I Hate You (IN EDITING)

Car Rides and Scheming

Clary had never enjoyed car rides, much less long ones.

So imagine her displeasure at sitting in such a cramped space with a blabbering Isabelle for over seven hours. And the traffic wasn't helping to improve the situation, either.

Finally—finally—Isabelle was pulling her supposedly smooth-riding car into a gas station. Clary groaned when they were so rudely cut off by a speeding, black Mustang. The black, glossy paint beautifully reflected the setting sun when its tires squealed to a stop against the cracking pavement, leaving burn marks.

Isabelle cursed loudly at the driver, swinging a leg out of the car, followed by the other until she was standing just barely out of said car, flipping off the driver of the car that had nearly "caused her to crash her baby."

In the middle of her rant at the stopped car, a squeaky-voiced boy came up to ask if she'd like her tank filled. Isabelle curtly said yes before continuing her rage-fuelled rant.

And surprise, surprise; out of the car stepped Jace Herondale, honey eyes hidden behind a pair of most probably expensive, top-of-the-line Ray Bands. His tawny hair was ruffled up around his head like a gruff halo. And when the sun caught said halo of hair, he practically shone as if he were the sun himself. Clary got out of the car, keeping her eyes low and away from Jace's own. Surely, it was petty, but she hated how simply perfect he looked—even with bed-head.

Isabelle was still muttering angrily to herself when she strode off to pay for the gas, leaving Clary alone with Jace just a little ways away.

Thanks, Izzy.

Out of the passenger seat stood Alec, his faded blue hoodie riddled with holes—and Clary had a gut feeling they weren't purposeful—his blue eyes shining as he smiled back down at something—someone still in the car. The dark-haired boy leaned back into the car for a beat, coming out with a hand attached to his own. This hand, however, was much darker than Alec's, and the nails were painted in navy blue, the polish chipped.

Out of the car came Magnus, his black hair—blue in patches from when he'd tried to dye it without bleaching out the black first—gelled into most probable once perfect spikes, flat against one side of his head. Clary guessed that was the result of him sleeping in the car—something she was never able to do, though it would probably make the car ride go by faster if she could.

Magnus leaned into Alec's neck, whispering something before he pulled away and sashayed over to where Clary leaned against the pristinely red hood of Isabelle's car.

"Oh, Biscuit!" Magnus put a hand to his forehead, throwing his head back exasperatedly—and slightly melodramatically. "You wouldn't believe it—," he began before Clary held up a hand to his slender form.

"You wouldn't believe what I would believe, Mags," Clary sighed, brushing a soft tendril of scarlet hair from her shoulder.

"Okay, well, that blond of yours—,"

Clary cut him off sharply: "He's not mine." She gritted her teeth.

"Sorry—anyways, that...that—thing won't shut his mouth for thirty seconds! I don't know how my Alexander can put up with his personality." Magnus turned up his nose at the idea of Alec somehow putting up with Jace.

"Me neither," Clary let out a final breath of anger, rubbing her temples, attempting to relieve an oncoming headache.

Isabelle emerged from the gas station, keys grasped tightly in her slightly clammy hand. She cocked her head curiously at the sight of her brother's eccentric boyfriend but said nothing even as she got in the car and brought the engine to life with a loud roar that quickly fell into a satisfying purr.

"Magnus is going to ride with us," Clary tried, but the thick silence remained, swiftly becoming constricting and claustrophobic. She would have thought the reason for the odd stares Isabelle and Magnus often gave each other were because of some sort or another of a romantic entanglement, if it weren't for the fact that Magnus was one-hundred percent gay.

"Whatever," Clary sighed quietly, turning her attention to the long stretch of highway ahead of them and the pressing rain wetting the cracked pavement.

After hours of driving, Magnus piped up, clearing his throat imposingly before speaking: "What are the sleeping arrangements?"

The eccentric man leaned forward in his seat, but as if sensing the discomfort rolling off of the driver, backed off, once again leaning back into his seat. "So—uh, sleeping arrangements?" Magnus tried once more.

With set shoulders and pursed lips did Isabelle speak: "Clary and I, you and my brother, and Jace will get his own room." She spoke Jace's name with such disdain and venom she caught Clary's wandering eye. The redhead didn't believe she had ever heard Isabelle talk like that—Isabelle was the ever-happy, occupied girl that had no time for petty feuds or anything of the sort.

"Izzy what's wrong?" Clary shifted in her seat, pressing her back against the window. The cold of the glass seemed to seep through her clothes as if they weren't even there and directly to her porcelain, freckle-spattered skin.

Isabelle sighed, readjusting her grip on the leather-clad steering wheel. "I just—I did not want Jace coming on this trip but Alec fought me tooth and nail."

Clary slumped against the window, the seatbelt burrowing painfully into the hollow between her neck and collarbone. Even Magnus, who could rarely, if ever, keep his lips clamped together, was at a loss for words.

"He will not ruin our summer," the raven-haired girl murmured. "I won't let him."

"What if we ruin his summer instead of the other way around?" Magnus blurted unexpectedly.

Isabelle snapped her head towards Magnus's glittery own. "What do you mean?" She demanded sharply. Something about her tone made the small girl in the seat neighboring hers shrink a little, like she thought that Isabelle might grow a set of elongated canines at any moment and rip her throat out.

"I mean," Magnus shifted for a second time, propping his feet up on top of the centre console, the soles of his metallic boots on display for the two girls. "We break the boy's stone-cold heart."

Clary fixed her eyes on the space between the two front seats, staring at the eighteen year-old stretched out in the backseat. His black hair, with strips of barely visible blue throughout it was eye catching in all its glittering glory. Clary would admit that much. But she would not admit under any circumstances that she liked—found irresistible—the idea of breaking Jace's ostensibly nonexistent heart.

"I'm game," Isabelle said grudgingly. "If he has one to break," she murmured under her breath.

"Biscuit?" Magnus prompted the oddly quiet girl.

"I guess so?" The reply came out more like a question than a sure answer. But Magnus took the answer and Clary returned to her staring contest with the long stretch of wet road ahead.