Standing Up For Grace

by Kristine Grayson

  Imperia wonders if she can dodge Skylar, then Mikayal sees her and elbows Skylar while pointing Imperia out. Imperia takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, and walks toward the group.

  “What’re you doing?”

  She can hear Janie’s voice behind her. Imperia didn’t even know Janie was nearby. So Imperia pretends she can’t hear her.

  Imperia walks right up to the group.

  Mikayla and Georgia stand in front of Skylar, arms crossed, like body guards.

  “I want to talk to Skylar,” Imperia says.

  “No,” Mikayla says.

  Imperia tilts her head so she can see around Mikayla. Skylar is standing directly behind Mikayla, face still bandaged. Her eyes are less black now, more purple and green and yellow—and not in an attractive way. Imperia has never seen anything like it before.

  “I want to talk to you,” Imperia says to Skylar. “In private.”

  Skylar doesn’t answer.

  “Look,” Imperia says to Mikayla, “if I lay a finger on her, I promise, I’ll let you guys beat me up all year. You can break my nose too if you want, okay?”

  “Don’t say that.” Janie has come up beside her. “They’ll do it.”

  “I’m making a promise here,” Imperia says to Janie and to Mikayla. “I mean to keep it. I won’t touch her. Not a finger. I just want to talk to her. Alone.”

  “No,” Mikayla says.

  “It’s okay.” Skylar’s voice sounds funny. It almost sounds like she said Idsokey. It takes a minute for Imperia to realize Skylar’s talking that way because of her nose. “I’ll talk to her.”

  Mikayla turns as if she’s going to protest. Skylar just raises her eyebrows—a very Grandfather move—and Mikayla walks over to the lockers.

  The other girls follow and line up along either side, so they can rush in if Imperia hurts her.

  “You too,” Imperia says to Janie. “I want to talk to Skylar alone.”

  “It’s not a good idea,” Janie says.

  “You’re probably right, but I’m going to do it anyway.” Imperia looks at Janie. Janie has a frown on her face. She holds her phone up.

  “I’m recording it,” Janie says.

  Janie is actually worried about her. That touches Imperia. No one ever worries about Imperia.

  “I’ll be okay,” Imperia says softly.

  Skylar hasn’t moved. She’s watching warily. She really doesn’t look pretty right now, even though she should. Her hair is perfect. She has make-up on that sort-of covers the bruising. But her face is a mess.

  And Imperia did that to her.

  “Go,” Imperia says to Janie.

  “I’m leaving in protest,” Janie says, but backs off.

  Imperia feels really exposed now, standing in the middle of the hallway, facing off with Skylar. “Let’s go over there.”

  Imperia nods toward a wider area near the stairs where two corridors meet. The other girls can still see what’s happening, but they can’t hear.

  “All right,” Skylar says. She pivots and walks to the stairs, turning her back on Imperia.

  In spite of herself, Imperia admires that. It shows a confidence that Imperia would never have.

  Imperia follows her. Skylar stops a few feet away from the steps and waits, like Grandmother does on state occasions.

  “What’s so important?” Skylar asks as Imperia approaches. “I suppose you’re going to tell me to drop the lawsuit.”

  Imperia starts. She thought Daddy had taken care of that. But she doesn’t want to lose her focus. She’s going to talk to Skylar, not let Skylar bully her.

  “I don’t want to talk about the lawsuit,” Imperia says. “I want to tell you something about me and Grace.”

  Skylar’s eyelids lower just a bit. It’s a good move. It shows contempt. “Why should I care?”

  She isn’t going to make this easy.

  “You know we just moved here,” Imperia says as quickly as she can. If she doesn’t get this out, she’s not going to try again. “What you don’t know is that we just moved in with our father too. Our mother ran off with some other guy and dumped us with our grandparents.”

  “So?” Skylar’s voice drips with contempt, and it actually hurts. Imperia debated all weekend about telling Skylar the personal stuff because she was afraid it would give Skylar more ammunition, and now that looks like it might be true.

  “So,” Imperia says softly, “when you and I were fighting over Grace, I got really mad. So I hit you.”

  “Yeah, I got that,” Skylar says.

  “And I hit you hard.”

  “No kidding,” Skylar says.

  “And I shouldn’t have. You didn’t deserve that. I hit you really hard because I’m mad about all the other stuff too.”

  Skylar stares at her for a minute. Imperia has clearly surprised her, and for once, Skylar has nothing to say.

  “So honestly, I’m sorry I broke your nose. I didn’t mean to disfigure you for life. Really. I was mad about Grace—you shouldn’t pick on Grace. She can’t defend herself. Just pick on me from now on, okay? I deserve it. Grace doesn’t.”

  Skylar frowns, but she still doesn’t say anything.

  Imperia shrugs. “That’s all I wanted to say.”

  She turns, takes a deep breath, and hopes Skylar doesn’t hit her.

  “You didn’t,” Skylar says.

  Imperia stops and looks over her shoulder. “I didn’t what?”

  “Disfigure me for life. You didn’t hit me that hard. You’re not as powerful as you think you are.”

  It sounds like an insult, but it’s not. It’s kinda sorta forgiveness. At least, Imperia thinks it is. But she has to ask. “What about the surgery?”

  “I probably won’t do it. My mom can’t make me either. Got that?”

  “Yeah,” Imperia says.

  “Good,” Skylar says, and walks past her, back to her posse.

  Imperia watches her go. That was kinda weird, but okay. Better than Imperia expected. She lets out a small breath and feels a little dizzy.

  Janie hurries over to her. “What happened?”

  “Nothing really,” Imperia says. She wants to say more, but she thinks it’s not about Janie, not really. It’s not about Grace either.

  It’s about settling in, and the bleed from one world to the next. Magic isn’t the only thing that can get loose. Anger can too.

  Imperia sighs, then smiles at Janie. “Thanks for standing up for me,” Imperia says.

  “No big,” Janie says.

  But it is a big. It counts for a lot. But Imperia has already said that as best she can.

  She and Janie walk the rest of the way to class. One person isn’t a posse. But it’s better than all the glitter and magic wands in both worlds.

  Imperia was wrong. School isn’t so bad. And the weird thing is she didn’t have to talk about fairy tales or lies or anything like that to make it all better.

  Nobody cares about fairy tales. Nobody cares about anybody else most of the time.

  Except maybe your sister.

  Or your posse.

  Or your friends.

  If you liked “Standing Up for Grace,” you might also enjoy the Interim Fates Trilogy. Following is a sample chapter from the first book, Tiffany Tumbles, available from your favorite bookseller.

  ONE

  MY FIRST DAY of school-ever-and I'm wearing a pair of blue jeans my mom picked out, a shirt my dad gave me that says INTERIM FATE: YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT, BABY all in pink glitter, and a pair of Jimmy Choos (also pink) that I conjured the last day I had my magic. I was going to wear pink beads at the base of my cornrows, but I couldn't fasten them right, and so twenty-four hours before I'm heading to a place my mom calls high school and her neighbor calls hell, I'm heading to the beauty parlor (where no one is beautiful) and getting my locks chopped off.

  Now I've got a modified afro (that's what Mom calls it) that only needs a pick to keep up, some glitter eye shadow Mom let me buy at a place she calls the
mall, but whose sign out front says Valley River Center, and some matching glitter polish that was harder to put on than I remember.

  Not that I ever did anything the old-fashioned way when I had magic. Back then, I'd snap my fingers and get what I wanted. Literally. Sometimes I had to say a spell, and sometimes I said it wrong, but mostly, I was good at magic. So good, my dad appointed me and my sisters the head of all magic for about a year.

  Now I've got to be driven places in a car that's older than I am. My mom goes everywhere with me, and she's explaining stuff in this really fast voice because she knows I spent my entire life (except vacations) on Mount Olympus-not the one on mortal maps, but the one where the gods (mages, really) live-and she's a little worried I'm not going to survive my first day on my own.

  I'm a little worried too. I'm learning too much to absorb-and I'm the smartest of the three of us sisters. The other two have been farmed to their moms (we all have the same dad, but not the same mom-more on this later), and we used to work as a team. Brittany and Crystal would remember things I couldn't. Right now I don't have my backup memories-one's in New York (which is kinda cool) and one is in Northern Wisconsin, wherever that is, and we're not going to see each other until winter holiday break.

  I didn't even know there were such things as winter holidays before, even though I've seen movies about Christmas. More on that later, too.

  First, a little bit on now:

  I live in Eugene, Oregon. I can give you the street address if you ask, but Mom says I shouldn't go divulging information to strangers unless it's necessary-which I find to be mystical talk of the first order. Same goes for the landline and the cell numbers. Mom didn't want to give me a cell, but she finally decided to give me my own with extremely limited hours. She decided to give me mine after sending me shopping in that so-called mall-three stores on my own before I saw something I liked, and then I learned about this concept of paying. Weird and a bit cumbersome. But most stuff here is cumbersome. A lot of work for very little reward. Which, my therapist says, is One Of The Reasons I'm Here.

  My mom's name is Serena VanDerHoven, which makes my name Tiffany VanDerHoven because my dad, Zeus, doesn't have a last name at all. He's like Madonna or Cher-so famous he doesn't need one. He met my mom when she was on some college-sponsored year abroad in Greece, and the rest, as Mom says, is history. Only I'm just beginning to find out about all the delicate negotiations that went on before history could happen.

  Mom says that in order to explain things to my teachers and future friends, I have to say that my dad had custody for the first fifteen years of my life, and I lived everywhere (kinda true if you add “and nowhere at the same time”) but never spent any real time in the United States. Because of our weird lifestyle, my dad home-schooled me (not true; I learned mostly from my older sister Athena, who hated that we younger kids didn't have much education, so she set up this little temple and…oh, never mind. That's one of those digressions Mom says I can't make), and because of that home-schooling thing, I didn't spend a lot of time with people my age.

  I'm having trouble keeping track of the lies and the half-truths-the things I can say and the things I can't say-and, as I said, that's weird for me because I'm the smart one.

  Although I don't feel that way as I stumble through the doors of Central High (Home of the Cougars! whatever that means). We have to go through metal detectors, which I recognize from the movies, and which seems kinda strange just for going to school.

  Mom's beside me, looking stern, which I've never seen before. She's taller than me, and has that whole world-class beauty thing going for her. If I had to describe her, I'd say she was a cross between Halle Berry and Wonder Woman (see, I know some cultural references) but that description doesn't quite get at the whole I'm-smarter-than-you-are-and-you-better-respect-it thing she can do with her face.

  She's wearing that face now as she drags me down this wide hallway filled with badly dressed kids who are, I guess, my age. They all watch me stumble, looking at me like I'm the strange one, when half the guys wear pants that hang off their butts and bag at the knees. Don't they watch TV? Don't they know that's-in the words of Alicia Silverstone of Clueless fame-so five minutes ago?

  The whole place is in Sensurround-everywhere something new. You come in the main double doors to more double doors, only this little airlock part smells like bubblegum, hairspray, and cigarettes (which I thought were illegal). Then you go through those doors and the metal detectors and you're in this big echoy room with brick walls and a high ceiling and a lot of glass.

  Trophy cases line up near the open window that leads to the office, and hallways branch off each side. Only you can't see all that right off because the big room is filled with kids my age. Some of them are talking really fast and some of them slouch against the brick wall and some of them have coupled up and are groping near the trophy cases (where, I guess, you can't easily see them from the window). Everybody has backpacks except me, and everybody knows everybody except me, and no one looks at me, but all the guys stare at my mom, which is, I gotta say, totally normal.

  She marches right up to that window, says, “Serena VanDerHoven for Principal Meyers,” as if she's my stepmom Hera (wife of Zeus and one of the Powers That Be) and Principal Meyers is some poor captain of the guard. The woman behind the window, who is clearly younger than Mom but nowhere near as pretty, says she'll take care of it, and we should wait, and we do, and I watch these kids move around like amoebae in that one science experiment I got to do in Athena's temple class before Dad pulled me out to be head of all magic.

  In movies about high school, there aren't this many students, and all of them dress better than they do here, except for the handful of losers and the theater club (upgraded losers) and of course, our hero (or heroine), who learns how to dress and how to talk and how to Fit In.

  I watched a lot of movies to get ready for this, not to mention lots of TV shows and tons of YouTube videos. So while I'm prepared for lots of drama and tons of backbiting, I'm not quite ready for all this space filled with so many people who haven't even noticed me, even though I'm the best-dressed person in the room.

  The woman behind the desk bleeps open a door that almost magically appears in the wall (I say “almost” because once I stared at it, I realized the door was cut into the wall; I just hadn't noticed it before). Mom yanks me through the door, and I trip over the sill, and Mom says something about my Jimmy Choos, which I don't think anyone should say in the office of someone in authority.

  Back here, it smells like coffee. Computers run on nearby desks and so do some security feeds, mostly of the outside of the building, which surprises me (there are kids out there smoking and, from what I gather from some disgruntled employee, one teacher). Lots of desks are sprawled haphazardly and there are dying plants on most of them, along with stacks of files and uncapped pens in pen containers. A few chairs have sweaters hanging off them, which seems weird to me, given how warm it was out front, but the longer I'm in here, the more I realize it makes sense, because air coming from the vents is icy cold.

  A wood door is open in the back, and on it is a sign that's got to be older than Mom. It says Principal's Office, and since I've heard such awful things from so many movies (or maybe because everything's so dang new), my stomach clenches up like I ate a bad oyster or something.

  “Ma,” I say, “I don't think I can….”

  Then she turns that look on me, that look that says one-more-word-and-I'm-sending-you-back-to-your-father-in-disgrace, which is somehow worse than staying here where everything's so new. (You see, my dad's really mad at me. I'm the one who started the whole you're-an-unfit-parent dialogue in the therapist's office, but I'm always the one who starts conversations, and besides, that day I was really mad [and, according to Megan, my therapist, I was right, too. Like beyond right. All the way to who keeps letting this man have children? But more on that later.])

  Mom clenches my arm real tight and drags me through that door into a pr
etty room (all wood) with living plants and a large window with a view of the parking lot. The woman behind the desk is tiny-not even five feet tall-and pretty in a wholesome way, and as she leans forward, extending her hand, I realize that this little person is Principal Meyers.

  Now, if you watch the movies and stuff, you know that principals are either ugly middle-aged mortal men or even uglier not-quite-so-middle-aged mortal women. Their meanness shows on their face, and you just know they're going to be the bad guy.

  But she doesn't look mean. She looks nice in a tough, sort of don't-mess-with-me kinda way.

  “Take her hand,” Mom hisses, like I don't know what a handshake is (which I guess is logical on her part, since I don't know a lot of basic mortal stuff), and I do, and Principal Meyers shakes my fingers authoritatively, and then lets go.

  She says, “Welcome to Central High,” but she doesn't add Home of the Cougars, so I guess that's not always required. Then she sweeps her hand toward the two uncomfortable looking wooden chairs in front of the desk, which is, I guess, a command to sit, and we do, and she does, and she smiles at me.

  “I hear you've had quite the exciting life, Tiffany.”

  I look at Mom, surprised that Mom would tell Principal Meyers about my past, but Mom shakes her head just enough that I realize she hasn't said a word except the lies and half-truths that I'm supposed to remember, and I blush, which is embarrassing in and of itself.

  “Yeah,” I say in my best slouchy American manner (even though I know I don't have the accent exactly right), “I guess.”

  “It'll probably be hard for you to adjust to the regulated lifestyle we have here at Central High,” Principal Meyers says, as if my slouchy attitude is something she expected. “If you have any troubles, just let one of your teachers know that you'd like to get in touch with me.”

  I don't see how come I can't get in touch with her directly if I want to be in touch with her, and I open my mouth to say that when Mom kicks me in the shin.