Tiffany Tumbles: Book One of the Interim Fates (9 page)

“Because?”

“Because what?”

“What happens if you get involved?”

I shrug again. This dinner isn’t going well. My stomach is growling, but I’m wondering if I should take another bite because Mom still hasn’t eaten. Her eyes are spitting sparks too—not literally, not yet (that menopause thing), but she’s going to be a danger with this look when she comes into her magic.

“
What happens when you get involved, Tiffany?”
She’s a half step away from yelling.

“They expect things,” I say.

“Like what?”

I keep shrugging. No one actually said what the servants would expect, only that it was bad.

“Tiffany…”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Magic, maybe.”

“Who made the non-fraternizing rule?” Mom asks.

That one’s easy. “Hera.”

“Ah.” Mom leans back and wipes her mouth with her napkin even though she hasn’t taken a bite. “So if you fraternize with the servants, you might become like your father.”

“Huh?” I ask.

“Your father fraternizes with a lot of women, and…” Mom pauses, as if she’s considering her words. Then she goes on as if she’s come to a decision, “…and a lot of them end up like me. Pregnant. Pregnant women expect the father of their babies to own up to their responsibilities. Is that what Hera means?”

“I don’t know,” I say, “but I can’t father any babies. My magic doesn’t work that way.”

Mom’s eyes bug out for a minute, and then she laughs. “No, that’s true. But you can have babies yourself, you know.”

I know. Mom and I have had this talk, as a matter of fact, every year since I turned ten. It gets more and more graphic over time, and I don’t want to have it again.

“I’m still intrigued by this ‘servant’ word,” Mom says. “It implies an us-against-them mentality.”

I don’t know what that means either, and I’m getting really frustrated. “Things are just different here,” I say, stirring my food again.

“They are.”

“So I want to know how to treat the servants. You already said to tip them.”

Mom rubs her forehead with the first three fingers of her right hand. She braces her thumb against her temple like she has a headache.

“You haven’t gotten very far in American History, have you?” she asks, finally.

“I’ve only been in school a week,” I say.

“No Constitution yet?” she asks.

“What?” I say.

“No All Men Are Created Equal?” she asks.

“What about women?” I ask.

“Precisely,” she says, then sighs. And shakes her head. “Okay. The short version: everyone in America is considered the same as everyone else. So you treat all people you encounter with kindness.”

This confuses me even more than the other stuff she said. “But not everyone is the same. Criminals are different.”

“Because they chose to break the law,” Mom says. She finally takes a bite of the dinner, but she chews automatically. She’s still staring at me like I’m nuts.

“And rich people have servants. At least in the movies.”

“Rich people do have servants,” Mom says. “They pay their servants. I suspect Zeus doesn’t.”

“We don’t have money,” I say primly, but I’m really not sure why the servants work at Mount Olympus. I was raised to ignore them, so I have. I have no idea if they got money or time alone with my dad (the women) or all their wishes come true when they’re done working. I have no idea at all.

“Theoretically,” Mom says, “being a servant is like being an employee anywhere else in America.”

When she says theoretically, I know she’s on shaky ground, but I don’t know why.

“So you tip them,” I say.

Mom shakes her head. Then she sighs again. “This is going to be tougher than I thought.”

She gets up and goes into the cooking part of the kitchen. She opens the fridge and gets a bottle of wine and a glass, then brings them back to the table.

It’s like the short walk gave her time to think because after she pours the wine (it’s red and looks as good as some of the stuff Dionysus used to bring us), she says, “To answer your question, yes, it’s okay to like servants.”

“But there’s more to it, isn’t there?” I ask.

“Only the entire history of our race,” she says, then rubs her forehead again.

“So what should I do?” I ask.

“Stop thinking in classes,” she says.

“Then why go to school?” I ask.

She looks at me through her fingers, and I get the sense that she meant something else, something I didn’t understand. She sighs a third time and says, “Just eat, Tiff. Okay? Just eat.”

EIGHT

SO I EAT
. Then I hang out a bit and watch some TV (weird, seeing it live. I don’t like those commercial thingies) and then I go to bed. Mom doesn’t say anything more about servants. Not that night, not the next morning, not all week.

I go through my routine and I try not to say stupid stuff. I don’t call
anyone
a servant. I barely call people by name. I almost never get called on either—the teachers avoid me, like they expect me to be dumb or behind or both.

The only thing I seem to be good at is P.E. I can run faster than anybody, especially at short distances. I’m really good at jumping too, so Mrs. Yates wants me to go out for basketball in a few months. I’m too embarrassed to tell her I don’t know what basketball is. I actually have to Google it when I get home, and then I learn that it’s this important American game that I should be honored to be a part of, that it’s like a religion to hundreds (maybe thousands, maybe millions) of people, and if I’m really good, I can get scholarships to college when I’m older.

The girls in my P.E. class hate it that I’m good. I guess one of them—Helen?—used to be the best runner, but I can beat her with my shoes off. She says I’m good because I’m Greek, and she doesn’t make it sound nice. So finally I turn on her one morning.

She’s this flashy blonde with no fat at all. Her gym suit (we all have to wear these dorky two piece things that the school provides [for the poor kids] or that we buy and leave [again for the poor kids] so no one feels left out or dorkier than someone else) has pink embroidery around the collar and some rhinestones on the sleeves, even though we’re not supposed to “tart things up” as Mrs. Yates says.

Mrs. Yates never yells at Helen because Helen’s too good to get yelled at, I guess. Helen always stands near the bleachers when she’s not participating. Our gym is regulation-sized (whatever that means) and has a full basketball court. We’re going to have to use a community center in the winter for swimming (I don’t know how you swim in a center, but I guess I’ll learn) but everybody’s really proud of the gym floor. We’re not even allowed on it without special shoes, which my mom calls tennis shoes, but everyone here calls Nikes even if they’re not.

Anyway, during class on Monday, Mrs. Yates tells everybody that I’m the best runner she’s seen in twenty-five years of teaching, and Helen’s all smiley. (I looked; I know she hates it when I get attention.)

Then we go into the locker room to shower and change out of the stinky gym suits, and Helen says, really loud, that the only reason I’m good is because I’m Greek.

I can’t take it anymore. Helens have been trouble for my family since the dawn of time. I glare over my shoulder, wishing for some kind of magic power, any kind or maybe even just a guardian: y’know, someone from my past who’d zoom in and zip up Helen’s lips or turn her into a baton or something.

“I thought Africans were good at running,” one of the other girls says. I never learned her name. She always drops things when people throw them at her, and she complains when we have to do laps. “That’s what they say on the Olympics.”

Helen gives this evil smile and she says, “The Greeks invented the Olympics. They put in running because they’re good at it.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re confusing marathons with the Olympics. The original Olympic games didn’t have distance running. There were footraces and a pentathlon and some wrestling and stuff. And some poetry contests sponsored by my…um…by Aphrodite and the muses and stuff. But the marathon is something else.”

“Wow, girls,” Helen says. “Listen to that accent. It even makes garbage sound good.”

“Look it up,” I say, sounding just like my mom. “You’ll see how wrong you are.”

“I’m never wrong, honey,” Helen says.

“You’re never right, either,” I say and pull on my favorite white shirt. I bought it at the mall with the money Mom gave me, and it fits better than some of the stuff I magicked over the years. I slip on some jeans too. I’m just sitting down for my socks when Helen puts a manicured hand on my shoulder.

“You think you’re something, don’t you, Little Miss I’ve Lived All Over The World.”

Actually, I don’t think I’m much of anything these days, but I’m not admitting that to Helen. Instead, I say, “I’ve met people who are something. I can’t keep up with them. What does it say about you that you can’t keep up with me?”

Helen frowns at me. I can tell she knows I’ve insulted her, but she can’t tell how. Then she flushes bright red.

Mission accomplished. I take her hand off me like it’s a dead squirrel and let it drop. Then I finish getting dressed. Most of the girls need an extra five minutes for makeup, but I don’t. I decided not to wear any this year after my early attempts at putting it on manually failed.

Instead, I walk out of there like I own the world. I get some water at one of the fountains and I’m halfway to Mr. McG’s lame American History class when Jenna catches up to me.

“You shouted down Helen?” Jenna asks.

I shrug. “I wasn’t shouting.”

“Wow,” she says. “No one stands up to Helen.”

“Why not?” I ask, expecting the whole
Mean Girls
answer, y’know, Helen’s too mean to people who cross her and her parents are rich and the school bows down to them, and as a result bows down to Helen.

I’m so prepared for that answer, I almost don’t hear the real one.

“She’s the smartest, prettiest, most successful girl in school,” Jenna says with something like awe. “She’s good at sports, she’s in college prep, and she never misses on a test. She’s had the same friends her whole life and she’s really loyal. And she’s always going out with the best guys.”

Jenna actually admires Helen. Maybe because Helen doesn’t scowl at her from the gym floor.

“I don’t like her,” I say, which isn’t exactly true. I’m a little intimidated by her too. That scowling thing is pretty powerful. “Do you like her?”

“She doesn’t even know who I am,” Jenna says, which really isn’t an answer. I mean, you can like someone without them knowing you, can’t you? I like Brad Pitt—or I did until I learned about the whole Angelina/Jennifer thing—and I’m sure he has no clue who I am or even that there are mages in the world.

I decide to push it. “Yeah, but you know who she is. So do you like her?”

“I want to
be
like her,” Jenna says as the bell rings. We hurry to Mr. McG’s class and get to our desks just before he closes the door, which is to say, in the nick of time.

He’s talking about revolution today. Battles and stuff like that. I grew up hearing about battles. Epic battles still celebrated in story and song. I really don’t care about some minor revolution in some faraway land called Massachusetts.

So I sit there thinking and looking at Jenna out of the corner of my eye. She’s hunched over her book, scribbling notes. She’s not pretty like Helen. Jenna’s skinny and she doesn’t dress well at all, and she looks like she’s never stood up straight in her whole life. But she’s nicer, and that’s got to count for something, right?

That’s what all the movies teach anyway.

But I’m thinking about her last few words, and Megan’s from the day before. I mean, if dreams and goals are what you want and desire, your hopes and plans for the future, then what does it say about Jenna that she wants to be Helen?

Is that Jenna’s dream or her goal? Or is it just something she said to throw me off?

I plan to ask her after class, but just before the bell, Mr. McG tells me to talk to him after class and I miss my chance.

He wants me to do make-up work since it seems that I’m not absorbing the important stuff. I have no idea how makeup will help me with history, and I tell him.

He gives me that “how dumb is she” look, and then tells me that he means I have to catch up to everyone else. “You do understand ‘catch-up’ right? You use so much slang, dated as it is, that I thought you understood idioms.”

“I get slang,” I say (although I had no idea that what I say is dated. I guess that means old. And does that make me sound stupider than I already do? I have no idea). “I don’t know what idiotums are.”

“Idiotums.” He laughs. “Sometimes, VanDerHoven, I can’t tell if you’re Gracie Allen or Roseanne Roseannadanna.”

I frown. I’m going to have to jot those names down when I leave so that I can Google them later to understand what he means.