"Is this Clarissa Fray?" The voice on the other end of the phone sounded familiar, though not immediately identifiable.
Clary twirled the phone cord nervously around her finger. "Yeees?"
"Hi, I'm one of the knife-carrying hooligans you met last night in Pandemonium? I'm afraid I made a bad impression and was hoping you'd give me a chance to make it up to—"
"SIMON!" Clary held the phone away from her ear as he cracked up laughing. "That is so not funny!"
"Sure it is. You just don't see the humor."
"Jerk." Clary sighed, leaning up against the wall. "You wouldn't be laughing if you'd been here when I got home last night."
"Why not?"
"My mom. She wasn't happy that we were late. She freaked out. It was messy."
"What? It's not our fault there was traffic!" Simon protested. He was the youngest of three children and had a finely honed
sense of familial injustice.
"Yeah, well, she doesn't see it that way. I disappointed her, I let her down, I made her worry, blah blah blah. I am the bane
of her existence," Clary said, mimicking her mother's precise phrasing with only a slight twinge of guilt.
