so interested in you...When you 'introduced' me to Clary for 'the first time', you let me insult her. You just stood there. You yourself chose me over her; you hung out with me after you already promised your little Clary the same. If you really didn't notice any of that, then I seriously need to get my judgement restored."

She took a step towards me. "You're so in love with me that you got distracted from her, from Clary."

"In love with you?" I sputtered. "What? I don't—I hardly even know you. You're completely deluded. You're crazy."

Put off guard, Emily noticeably frowned, but the response came and went so fast that I nearly missed it. She was obviously emotionally deprived or something to be able to recover so quickly, to hardly even give a damn. How had I ever thought she was hot? "If you don't love me," she drawled, her voice sickly sweet, "then... why did you choose me?"

"I didn't," I said, almost defensively, not missing a beat.

"Oh, but you did."

You have just finished the preview of this chapter! Everything beyond this point is new material(:

I stared her down, wanting to be disgusted with her, with that face; blue eyes alight with power, individual with simper, together with flashing dominance, lips the color of rose petals, twisting up at the right corner, unmasked satisfaction and alarming self-sufficiency laid bare. I could see her now. I could really see her. She wasn't perfect, she wasn't the girl of my dreams, she wasn't deserving enough to pocket the ever-present looks of longing she collected wherever she went, whether they be at school, the mall, or a drugstore. It was so wrong that she could get away with her cynical ways without even batting an eyelash, eluding the right minds of her true self. She put on a show for those she knew would be vulnerable to it, while simultaneously taking apart all things good.

I wanted to hate her, to never give her another thought, to uproot her very being, but, at the same time, I knew that I had no one to blame but myself. I'd let myself become her victim, I'd let her distract me, use me, manipulate me, and stamp her power over me right, dead-center on my forehead for the world to see. For Clary to see. She'd accomplished what she'd aimed to do and it's because of ignorant, audacious, stupid guys like me that enable her to do so. Did I not have any self-preservation or respect at all? Did I really let Emily wreck what very well could've been my future? All it took was less than a week for her to target, pounce, and put me to death.

Man was she a grade A bitch.

"You see," she said, giggling miserly. "You can't even say anything to deny it."

I opened and closed my mouth, trying to think of something to get her to just shut up, to wipe the smile from her face. To hurt her. But no words came to me. I couldn't think of anything to say in her now considerably daunting presence; she'd won and I was trying not to accept that. "You're wrong," I bit out, taking a step towards her to show that I wasn't playing around, that she no longer had any sovereignty over me. I might not have known what to say, but it was no longer me who was speaking. "Forgive me if I didn't want to choose between you and my best friend. I'll admit it was senseless of me to actually think you and her could've gotten along, but that was before I found out you've been a sneaky, oppressing—bitch."

Her cheeks flushed and her eyes looked murderous. "What did you just call me?"

I stood up a little straighter, smirking with conviction and widening my own eyes just to piss her off. "A sneaky, oppressing bitch," I enunciated slowly, talking down to her as if she were a confused first grader.

She released a beyond irritated, ragged exhalation, shaking her head madly. "No one calls me—"

"A bitch?" I finished cheerily. "Well, I, uh, just did."

She sneered at me—very attractive—and crossed her bone-thin arms over her chest. "Then what does that make you? If I'm such a bitch, then why did you fall so madly in love with me?"

I looked up, exasperated, and raised my hands as if I were about to keep a three-hundred pound football player from barreling into me. "Emily," I breathed out, laughing harshly in disbelief. "Get over yourself—I've known you, what, a total of four days? We've never even been on a real date. I am not in love with you. Even if this whole escapade never happened today, I would've found out about your annoying, vindictive ways eventually. You're in love with yourself and you're right—I was clearly being an idiot. I'm only human, but you...you're a sociopath or something. You're delusional. You need help."

I could see through her expressionless façade, the hasty blank stare she sent towards me. She was angry, furious, livid. Call me a hypocrite, but I felt an undeniable sense of satisfaction ascend my spine. I was on the verge of sticking my tongue out at her and yelling 'Ha Ha!'—but of course I didn't because, well, that would've been immeasurably immature. Screw maturity...

"Are you done?" she snapped. I absolutely hated her composure, how she still made her voice sound as demeaning as ever, as if she hadn't just been thrown the insult of a lifetime in her face. Why couldn't she just be upset. Why?

"No," I drawled out. "I'm not. Just to clear up any confusion here: I choose Clary. I will always choose Clary."

She arched a brow. "I think I got that, and kudos to you. You finally 'broke free of my evil spell'," she practically snarled, mocking hurt and distress. "But you're still just as stupid and oblivious as ever."

I scrunched together my features.

She barked out a laugh. "Yes, you choose your little friend Clary, but not for the same reason she's put up with your crap for this long."

"What the hell would you know—?"

"Oh, I know," she droned, tightening her lips together in a sour smile. "I know a lot more than you, and you've known her your entire life. She's helplessly in love with you; she's so in love with you that she was willing to never speak a word to you about how I acted towards her because she knew it'd jeopardize your happiness. From what I hear you've dated practically every girl in this school except Clary. She may not have told anyone, but everyone knows how she feels towards you." Emily made a parody of smile. "Everyone feels so bad for her. She's pathetic, really. It was almost too easy to intimidate her, which made it all the more enjoyable—"

"Stop," I demanded. "She's not pathetic. She's not. Don't you ever—"

Emily rolled her eyes. "Is that really all you got out of that? Enough with the threats, Jace."

I shook my head once, so angry that I could hardly control myself. "Clary is not in love with me, Emily," I told her. "You said so yourself, I've known her my entire life. I'm her best friend. I know everything there is to know about her. I think I would know if she had feelings towards me that were anything other than friendly."

"So oblivious."

I wanted to wring her neck. "I am not fucking oblivious." Arguing with her was pointless and I knew that I was just feeding her exactly what she craved, but I couldn't not fight back. I wanted her to admit that I was right and she was wrong. I wanted to leave her without words. "You think you know everything there is to know about everyone, and that makes you oblivious. You can't just read people like a book, and that's what you try to do. You think you know who you can toy around with and who's what, but you're deluded and such an arrogant bitch that it's almost laughable. I know who you are now, Emily, and once everyone else figures it out for themselves, your little games aren't going to work and you're going to be left with nothing."

She scoffed. "You know, I actually feel sorry for her now."

She was coiling my nerves so tightly that I knew it was just a matter of time before they broke free and I'd snap; I'd make my wants to hurt her not just mentally but physically a scary reality. Why couldn't Emily just be a guy? It'd make thing things so much easier if she were. "Did you not just hear what I said to you?" I practically shouted.

"I'm asking you the same exact question," she deadpanned, leaving me the one without words. "You let everything I said about Clary having feelings for you fly right over your head; you're not just oblivious, Jace, you're in denial. You let me in so easily, you let other girls in, too, so why is it that you're so bent against letting Clary in?" With that, and a final glance in my direction, she slithered past me, bumping her shoulder against mine, and leaving me with nothing but the loud echo of her heels and words. I couldn't even bring myself to turn around and try to stop her, because that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to keep yelling at her until I had fully won, but...I just let her walk away.

I stood alone in an empty hallway, my mind only registering one word. One name. Clary.

~Clary~

Jace had tried calling me all right. He'd even gone as far as to calling me twenty times in one night, each unreciprocated call after call followed by a voicemail that I couldn't bring myself to listen to. I knew he'd tried visiting me, too, each day after school, but my dad, unaware of me sitting on top of the stairs whenever I heard the doorbell ring, never told me this himself. I think he was trying to protect me.

He'd let me stay home for a total of two weeks, telling the school we were on vacation in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, when in reality he knew sending me to school without me being able to see anything was cruel. But now that my new contacts were sitting in front of me on my dresser, waiting to be put in, he didn't have any other excuse to keep me home. He'd opted to let me continue schooling via internet, playing off his uncharacteristic concern and unwillingness to let his 'little girl' go back to the place that had returned her to him in hysterical tears, clutching her broken glasses to her chest. He may be stoic, my father, but when something or someone hurts me, he doesn't hesitate to go to the extremes.

Contacts. I now had contacts. Glasses were definitely the more financially secure option, and I'd made no protest or argument against replacing my old pair, but my dad—at the eye doctor's with an audience and all—had tucked a loopy strand of my hair behind my ear, smiled, and told me that "it was time for the world to see my pretty face". He'd insisted that not only should I get contacts instead, but that I order a backup pair of glasses as well, just in case. "Don't worry about money, Clare," he'd continued. "You've gotten more use out of those glasses than I should've allowed. Let me do this for you."

So, I sat in front of my dresser for over an hour, trying and failing to put a little, circular piece of rubber in my eye, until finally—finally—I succeeded. Despite my left eye taking on a slightly reddish hue from my fingers' previous assaults, looking in the mirror, I saw a whole new Clary. One whose eyes were bright, no longer shielded behind thick frames of glass. Her heart-shaped face was narrow and angular, a small, pale smudge between her curtain of red hair on either side. She was pretty, I suppose, but much too young looking and delicate and fragile. She yearned to be tall, willowy, strong, and confident, to be a girl like Emily, minus the ever-present, festering bitch-itude, but she'd already accepted she was anything but, so it wasn't really that much of a headache anymore. The point was, the glasses were gone and I was still standing.

Like clockwork, the doorbell suddenly rang. Thinking, knowing it was going to be Jace, I quietly exited my room, reveling in the twenty-twenty vision I had been without for two weeks, and found my little spot on top of the stairs. I held my breath as my father appeared from out of the kitchen, mumbling something incoherent under his breath, stalking past me without even a glance my way, and then disappeared from my sight once again as he opened the front door.

"Jace—" he began, but then he abruptly cut himself off. "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought it wa—"

"Hello Mr. Fairchild," the voice of a girl, not a boy, not Jace, said. In fact, it was the voice of Maia. "You've met me a couple times, but it's been a while. I'm Maia and this," she continued, "is Isabelle. We're friends of Clary."

"Hello," the girl—Isabelle—said in a friendly manner. Confusion overrided my features and clenched at my gut; I was almost, almost disappointed that it wasn't Jace. If it had been him, I still wouldn't have been willing to talk to him, no way, but he had yet to make his daily round to my house and it was getting late. Had he given up? Was he tired of getting the door shut in his face? Did I really mean that little to him? But at the same time, Maia and Isabelle, the latter being my friend and my other friend Simon's girlfriend, were here to see me. I still had other people in my life besides him, besides Jace, and that was an overwhelming net of assurance.

"No, no, I remember you Maia," my father said. I could picture him smiling. "Hi, Isabelle. It's nice to meet you."

"You too," Isabelle said.

There was a brief pause. "You girls are here to see Clary?"

"Yeah—we haven't seen her at school and when we asked a few of her teachers, they told us she was on vacation. We didn't know if she was back or anything, but we thought we'd try," Maia explained. "Is...uh, she here?"

"Yes—I'll go tell her you're both here. I'm sure she'll be happy to see you guys."

My eyes widened and I silently jumped from the sitting position I was in, and raced back to my room, shutting my door just in time to hear the slight thud of my father's feet against the stairs. I leaped on my bed and picked up a random book off of my nightstand. By the time there were three knocks on my door, I was out of breath and trying to focus on the last paragraph of the one-hundred-sixtieth page of The Awakening by Kate Chopin.

"Come in," I called levelly, evening out my breathing.

The door opened and my father's blue eyes met my green ones. He smiled at me, opening his mouth and closing it, as if he were debating on what to say. I was so flustered and frazzled that I almost forgot that this was the first time anyone would see me without my glasses on. "Would you look at that... I see her, your mother in you."

I sat up with flushed cheeks and grinned softly, suddenly feeling self-conscience. My face felt so open and vulnerable, and I had nothing to hide behind anymore. So I looked down at the book in my hands, unable to keep eye contact for too long.

"Some of your friends are here," he told me. "Maia and a girl named Isabelle. Do...do you want to see them?"

I allowed myself to look at him again and I nodded. "Yeah, bring them up."

Next chapter, like so many of you reviewed, Clary will be getting her makeover and she will be seeing Jace for the first time since the 'incident'. (: I hope you guys enjoyed the full chapter of Missing and I'll be working on a new chapter for you guys in the meantime.

Please review your thoughts and comments and suggestions, critique, predictions...I'd love to hear from all of you(:

Will be edited soon.