Tiffany Tumbles: Book One of the Interim Fates

by Grayson, Kristine

  I gave up on that book almost as soon as I opened it, but some stuff sticks with you. Like the stuff about boys being interested in anything in skirts that’s interested back. Not that anyone but the cheerleaders here wear skirts, but you know what I mean.

  So I head through the empty halls (everyone’s in class except one or two dweebs trying to get there before second bell) about three minutes late. I decided on three minutes last hour, figuring it’s not so late that I’m impolite, nor is it late enough to miss the actual buying of the food, but it’s not so early that I seem eager, and it’s not on time, which seems to be a crime here (unless you miss class, and too many tardies mean you lose grade points—and yes, someone has explained grade points to me. I plan to get straight As, or at least I did, until I realized that everyone else has all these cultural assumptions ahead of me—like having had arithmetic [it’s assumed they did!] and the same cultural history [no myths until last year] and a basic understanding of U.S. geography, which still has me bamboozled).

  Anyway, I get to the cafeteria and there she is, standing just outside the door, looking as nervous as I feel. Only because I’m approaching, I get to check her out before she sees me.

  When she sees me, she gives me this goofy, black-lipped grin (I don’t get the black makeup thing either) and says we can go to McDonald’s—she’s buying.

  “I’m not big on McDonald’s,” I say, looking into the cafeteria, almost with longing. It’s not that I want to eat in there. I just want the people who’ve ignored me to notice that I’m eating in there with someone else. “That whole Supersize Me thing.”

  Which reminds me that I’m getting all my information from movies, and maybe I should see for myself.

  So before she can say anything, I add, “But who cares? Once isn’t going to hurt me, right?”

  “Naw,” she says, shoving her books into an oversized bag with fringe at the bottom. “Besides, they got salads now.”

  I didn’t know they didn’t have salads before. Maybe I should try stuff before I let someone else’s judgment get in the way of mine.

  We push open the double glass doors that lead to the parking lot. Those are the only doors open during the school day, and they’re monitored, not just by bored-looking teachers on monitor duty, but also by cameras, in case someone comes in with a rifle or something like Bowling For Columbine. And that I know is the case, because Mom told me there was some real bad tragedy here (not Eugene, but its sister city, Springfield [just across the bridge]), and even though it happened, like, years ago, everyone’s still “justifiably” paranoid.

  I’m not sure exactly what that means except that the doors are locked and kids actually have to go through these metal detector things before we go into the school proper and we don’t get to have lockers except in gym class, but we can’t store anything in them except our smelly gym suits, so what’s the point?

  Outside smells of cigarette smoke. A bunch of students huddle near the building, and a couple of teachers lounge there too, even though they’re careful to stay outside of camera range (like no one knows what they’re doing. Hello!). Once we get past the smoke zone, the air is pretty fresh. Not as fresh as on the Mediterranean, but I’m beginning to realize that some parts of home (and not even the people parts) can’t be replicated just anywhere.

  Me and Olivia cross the parking lot in silence. A bunch of other kids, including some of the Helen Minions, are several yards ahead of us, all heading to McDonald’s. Maybe that Supersize Me movie isn’t true, because all the Helen Minions go to McDonald’s and none of them are even approaching fat.

  I say that to Olivia, and she grins at me.

  “That’s because they yack,” she says.

  I can feel a blush starting, but I will it away. If I can’t magic it away, I’m going to stop it by sheer force of personality. And to my own surprise, I do.

  “I’m still pretty new to this country,” I say, “and one thing I don’t exactly get is the slang.”

  “You don’t know yack?” Olivia says.

  I shake my head. “Except like that song my mom likes about yackety-yack.”

  “Your mom is old,” Olivia says.

  “My mom isn’t old,” I say. “My dad is.”

  Olivia looks at me sideways. Her black eyes glitter, like mention of my dad is the dish she’s been waiting for.

  “He’s the one who had to give you up?” she asks.

  “He didn’t give me up,” I say. “I’m still his daughter.”

  “I mean, he lost custody of you, right?”

  I shake my head. “No one has custody of me. I’m my own person.”

  Who lives with her mom and doesn’t have money and no longer has magic and seems totally out of control. But hey, besides that.

  “But you can’t live with him anymore,” Olivia says. I’m not sure I like how bright her eyes are.

  “I chose to live with my mom,” I say, which is basically true. “It wasn’t working with my dad.”

  “He beat you, huh?” Olivia opens the doors leading into that little anteroom that all American businesses seem to have. It’s like a Star Trek airlock between the indoors and the outdoors, but unlike in Star Trek, doesn’t seem to have any real purpose.

  The air here smells greasy, and the smell gets worse when we get inside the McDonald’s proper. I didn’t expect the place to be so big. And off to one side are parents, peering through windows at something called Playland, where a bunch of little kids jump on balls and go through tunnels and scream a lot.

  The noise level in here is outrageous. In addition to the screaming, everyone’s talking at once, and there’s some kind of syrupy music on the overhead speakers that gets interrupted now and then with some name or number. Students are sitting at all the tables. The guys are eating these huge burgers and the girls are picking at salads but steal the guys’ French fries.

  “You were going to tell me what yack is,” I say as I watch some girl inhale a big box of someone else’s fries.

  Olivia grins at me. Then she sticks her tongue out and her finger down her throat in the universal gesture for barfing.

  I make a face. I’ve heard of this forced barfing stuff, but I didn’t believe it. I guess that is one of the things from the movies that is true.

  She leads me up to the counter. I let her get in line ahead of me so I can check my purse. I do have enough money to order something, but not a lot. (I hadn’t asked Mom for lunch money today because—y’know—we’re not talking.)

  I get some kind of chicken sandwich without the fries (it’s not that I don’t want to try them; I just can’t afford them) and the guy at the counter—who is obviously too old to be in high school—laughs when I ask for free bottled water. He gives me a tiny cup and tells me to fill up from the pop machine.

  “Just get soda,” Olivia says, but I don’t. I decide I’m going to suffer with the little water cup. I’ve had soda and it makes me loopy. Mom says it’s all the sugar. I’m not used to all the sugar this society eats, not at all.

  Olivia shows me how to get water out of the soda machine, which seems like an unnecessarily complicated procedure, and then the guy from the counter says Olivia’s name. On a tray is her salad and hot apple pie and my chicken sandwich, which is deep fat fried and doesn’t look half as bad as the movies made these things out to be.

  In fact, by the time I get a bite—after we’ve found a table near the window, away from the cool kids and their potential yack—I realize it doesn’t taste half bad either. It’s certainly better than the crap I’ve had for the past week or so in the cafeteria.

  “So,” Olivia says, “you were telling me about your dad. What did he do to you? Beat you?”

  I’m shocked. I can’t believe she’d ask that question. Not because it’s unlikely—in Olympus, we learned about all kinds of weird stuff—but because we don’t know each other. Sometimes I wouldn’t even tell my sisters stuff I was thinking.

  I certainly am not going to tell some stranger t
hat my dad’s a beater—which he most certainly is not. My dad wouldn’t beat anyone. That requires fists and my dad is too sophisticated for that. But I can’t say anything that I want to say, like my dad prefers magic to punching or whatever.

  “I thought you wanted to know about Greece,” I say.

  “I want to know about you,” Olivia says. “You’re the stranger.”

  “To you,” I say, “but everyone here is strange to me.”

  She grins, like I’ve been really witty, and says, “I can see how that goes.”

  She picks at her salad, then opens the apple pie. It’s steaming and it smells of cinnamon. She eats a big bite of it before saying, “I’ve lived here my whole life. My parents were born here. My grandparents too. They hate how I dress, which is why I started to do it, but now I just do it because I like how it looks. Do you like how it looks?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know how you’d look any other way.”

  She laughs. “You’re not a diplomat. I’ll say that for you.”

  “Is that good?” Because I know back on Mount Olympus my lack of diplomatic skills (my willingness to say what was on my mind) was one of the many problems the Powers had with my Interim Fate duties. Only they (the Powers, not the duties) assumed that my lack of diplomacy came from my age, not my personality.

  I wonder if it is because of my personality. There seem to be diplomatic kids here, even if they mostly stay away from me.

  “Hell, no,” Olivia says. “I like people who speak their mind.”

  “Then you’ll like me,” I mutter.

  She lifts her paper Coke cup and tilts it toward mine, straw and all. “Here’s to that,” she says.

  I lift my cup and touch it to hers. Then I take a sip, which pretty much drains the water from the whole thing.

  Before she can ask another question, I’m up to get myself more water.

  “If it isn’t Interim Fate, you’d better believe it,” a voice says behind me.

  I turn around. It’s Josh. My heart leaps and I try to tell it, “hey, he’s just a servant,” but I remember Mom’s lecture (and how I might be sold into servitude) and I think maybe that’s not so bad.

  “How are you, Josh?” I ask, sounding lame.

  He grins. “Didn’t know you had lunch at this time of day.”

  “It’s my first visit to McDonald’s,” I say.

  “Yeah, or I would’ve seen you. How come you never came before?”

  I shrug. “I watch too many movies.”

  He frowns, and then the frown clears when he gets it. “You mean that one about the guy who got fat eating fast food? It’s a myth, kiddo.”

  I smile in spite of myself because I can actually say what I’m thinking, be truthful, and not give anything away. “You know, I’ve learned, coming from Greece, that a lot of myths aren’t all that far from reality.”

  “I bet,” he says. “I hear there are temples there to the Greek gods. Is that true?”

  I nod. “I used to go to school in Athena’s temple.”

  I figured I could say that because it’s true too, and the temple exists for mortals as well as mages.

  “I thought you were homeschooled.”

  “My sister would take me there,” I say.

  “Cool. Do you miss it?” He leans against the soda machine like he owns it.

  “Being homeschooled?” I ask.

  “Greece,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say quietly. “I miss it a lot. My whole family’s back there. Except my mom.”

  “How’d she end up here?” he asks.

  “They offered her tenure, whatever that is,” I say.

  He grins like I’m being witty. I guess being honest passes for witty in Eugene, Oregon.

  “But your dad is still in Greece, huh?” Josh asks.

  I’m not sure why he cares, but I’m kinda glad he does. Okay, I’m really glad. He’s the most interesting person I’ve met so far, no offense to Olivia, who just seems like she’d trying to rebel (and not doing it real well), and Jenna, who’s just trying to survive from one day to the next. Even Helen seems like somebody I would have expected to meet, given what I’ve seen in movies (sorry, Mom, but sometimes they have some truth).

  But Josh, he’s different. He has a job, and he doesn’t seem to care that people see him talking to me, and he remembers stuff, like my t-shirt. (Okay, he probably remembered that because he was checking out my chest, but he wasn’t that obvious about it, and he hasn’t said anything lame about it either, like how come you don’t wear t-shirts anymore? Or something like that. He’s being cool, at least what I think is cool.)

  I step up to the soda fountain and get more water.

  “Here,” Josh says, and hands me a bigger cup. “Use this.”

  I frown at him. “But they gave me this.”

  “And they don’t monitor anything in this place, not when the high school crowd is here. We’ll just tell them it’s mine if they ask.”

  “Okay.” I feel a little surprised—both at him and at me—I mean, I’m not usually one for rules (although I’m trying) and he seems pretty cavalier about the whole thing.

  “So you don’t want to tell me about your dad?” Josh asked.

  “No,” I say. I’d actually forgotten the question in my ruminations about Josh’s motives. “I mean, I don’t mind. He might be in Greece. I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” Josh sounds surprised. He takes the cup from me and presses it hard against this metal bar. Ice pours into the cup. Then he hands the cup back.

  I stare at it, surprised at all the ice.

  “Now fill it with water,” he says.

  He doesn’t seem to mind that I’m clueless about this stuff. My hand shakes as I press the button marked “water” in teeny tiny letters.

  “My dad, he goes wherever he wants,” I say.

  “Now that he doesn’t have custody, he feels free, huh?” Josh nods. “I get that. My dad was the same way.”

  I want to correct him about my dad, to tell him that my dad always felt free, but Josh hasn’t volunteered much before now.

  “Your dad lost custody?” I ask.

  Josh shrugs one shoulder. “Never tried to get it. Mom had to force him to pay child support and to set up visits, not that he ever comes. Always some lame excuse.”

  He smiles, but the smile’s sad.

  “Wow,” I say. “We’re having trouble making my dad back off.”

  “If he’s that interested, how did he lose custody?”

  I put one of those lids on my cup, then grab a straw. “He’s only interested in the stuff he can’t have.”

  “Harsh,” Josh says.

  It’s my turn to shrug. “But true.”

  “Tiffany?” Olivia has made her way over. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” I say, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. She doesn’t know that I’m enjoying this conversation. She probably thinks I’m trapped or something.

  She glares at Josh and he tips an imaginary hat to her. Then he goes back to his friends.

  “You like him?” she asks in a voice that’s way too loud.

  “He’s nice to me,” I say.

  “That’s weird,” she says. “You got your water?”

  I nod.

  She leads us back to the table. Her apple pie is gone, but her salad looks like it did when she got it. My chicken sandwich is missing the single bite I took.

  We sit back down. I take a big slug of water (it does taste better with the ice) and then another bite of my sandwich. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Josh, waving his hands as he talks to the two boys he’s sitting with.

  “How come it’s weird that he’s nice to me?” I ask.

  Olivia stirs the lettuce in her salad. “Because he usually goes for blondes. Airheady blondes. You know, cheerleaders and stuff.”

  I think of Brittany. She seems airheady and she’s blonde. And beautiful too. But she can be smart when she wants to.

  Suddenly I miss her
so much my stomach hurts.

  “You okay?” Olivia asks. Maybe that’s the only question people feel they can ask me.

  I nod.

  “I don’t mean anything by it,” she says. “I mean, he’s okay for one of the cool guys. Maybe he’s interested because you’re so exotic.”

  “Exotic?”

  “How many other people here look like you? That skin, those eyes—all black like that—your accent. You’re exotic. We don’t get exotic here much.”

  “That’s what interests you, isn’t it?” I ask before I can stop myself. “I mean, you wanted to talk to me because I’m from Greece, you said, and then you ask for dish on my family.”

  She grins. Then shrugs. Then her grin grows wider. “I’ve known most of these people since the third grade,” she says. “I know who their parents are and when each one had their first kiss and from who—”

  “Whom,” I mutter. I am good at grammar in all my languages, even when I choose not to use it.

  “Whatever,” she says. “I know everything about them, and sometimes too much, as you’ll figure out in gym soon enough.”

  I frown. I’m not sure what that reference is to, and I’m not sure I want to know.

  “And you don’t like Josh?” I ask.

  “I didn’t say that,” she says. “I just think he’s predictable, you know? He likes blonde cheerleaders, girls he can lead around. And suddenly he’s chatting you up. That’s weird. I notice weird.”

  “Do you approve?” I ask.

  Her grin is so wide it looks like it might eat her face. “It’s not up to me to approve.”

  The other students are getting up. I guess it’s nearly time for class. I shove a few more bites of chicken in my mouth and stand too.

  Olivia hands me my cup. She keeps hers too.

  “But I do approve,” she says really soft. “Not because I like Josh or know much about you. But because you’re something new. And together, you’re something fascinating.”

  “We’re not together,” I say.

  She shakes her head. “Whatever,” she says again, and hurries out of the restaurant.

  THIRTEEN

  LUNCH LEAVES ME confused, but I’m beginning to think confusion is my natural state—at least here, in the mortal world. I’m not sure why Olivia wanted to talk to me, and I’m really not sure why Josh keeps coming up to me, but I’ll talk to him if he wants to talk to me.