Crystal Caves (6 page)

Daddy, apparently, had to insist that Mother visit me every year so I would get to know the mortal side of my family. At least, that’s the story he told Megan. Mother has no idea. She just knew that visiting Greece—well, Mount Olympus—once a year was the requirement of getting me out of her daily life, so she jumped at it.

I feel sick. My stomach aches and my shoulders feel like rocks. All the road grit and crap in the air make my eyes tear up. At least, that’s what I would tell someone if someone was walking with me. But the only people walking with me are the ones I’m carrying in my imagination.

I stop by the big statue of some guy named Columbus as cars drive in circles around me. My heart always pounds here, because it feels very modern and confusing and dangerous, traffic going in circles, and people trying to get to the subway entrance and people trying to cross.

I know if I can get into Central Park, the noise will ease (a little) and I’ll calm down just a bit, but I hate standing here, surrounded by the traffic, which almost seems like those monsters my family fought in the stupid myths everyone tells about them. I’ll take a minotaur any day over traffic roaring around a circle, with more traffic behind me.

It’s not that far from the circle to the park entrance, but it always feels scary to me. Maybe because the city is weirdly open here—with lots of choices. You can go to the building with the globe in front of it (some famous guy’s hotel) or you can go to the TV studio for CNN (which I’d even heard of before I got here) or you can go to some apartments or other tall buildings that E tried to explain to me once. And then there’s Lincoln Center, the Center of All Culture according to Danny, and across from it all Central Park, which I had heard of before I got to New York; I just didn’t know what it was.

And I didn’t know how it was the only place I’d feel halfway comfortable. If I could get across traffic.

The light changes and I sprint, because I don’t want to be near those cars
ever
, and I stop near this gigandous monument, which I kinda love, maybe because it reminds me of home.

You see, I’m the one who told E that the gold creatures pulling the seashell chariot on the top of the monument (which we had to stand waaaaaaay back to look at) were hippocampi. He’d never heard of them. Danny looked them up on his phone and said, as snotty as Gordon could be,
Why don’t you just call them seahorses? Jeez
. But they’re not seahorses. They’re Greek. The statues aren’t of my family—there’s someone called Columbia and someone called Peace—but they look like they’re of my family, like the stuff you see in Greece (the real Greece) all the time. Except for the big tall brick-like box thing.

Still, I look at the Maine memorial as a little bit of home, although I think if you need a memorial to a ship in the middle of the city, the memorial should have my uncle Poseidon riding through it somewhere.

I go to a nearby food cart and get a knish. I’ve fallen in love with the food in this city, which is a problem, considering how Mother wants me to control everything I eat. But as I get ready to pay for the knish—which is spinach, because it, y’know, pretends at healthy—I realize I don’t have to care what Mother thinks. I order a potato knish too, and I take them, plus a bottle of water, to a bench across from the monument.

I sit a little sideways, so I’m looking at mostly monument instead of mostly traffic. The park’s behind me, and the air smells of falling leaves. It’s not really fall yet, but it will be soon, and everyone’s warning me that it’ll get really cold here in the winter, too cold for my Mediterranean blood.

Maybe I won’t be here in the winter. Maybe I’ll be somewhere else.

I’m trapped here, but if Mother’s not following the rules, I don’t have to either. I mean, what’s Megan going to do to me? Empath me to death? Her magic doesn’t have lightning bolts or big magic tricks or anything. She can’t hurt me.

No one can, not with magic. Not here.

Ignorance might hurt me, though. I really don’t know this place.

I bite into the potato knish. The potatoes and onions steam out of the fried dough, and some fall on my jeans. Instead of brushing the food off like I was taught by one of the au pairs, I eat it, then wipe my hands on the napkin that came in the greasy little bag the street vendor had given me.

New York’s not that bad if I have to hole up somewhere. There’s a million great hotels, and no one would have to know why I was there. I wouldn’t have to go to school, and—

I shiver. If I don’t go to school, what would I do? I wouldn’t have anyone to talk to. I actually am making a place at school. I’ve got friends, even if they aren’t exactly warm and fuzzy, and they can’t finish my sentences like Tiff and Brit. My friends are at least helpful, and they’ve done more to keep me alive in this city than anyone at my mother’s house.

I look over at the hotel with the globe. The hotel’s name is emblazoned across the front. For a long time, I thought the “trump” in the name was bragging. Like, you’ve trumped someone else for being in that hotel. I said that to Melanie and she laughed at me and corrected me, telling me the hotel is owned by some guy named Trump and he puts his name on everything, and it is kinda like bragging and trumping only really déclassé. I actually had to look up that word on my phone, and I decided I liked it. I could achieve a really snotty tone, and say everyone was déclassé.

That hotel is supposed to be really fancy. All of the hotels around the park are. There are good hotels in Manhattan and “fleabags” according to Veronica, which I guess have fleas or something. The fleabags are dangerous and cheap and for tourists only. I know there are hotel sites on the web where I could look all this stuff up, because I’ve seen them advertised. (I’ve been watching too much TV, and Tiff is wrong: you don’t learn everything from TV, just enough to get by, kinda.)

Maybe I won’t go home. Maybe I’ll just march over to Trump whatever and give them my credit card and run up a big bill. I imagine it for a minute, going home every night to some fancy room…with a TV and room service…and it wouldn’t be that different from the apartment, except it wouldn’t have the staff and the stupid boys.

I sigh. I’d be even lonelier in the hotel.

I finish the first knish and am too full to start the second. But I want it, and Mother would hate it if I get fatter, and to hell with her, and I eat it, licking my fingers when I’m done. I feel a little queasy, but I also feel triumphant.

I have a really nice room and some friends, and I have to stay here until we all meet for the winter holidays. I know Tiff and Brit would be mad at me if I show up at their places, and their mothers would have fits if I sent plane tickets or something to some other city where we could all meet. I mean, if the mothers got mad at iPhones, imagine how they’d feel about paid vacations?

I could run away all on my own, like those heroines in the movies, the ones who seem stronger because they have adventures. I could take my magic credit card, and go all over the country, and do good or just see how different America is in real life than it is on TV.

Mother would be fried—at least, once someone told her I ran away. She’d probably be relieved too. It would be the excuse she needed to disown me.

And when she disowned me, she’d cut off my magic credit card.

I let out a breath of knishy air. I have a room, I have friends sort of, and I have unlimited money.

If I don’t try to impress Mother and if I ignore Megan, I might be able to stick it out until the winter holidays.

That feels like a real decision, one I’ve made all on my own, maybe for the first time in my life.

And instead of feeling good, it feels…scary. My heart’s pounding like I’ve run a race or something, and I want to look over my shoulder to see if someone was watching me while I was sitting here thinking.

Or if someone has read my mind—or my emotions.

I glance around looking for Megan, but she didn’t follow me to the park. Which is good, because I’d’ve given her what-for if she had.

She’s not part of my life anymore.

I’m just going to hang on and pretend to be the perfect daughter at Mother’s (whatever that means), the perfect student at school (if I can), and the perfect friend to M, V, & A.

I’ll do what I have to do to survive.

FIVE

MY RESOLVE MAKES it all the way to dinner. Which, Tiff would say, was longer than she would have expected.

Me, I expected to stay resolved for the rest of my life. Brit would probably have said (nicely, because Brit’s usually nice) that my expectations of myself are always unrealistic.

Megan would’ve added that I let my sisters define me, even when they’re not here. And then I have to remind myself that I’m not going to think about Megan ever again.

Dinner’s at eight, which, E says, is the title of some old song. Occasionally Fabe sings part of it, because he thinks waiting until eight is really stupid, particularly when Mother and Owen fail to show up.

Rumors of their appearance at dinner tonight started at 5 p.m., but we’re never confident they’ll arrive until they actually take their places at the head and foot of the table. (Sometimes they even argue about who’s at the head and who’s at the foot.)

I’ve cadged a seat in the formal dining room that lets me stare out the windows, even when the sun is setting. It makes the buildings gold for a few minutes before the city goes dark—or dark-ish, because the artificial lights keep it constantly lighter than any other place I’ve ever lived. (Make that Mount Olympus.)

Tonight, the artificial lights are up already. Because we’re in a penthouse, we can keep the windows uncovered if we want to. One clue that Mother and Owen will actually show is that the staff is using the remotes to darken the windows so no one—no bird, no helicopter, no drone, no person with binoculars in another penthouse across the way—can look in.

Danny says that’s to prevent paparazzi (a word I learned week one) from photographing us, but E says it’s really to prevent some sniper from taking out Owen. I think both of them are fanciful. I grew up with really famous people, and no one tried to kill them.

Okay, not entirely true. If you look closely at my family’s history, you’ll see that they’re constantly trying to kill each other. But the key phrase is “each other.” I have a lot of family: more, Brit says, than the population of that Midwestern town where she lives.

Of course, we’ll get a bad apple or two. (And my sisters would’ve giggled at that, since the Trojan War started when another of our sisters, Eris, tossed a golden apple on a family dinner table and said it was for the fairest. They don’t call Eris the Goddess of Discord for nothing. Megan’s been worried that we’d end up as nasty as Eris is. The Fates had to deal with her long before we became Interim Fates. But that’s another story.)

When the housekeeper expects Mother to show for dinner, she makes us dress up. Or at least not wear blue jeans. Since the jeans I’ve been wearing today have a fried-onion-and-potato stain, I don’t mind changing.

I put on an unapproved forest green skirt with an ivory top, and some gold bangles that Athena gave me before I left. I’m not going to tell anyone that I’ve checked out mentally, but I am going to rebel just a little.

And, if I’m being really honest with myself, I’m also testing Mother. I want to see if she notices that I’m wearing my favorite colors, not hers.

When I get to the table, E’s sitting in his usual spot. Normally, he has a thick textbook or some kind of dedicated ereader, but tonight, he has nothing. His mouth is in a tense line, his thin face looks worried.

Danny, Fabe, and Gordon haven’t shown up yet. I sit in my usual spot and look first at the head of the table, then at the foot.

“You think they’ll show?” Even though I’ve decided to become my own person, I don’t want Mother to hear me gossiping about her.

“They’re already here,” E says. “Dinner might be delayed.”

I frown, about to ask him why, when Mother’s voice carries across the large room.

“
There
you are,” she says. I turn toward her, expecting her to be looking at the three younger boys, but she’s staring at me as if I’ve been missing instead of watching television in my room for the past three hours.

Mother’s stares are pretty powerful. She has emerald green eyes and a narrow chin. The plastic surgery she indulged in makes her cheeks shiny and the space under her eyes flat instead of slightly concave like everyone else’s. Sometimes she Botoxes, but not today, because she has a hefty frown marring her otherwise perfect features.

She sweeps a hand toward me. “You. Crystal. With me.”

Then she turns, her black silk tunic rustling. My stomach clenches, and I wonder if she heard what I said to E. Then I wonder if she disapproves of my clothes. And finally, I wonder if she already knows that I’m not going to be the dutiful daughter anymore.

E raises his eyebrows, and I suddenly realize he’d been waiting for me. He wanted to warn me about Mother. Of all the brothers, E’s been the kindest (which isn’t saying much).

Good luck
, he mouths.

I nod, grateful for even that little bit of support.

I slide my chair back and follow Mother. She’s wearing sling-back shoes that click on the wooden floor as she heads toward a part of the apartment I’ve never seen.