Shadow Hunter High, editing

Alarms and New Starts.

C L A R Y
Chapter 1 — Alarms and New Starts

The alarm clock goes off with a buzz that pierces the silence of my sleep. I wake up with Jace's arm slung over me, and my eyes flutter open to rest upon his face — he looks like an angel when he sleeps, at peace with himself and his dreams.
The orange sky of sunrise spills through the closed blinds, pooling the room with morning and bliss.

"Ten more minutes, Fray", he mutters, his eyes still closed.

I shake my head, although he cannot see me. "Nope."

Jace's eyes then flutter open; his golden orbs glare at me, his eyelashes casting a shadow onto his cheekbones, his skin pale against his blond, tousled locks. They'd grown out a lot lately, to the point that I wasn't sure whether it was for style or he'd just missed his last few haircut appointments — either way, though, he looks like Raziel had carved him himself.
"Why? I hate mornings," he mumbles into his pillow.

"Because today is the day that school starts!," I excitedly chime. "And we have to be on time. You have the rest of your life to sleep."

"Well, technically, I'm a Shadow Hunter. I'm not supposed to live that long," he retorts. "Many of us die young."

"Well, technically, I don't care," I force a smile, which makes his eyes narrow thinner and his lips to set into a straight line.

"I hate that you're the sarcastic one, now," he says.

"It's the side effect of spending so much morbid time around you," I tell him.

"Morbid?," he questions. "You're saying when you're with me it's morbid?"

I smile. "Of course."

"How swiftly you dismiss our love," he announces.
It takes me a few moments to gather my thoughts, realising he is repeating what he'd said to me the night Simon had interrupted us the first night we'd kissed.

I smile. "You're such a goof."

He winks.

"Okay. Now get up. Time is ticking," I urge.

"Nope. They say to do what you love. And I love to sleep," he falls back onto his pillow.

"Shut up, it's school time! You should be excited. Get ready," I tell him.

"Okay, Mum," he emphasises his words with purpose.

Thumping him on his head with my thumb and finger, I roll my eyes. "Stop being a child. Get up. I won't tell you again."

After my shower, I quickly threw on a pair of black skinny jeans and a green cropped sweater. To make some kind of effort, I put some makeup on; Izzy had recently said that she is proud of me for getting make-up and applying it 'correctly' lately, and even though Jace tells me he prefers me without it, I feel my confidence beam a lot more with it on.
My curls, as usual, remain untamed and tangled.
I then throw on one of Jace's old leather jackets and head into the bedroom to find Jace.
My boyfriend stands in the centre of the room; he runs a hand through his hair, but the locks fall right back into his eyes soon after, despite his best efforts.
"You need to get a haircut," I advise, tossing him his coat.

He shrugs it on, one arm and then the other. "And you need to be educated on the times that are legal to wake others up at."

"I don't think there's a law for that," I shoot back.

"Well, there should be."

"Simon! Don't touch that!," a voice disturbs the tranquility of the morning. "It's a curling iron, you idiot!", we hear Izzy's agitated voice yell from across the hall. "Put it down! You're going to scorch your eyes out! I swear to god, you pathetic excuse of a vampire, I will kill you."

Me and Jace exchange looks and he rolls his eyes. I laugh.

"Come on then", Jace says, taking my hand and walking me out of the door.

* * *

Standing back at the gate of my high school again feels almost too mundane — it's been too long that my life has been almost the faintest bit ordinary, and looking back onto the building, it's like staring into my past.

"So, this is school," Alec says.

"You say that like it's a bad thing, Alexander," Magnus chimes. "I can promise you, it is not."

"And how would you know?" Simon asks, raking a hand through his long hair — Jace accused him daily of taking his hairstyle. I listened to the dispute almost everyday.

Magnus only turns his head to settle his eyes on my best-friend. "Sometimes I do question why whatever controls us allowed you to be a day-lighter. Your stupidity is very off-putting, my friend," he starts. "You think I've grown to be over eight-hundred years old, and never lived the life of a student?"

"Oh," is all Simon replies.

"I've been the nerd, the jokester, the genius — obviously, that one wasn't that hard to act out. I've been the player, the loner. I've been the sporty one—"

"You play sports?," Alec stifles a laugh like the idea of it is incredulous, because it is.

"I cheated, of course. Magic is great to cheat your way into the dodgeball team, actually. You could hit them right where the sun doesn't shine, at whatever speed I wished, and the teachers wouldn't know whether to shout at me or applaud me," the warlock explains.

"So, is any of this worth it?" Jace asks Magnus. "Are we here for good reason?"

"School is wonderful," the warlock responds, lifting one hand to dramatically gesture towards the school building. It's brick and boring, toning down the dramatics of his actions a little. "You learn. You meet new people. Being a warlock in a sea full of mundane was absolutely fabulous when I was young. Of course, I couldn't do much magic. But I pretended I was a magician and made all the teachers stationary disappear."
He ponders for a moment.
"Come to think of it, I can't boast about the learning. I didn't do much of it. I practically lived in the principals office. Boy, was it fun to make his pencils disappear."

This makes me chuckle.

"Come on," Jace says, taking my hand and dragging me through the gates. "Let's get this over with."