Tiffany Tumbles: Book One of the Interim Fates by Kristine Grayson

belly laugh, the kind that comes when you really find something funny and you can’t prevent the laugh. She puts her hand over her mouth, gasps once, then manages to stop laughing, although her eyes twinkle.
    My face is so hot, it feels like it’ll explode. I feel humiliated, and I’m not sure exactly why, except that Mom found my panic funny.
    She touches my hand. “I’m sorry, baby.”
    I pull away.
    “Truly.” She wipes an eye with her other hand, then she takes mine, as if she can hold me in place.
    I want to tug away again, but I guess that would be childish. But so is laughing at someone who’s panicked.
    “Baby,” she says—she hasn’t called me baby in years—“we have to teach you how reality really works.”
    I know how reality really works. There’s her reality and my reality, and I have to lie about mine because the people in hers won’t believe me or they’ll think I’m whacked or something.
    I can feel my lower lip set in what Crystal calls Tiff’s Angry Face, but Mom doesn’t seem to notice.
    “Movies, honey,” and I hear laughter in Mom’s voice, lurking there, like a sea monster, “movies aren’t reality.”
    “I know that,” I say.
    She starts to say something, then nods, then looks at the package. “If you know that, then why do you think all packages explode?”
    “Because,” I snap. “If that was something made up, it wouldn’t be common in movies.”
    “Like murders?” she asks.
    I shrug.
    “Or superheroes with machine guns who never get prosecuted?” she asks.
    “There’re mages,” I say. “We don’t get in trouble.”
    “Really?” she asks. “Is that why your dad agreed to let you girls go? Because no one gets in trouble?”
    I felt my face get even hotter. “I’m not in trouble.”
    “No, sweetie, you’re not. But your dad is. He’s in trouble for meddling with things that only belong to the Powers That Be.”
    “He is a Power That Be,” I say.
    “I know, sweetie,” she says—and I’m getting sick of this sweetie thing. I can tell we’re not used to each other yet or she’d stop doing the baby-honey-sweetie thing. No one called me that at home.
    “But,” she continues, “it’s my understanding that the Powers That Be have to work in tandem, not alone, and your dad tried to do everything alone.”
    I shrug again. I’ve heard this. I had to testify in front of all the Powers, which wasn’t fun. My sisters were there, but they made me talk for them. I was there as an “Interim Fate,” not as Daddy’s little girl.
    And he stared at me the whole time like I was betraying him.
    “He’s in trouble, and part of his penance is to learn how to be a good parent.”
    “That shouldn’t be a penance,” I mutter.
    “I know that,” Mom says. “But he thought he was a good parent. You and your sisters told him otherwise, remember?”
    How can I forget? Those first few sessions with Megan—who in her empathic way figured out that we three Interim Fates were really unhappy, and probed to find out why—were a rollercoaster. First I talked (and talked and talked, Brittany said) and then Brit and Crystal did, and then everyone else chimed in, from Athena to Apollo and Artemis, and even Ares showed up, which scared all of us. When the God of War (even though he’s really not, but he’s good at anger, let me tell you) gets mad, everybody knows about it. Even Daddy.
    “Why are we talking about this?” I asked.
    “Because you say that mages don’t get in trouble,” she says. “They do, and will continue to get into trouble. Just like people do in what you call the mortal life when they do things wrong.”
    “So?” I ask.
    “So people in movies get away with a lot,” she says.
    “So?” I ask again.
    “So things like package bombs aren’t really very common.”
    “Somebody made up the Unabomber guy, then?” I ask.
    Mom looks at me sideways. “You can Google him,” she says. “He only sent a few packages. The problem is that they