Clockwork Heart | ✓

tres.

London, 1903

James did not warm up to Brooklyn as Lucie and Tessa had promised. In fact, he seemed to hate her even more the next day. Lucie found her in "her" room, and handed her a Codex. She took a seat on the bed next to Brooklyn. "This is mine." Lucie said. "I'm sorry about James, I really am. I don't know what's gotten into him. You came at possibly the best and worst time."

"Best?"

She nodded. "Something has gotten into my brother. Even Matthew doesn't know what happened to him. James is usually very sweet and respectful and compassionate, but lately he's been angry and distant and reckless. It isn't anything like my brother, and Magnus won't tell us anything. Brooklyn, he's been making bets with Downworlders."

Brooklyn shrugged. "Maybe he's hit his rebellious phase."

"That is nothing like my brother," she said. "The worst thing Jamie has ever done is gotten expelled from the Academy in Idris because some boys tried to let a demon loose on him to scare him away. He got blamed for it when the plan backfired."

"Have you tried talking to him?" Brooklyn asked.

"He won't talk."

"Maybe he's in love."

"Love?" Lucie tilted her head to the side. "Who would James have met that he could have fallen in love with? And I thought that love makes you happy?"

"Not always," Brooklyn said, and for a moment Lucie faded away and she was back in her "best friend's" room, shouting and screaming and forcing tears back. She returned to reality--or whatever it was. "Sometimes it turns you into an awful, twisted thing if it's the wrong kind of love."

"But Mother and Father--"

"Your parents have a pure, beautiful kind of love," Brooklyn said gently. "And the love they feel is nothing like the thing called love that comes from my time."

"What's it like?" Lucie asked. "Love in your time, I mean."

"Horrible," Brooklyn said. "I've never experienced it, and I couldn't be more thankful for that. But I know people that have. When she was married to my biological father, he and my mother didn't sleep in the same room and I could hear my mother cry herself to sleep every night. She and my father would spend hours screaming and throwing things across rooms and hitting each other, and then my father would scream something final at her and slam the door on his way out, and then he'd drive off in his car. Sometimes he'd be gone a few hours. Sometimes he'd be gone days. The time got longer as I got older. He used to come back with flowers and a teddy bear or her favorite kind of candy and an apology. When I was eleven, he came back with divorce papers. And since she married my stepdad, it seems as though they don't care about me. There is no room for me in their new life."

Lucie looked horrified. She reached over and grasped Brooklyn's hand. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.

"That isn't all." She stared down at her lap. "I lost the girl I thought was my best friend to love. She and her boyfriend would scream and hit and she'd come to my house crying and then all would be well, and then it would happen again. One time she came crying because she was pregnant and her parents kicked her out. She was sixteen and he was nineteen, and that's very illegal. She got an abortion and they took her back, and her parents filed a rape case against him. Even though it was all consensual, he's been listed as a child predator. She's eighteen now. I think they're still together. I know that he still hits her--sometimes she comes to school with bruises on her face and her makeup smudged--but she never says anything. There are always excuses." She gave Lucie a pained smile. "My life has been torn apart by love. Perhaps that's what's happening to James, too."