Tiffany Tumbles: Book One of the Interim Fates

by Grayson, Kristine

  Honestly, I think the problem is Megan.

  How do I explain Megan? I mean, I say that she’s my therapist, but she’s not like Dr. Phil or the therapists on TV. First of all, she’s an empath, a real one. Second, she doesn’t even live in Eugene or Oregon or even in the Pacific Northwest. She lives in Los Angeles with her billionaire husband, who is also a mage who’s been around since the Dark Ages (whenever that was), and she just swans into places like this when she’s needed.

  Only when I met her, I didn’t know what an empath was, and she didn’t know she was needed, and I was an Interim Fate, which technically meant I had more power than she did. She didn’t know she was an empath either, her not-yet-husband helped her figure that out because of the way she treated us girls.

  Mostly, she listened to us. No one else ever had. Our moms are too confused by this whole magic thing and our dad, well, I told you about our dad. The extended family (and honestly, there are thousands of us) has its own issues. No one really thought about us kids.

  Megan just asked us questions, and suddenly all that emotion was pouring out. Or it seemed that way.

  Later I learned that empaths are the most talented mages of us all. They’re the only ones who come into their magic when they’re born, mostly (the theory goes) because my dad doesn’t believe anyone who can draw out emotion can do magic. My dad mostly doesn’t believe in emotion.

  But that’s another story.

  What’s relevant here is that he believed that emotions weren’t important, so therefore empaths didn’t exist, so he didn’t ask (hundreds of years ago) to have them subjected to the rules that the other mages had to follow.

  Which meant that Megan, who is all of thirty-something, actually has her magic. She could even draw out my dad’s emotions, which is something to behold. She figured out that for all his bluster, he’s really insecure. Which I don’t believe, but if an empath says it, it must be true, right?

  I used to think so, but then I gave up my magic and came here, and now I’m wondering if Megan knows anything. This week was hard, and I’m not just talking about learning how to tie my own shoes. Mom doesn’t get anything, I’m all by myself, and I feel stupid all the time.

  I’ve never felt stupid in my life.

  It’s all Megan’s fault. She’s the one who convinced us to leave Mount Olympus and try the real world. She’s the one who convinced our dad to let us stop being Interim Fates. (Actually, we didn’t want to be anymore either—it’s hard to run the magical world when you really don’t understand it, and all you are is a pawn for some weird chess game your father is playing.) And she’s the one who decided that our mothers wanted the chance to nurture us.

  Maybe that is true: I mean, my mom is trying—consider how many heart-to-hearts she’s tried to have with me—but this whole separation from Brittany and Crystal, that was Megan’s idea too, and it just sucks. I mean majorly.

  So by the time I go to Megan’s office, I’m even madder than I was when I woke up. Mom parks in front of the building, which is in downtown Eugene near the performing arts center which is, for some reason, called the Hult, and we go into Megan’s office together.

  Megan’s real office is in Los Angeles. That’s where she and Rich Boy live. But because he’s rich, she’s now got branches in Eugene, Northern Wisconsin, and New York. She gives me an hour on Sundays, Brittany an hour on Thursdays, and Crystal an hour on Tuesdays. Our moms get the hour after ours, and theoretically Megan’s spending time with Dad too.

  Mom says that’s a full plate. I think it’s hardly working. When we were Interim Fates, we were working all the time. (Of course, when I said that to Mom, she said, Then it shouldn’t be hard for you to go to school for six hours and do your homework for two, should it? I used to think she was easy-going. I was wrong.)

  Megan’s building also has an optometrist, a few lawyers, and a dentist. I guess she rents to them, but they’re never around on Sunday. Megan has the entire upper floor.

  She showed me and Mom around during our first Eugene appointment. The upper floor has a “group” room for group therapy (a big room with a thick carpet and lots of pillows. Chairs stacked against the wall—and no windows! I hate it), two waiting rooms (you get assigned a waiting room so that you don’t see the other patients, although I don’t think she has other patients in Eugene), a really fancy bathroom, and the main therapy room. There’s also a library, where I get to wait for Mom to get done, and maybe do my homework.

  Mostly, I go down to this coffee shop not far from City Hall, have a latte, and watch people, trying to see how mortals act when no one’s paying attention to them. I sneak back up about fifteen minutes before Mom’s done, and pretend I’ve been doing my homework the whole time.

  I don’t know if she’s figured me out yet, and I’m not sure she cares. Last week, she came out eyes red and face tear-streaked, which freaked me out a little—who knew that Mom cried?—but she seemed to get herself together okay.

  I haven’t cried at all when I talk to Megan, except when she told all three of us girls that we couldn’t spend any time together for months and months and months. Brittany cried first, and then Crystal started sobbing, and I’d’ve looked unsympathetic if I didn’t shed a tear or two.

  Besides, it’s hard not to cry when they’re bawling like babies.

  Anyway, Mom and I go inside and take the elevator up. We don’t say anything as we ride to the top: she’s mad at me for my unreasonable attitude, and I’m just mad. She told me to save it for Megan, and I have.

  Believe me, I have.

  Megan’s waiting for us. She gives us both hugs, then takes me into the therapy room. I don’t even say good-bye to Mom. I have no idea what she does when I’m spilling my guts to Megan, but I suspect she goes to the same coffee shop I do. Sometimes she even forgets to bring a book, which for Mom is almost like forgetting to put on clothes.

  The therapy room is big and blue, with a soft chair near the only window and another soft chair across from it. There is a large comfy sofa, but Megan doesn’t make you lie down like in those New Yorker cartoons. She’d rather have you sit across from her, or walk around, or even sit on the floor, so long as you’re comfortable.

  I used to think Megan herself was comfortable. She’s this chubby woman, round all over, with really pretty red hair and nice green eyes. But she can be tough. Remember, I said she’s the only one besides Hera who can take on my dad. And Megan does it with a look. Her eyes go flat and then they go cold, like bright green ice chips, and it’s really, really scary.

  I think it even scares my dad when she does that, and I didn’t think anyone could scare Dad.

  “So what’s making you so angry?” Megan asks as she settles in her chair.

  By the Powers, she can sense it. I hate empaths.

  I had this all planned. I was gonna tell her everything was fine, and life was good, and I’m okay with school, and instead, I blurt:

  “Your stupid rules.”

  Megan tilts her head like I’ve said something interesting. “What about my rules?”

  “I want to see my sisters,” I say.

  She nods sagely. I hate that.

  “I hate it here.”

  “I figured you would,” Megan says.

  That stops me. “If you thought I would hate it, why did you make me come?”

  “I didn’t make you,” she says calmly. “You volunteered.”

  She’s right; I did. In fact, getting away from Dad was really my idea. But I hate having that pointed out because it violates my sense of fairness. I can’t scream at her for something that was my idea, even though I want to.

  I really, really want to.

  “I’m stupid here,” I say.

  “You’re not stupid,” she says. “You’re just inexperienced. There’s a difference.”

  “Really?” I ask. “I couldn’t even tie a shoe until last week, which, Mom informs me, most mortals learn when they’re three. I can’t find my way around the dumb school, and
nobody likes me.”

  I didn’t mean to say that last, but it just slips out. I hate that too. Back when I was at Mount Olympus, I looked up empaths after we first encountered Megan, and I learned that sometimes their very presence makes stuff slip out that should remain secret.

  Maybe Megan shouldn’t have a presence around me anymore.

  “What do you mean nobody likes you?” Megan asks.

  “Nobody likes me,” I say, louder this time, like she’s deaf rather than dense. “They don’t even see me most of the time. It’s like I’m wallpaper. I go from class to class and nobody even says hello.”

  I’m exaggerating a little. Jenna says hello in the morning, and I pathetically look forward to it. On Friday, I counted how many people spoke to me, then divided the speech into required speech (“What would you like for lunch?”) and non-required speech (“Hello” qualifies) and found that most of my conversations—like more than half—were required. It was down to only two non-required if I took out any conversation I had with my mother.

  Megan looks surprised at this news. Like I made it up or something. I’m still not sitting down, but she doesn’t seem to care that I’m towering over her. Instead, she puts her chin on her hand. She’s had a manicure. It looks nice, but not very Megan. I’m a little surprised myself.

  “I would have imagined everyone notices you, Tiffany,” she says. “You are beautiful, you’re smart, and you have your father’s charisma.”

  I snort. Like I’m any of those things. I don’t dress right—I stopped wearing the Jimmy Choos on day two (not only were they wrong for school, they hurt my feet)—and I’m not intelligent. I know a lot of big words in more than one language, I like to read like Mom does, but I had no idea until Thursday that the French and Indian Wars happened in the United States (only it wasn’t the United States yet, which I also find confusing, and how come people from India and people from France were fighting in the U.S.? No one would explain that either, not that I asked).

  And as for my dad’s charisma….um, what? My dad has charisma? I guess he’d have to, to get all those women into bed with him, but I always thought it was because most of them (my mother excluded [ick. Mother. Father. Bed. Ick]) thought he was a real god—I mean, Zeus, Supreme Ruler, Lord of the Sky, Rain-King, Cloud-Gatherer. The guy who controlled the thunderbolt. You know, that Zeus. The one Homer wrote about. (Dad always brags about being in Homer and those other famous writers. Dad says he wouldn’t have had half the power he did if he hadn’t been able to fool those men [Homer, Socrates, Euripides, and those guys] into thinking he was really terrifying.)

  Hera always said it’s not hard to fool a blind man and his little friends, but she always says stuff like that, especially when Dad gets too pompous. And as he reminded me once when she said that, Homer made her a goddess, number two in the power structure, actually (even though Dad says she’s not—I think he’s wrong, but what do I know? It seems like I know less and less).

  “You can snort,” Megan is saying, “and you can ignore me and disappear into your thoughts, but that won’t help you.”

  “The only thing that’ll help me,” I say, “is some magic.”

  “You opted not to have any.”

  I flounce onto the sofa, and almost bounce back to my feet. I forgot how springy it is. “Well, I changed my mind.”

  “You can’t. I didn’t cast the spell taking your magic away. The Powers That Be did as a collective, and the deed is done.”

  She says that like it’s a good thing.

  “So we have to deal with your feelings as they come up,” she says, “without magic.”

  I cross my arms.

  “When you cross your arms,” she says, just like I knew she would, “you’re not listening.”

  I shrug.

  “I know it’s hard to be without magic,” she says.

  Yeah, right. She’s never had any except this empath stuff, and she’s never been without that.

  “But that’s not all that’s bothering you, is it?”

  I don’t say anything. What’ll she do if I’m quiet for the whole meeting?

  She stares at me for a long time. We sit like that for maybe five minutes and it takes all of my control not to fidget. I think I’m going to hold to this silence thing.

  “That’s amazing,” she says. “You have no magic, and yet you can just disappear.”

  “Huh?” I ask, then curse myself silently. She got me to speak, the wily woman.

  “I just watched you,” Megan says. “When you’re quiet like that, you vanish. It’s as if you take your personality and hide it.”

  I frown at her. I’m not sure what she means.

  “Have you been quiet at school?” she asks.

  “I’m stupid,” I snap.

  This time she doesn’t contradict me. She says, “You’re being quiet because you feel stupid?”

  “Because I am stupid,” I say. “Everybody knows how money works. Everybody knows where their next class is. Everybody knows that Skinner Butte is a hill in the middle of town. Except me. Every time I open my mouth, I prove how damned dumb I am.”

  She doesn’t stop me from swearing like my mom did yesterday. Megan doesn’t even seem to notice that I learned that word this week on top of everything else.

  Instead, she’s looking at me like I’m a particularly attractive puzzle and she’s trying to unravel me.

  “How does it feel,” she asks, “being ignored like that?”

  “I’m not being ignored,” I snap. I like snapping. I’m good at it. “Nobody even knows I’m there.”

  “How does that feel?” she asks in the same tone of voice, like my snapping doesn’t even bother her. (Maybe it doesn’t. Megan is notoriously unflappable.)

  And that’s when it happens—that pully thing she does. The words come out of me even though I vowed not to say anything about this.

  “It feels,” I say quietly, “like I don’t even exist.”

  Megan nods. I get the sense that she not only understands this, she expected it. And if she expected it, how come she didn’t warn me? It’s not fair that I have to go through all this stuff and she just gets to sit there and listen and pretend like everything’s going to be all right.

  “In a way,” she says, “you’re right.”

  “Huh?” I ask again. That sound just kind of eaps out of me when I least expect it, mostly when I’m trying not to say anything.

  “The Tiffany who lived on Mount Olympus and had everything she wanted at the snap of a finger, the Tiffany who was part of a threesome with her sisters Brittany and Crystal, the Tiffany who is Zeus’s daughter, isn’t the girl who has come to Eugene, Oregon,” Megan says.

  My arms cross before I even think about it. “Yes, it is.”

  “Tell me how it is,” Megan says.

  “How what?”

  “How your life here is like your life there.”

  I frown. I’m still the same Tiffany. I’m the girl who had close sisters and Zeus for a dad, and a mom who only visited once a year. But I also had everything I wanted (and servants, which I’ve never told Megan, but I think she suspects it), and if I didn’t have it, I could get it.

  I thought I was pretty smart about popular culture and America and stuff. I mean, most of the movies we saw (DVDs, really) were set here and all of the TV shows, except one about immortals in France and a few in England (and some great Mexican soap operas—okay, not all, but most). I thought it’d be pretty easy.

  And it would’ve been if I still had magic. Imagine what I could’ve done to Mr. McGuillicuty. Or to those kids who don’t notice me. Or to Jenna to make her slouch less. Imagine.

  “Tiffany?” Megan asks. “Tell me.”

  I lick my lips. Then I bite the lower one. It’s not the same. It’s not the same at all.

  “I’m the same person,” I say.

  “Are you?” she asks.

  “Yeah.” The mad is back, and it came back fast. One second I wasn’t mad at all and now I’m ready
to spit. “I’m exactly the same.”

  “Only you’re here without your sisters.”

  “That’s your fault.”

  “And your dad can’t protect you.”

  “He never did.”

  “And you live with your mom.”

  “I like her.”

  “And,” Megan pauses like it’s an effect, “you don’t have any magic.”

  “I hate that,” I say.

  We stare at each other. I’m breathing hard like I’ve been running in P.E.

  “What would you do if you had magic?” Megan asks.

  I shrug. I’m not going to tell her about turning Mr. McG into a toad or making Jenna feel better or getting the attention of the other kids.

  “Besides getting revenge on everyone who made you angry,” Megan says with a smile.

  Just a little smile, but it’s enough to keep me mad. “I wouldn’t do that,” I say. “It’s forbidden. I know that.”

  “Okay,” she says in that voice which means she doesn’t believe me. “What would you do with the magic?”

  “I’d go home,” I say. The words just came out. And there wasn’t even a pully-thing. It was like they were waiting to escape.

  “Where’s home?” Megan asks.

  I’m about to snap at her again—Where do you think?—but for a minute, I don’t have any words. I mean, Mount Olympus is technically home, but it wasn’t what I was thinking about when I said that.

  I was thinking about Brittany and Crystal.

  I shrug.

  “Where, Tiffany?” she asks.

  “I just want to see my sisters,” I say.

  “They’re home?”

  I nod. Then I look at my hands. I’m blinking hard. I will not cry in here. I promised myself after the last time. Crying is for babies.

  “In Mount Olympus?”

  “No, dummy,” I snap.

  “A little respect, please,” Megan says, but there’s no edge to it. “They make you feel at home?”

  “They make me me,” I say.