“I know what happened there.” Namely, Simon had summoned the Angel Raziel—and the Angel had actually shown up.
He wished he could remember it; he would like to know how that felt, talking to an angel.
“Clary told you,” she said flatly.
“Yeah.” Isabelle was a little sensitive on the subject of Clary. She definitely didn’t need to hear about all the time he’d had with Clary this summer, the long hours spent lying in Central Park, side by side, swapping stories of their past—Simon telling her what he remembered; Clary telling him what actually happened.
“But she wasn’t even there,” Isabelle said.
“She knows the important stuff.”
Isabelle shook her head. She reached across the picnic blanket and rested a hand on Simon’s knee. He worked very hard to hear her over the sudden buzzing in his ears. “If she wasn’t there, she can’t know how brave you were,” Isabelle said. “She can’t know how scared I was for you. That’s the important stuff.”
There was silence between them, then. But finally, it wasn’t the awkward kind. It was the good kind, the kind where Simon could hear what Isabelle was saying without her having to say it, and where he could answer her in kind.
“What’s it like?” she asked him. “Not remembering. Being a blank slate.”
Her hand was still warm on his knee.
She’d never asked him that before. “It’s not quite a blank slate,” he explained, or tried to. “It’s more like . . . double vision. Like I’m remembering two different things at the same time. Sometimes one seems more real, sometimes the other does. Sometimes everything is blurry. That’s when I usually take some Advil, and a nap.”
“But you’re starting to remember things.”
“Some things,” he allowed. “Jordan. I remember a lot about Jordan. Caring about him. Losing—” Simon swallowed hard. “Losing him. I remember my mom freaking out about me being a vampire. And some stuff before Clary’s mom got kidnapped. The two of us being friends, before all of this started. Normal Brooklyn stuff.” He stopped talking as he realized her face was clouding over.
“Of course you remember Clary.”
“It’s not like that,” he said.
“Like what?”
Simon didn’t think about it. He just did it.
He took her hand.
She let him.
He wasn’t sure how to explain this—it was still all jumbled in his head—but he had to try. “It’s not like the things I remember are more important than the things I can’t remember. Sometimes it seems like it’s random. But sometimes . . . I don’t know, sometimes it feels like the most important things are going to be the hardest to get back. Picture all these memories buried, like dinosaur bones, and me trying to dig them up. Some of them are just lying right beneath the surface, but the important ones, those are miles down.”
“And you’re saying that’s where I am? Miles beneath the surface?”
He held on to her tightly. “You’re basically down there at the molten center of the earth.”
“You are so weird.”
“I try my best.”
She threaded her fingers through his. “I’m jealous, you know. Sometimes. That you can forget.”
“Are you kidding?” Simon couldn’t even begin to understand that one. “Everything you have, all the people in your life—no one would want that taken away.”
Isabelle looked back out at the lake, blinking hard. “Sometimes people get taken away from you whether you want it or not. And sometimes that hurts so much, it might be easier to forget.”
She didn’t have to say his name. Simon said it for her. “Max.”
“You remember him?”
Simon had never realized what a sad sound it was, hope.
He shook his head. “I wish I did, though.”
“Clary told you about him,” she said. Not a question. “And what happened to him.”
He nodded, but her gaze was still fixed on the water.
“He died in Idris, you know. I like being here sometimes. I feel closer to him here. Other times I wish this place would evaporate. That no one could ever come here again.”
“I’m sorry,” Simon said, thinking they had to be the lamest, most useless words in the English language. “I wish I could say something that would help.”
She faced him; she whispered, “You did.”
“What?”
“After Max. You . . . said something. You helped.”
“Izzy . . .”
“Yes?”
This was it, this was The Moment—the moment talking gave way to gazing, which would inevitably give way to kissing. All he had to do was lean slightly forward and give himself over to it.
He leaned back. “Maybe we should start heading back to campus.”
She made that angry cat noise again, then lobbed a chunk of peanut brittle at him. “What is wrong with you?” she exclaimed. “Because I know there’s nothing wrong with me. You would be insane not to want to kiss me, and if this is some stupid playing-hard-to-get thing, you’re wasting your time, because trust me, I know when a guy wants to kiss me. And you, Simon Lewis, want to kiss me. So what is happening here?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, and ridiculous as this was, it was also wholly true.
“Is it the stupid memory thing? Are you seriously still afraid that you can’t live up to some amazing forgotten version of yourself? Do you want me to tell you all the ways you weren’t amazing? For one, you snored.”
“Did not.”
“Like a Drevak demon.”
“This is slander,” Simon said, outraged.
She snorted. “My point, Simon, is that you’re supposed to be past all of this. I thought you figured out that no one is expecting you to be anyone other than who you are. That I just need you to be you. I only want you. This Simon. Isn’t that why we’re here? Because you finally got that through your thick head?”
“I guess.”
“So what are you afraid of? It’s obviously something.”
“How do you know?” he asked, curious how she could be so certain, when he still had no clue himself.
She smiled, and it was the kind of smile you give to someone who can make you want to throttle them and kiss them all at the same time. “Because I know you.”
He thought about gathering her up in his arms, about how it would feel—and that’s when he realized what he was afraid of.
It was that feeling, the hugeness of it, like staring into the sun. Like falling into the sun.
“Losing myself,” he said.
“What?”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. Losing myself, in this. In you. I’ve spent this whole year trying to find myself, to figure out who I am, and now there’s you, there’s us, there’s this all-consuming, terrifying black hole of a feeling, and if I give into it . . . I feel like I’m standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, you know? Like, here’s something bigger, deeper than the human mind is built to fathom. And I’m just supposed to . . . jump in?”