"Uh oh. That means if you worry too much on a hot day, you'll get both and then you'll never get married!" he said with mock horror, absorbing the push without missing a beat. Thanks to whatever power this town had, Jack somehow knew Clary's war on freckles had been waging as long as the Ultima War, and it was thanks to that that he teased her. "Better stick to the one you can't do anything about."
Freckles were a permanent fixture, but as he'd been telling himself since he was seven and his parents' deaths were blowing out the walls to his sheltered little life, worries could be overcome with enough effort.
This town was putting that philosophy under a major stress test, though.
Authority figures like the sheriff who doled out the kind of bullshit answers Clary was describing about didn't help. Jack, for one, couldn't imagine anyone really had his best interests at heart when so far most adults had done little more than perpetuate the charade since he got here. Even before, the only person he could rely on for a long while had been Mother.
... And even she had left him. It was an uncomfortable thought, one he resisted entertaining. She must have had a reason. There had to be an explanation.
(The most believable kind of lies are the ones you tell yourself.)
"Er, he's sort of a... family heirloom," he said, pushing the rest of those thoughts away. He was sidling up against the truth with that comment; Clary would know he had no immediate family to speak of, adopted by Nyx, supposedly a distant relative. "His egg ended up in my box of belongings after my accident."
no subject
Freckles were a permanent fixture, but as he'd been telling himself since he was seven and his parents' deaths were blowing out the walls to his sheltered little life, worries could be overcome with enough effort.
This town was putting that philosophy under a major stress test, though.
Authority figures like the sheriff who doled out the kind of bullshit answers Clary was describing about didn't help. Jack, for one, couldn't imagine anyone really had his best interests at heart when so far most adults had done little more than perpetuate the charade since he got here. Even before, the only person he could rely on for a long while had been Mother.
... And even she had left him. It was an uncomfortable thought, one he resisted entertaining. She must have had a reason. There had to be an explanation.
(The most believable kind of lies are the ones you tell yourself.)
"Er, he's sort of a... family heirloom," he said, pushing the rest of those thoughts away. He was sidling up against the truth with that comment; Clary would know he had no immediate family to speak of, adopted by Nyx, supposedly a distant relative. "His egg ended up in my box of belongings after my accident."