Beyond The Fence

Chapter 19:

"Is everything alright here?"

The law enforcement officer asked, his voice barely audible to Clary over the sound of her own heart beating furiously. She was sitting on the rear passenger seat with Jason, while Austin was riding shotgun.

The officers were total six in number, Clary counted with much dread. The law enforcement easily outnumbered them. However, only one of them from the group had walked towards the car whilst the others roamed in the vicinity of the restaurant, clutching guns in their hands.

The window next to the driver's seat, where Stephanie was seated, was pulled down so that the officer's voice could be heard.

"Yes, we're fine," Stephanie answered her voice level and calculated.

"But it came to my knowledge that a boy around here fainted."

Stephanie drew in a breath, before answering; making no attempt to conceal her disinterest in the conversation.

"He did, but he's fully conscious now."

"Well, where is that poor chap?"

Raising his hand to make known his presence to the officer, Austin tried to look as miserable as possible. He seemed to be doing a pretty good job. The officer expressed his sympathies towards Austin, giving him a whole bunch of advice on how to avoid fainting. He was in the middle of explaining the importance of sleep, when his phone rang. Excusing himself, the officer went off.

"Do we wait for him or should we leave?" Stephanie asked, tapping her fingernails on the steering wheel.

Placing his hands on either side of him, Austin pushed himself upwards to face her.

"I don't think he's done with his advice."

Before Stephanie could reply to that, the officer came walking towards them. Beside her, Clary heard Jason groan.

"You give women just one job and they fail to do that even. I think there should be no women in the law enforcement. These creatures can't be trusted to do anything right."

"Why, what happened officer?" Austin asked, warily.

"The female officers were to arrive at ten pm sharp so we can go on searching public places for the escapees from Albama. And look now, it's almost ten-thirty and they are nowhere to be seen."

"Maybe something unfortunate happened to them."

"Nah, son! Officer Kim just called, said the car ran out of fuel. She couldn't have made sure that the car was fueled before- hand? Just had to ruin the operation. Can't be expected to ever do anything decently. "

If the officer could see how annoyed Stephanie was at him, he chose to ignore it and went on rambling. After what felt like eternity, the officer shook hands with Austin, before leaving to join the rest of the officers.

                                                                                         *****

After roughly half an hour of driving under the city lights of District A, the four of them arrived at Austin's house. Stephanie was pretty insistent on dropping Austin back to his room, but he declined the offer.

Cautiously, he walked into his house, back to his room, with Clary on her tip toes right behind him.

Once they arrived back into the room, Austin locked the door immediately, slumping on the ground after he was done. Clary sat beside him, her back to the door. After releasing the breath she didn't even realise she was holding, Clary let her gaze drift to Austin, to find him looking back at her. Despite herself, she started laughing uproariously. She didn't even know why she was laughing so hard, but the waves of laughter kept coming. Austin was eyeing her as if she was stupid, but then all of a sudden, he burst out laughing too. With each surge of laughter, the tension between the two seemed to drain away.Clary leant her head on the door behind her, trying to catch her breath. 

She couldn't remember the last time she had laughed this heartily. 

A/N: Sorry for not updating this Wednesday. I lost all my motivation for this story, and for all of my writing haha. So I'm actually surprised that I'm able to put something up. It seems like a miracle to me! 

Anyway, thank you so much for reading :) Don't be shy to comment any suggestions you have!