Tiffany Tumbles: Book One of the Interim Fates (6 page)

And as for my dad’s charisma….um, what? My dad has charisma? I guess he’d have to, to get all those women into bed with him, but I always thought it was because most of them (my mother excluded [ick. Mother. Father. Bed. Ick]) thought he was a real god—I mean, Zeus, Supreme Ruler, Lord of the Sky, Rain-King, Cloud-Gatherer. The guy who controlled the thunderbolt. You know, that Zeus. The one Homer wrote about. (Dad always brags about being in Homer and those other famous writers. Dad says he wouldn’t have had half the power he did if he hadn’t been able to fool those men [Homer, Socrates, Euripides, and those guys] into thinking he was really terrifying.)

Hera always said it’s not hard to fool a blind man and his little friends, but she always says stuff like that, especially when Dad gets too pompous. And as he reminded me once when she said that, Homer made her a goddess, number two in the power structure, actually (even though Dad says she’s not—I think he’s wrong, but what do I know? It seems like I know less and less).

“You can snort,” Megan is saying, “and you can ignore me and disappear into your thoughts, but that won’t help you.”

“The only thing that’ll help me,” I say, “is some magic.”

“You opted not to have any.”

I flounce onto the sofa, and almost bounce back to my feet. I forgot how springy it is. “Well, I changed my mind.”

“You can’t. I didn’t cast the spell taking your magic away. The Powers That Be did as a collective, and the deed is done.”

She says that like it’s a good thing.

“So we have to deal with your feelings as they come up,” she says, “without magic.”

I cross my arms.

“When you cross your arms,” she says, just like I knew she would, “you’re not listening.”

I shrug.

“I know it’s hard to be without magic,” she says.

Yeah, right. She’s never had any except this empath stuff, and she’s never been without that.

“But that’s not all that’s bothering you, is it?”

I don’t say anything. What’ll she do if I’m quiet for the whole meeting?

She stares at me for a long time. We sit like that for maybe five minutes and it takes all of my control not to fidget. I think I’m going to hold to this silence thing.

“That’s amazing,” she says. “You have no magic, and yet you can just disappear.”

“Huh?” I ask, then curse myself silently. She got me to speak, the wily woman.

“I just watched you,” Megan says. “When you’re quiet like that, you vanish. It’s as if you take your personality and hide it.”

I frown at her. I’m not sure what she means.

“Have you been quiet at school?” she asks.

“I’m stupid,” I snap.

This time she doesn’t contradict me. She says, “You’re being quiet because you feel stupid?”

“Because I
am
stupid,” I say. “Everybody knows how money works. Everybody knows where their next class is. Everybody knows that Skinner Butte is a hill in the middle of town. Except me. Every time I open my mouth, I prove how damned dumb I am.”

She doesn’t stop me from swearing like my mom did yesterday. Megan doesn’t even seem to notice that I learned that word this week on top of everything else.

Instead, she’s looking at me like I’m a particularly attractive puzzle and she’s trying to unravel me.

“How does it feel,” she asks, “being ignored like that?”

“I’m not being ignored,” I snap. I like snapping. I’m good at it. “Nobody even knows I’m there.”

“How does that feel?” she asks in the same tone of voice, like my snapping doesn’t even bother her. (Maybe it doesn’t. Megan is notoriously unflappable.)

And that’s when it happens—that pully thing she does. The words come out of me even though I vowed not to say anything about this.

“It feels,” I say quietly, “like I don’t even exist.”

Megan nods. I get the sense that she not only understands this, she expected it. And if she expected it, how come she didn’t warn me? It’s not fair that I have to go through all this stuff and she just gets to sit there and listen and pretend like everything’s going to be all right.

“In a way,” she says, “you’re right.”

“Huh?” I ask again. That sound just kind of eaps out of me when I least expect it, mostly when I’m trying not to say anything.

“The Tiffany who lived on Mount Olympus and had everything she wanted at the snap of a finger, the Tiffany who was part of a threesome with her sisters Brittany and Crystal, the Tiffany who is Zeus’s daughter, isn’t the girl who has come to Eugene, Oregon,” Megan says.

My arms cross before I even think about it. “Yes, it is.”

“Tell me how it is,” Megan says.

“How what?”

“How your life here is like your life there.”

I frown. I’m still the same Tiffany. I’m the girl who had close sisters and Zeus for a dad, and a mom who only visited once a year. But I also had everything I wanted (and servants, which I’ve never told Megan, but I think she suspects it), and if I didn’t have it, I could get it.

I thought I was pretty smart about popular culture and America and stuff. I mean, most of the movies we saw (DVDs, really) were set here and all of the TV shows, except one about immortals in France and a few in England (and some great Mexican soap operas—okay, not all, but most). I thought it’d be pretty easy.

And it would’ve been if I still had magic. Imagine what I could’ve done to Mr. McGuillicuty. Or to those kids who don’t notice me. Or to Jenna to make her slouch less. Imagine.

“Tiffany?” Megan asks. “Tell me.”

I lick my lips. Then I bite the lower one. It’s not the same. It’s not the same at all.

“I’m the same person,” I say.

“Are you?” she asks.

“Yeah.” The mad is back, and it came back fast. One second I wasn’t mad at all and now I’m ready to spit. “I’m exactly the same.”

“Only you’re here without your sisters.”

“That’s your fault.”

“And your dad can’t protect you.”

“He never did.”

“And you live with your mom.”

“I
like
her.”

“And,” Megan pauses like it’s an effect, “you don’t have any magic.”

“I hate that,” I say.

We stare at each other. I’m breathing hard like I’ve been running in P.E.

“What would you do if you had magic?” Megan asks.

I shrug. I’m not going to tell her about turning Mr. McG into a toad or making Jenna feel better or getting the attention of the other kids.

“Besides getting revenge on everyone who made you angry,” Megan says with a smile.

Just a little smile, but it’s enough to keep me mad. “I wouldn’t do that,” I say. “It’s forbidden. I know that.”

“Okay,” she says in that voice which means she doesn’t believe me. “What would you do with the magic?”

“I’d go home,” I say. The words just came out. And there wasn’t even a pully-thing. It was like they were waiting to escape.

“Where’s home?” Megan asks.

I’m about to snap at her again—
Where do you think?
—but for a minute, I don’t have any words. I mean, Mount Olympus is technically home, but it wasn’t what I was thinking about when I said that.

I was thinking about Brittany and Crystal.

I shrug.

“Where, Tiffany?” she asks.

“I just want to see my sisters,” I say.

“They’re home?”

I nod. Then I look at my hands. I’m blinking hard. I will not cry in here. I promised myself after the last time. Crying is for babies.

“In Mount Olympus?”

“No, dummy,” I snap.

“A little respect, please,” Megan says, but there’s no edge to it. “They make you feel at home?”

“They make me me,” I say.

“Ahhhh.” She leans back and temples her fingers like I’ve made some kind of revelation. “Can you be you without them?”

“No!” I’m yelling without any build-up. I don’t expect that either. How come my emotions are all over the place when I’m with Megan? Does she do that on purpose? If she does, I want her to stop.

I want to be able to ask someone how she does what she does, but Mom doesn’t know and I can’t go to the magic libraries on Mount Olympus until next summer and I can’t conjure Athena or Dad or anyone else from home, either. I just have to wonder, which isn’t fair.

None of this is fair.

Megan is staring at me, almost like she can hear what I’m thinking. And if she can hear it, I’m leaving.

Although I know she can’t. We looked that up the first time. She can feel what I’m feeling, and sometimes, because of that, she can guess what I’m thinking pretty accurately, but she doesn’t hear the words.

“Have you ever thought about the future?” she asks.

I pause. I didn’t expect her to say that. I expected her to tell me that I can be me without them or that I am me even when I’m with them or that I can lose me because of them, but she doesn’t say that. She asks about the future, and I say, “Huh?” before I can stop myself.

“The future,” she says. “What if you girls remain side-by-side for the rest of your lives? Don’t you have separate dreams?”

“Dreams?” I ask.

“Goals,” she says, like that explains it. “Don’t you want to be something when you grow up?”

“Huh?”

“I don’t know,” Megan says. “I wanted to be a fireman when I was really little. My brother wanted to be a basketball star.”

I’ve met her brother. He’s an accountant.

“You’re not a fireman,” I say.

“But children have dreams,” Megan says. “Don’t you have any?”

“What does that have to do with my sisters?” I ask.

“What if they have different dreams?” Megan asks.

“So?”

“How can you fulfill those dreams if you are always with each other?” she asks.

“We don’t have any dreams,” I snap.

She nods, her eyes looking sad.

“I know. We’re going to have to change that.” Then she glances at the clock beside her chair. “Oh, and by the way, time’s up.”

SIX

TIME’S UP. TIME’S
up. She always says that, like time’s important to her. Like someone besides my mom is in the waiting room. No one is. She has no other patients in Eugene.

(I hate that word “patient.” I’m not sick and neither is my mom. I asked Megan to use client, but she wouldn’t.
Patient
, she says.
Look it up. Look up its roots. See what other words it’s related to
. I did. Found patience. Didn’t like it much. Just like I don’t like time’s up.)

I stand, get my purse, and give Megan the obligatory hug, even though I want to slap her (and I know she can feel that, so it’s kinda my revenge) and then I let myself out of the room.

Mom is in the hall, not the waiting room like she’s supposed to be, and I see from the big round clock above the door that we went over five minutes.

“You okay?” Mom asks.

Of course I’m not okay. I just went to see my
therapist
. She just told me that I’m not me. She says I can’t be with my sisters until I figure out what “me” is, and I can’t be me without them, so I’m just screwed.

That’s another word I learned this week: screwed. It’s pretty appropriate to the moment.

“I’m fine,” I say. “She’s waiting for you.”

Then I head to the waiting room like I’m going to spend the next hour there. I peer through the half open door, see Mom go into Megan’s therapy room, and count to ten. When I reach five, I let myself out and take the stairs to the first floor.

I’m not really worried that Megan’ll say anything to Mom about my temper tantrum. Mom’s supposed to talk to Megan about the problems dealing with a formerly magical teenager who has to live like a “normal” person, and Megan’s vowed not to divulge any secrets—mine or Mom’s—unless the situation is dire.

When Megan set up that rule, I asked what dire was, and Megan said that dire was if one of us was getting violent or abusive or stuff like that.
What about suicidal?
Mom asked, and Megan looked at her like Mom had said a dirty word. I got the sense Megan didn’t want that idea floated anywhere near me.

That was before we had officially left Mount Olympus, and I didn’t think depression was an option. Or suicidal depression. Or anxiety. Or loneliness.

I just planned to swan through my life here, like I had swanned through my life there until Dad made us Interim Fates and everyone in the magical world started to hate us for not knowing how to do the job. Of course, they blamed Dad since it was his power-play, but still, it didn’t feel good.

It really didn’t feel good to be used by my father for political purposes.

I’m thinking about all that as I bust out the door of the building and head to the coffee shop. Eugene is kinda different from where I grew up. Okay, a lot different. There are cars here, for one thing, that just swoosh past as if no one’s paying attention to anything.