I'm dropped violently on a hard, concrete floor. The physical pain, though, is nothing compared to what I'm feeling inside. I'm still wearing the ball gown, which I probably should have changed out of before I left. I pull myself up, my motions slow and uncoordinated. I hold onto some cardboard boxes, standing still for a few moments, to regain my balance. I realize that I'm in the storage room, where I was before I left. My hands fly to my necklace, and I take it off and put it in my suitcase, knowing that if my mom sees it, she will think I have stolen it. And I just can't lose it. I decide I had better change in the bathroom before someone sees me, and drag my suitcases out into the area between the storage closet I'm in, and the bathroom. I go back and look around in the storage closet, going through boxes until I find what I'm looking for. It's a large hammer. I walk over to the red portal jewel, and stare down at it. Then, without a second thought, I smash it to bits. It breaks surprisingly easily, and I hit it with so much force that it doesn't take long for it to become a pile of red dust. Now that I have fixed the story, I don't want my sacrifice to go to waste if someone else wonders in here. I look down at it, knowing it was my only way back to Jem and Will. I shake my head and exit the room.

"Aurelia Charlotte Rose!" I jump back as I hear my mom's voice, who is standing at the end of the hallway, her hands on her hips, and staring at my dress. Suddenly I'm overcome with sadness as I realize how much I've missed my family, and how much I miss the people I have just left behind. I run to her, throw my arms around her tightly, and begin to cry. She freezes, uncertain about where this unusual behavior is coming from. I never cry at home. Even when I broke my arm in 6th grade, I fell off of my bike, I didn't shed a single tear. Now, though, I'm crying so hard that the sobs wrack my entire body. "Oh, Lia, what's wrong?" My mom asks, looking at me with concern. "I'm not that mad, you were just gone for ten minutes so I was worried." She says, holding me close to her. "Baby, it's okay. It's okay." She says softly, but it reminds me of what Jem had said, and that only makes me cry harder. And my poor mom, who could never guess the reason of my tears, just holds me, telling me it's okay.

I waited at the door eagerly on August 6th. I stared out the window the entire day, waiting for Magnus to come. For him to show up. And he never did. The first few months were the hardest. I tried to act normal, but honestly, you can't just go back to your old like after something like that happens. When you love someone as I had loved Jem, nothing in the world could replace that love. The only one in my family who seemed to notice that I was different was Missy. She saw how I stopped reading any books, and immediately knew that there was something wrong. Oh, and that was the first thing I noticed when I got back. Every single copy of any Cassandra Clare book seemed to have disappeared off of the face of the Earth. I would ask people who were hardcore fangirls about them, and they would look at me like I was crazy. I took this as a good sign, but when he didn't come after two weeks, I gave up. And I lost some part of me. The part that believed. It was hard to pretend that everything was alright. Especially when school started that summer. My teachers would call my parents, saying that I wasn't focusing in class, and that I seemed out of it. When I was home, I would stare for hours at the pictures Jem, Will and I had taken one day on my phone. At one point, I considered seeing if there was any way for me to forget what had happened. But I just couldn't. Instead, I pulled myself together, at least in front of other people. My grades were better than ever. I acted in the school musical. I hung out with Kat and my other friends. I helped out with Missy and Jacob's school work. I got myself a kitten and named her Lady Cream Puff. It was Missy's idea. Next summer, I looked into colleges. To everyone else, it just seemed the beginning of eleventh grade had been a lot for me, and I had gone back to normal. But when I was alone I would cry to myself if I saw anything that I wore during my time with Jem and Will and the others. I ended up burning all of those clothes in a bonfire when I went camping with Kat and my friends Alyssa and Ella. One night I was just so done with myself because I couldn't tear my eyes away from the phone screen that I threw it out my window. By the time twelfth grade came around, I felt like I had gotten over crying everything something reminded of what had happened. Only, people kept asking my why I was 18 and I had never had a boyfriend. I was tempted to snap at them that I had, indeed, had a boyfriend and he was one of the most perfect people to ever set foot on this planet and, oh, right, he was part angel. But, instead, I just shrugged and continued on with my day. I wanted to at least try to date someone, but, well, no one could possibly hope to live up to Jem. No one could possibly hope to have every single piece of my heart belong to them as Jem did. No one could possibly hope to have me love them as deeply and as truly and as fiercely as I loved Jem. Which wasn't fair to my date. So I went through the beginning of twelfth grade without a boyfriend. On the first day of Winter Break, I decided that I had to try. So, that day, I asked the cutest and smartest boy in school, Jon DeHaven, out on a date. He said yes, and we had planned to go to see the latest Marvel movie. I was finally ready to do this. Because it's what Jem would have wanted.  But of course, seeing as life hates me, it had other plans.