Tiffany Tumbles: Book One of the Interim Fates

by Grayson, Kristine

  “So you’ve had quite an education, after all,” Mrs. Fiddler says.

  Everyone is looking at me like I’ve vomited green blood all over the desk in front of me. I’m not making friends here, not that Mrs. Fiddler cares. She’s just amazed I know stuff.

  “Not a good one,” I say.

  “Not many students can claim to read Homer,” she says.

  “Yeah, but I’m going to school in America now,” I say, “and I’d trade Homer any day to find out stuff everyone else takes for granted, like the fact that Massachusetts is a state, not a country, and everyone puts up with the idea of being equal.”

  “Puts up with?” Mrs. Fiddler asks just as someone next to me says, “Huh?”

  I shrug. “Mom’s trying to explain the whole equality thing to me. It’s new.”

  “Greece is a democracy, isn’t it, class?” Mrs. Fiddler asks in a way that makes me thing she doesn’t know either.

  “Not in my household,” I mutter, and to my surprise people sitting closest to me laugh.

  “Anyway,” Mrs. Fiddler says, “we’re going to be studying the Greeks in a few weeks, and I’ll be calling on you to help me a bit then, Tiffany. All right?”

  I frown. I have no idea if that’s all right. It’s probably geeky and unpopular and stupid, but as I said, I promised myself I’d try here, and that would be part of trying.

  “Um,” I say before I can stop myself, “can I ask why we’d study Greek stuff in an English class?”

  Mrs. Fiddler clasps her hands together as if she couldn’t wait for someone to ask that question. “Well, you see, class, the Greek myths and their Roman counterparts are, like Biblical literature, the basis for much in Western fiction…”

  And off she goes, onto new topics so fast that I’m getting lost.

  The girl beside me, a dark-haired Goth chick wearing all black with black makeup (that is still called Goth, right?), leans toward me.

  “Cool you took on Helen,” she says.

  I want to say I didn’t take her on, but there’s no combatting rumor, I guess.

  I shrug.

  “Can you tell me about Greece sometime?” she asks. “It’d be cool to grow up somewhere other than here.”

  “Sure,” I say, wondering what I can tell her. How blue the sky is and the way the Mediterranean looks in the middle of summer? How good olive oil really is when it’s fresh and how feta cheese tastes when it doesn’t have yucky preservatives?

  I have a hunch that’s not what she’s interested in.

  “When do you have lunch?” she asks.

  I tell her—I’m finally beginning to remember which period is which—and she smiles.

  “Me, too,” she says. “Tomorrow, then. You can tell me everything.”

  Like I’m holding some great secret.

  “Did you have something to add, Olivia?” Mrs. Fiddler says.

  The girl across from me scowls. Apparently, she is Olivia. “No.”

  “Then please refrain from talking until class is over.”

  “Okay,” Olivia says and flounces back in her seat.

  The girl behind me whispers, “Like she can’t say ‘please stop talking’ like a normal person.”

  It takes me a minute to realize the girl means Mrs. Fiddler. I guess there’s specific ways of speaking for everyone, not just students, and I don’t know any of them.

  I scrawl in my notebook, not words really, just doodles. A couple of kids, mostly boys who also sit in the back, are still staring at me. What, were they so gone in their heads that they missed the new student until this week?

  I sigh, and wish I was back home with Brittany and Crystal. At least I understand them.

  I don’t seem to understand anyone else.

  TEN

  AND MAYBE I don’t even understand Brittany and Crystal. When I get home from school, tired and cranky (mostly because Mom has a class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and she expects me to walk, like a common…ah crap, I shouldn’t use that word. But I will. Like a common servant), there’s this package on the porch.

  Now, I’ve seen a lot of movies, so I know that packages on porches are usually bombs. Especially if they’re from someone you don’t know. But how are you supposed to know if the package is from someone you know if you can’t see the package?

  So I sneak up on it, worried that the vibration of my feet might set it off. I lie to myself and say that Daddy wouldn’t let me die—if something got blown off or if I lost a lot of blood, he’d appear out of nowhere and magick me back together again.

  But I don’t know that and for the first time, I feel really mortal.

  I mean, I am, as I said, just long-lived. We, the magical, can be killed if something bizarre happens or if we use too much magic, which theoretically shortens our lifespans, but Daddy futzed with that for our family too, only I don’t know if the futzing still holds for me since I left home without magic.

  I sigh.

  There’s a wind. It’s dry—a desert wind, Mom would call it, even though we’re in a rain forest—and the leaves rustle on the rhododendrons beside the porch. Across the street, a guy—a neighbor, I guess—mows the lawn, and farther down the street, some dog is pulling its owner along on a leash.

  I take all this in, like I’m a superhero or something. Maybe that’s a movie thing too. I mean, I’m supposed to be a little responsible, right? If this thing is a bomb, and it goes off, then I have to make sure no innocents get hurt.

  Except, of course, me.

  Because I can’t imagine who’d send me a bomb. So if it’s intended for anyone, it’s intended for Mom.

  All the looking around gave me time to make a plan. I’ll look at the package, and if I don’t know who sent it or if there’s no return address at all, I’ll leave it here, and let Mom decide what to do with it. but I won’t let her pick it up either if she doesn’t know who it’s from.

  I look, I see my name, which surprises me (I really did think this was for Mom), and then I note the return address. Crystal Chandler, something something Park Ave, NYC, along with more numbers.

  My sister. Crystal.

  No mad bomber could know her address and her new last name. And Crystal might get mad at me, but she’d never bomb me into oblivion.

  Still, my heart’s pounding. I unlock the door and push it open before I pick up the package. Then I carry the package gingerly inside, holding it steady so that I don’t jar it.

  Just because it has the right names doesn’t mean it can’t be booby-trapped. It just means it’s less likely to be booby-trapped.

  I close the door with my foot, then carry the package all the way to the kitchen table, the big one that looks too formal for us half the time. I’m shaking too much to open it though.

  Instead, I get myself some orange juice and an apple (only healthy foods, Mom says, or I’ll balloon up, considering how I ate at home). Then I sit in my favorite chair and stare at the package.

  I could call Crystal, I suppose, but that’s against the rules. I can leave the package for Saturday, and open it after I’ve spoken to Crystal, but that leaves the mystery too long. Besides, if it is something dangerous, it’s lurking in the house way too long—nearly a week—unopened, which might make it even more dangerous.

  And besides again, if it is dangerous and we have to catch whoever sent it, then I can’t be moving it around and messing up the fingerprints. The CSI people wouldn’t like it.

  So I sit there, trying to gather enough nerve to open it.

  Then Mom busts in the side door.

  She doesn’t bust, really, or even burst. She comes in with her normal exuberance. Mom likes her job and she likes that I’m here, and she’s mostly cheery most of the time, which may be what attracted Daddy in the first place.

  She sees me, smiles, hangs her keys on the key holder beside the door, then turns back to me. The smile has become a frown.

  “What’s going on, Tiff?” she asks.

  I nod to the package. “I’m afraid to open
it.”

  “Why?” She has a briefcase and she sets it near the stairs, so she can take it to her office later.

  “Because,” I say, “even though I know who it’s from, I’m afraid it might explode.”

  Mom squints at me, and I can tell she wants to smile. Then the urge leaves her, and she takes a deep breath, like she’s about to deal with a new problem. Then she nods, as if she’s had an argument with herself and won.

  “Do you have exploding packages back home?”

  “Not like you do here,” I say. “Aren’t you scared when you get one?”

  “I like packages,” Mom says. “I don’t get enough of them.”

  “But they explode.”

  She comes into the kitchen and sits beside me. “What makes you think that, Tiffany?”

  “I’ve seen it,” I say.

  “In person?”

  “Heck, no.” I sound as shocked as I feel. Does anyone see it in person and live? I guess a few people, or they wouldn’t have the rules about keeping the packages steady and not opening from someone you don’t know and stuff like that. How else would they know than if someone survived it?

  “How have you seen it, then?” Mom asks.

  “TV. Movies. You know.”

  She laughs. A deep, amused belly laugh, the kind that comes when you really find something funny and you can’t prevent the laugh. She puts her hand over her mouth, gasps once, then manages to stop laughing, although her eyes twinkle.

  My face is so hot, it feels like it’ll explode. I feel humiliated, and I’m not sure exactly why, except that Mom found my panic funny.

  She touches my hand. “I’m sorry, baby.”

  I pull away.

  “Truly.” She wipes an eye with her other hand, then she takes mine, as if she can hold me in place.

  I want to tug away again, but I guess that would be childish. But so is laughing at someone who’s panicked.

  “Baby,” she says—she hasn’t called me baby in years—“we have to teach you how reality really works.”

  I know how reality really works. There’s her reality and my reality, and I have to lie about mine because the people in hers won’t believe me or they’ll think I’m whacked or something.

  I can feel my lower lip set in what Crystal calls Tiff’s Angry Face, but Mom doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Movies, honey,” and I hear laughter in Mom’s voice, lurking there, like a sea monster, “movies aren’t reality.”

  “I know that,” I say.

  She starts to say something, then nods, then looks at the package. “If you know that, then why do you think all packages explode?”

  “Because,” I snap. “If that was something made up, it wouldn’t be common in movies.”

  “Like murders?” she asks.

  I shrug.

  “Or superheroes with machine guns who never get prosecuted?” she asks.

  “There’re mages,” I say. “We don’t get in trouble.”

  “Really?” she asks. “Is that why your dad agreed to let you girls go? Because no one gets in trouble?”

  I felt my face get even hotter. “I’m not in trouble.”

  “No, sweetie, you’re not. But your dad is. He’s in trouble for meddling with things that only belong to the Powers That Be.”

  “He is a Power That Be,” I say.

  “I know, sweetie,” she says—and I’m getting sick of this sweetie thing. I can tell we’re not used to each other yet or she’d stop doing the baby-honey-sweetie thing. No one called me that at home.

  “But,” she continues, “it’s my understanding that the Powers That Be have to work in tandem, not alone, and your dad tried to do everything alone.”

  I shrug again. I’ve heard this. I had to testify in front of all the Powers, which wasn’t fun. My sisters were there, but they made me talk for them. I was there as an “Interim Fate,” not as Daddy’s little girl.

  And he stared at me the whole time like I was betraying him.

  “He’s in trouble, and part of his penance is to learn how to be a good parent.”

  “That shouldn’t be a penance,” I mutter.

  “I know that,” Mom says. “But he thought he was a good parent. You and your sisters told him otherwise, remember?”

  How can I forget? Those first few sessions with Megan—who in her empathic way figured out that we three Interim Fates were really unhappy, and probed to find out why—were a rollercoaster. First I talked (and talked and talked, Brittany said) and then Brit and Crystal did, and then everyone else chimed in, from Athena to Apollo and Artemis, and even Ares showed up, which scared all of us. When the God of War (even though he’s really not, but he’s good at anger, let me tell you) gets mad, everybody knows about it. Even Daddy.

  “Why are we talking about this?” I asked.

  “Because you say that mages don’t get in trouble,” she says. “They do, and will continue to get into trouble. Just like people do in what you call the mortal life when they do things wrong.”

  “So?” I ask.

  “So people in movies get away with a lot,” she says.

  “So?” I ask again.

  “So things like package bombs aren’t really very common.”

  “Somebody made up the Unabomber guy, then?” I ask.

  Mom looks at me sideways. “You can Google him,” she says. “He only sent a few packages. The problem is that they worked.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “I don’t know anyone like him, and I doubt you do either.”

  “Okay.” My face is so hot it hurts. My eyes are filling with tears and I don’t want Mom to know. This is embarrassing. First Jenna tells me I use ancient slang, and now Mom thinks I’m hilarious because I’m trying to get along.

  “I’m not sure how to show you how things really work,” Mom says, more to herself than to me.

  “I’m sure I’ll pick it up.” I shake my hand free of hers and get up. I go over to the counter and grab some sharp scissors. Then I head for the box.

  Mom is watching me as if she expects me to do something wrong. And I probably will.

  I should’ve thought this through. Before I gave up my powers—voluntarily, to learn how to be a proper mage, how dumb was that?—I should’ve spelled real world knowledge into my head or taught myself how to behave like mortals or something.

  But spells can backfire, and even if I’d thought of it, I probably would’ve done it wrong. Me and Crystal and Brittany might’ve been powerful, but we were sadly lacking, even in the magical side of our education.

  “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, Tiffany,” Mom says.

  I keep my back to her. I use the blade of the scissors—like I’ve seen on TV (so there, Mom!)—and slice open the box.

  “You didn’t,” I say.

  “I didn’t mean to laugh,” she says again.

  “I know,” I say. “You couldn’t help it.”

  The box tears open, and white foam stuff falls everywhere. On top, there’s a letter in calligraphed handwriting, and the signature on the bottom is Crystal’s.

  Who knew she could do that?

  I set the letter aside. I’ll read it after I see what she sent.

  I reach inside the white foam packing stuff and pull out a box. On top, it says iPhone, and it has a picture of a gadget on the cover.

  Mom comes over and makes one of those frowny sounds.

  I ignore her. I don’t want her here, seeing my stuff—which is not a bomb, just like she knew (I feel so dumb)—but I don’t tell her that. I can’t, really. I don’t have any power here. I’m not sure what to do when I get angry. I can’t cast a spell, I can’t run away, and I sure can’t tell her to get lost (is that modern slang?) because she’s the one who owns the house.

  I’m dependent, worse than I’ve ever been in my life, and it frightens me.

  She picks up the letter. I snatch it from her hands.

  Tiff—

  We’re not supposed to e-mail or chat or call, exce
pt on Saturdays, but no one said anything about texting. I discovered it here in New York and it’s wonderful. I got us a subscription to a network. You, me, and Brit are on a family plan. We can send each other notes all day and no one’ll be the wiser.

  I wish I could show you how, but the instructions that come with the iPhone should be clear for someone as smart as you. We'll probably have to tell Brittany what to do on the phone on Saturday.

  I miss you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Love,

  Crystal

  “No one’ll be the wiser, huh?” Mom’s looking over my shoulder, reading my mail. I thought Americans value privacy. The movies say that too, but what do I know? I have a skewed sense of reality.

  “I don’t think she thought you’d be here,” I say. And if I hadn’t had that bomb moment, she wouldn’t have been. No one would’ve been the wiser.

  “I see your sister hasn’t learned about money yet,” Mom says.

  “What?” I pick up the box. It doesn’t look expensive, but what do I know? Everyone says coffee is expensive, and it doesn’t seem that way to me. Clothes seem expensive, and so do cab rides, and I can’t figure out food prices at all, but coffee seems pretty consistent from café to café.

  “Networks,” Mom says. “They’re expensive.”

  “But Crystal already bought us into one,” I say.

  “She subscribed,” Mom says. “She didn’t pay.”

  It takes nearly a half an hour for Mom to explain to me the difference between subscribing and paying. Then she has to take me to the internet to show me how billing works for texting and cell phones and e-mail and stuff. Each minute, each call, each texting thing costs something, except you get some of those things free for being in the network, but you’d use them up pretty fast.

  “So we won’t use them up,” I say.

  “You’d use them up in an afternoon, and then who is going to pay your phone bill, hmm?” Mom asks. She’s sounding really frustrated. “It won’t be me.”

  “Well, it can’t be me,” I say. “I don’t have any money.”

  “We’re going to have to change that,” Mom says.

  That sounds like a good thing to me, and I say so.