Beatriz hesitated, then put her pen down. “Okay,” she said. “I can see it’s weird for you, but—it does come from everyone admiring what they’ve done. People act like they know them because they want to know them. And being admired means they have a lot of influence over other people. They can do a lot of good with that. Alec Lightwood is Sunil’s inspiration to be a Shadowhunter. And you, Simon. A lot of people follow you because they admire you. There might be some weirdness mixed in with being admired like that, but I think there’s more good.”
“Oh, it’s not the same for me,” Simon mumbled. “I mean, I don’t even remember. I meant my friends. Including Alec, who is . . . my friend who doesn’t like me. They’re the special ones.”
He couldn’t be cool and assured like Magnus or Jace. He didn’t know what Beatriz was talking about. Also he felt suddenly paranoid over whether people were wondering if he had piercings.
Simon had no piercings. He used to be a musician in Brooklyn. He probably should have piercings.
Beatriz hesitated another instant, then tore off the page she’d written on and rolled it into a ball. “You’re special too, Simon,” she said, and blushed. “Everybody knows that.”
Simon looked at her red face and remembered George mentioning someone had a crush on him. He’d thought for a moment it might be Julie, and though it would be both bizarre and bizarrely flattering to have changed the heart of a Shadowhunter ice princess with his manly charms, he supposed Beatriz made more sense. He and Beatriz were really good friends. Beatriz had the best smile in the Academy. Simon would’ve been thrilled to have an attractive girl he was friends with get a crush on him, back in Brooklyn.
He felt mainly awkward now. He wondered if he was supposed to let Beatriz down easily.
Julie cleared her throat. “And just so you know . . . ,” she said, “there have been invasive questions asked about you. Also there was an incident where someone tried to steal one of your used socks and keep it as a trophy.”
“Who was the sock person?” Simon demanded. “That’s just nasty.”
“We never tell them anything,” Julie said. “And they may ask once, but they never ask again.” Her lip curled back from her teeth. She looked like a snarling blond tiger. “Because you’re a real person to us, Simon. And you’re our friend.”
She reached across the table and touched Simon’s hand, then drew it back as if she had been burned. Beatriz snatched Julie’s hand as soon as she’d drawn it back and pulled her out of her chair and toward the corner of the room where the food was laid out.
Neither of them needed more food. They had barely touched their stew. Simon watched as they went, and then stood talking to each other in fraught whispers.
“Well, they both seem strangely upset.”
George rolled his eyes. “Come on, Si, don’t be dense.”
“You can’t mean . . . ,” began Simon. “They can’t both—like me?”
There was a long silence.
“Neither of them like you?” Simon said. “You work out. And! You have a Scottish accent.”
“Don’t rub it in. Maybe girls fear me, because my keen eyes see too deeply into their souls,” George said. “Or maybe they’re intimidated by my good looks. Or maybe . . . Please don’t make me talk about what a lonely bugger I am anymore.”
He looked after Julie and Beatriz a little wistfully. Simon could not tell if George was wistful about Julie or Beatriz, or simply wistful about love in general. He’d had no idea his friends were involved in such an emotional tangle.
He was surprised. He felt awkward. And he didn’t feel anything else.
He liked Beatriz a lot. Julie was terrible, but Simon thought of Julie telling him about her sister, and he had to admit: Julie was terrible, but he liked her, too. Both of them were beautiful and badass and did not come with a burden of lost memories and tangled emotions.
He wasn’t even pleased they liked him. He wasn’t even slightly tempted.
He wished, with single-minded intensity, that Isabelle was here—not a letter, not a voice on the phone, but here.
He looked at George’s sad face and offered: “Want to talk about when Magnus and Alec go, and we steal their suite and make our own meals in our own little kitchen?”
George sighed. “Could we really, Simon, or is that too beautiful a dream? Every day would be a song. All I want is to make a sandwich, Simon. Just a humble sandwich, with ham, cheese, maybe a little dab of . . . oh my God.”
Simon wondered what a dab of “oh my God” would taste like. George had frozen, spoon to his lips, eyes fixed on a point over Simon’s shoulder.
Simon turned around in his seat and saw Isabelle framed in the doorway of the Academy dining hall. She was wearing a long dress the color of irises and her arms were spread wide, bracelets gleaming. Time seemed to slow, like a movie, like magic, like she was a genie who could appear in a puff of glittering smoke to grant wishes, and every wish would be her.
“Surprise,” said Isabelle. “Miss me?”
Simon jumped to his feet. He might have knocked his bowl clear across the table and into George’s lap. He was sorry, but he would make it up to him later.
“Isabelle,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“Congratulations, Simon, that’s a very romantic question,” Isabelle told him. “Am I meant to take it as ‘No, I didn’t miss you, and I’m seeing other girls’? If so, don’t worry about it. Why worry, when life is short? Specifically, your life, because I am going to cut off your head.”
“I’m confused by what you’re saying,” Simon told her.
Isabelle raised her eyebrows and opened her lips, but before she could speak Simon caught her by the waist and drew her in against him, kissing her surprised mouth. Isabelle’s mouth relaxed, curving under his. She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him back, sultry and exuberant at once, a femme fatale and a warrior princess, all the dream girls of all his nerdy fantasies in one. Simon pulled back for a moment to look into Isabelle’s night-dark eyes.
“I wasn’t aware,” said Simon, “that there are any other girls in the world but you.”
He was embarrassed as soon as he said it. It was in no way a smooth line. It was pathetically honest, trying to tell Isabelle what he had only just realized himself. But he saw Isabelle’s eyes shine like new stars waking in the night, felt her arm around his neck pulling him down for another kiss, and he thought to himself that the line might be a little smooth. After all, it had gotten him a girl, the girl. The only girl Simon wanted.
It was midnight before Magnus got all of the Lightwoods out of their suite. Isabelle had left to see Simon some time before, and Clary and Jace could usually be persuaded to go off together, but for a while he thought he was actually going to have to use magic on Maryse and Robert. He shoved them out of the door while they were still giving him helpful baby tips.
As soon as they were gone, Alec stumbled over to the bed and lay flat on his face, instantly asleep. Magnus was left with the baby.