“Isabelle.” Robert took his daughter’s hands in his own. “I’m telling you that I found it with Alec. With you. With . . .” He looked down. “With Max. Having you kids, Isabelle—it changed everything.”
“Is that why you spent years treating Alec like he had the plague? Is that how you show your kids that you love them?”
At that, if possible, Robert looked even more ashamed of himself. “Loving someone doesn’t mean you’re never going to make mistakes,” he said. “I’ve made more than my share. I know that. And some of them I will never have the chance to make up for. But I’m trying my best with your brother. He knows how much I love him. How proud I am of him. I need you to know it too. You kids, you’re the one thing I’m certain of, the one thing I’ll always be certain of. Not the Clave. Not, unfortunately, my marriage. You. And if I have to, I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to prove to you that you can be certain of me.”
It was a lame party, the kind that even Simon had to admit might have been livened up by a demon or two. The decorations—a few sad streamers, a couple of underinflated helium balloons, and a hand-drawn poster that (mis)spelled out “CONGRATULATONS”—looked as if they’d been grudgingly thrown together at the last minute by a bunch of fifth graders in detention. The refreshment table was crowded with whatever food had been left over at the end of the semester, including stale croissants, a casserole dish filled with orange Jell-O, a vat of stew, and several plates heaped with unidentifiable meat products. As electricity didn’t work in Idris and no one had thought to hire a band, there was no music, but a handful of faculty members had taken it upon themselves to improvise a barbershop quartet. (This, in Simon’s mind, didn’t qualify as music.) Isabelle’s posse of demon summoners had been let off with a stern warning, and even allowed to attend the party, but none of them seemed much in the mood for revelry—or, understandably, for Simon.
He was lingering alone by the punch bowl—which smelled enough like fish to preclude him actually pouring himself any punch—when Isabelle joined him.
“Avoiding your friends?” she asked.
“Friends?” He laughed. “I think you mean ‘people who hate my guts.’ Yeah, I tend to avoid those.”
“They don’t hate you. They’re embarrassed, because you were right and they were stupid. They’ll get over it.”
“Maybe.” It didn’t seem likely, but then, not much that had happened this year fell into the category of “likely.”
“So, I guess, thanks for sticking around for that whole thing with my dad,” Isabelle said.
“You didn’t exactly give me much of a choice,” he pointed out.
Isabelle laughed, almost fondly. “You really have no idea how a social encounter is supposed to work, do you? I say ‘thank you’; you say ‘you’re welcome.’??”
“Like, if I said, thank you for fooling all my friends into thinking you were a wild-and-crazy demon summoner so that they could get in trouble with the dean, you would say . . . ?”
“You’re welcome for teaching them all a valuable lesson.” She grinned. “One that, apparently, you didn’t need to learn.”
“Yeah. About that.” Even though it had all been a test—even though, apparently, Isabelle had wanted him to report her, he still felt guilty. “I’m sorry I didn’t figure out what you were doing. Trust you.”
“It was a game, Simon. You weren’t supposed to trust me.”
“But I shouldn’t have fallen for it. Of all people—”
“You can’t be expected to know me.” There was an impossible gentleness in Isabelle’s voice. “I do understand that, Simon. I know things have been . . . difficult between us, but I’m not deluded. I may not like reality, but I can’t deny it.”
There were so many things he wanted to say to her.
And yet, right at this high-pressure moment, his mind was blank.
The uncomfortable silence sat heavily between them. Isabelle shifted her weight. “Well, if that’s all, then . . .”
“Back to your date with Jon?” Simon couldn’t help himself. “Or . . . was that just part of the game?”
He hoped she wouldn’t catch the pathetic note of hope in his voice.
“That was a different game, Simon. Keep up. Did it ever occur to you I just enjoy torturing you?” There was that wicked smile again, and Simon felt like it had the power to light him on fire; he felt like he was already burning.
“So, you and he, you never—”
“Jon’s not exactly my type.”
The next silence was slightly more comfortable. The kind of silence, Simon thought, where you gazed googly-eyed at someone until the tension could only be broken with a kiss.
Just lean in, he told himself, because even though he couldn’t actually remember ever making the first move on a girl like this, he’d obviously done so in the past. Which meant he had it in him. Somewhere. Stop being such a coward and freaking LEAN IN.
He was still mustering up his courage when the moment passed. She stepped back. “So . . . what was in that letter, anyway?”
He had it memorized. He could recite it to her right now, tell her that she was amazing, that even if his brain didn’t remember loving her, his soul was permanently molded to fit hers, like some kind of Isabelle-shaped cookie cutter had stamped his heart. But writing something down was different from saying it out loud—in public, no less.
He shrugged. “I don’t really remember. Just apologizing for yelling at you that time. And that other time. I guess.”
“Oh.”
Did she look disappointed? Relieved? Irritated? Simon searched her face for clues, but it was impervious.
“Well . . . apology accepted. And stop staring at me like I have a bug on my nose.”
“Sorry. Again.”
“And . . . I guess . . . I’m sorry I returned it without reading it.”
Simon couldn’t remember whether she’d ever apologized to him before. She didn’t seem the type to apologize to anyone.
“If you wrote me another one sometime, I might even read it,” she said, with studied indifference.
“School’s over for the semester, remember? This weekend I go back to Brooklyn.” It seemed unimaginable.
“They don’t have mailboxes in Brooklyn?”
“I guess I could send you a postcard of the Brooklyn Bridge,” Simon allowed—then took a deep breath, and went for it. “Or I could hand deliver one. To the Institute, I mean. If you wanted me to. Sometime. Or something.”
“Sometime. Something . . .” Isabelle mulled it over, letting him twist in the wind for a few endless, agonizing seconds. Then her smile widened so far that Simon thought he might actually self-combust. “I guess it’s a date.”
Pale Kings and Princes
By Cassandra Clare and Robin Wasserman
This morning Mayhew ceded the classroom to a girl a few years older than Simon. Her white-blond hair fell in ringlets around her shoulders, her blue-green eyes sparkled, and her mouth was set in a grim line that suggested she’d rather be anywhere else. Professor Mayhew stood beside her, but Simon noticed the way he kept his distance and was careful not to turn his back on her. Mayhew was afraid.
—Pale Kings and Princes
What I Did on My Summer Vacation