Megan puts a hand on his arm. “Let Brittany finish.”
Daddy looks at Megan’s hand as if he’s going to burn it off. But she doesn’t move.
See? Courage. I’d take my hand off Daddy’s arm in an instant if he looked at me like that.
I say, “The play is apparently a classic. It’s called Doctor Faustus, and—”
“That horrid Marlow,” Clotho says to her sisters.
“Almost as bad as Shakespeare,” Lachesis says quietly.
“I’ll never forgive him for ‘boil, boil, toil and trouble,’” Atropos says. “Never.”
They’re talking with each other and not paying attention to me.
Megan glances at me, sees (feels?) my distress, and says, “We’re not discussing Shakespeare. Marlowe was a contemporary—”
“We’ve met him,” Clotho says.
“Horrid little man, horrid,” Lachesis says.
“The things he says about magic and its practitioners,” Atropos says. She clucks and shakes her head.
“I know, right?” I say before I can stop myself.
They all look at me as if I’ve done something wrong. But I’m used to talking in this room, and besides, isn’t this meeting about me?
I force myself to continue. “I hate the play and I tried to get out of it, but if I want a good grade, I have to stay.”
The Fates all frown at me at the same time. I know that look. They usually don’t have that look. Tiff, Crystal, and I had that look a lot. The Fates don’t understand what I’m saying.
Clotho turns her piercing gaze on Megan. “What are these grades?”
“They’re the currency of school,” Megan says. “The better the grade, the better the student does.”
I look at her in shock. I’ve never heard grades discussed as if they’re money.
Megan gives me a tiny smile, as if warning me not to say anything.
“So,” Lachesis says to me. “If you perform this play, you will do well in your mortal endeavors?”
“One of them, I guess,” I say.
“And it is a play,” Atropos says. “Not an enchantment.”
I kinda think all plays are enchantments. “I—”
“It’s a play,” Megan says quickly. “I can get you the text if you like.”
Clotho snaps her fingers and the play appears before her, like a hologram. She waves her hand and the words fly past.
Daddy is watching all of us, and he’s not frowning. I would think he’d be angry that his plan got thwarted.
Unless he really and truly is worried about me playing Helen.
He can’t be, can he?
Lachesis leans over and helps with the text. Then Atropos touches some of the words. They glow, and I recognize the lines that Mrs. Schmidt quoted when she told me to take the part.
The face that launch’d a thousand ships…
“This is drivel,” Clotho says.
“And it has nothing to do with Helen,” Lachesis says.
Atropos peers around the words at Daddy. “Did you read this?”
“No,” he says, sounding offended that he had to read anything. “My daughter will not embody Helen of Troy.”
“Interesting word, ‘embody,’” Clotho says.
“Almost magical,” Lachesis says.
“Theater can be magical,” Atropos says.
See? I mouth at Megan. She makes a tiny downward gesture with her hand, essentially telling me to be quiet.
“Now, do you understand my concern?” Daddy asks.
“Not entirely,” Clotho says.
“If we worried about everyone in theater, we would be worrying all the time,” Lachesis says.
“But this is my daughter,” Daddy says, “portraying Helen.”
“Yes,” Atropos says, but I can’t tell if she’s agreeing with Daddy or simply saying that to get him to say more.
Daddy being Daddy, however, thinks she’s encouraging him to say more. “And, have you seen where she lives? Have you seen the hovel they put her in?”
Hovel? Is he serious?
“Daddy,” I say. “The Johnson Family is doing the best they can.”
“They are not,” he says. “You have never had such a horrible place to live.”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “You never saw where the wood nymphs put me and Tiff and Crystal when you had them take care of us. We didn’t even have a roof over our heads. We were living in trees. You didn’t care then.”
He shoots me a look that, had the Fates not scared him about the magic, probably would have had lightning bolts in it.
“I have already apologized for my earlier behavior,” he says unapologetically.
“Apologies are only effective if they are sincere,” Clotho says.
Daddy shifts his stance. He looks like a fighter. “I was sinc—”
“What is your real reason for bringing young Brittany here?” Lachesis asks Daddy.
“I want to rescue her from—”
“Your real reason,” Atropos says. “Not the lies.”
He glances at me. His entire expression is odd, as if he’s sad or desperate or worried. Is he that concerned about my role as Helen of Troy? Or is he that concerned about how I live? He can’t be, right? Because he’s never even seen the house.
Although he must have, because he’s talking about it. That creeps me out worse. He’s seen the house, and he hasn’t talked to me. Has he been stalking me?
I understand stalking. I watch TV, just like everyone else.
“Brittany,” Daddy says, and the fact that he says my name always sends a little shiver through me. For so long, I wanted him to recognize me, and now he is, and I can’t get over that.
Even though I want to. I don’t want to be that pathetic girl who takes crumbs of attention from her big powerful and neglectful father.
I want to be someone who is valued for who she is.
And I know that Daddy has no idea who I am.
But he thinks he does. He says to me, “This punishment they have inflicted on you, the loss of your magic, the loss of your home, it’s wrong.”
Punishment? What? No one is punishing me.
And then the rest of the sentence sinks in. He means “they” as in the Fates—they, not anyone-else-they.
I look at the Fates. They’re glaring at Daddy over the glowing words of the play.
“You punished me?” I asked them. “I thought we agreed that we’d have a normal life. That’s not punishment, is it?”
“I found a normal life trying,” Clotho says.
“But to us, this is normal life,” Lachesis says.
“Besides, your family came to us after your decisions were made,” Atropos says.
“That’s because we all decided, in my office, that the girls were being mistreated,” Megan says, moving herself closer to Daddy. “By you.”
He makes a face. “I elevated them to a position of honor. And when you all protested, I gave in to your silly demands. But this life that Brittany is living, it’s horrible.”
My mouth opens slightly? My life is horrible? Really? It doesn’t seem that way to me.
“Honey,” he says, “you need to defend yourself. They’re making you into someone you’re not.”
I’m having trouble focusing on any of this. I’m tired from my long day at the store, and my muscles ache in ways they never have before, and I’m getting a slight headache.
Besides, this library makes me really, really uncomfortable, and Daddy’s piercing gaze makes me even more uncomfortable.
It’s like he’s arguing in circles, and I’m getting dizzy rather than enlightened.
“What are ‘they’ making me into?” I ask.
“A pawn, a puppet,” he says. “Someone who does not think for herself, but does what everyone expects of her.”
A slight frown mars the skin between Megan’s eyes. Does she agree?
The Fates are all watching me, as if waiting for me to decide something.
�
�You mean like you did?” I ask him.
He glances sideways at Megan as if he’s silently asking her to stop me. But Megan doesn’t move.
I do. I take a step toward him.
“You expect something from me,” I say. “You expect me to do what you want. You’ve always expected that.”
“I know what’s best for you,” he says. “Losing your magic is not what’s best.”
I run a hand through my hair. There’s dust in it, and grit from the boxes this afternoon. I probably have dirt on my face.
I look at Clotho. She almost looks like a statue, with her blonde hair flowing down her back, her tunic draped beautifully around her willowy form, and her hands clasped in front of her.
She lives here, in this library. She understands it. She can call up an old play with the flick of a finger, and she can read it, and understand it immediately. She has forgotten more than I’ll ever know.
And she seems comfortable here.
So do Lachesis and Atropos.
But I’m not. Even though this library goes on forever, it feels oppressive. It makes me feel small and stupid and jittery, like the library itself expects me to screw up.
I never did anything right when I was here. I didn’t do what Daddy wanted. I didn’t do what Tiffany wanted. I didn’t do what Crystal wanted.
And all the mages who showed up for help, I didn’t do what they wanted either. They wanted us to be wise and we weren’t wise. We were just faking it.
“Brittany,” Megan says, “do you have something to add?”
For a moment, I forgot that she can feel what I feel. I look at her.
“I didn’t lose my magic, did I?” I ask the Fates.
“No, child,” Clotho says. “Your magic is waiting for you when you come of age.”
I nod.
“I think we should have a ruling,” Daddy says. “I think that Brittany should be released from this punishment, and—”
“It’s not a punishment,” Lachesis says.
“But that’s the end result,” he says. “She’s forced to be someone she’s not, she has to labor in a sweaty shop, and she has no room of her own. The conditions you’ve sent her to are terrible. The other girls have nice rooms and nice homes, and they don’t have to be a mass murderer to get it. But Brittany…”
My heart starts to race. Helen of Troy was a mass murderer? Who knew?
“She seems to have nothing at all. I think you should reconsider for her.” Daddy finishes quietly, rather than his usual rhetorical flourish.
“Are you acting as her advocate?” Atropos asks him.
My breath catches. Even I know what that means. I’ve seen it a few times as an Interim Fate. An advocate doesn’t mean he represents me. It means he’s speaking out against an injustice.
Usually the advocate speaks out without the person he’s advocating for even knowing that he’s pressing her case.
“Yes,” Daddy says.
“Then we must take this under advisement,” Clotho says, and waves her arm.
And the entire library disappears.
TWELVE
THE NEXT THING I know, I am standing, alone, on the sidewalk outside the store. It’s colder here than it was inside the library, and I shiver. The sky looks just as gray as it had before, and it seems to me that the same cars are parked in the same place in the parking lot.
I don’t have a phone, though, and I don’t have any way to explain what happened to the phone Karl gave me.
The Johnson Family can’t afford to lose a phone. I tear up, then force the tears back. I don’t need to cry over a phone.
Of course, I wouldn’t be crying over a phone. That entire experience…
I shake my head, trying to clear it. Daddy as my advocate. I have no idea how the real Fates will handle that.
I have no idea how he will.
I take a deep breath of the cold air. I can’t get back to the Fates. I can’t talk to Daddy. I’m going to have to get to the Johnson Family Manse somehow.
I turn back to the store, hoping the door is still unlocked. I’ll use their phone, and then I’ll tell Mom what happened to the cell phone. I’ll offer to pay for it.
Somehow.
I pull the door open and step inside. It’s warmer here, and darker than outside, because the front lights are still off. Just ahead of me, I see four silhouettes. I blink to help my eyes adjust, and as they do, I realize the silhouettes are women.
Four women. One of them is Mrs. Larson. She stands near some shelves, arms crossed.
The other women wear cloth coats with fur collars, stockings with lines that goes up the back of their legs, high heels, and jaunty hats that are more decorative than functional.
My breath catches.
The Fates.
Those three women are the Fates.
They can’t be. I just left them at the library—or rather, they banished me back here.
But if they’re taking an advocate seriously, they need to send a representative to evaluate the situation, and if there’s no trusted representative…
They have to do the job themselves.
“Crap,” I mutter, and feel Mom’s disapproval even though she’s not here. “Crap, crap, crap.”
I walk toward the women. Mrs. Larson looks up and waves me over.
I hurry to her side.
Clotho stands directly across from her. Clotho’s coat is a deep red and (gross!) the fur around the collar isn’t attached. It’s a real fur. A fox fur, with the dead fox’s head nipping its tail. Her hands are tucked inside a matching fur muff.
“Ah, Brittany,” Mrs. Larson says, waving me closer still. “I had told these ladies they had just missed you.”
My gaze met Lachesis’s. Her coat is green and it matches her eyes. The fur around the collar is white and spotted, and I worry that it’s from some dead endangered creature. Her hands are bare, and her fingers are covered in gold rings. Her fingernails are painted bright red, matching her lipstick.
“We are not here to see the child,” Lachesis says, forming her words very carefully.
“We are here to examine her work conditions,” Atropos says.
She’s wearing a blue coat, and her fur has no face (thank heavens!). The fur is sleek and black and drapes over the side of the coat like a scarf. She also has a muff that matches, only she’s holding it in one leather-gloved hand, while the other hand clutches a long cigarette holder à la Cruella de Vil.
“Who did you say you were again?” Mrs. Larson asks them.
The Fates don’t know enough about the Greater World to lie convincingly. They’d probably just end up magicking Mrs. Larson, which could go wrong in so many ways.
“My father—my real father—is having some custody issues,” I say to Mrs. Larson. “He sent them.”
“He did not send us, child,” Atropos says. “He advocated—”
“They’re, like, representatives of the government,” I say hastily. I don’t want them to explain who they really are or what they think the American equivalent of their job is. “They have to evaluate my situation.”
“Oh, I see,” Mrs. Larson says in a tone that implies that she doesn’t see at all.
“My dad is really rich and influential,” I say, “and he doesn’t approve of anything Mom is doing.”
“He believes she does not have young Brittany’s interests at heart,” Clotho says.
“Karin?” Mrs. Larson says, sounding stunned. “That woman adores this girl. Karin is doing everything in her power to make sure that Brittany has a good life here. Karin doesn’t have any money to speak of and she and Karl have a lot of children, but they do better than any other parents I know of. You give Karin a chance. She’s been waiting years to have Brittany at her side. She was so happy when she learned that Brittany was coming.”
“We are unconcerned about Karin Johnson at the moment,” Lachesis says. “We need to evaluate Brittany’s work conditions.”
I’ve had the job only one real day and a
lready I’m causing trouble. My cheeks heat.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Mrs. Larson. “I didn’t mean for this—”
“That’s all right.” Mrs. Larson pats my arm. “I’ll take care of these ladies. Did you forget something?”
I frown, before I realize why she’s asking. From her perspective, I left and came back immediately. She probably thinks I’m trying to interfere with the Fates’ investigation.
“I don’t have my phone anymore, and I need a ride home.” I glance at the Fates. They watch as if we’re putting on a play for them. “May I use the phone here to call?”
“Certainly,” she says. “Why don’t you use the phone in my office?”
“Thanks,” I say. I walk in there, head down. What a disaster. Daddy can ruin everything without even trying hard.
As I approach the desk, I can hear Mrs. Larson say, “This was Brittany’s first day with us, and she did tremendously well. We’re just setting up the store right now. After we’re done stocking shelves, we’ll help customers….”
Her voice fades as she walks into the back. I hope the Fates understand what she’s talking about.
I hope she’s willing to keep me on after all of this trouble.
If, of course, I’m staying in Superior.
I call the house, and Ivan answers.
“Hey,” I say, “is Mom or Karl there?”
“Um, lemme check.” He sets the phone down with a clang. I hear voices, but all of them young. Then he comes back. “Haven’t seen either of them. I guess they’re not here.”
“What about Eric or Lise?” I ask.
“Eric just left, and I dunno where Lise is. Something I can do?”
“I wish,” I say, thank him, and hang up.
Then I stand in the office for just a moment. I can hear the Fates’ heels clicking loudly as Mrs. Larson gives them a tour of the front area.
I pick up the phone again, and dial the only other number I have memorized—Eric’s.
He answers faster than I expect.
“Hey,” I say. “Would you mind picking me up at the store?”
“No prob,” he says. “I’m a block away. Be outside.”
Then he hangs up.
I glance around, but I don’t see anyone. Even the footsteps have grown quiet. My heart is still pounding too hard.
Brittany Bends Page 12
