Tiffany Tumbles: Book One of the Interim Fates

by Grayson, Kristine

  “Reject everything I give you,” he says. “And how come you don’t like me?”

  I sit up. My headache is still there, or maybe it came back or maybe I never got rid of it in the first place. I rub a temple and finally say, “It’s not about you, Daddy.”

  “It’s always about me, baby girl.”

  I shake my head. “I just want a chance.”

  “To be like that loser, your mother? She has no power.”

  I think of the way she walked into the school on my first day of class or the way she made Daddy break some of his personal rules when she argued for custody with me. She got stuff no other mother of his children ever got.

  Mom has a lot of power, and it doesn’t come from her magic, because she hasn’t come into it yet. It comes from her.

  That’s what I like about her.

  “You’re wrong, Daddy,” I say. “She’s got a lot of power.”

  He harrumphs. “I have children who are much more special than you.”

  “Then bother them,” I say.

  “I will.” He vanishes.

  I lie back on my pillow, and there’s another pop. He’s reappeared. He’s standing right beside my bed, his face bright red. Maybe I get the blushing from him. How weird. I thought it came from Mom.

  “Why do you hate me?” he asks. “Is it your mother’s fault?”

  “She’s always nice about you,” I say. “Nicer than you deserve.”

  “So answer me,” he says. “Why do you hate me?”

  “I don’t hate you,” I say.

  “You seem like it.”

  I shake my head. “It’s just that, y’know.”

  He crosses his arms.

  My heart is pounding. “You’re not very nice to me.”

  “Nice? I made you a Fate.”

  “An Interim Fate,” I say. “And you were using me for your political ends without helping me at all.”

  “I gave you magic,” he says.

  “That I didn’t want.”

  “I offered to take you home.”

  I stare at him. This is the moment, I guess. The moment when I can’t turn back.

  “I am home,” I say quietly.

  He harrumphs again, peers at me as if he can’t quite believe me, and then he disappears. I hug my pillow tight.

  How strange that such an unfamiliar place can feel safer than my most familiar place.

  I guess that’s what home is. The place where you’re safest.

  The place where you’re loved.

  EIGHTEEN

  I WISH I could say it’s gotten easier since that afternoon. It hasn’t. I still don’t understand stuff most people take for granted, although me and Mom solved the American history problem. She got some History Channel DVDs that give me an overview of America from before the Revolution to now, and she watched them with me, answering questions.

  Like my first one: If the movies don’t tell the truth, how come I can trust these things?

  And she tells me the difference between fiction and nonfiction, which sounds a little like the difference between myth and reality, at least to me.

  Helen’s still giving me some grief in school, but not nearly so bad as I thought from my movie examples. And Olivia doesn’t ask so many personal questions, even though I don’t talk to her as much as I talk to Jenna. Jenna’s really nice, and she doesn’t care about Greece or any of that stuff, and she doesn’t think I’m dumb when I ask what a social security number is. She just answers me, as if my questions are the most natural things in the world.

  I did tell Megan about Daddy because the Fates already knew, and Megan got angry. She kinda radiated it. Empaths shouldn’t feel emotion when they’re counseling.

  Still, she tried to hide it and let me talk, and then she said she was proud of me for standing up to Daddy, and she told me I should tell Mom all over again about what I want to be when I grow up, because Mom probably can’t remember.

  So I’m going to. Once the right time comes around again.

  But I still don’t get the entire goal thing. Megan laughs about that. She says that’ll come now that I know what kind of person I want to be.

  I’m not sure I’d go that far. About knowing what kind of person I want to be. I know who I want to be like, but that’s a far distance from who I want to be.

  Still, I got stuff to think about now.

  And that’s all about me.

  There’s Josh too. He’s really nice to me, and not just because he has to be. He waits for me at the coffee shop now after my therapy and buys me a mocha or a cookie and sometimes he just lets me sit.

  Last week, he asked me to the homecoming dance, which I haven’t told Mom yet, because she’ll get all businesslike with dresses and shoes and stuff—which is necessary, but right now, it’s kinda nice that somebody likes me enough to want to spend time with me—and not just because I’m exotic.

  Josh and I have talked enough that he knows I’m weird, but not all that unusual.

  I did do one thing, though. I put away my Interim Fate t-shirt. I don’t wear it anymore, and Josh doesn’t mention it either. Like Megan said, I’m not that girl. I’m not a puppet for my dad’s political aims.

  I’m my own person. Or at least I’m trying to be.

  And—Mom says—that’s all any of us can ever ask.

  Following is a sample chapter from the next book in the Interim Fates Trilogy, Crystal Caves.

  ONE

  MY MOTHER CALLS me the Unexpected Consequence of a Momentary Lapse of Judgment. My older brother calls me the Unwelcome Visitor. My younger siblings don’t call me anything. They seem to think I’m going to be leaving soon.

  Which, I suppose, makes sense, considering none of them knew I existed until July. Apparently, Mother never told anyone where she went those summers when she came to visit me. But Mother doesn’t tell anyone anything. It’s one of her trademarks. She’s an Independent Woman, and proud of it.

  I guess someone had to force her to visit last June. That same someone reminded her that I am an Obligation, and she can’t simply ignore that, much as she wanted to. Or maybe they just told her all the other mothers were taking their children away from Daddy, and she had to too.

  For an Independent Woman, Mother is awfully quickly swayed by public opinion.

  My real name is Crystal, and apparently, I have a last name as well, which I didn’t know until I came to New York, and the nanny—the younger children have a nanny, and I was told, she would mind me as well because I’m “special” (which they all think means I’m of lesser intelligence than the rest of them when really, I’m probably smarter, just with a different life experience)—and the nanny handed me a student identification card for a school that I’m apparently enrolled in, a building identification card for this fortress in which we live, and a credit card embossed with my name on it.

  My new name.

  Crystal Chandler.

  Here’s where it gets confusing or at least, where it gets confusing to me. My last name is Chandler. So is my mother’s. My stepfather’s last name is Wright, which is also the last name of my younger siblings. My older brother’s last name is Lieberman because, apparently, he, like me, has a different father than the other children.

  Only he got to keep his father’s last name, and I got my mother’s—probably because my real father has no last name.

  He doesn’t need one.

  The entire world knows him as the Greek God Zeus.

  I shy away now whenever I say that. The modern world hears that as craziness, but it’s the truth. And here’s more truth: I lived with my father, and his children—all of whom are my half-siblings—for my entire life. Until July, I had magic. At that time, I gave it up for something called a normal life.

  I do regret that decision now.

  Here’s what the “normal life” consists of:

  A bedroom on the third floor of my mother’s Park Avenue apartment. In the castles where I was raised, this apartment would be called a wing. I
t’s large. Apartments in my previous homes had two rooms. This one has three spacious floors with more rooms than I’ve seen (I’m not allowed in the servants’ quarters) and feels as big as Mount Olympus itself.

  The windows in the apartment either overlook the skyscrapers and other buildings that make up New York City, or they overlook Central Park. I received a park view—something I “deserved” for the “dislocation” of being in a new place, which is what my stepfather said as he made the room assignment. My older brother, whose name is Ethan, by the way, but prefers to be called E (I think of him as EEEEEEE) groaned about this—apparently we’re on the same floor, only a few meters from one another—but everyone ignored him.

  Everyone always ignores him which, I’m guessing, is the reason he picks on me. But more about that later.

  By the way—and this isn’t unimportant—my stepfather, Owen Wright, is the only person in the household who calls me by my name. He’s the only one who treats me with a bit of respect, although he does look at me like I’m an alien creature.

  And, compared with the rest of this clan, I am. I have my mother’s coloring—none of the others are blessed with it. That means I have bright red hair (auburn, my mother says, but I’ve seen auburn, and I ain’t got it. What I have is bright red), bone-white skin, and bright green eyes.

  What I lack is my mother’s figure. I got my figure from the Greek God side of the family. I’m large-boned and large-breasted, something that is certainly not in fashion in New York. Even though I don’t have an ounce of fat (I know this because the first thing my mother did was drag me to her personal trainer so that I could lose weight, and the trainer did a body fat index on me and said I was less than 1% fat, which, Mother snapped, had to be impossible because I was so large [her word, “large,” not anyone else’s] and the trainer took me to the nutritionist who confirmed it. They said, Mrs. Chandler, your daughter is just a big healthy girl, to which my mother responded, How do we change that?).

  I’ve seen three fashion designers, one of whom specializes in plus-sizes (which I’m not, according to that lovely woman) and now I have my own buyer, who makes sure I look as thin as possible, given my large bones and elephant nature.

  These people here also want to change my hairstyle—I cropped off all the red because it was unusual on Mount Olympus too (most everyone there is dark-haired, olive skinned, and dark-eyed, except my favorite sisters, Brittany and Tiffany. Brittany’s a blond, and stood out even more than I did, and Tiff has the dark hair and dark eyes, but her skin color is dark chocolate, which made her as odd as me and Brit).

  These people here want me to get something called a perm and have natural curls which will accent my face. I figure it’ll access my “largeness” and have so far refused.

  Mother also wants me to get rid of my tattoos, which are all little images of me at various ages (except the miniature roses scattered in between). Apparently there’s a doctor who can remove these things and “not leave scars” which I had to look up. Scars are scary. He’s not touching me. I like my tattoos, and no one can take them away.

  Although they did manage to take away my diamond studs. I wore one in my nose and the other in my belly button. Mother says they’re unladylike, and she doesn’t care that they’re in fashion. She believes I must look my best at all times, which is becoming more and more clear that I must look what she considers to be my best at all time.

  I used to wear green because it accented my eyes. Now I wear this rosy-taupe color that gives my skin “some color” and “tones down” my hair. I can’t wear crop tops or low rise jeans, and heels are out of the question, unless I pair them with a skirt and a loose top.

  I have volunteered for prison, and I’m not sure how to get out.

  Not that my previous life was much better. There, I lived on top of a mountain—actually on a cloud above the mountain, but that wasn’t immediately obvious—and couldn’t leave either. However, I could spell myself anywhere I wanted, which I most certainly cannot do here.

  I bitch about that a lot. I bitch about everything a lot, but no one pays attention. Even when they do pay attention, they don’t believe me, so what’s the point of talking?

  I thought nothing could make me miss my previous life, but this place does. Theoretically, it’s nice. I have a huge bed all to myself (in Olympus, Britt and Tiff often crawled in with me—usually to annoy me) and a private suite to one side, and my own bathroom, which has a dual shower that can be set with computer controls.

  I spent one entire day exploring that bathroom, learning all its gadgetry. If Olympus is about magic—and it is—this place is about gadgets. Just my bathroom alone has the coolest stuff. We won’t discuss the commode (because we’re not supposed to) but suffice to say it has both an automatic flusher and a scentilator, which immediately clears odors from the air and adds perfume. And then there’s the mirror cabinet with its own remote control—I can make the mirror rise or turn or become a make-up mirror (it shows your pores) with the touch of a button from across the room. And the shower: the shower is heaven. Not only does it have two different heads, like I said, but they can steam or pound; make the water feel hard or soft; or add shampoo and soap if you use those settings.

  Then there’s the Jacuzzi, which took me two days to figure out because I’m not asking anyone here how to do anything. But now that I have it figured, I practically live there. What else is there to do around here?

  I can shop, of course. That’s expected. Besides the wardrobe which I’ve had to buy, I’ve also bought Egyptian cotton high thread count sheets (because I saw them on sale), a down comforter (even if it is a warm fall for New York) and a puppy. The only thing I’ve ever had to take back was the puppy. The housekeeper informed me, followed by my stepfather, E, and my mother, that animals are not allowed in the apartment because they’ll ruin the floors.

  It made me angry enough to nearly ruin the floors myself.

  My younger siblings—all boys--watch TV most of the time or play games on their X-Boxes or use the computers to download things that they’re not supposed to have. E is trying to get into Columbia, so he studies all the time.

  We’re supposed to have dinner as a family—and we kids usually do—but Mother and Owen almost never make it. Their phone calls are predictable—usually one hour before the meal should start, one or both call to say that they’ll be late. Often late is after bedtime.

  When I first got here, we kids would sit there and stare at our food. Or, rather, I’d stare at the room. It’s pretty big, with huge windows that overlook the park. After about three days, I got tired of staring at the food, so I just decided to eat, and E decided to bring some thick textbook to the table. The younger three started bringing their tablets. The three of them would stick ear buds in their ears, and play games or watch whatever show they’d somehow missed the night before.

  If it weren’t for the housekeeper, I wouldn’t show up at all. But she fetches me like I’m the puppy and brings me into the formal dining room to make certain I “interact” with my new family.

  Yeah. Interact.

  Here’s the interaction:

  Day Four.

  E looks at me from his specially prepared meal—apparently he’s doing something called kosher, which I don’t completely understand—and says, “So who’s your dad?”

  Like that’s appropriate dinner conversation.

  Me, I’m eating roast beef with baby potatoes and some grilled asparagus. It’s not bad. The younger three have shoved their potatoes and asparagus aside and are focusing on the beef like it’s the only real food in the world.

  They look up when E asks the question.

  Here’s the thing about the younger three. They’re “stair-stepped”—the oldest being 10, the next nine, and the youngest eight—and they look like miniature Owens, which means they have dark hair, blue eyes, and skin that’s almost gray. (I think in a place with real sunlight, it might be some kind of mid-level white—but here, gray. I kid you not.) T
he only way I can tell these three apart is by height.

  The oldest—Danny—puts his elbows on the table, like he’s actually interested. So the middle one—Fabian (called Fabe which rhymes with babe)—does the same. And the youngest, Gordon, scowls at both of them, as if they’re betraying him by paying attention to me. Which they are.

  I stare them down, and they look away. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they don’t call me anything because they’re scared of me, not because they think I’m leaving soon. Or maybe they do think I’m leaving soon and they’re scared of me.

  I don’t know.

  E says, “Aren’t you going to tell us? I mean, your father is a mystery man.”

  Mystery man. My father isn’t a mystery man. There’s been more written about my father than any other man alive. Well—that’s probably not true—but there’s certainly been more written about him than about their fathers. Combined.

  “What did Mother tell you?” I ask, trying to dodge the question. One of the big rules I got before coming here is that I can’t tell anyone the truth about my father. Not because my mother is ashamed of him (although I think she is—or maybe she just doesn’t believe the magic stuff) but because the mages—the magical people I come from—don’t want the mortals (that would be E and the three siblings, as well as Owen and the staff and anyone else I come into contact with) to know about the magical universe.

  I got this instruction so many times before I landed in New York that my stomach twists just thinking about it.

  But E doesn’t seem to notice how twisty I am. Instead, he shrugs his shoulders. “Mother says that he’s some major Greek tycoon, like Aristotle Onassis or something.”

  “I Googled that Onassis guy,” Fabe says. “He was ugly.”

  “But rich,” Gordon says, like that’s a good thing.

  “He’s been dead forever,” Danny says.

  “He’s not my dad,” I say.

  “Mother says he’s like your dad,” E says.

  “Sure,” I say.

  But something in my tone—maybe the dripping sarcasm—makes E set down his fork.