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

paying. Then she has to take me to the internet to show me how billing works for texting and cell phones and e-mail and stuff. Each minute, each call, each texting thing costs something, except you get some of those things free for being in the network, but you’d use them up pretty fast.
    “So we won’t use them up,” I say.
    “You’d use them up in an afternoon, and then who is going to pay your phone bill, hmm?” Mom asks. She’s sounding really frustrated. “It won’t be me.”
    “Well, it can’t be me,” I say. “I don’t have any money.”
    “We’re going to have to change that,” Mom says.
    That sounds like a good thing to me, and I say so.
    Mom grins. “You’ll have to become a servant.”
    “Huh?”
    “Work in a coffee shop or in a restaurant or some other menial task. For which they’ll pay you.”
    “Okay,” I say, even though I’m not sure I want to do it.
    “We’ll talk to Megan,” Mom says, “but I suspect it’s too early for you. There’s so much you don’t know.”
    “So?”
    “So I don’t want someone else to assume the liability. School is difficult enough at the moment.”
    I turn to the computer so she can’t see my face turn red again. I’m feeling like a steam machine, all hot, then cold, then hot again, and just because of embarrassment.
    So Mom’s figured out how dumb I really am. Would Crystal think that if I don’t use the iPhone thing? I have no idea, and I don’t know how to tell her either.
    “She wants me to use this thing,” I say.
    “We can’t pay for it,” Mom says. “We’re not incurring that kind of expense.”
    “But Crystal’s mom is,” I say.
    “Crystal’s mom is rich,” Mom says. “I’m not.”
    “So Crystal’s mom can pay,” I say.
    “No.” Mom actually crosses her arms and glares at me.
    “No?” I say. “Just like that? I get a gift and you say no?”
    “That’s right,” Mom says. “You can’t do everything you want to here.”
    “That’s for sure.” I stand up and stomp away from the computer. “I can’t do anything I want. I can’t go where I want and I can’t read what I want and I can’t talk to my family when I want and I can’t even figure out how things work. You just want me to be alone all the time.”
    Mom reaches for me. “Honey—”
    “Don’t honey me,” I say, staying out of her range. “You don’t know me, and you’re being mean. I miss my sisters. I used to be with them all the time. You know what all the time is, right? Like every minute?”
    “I know,” Mom says softly. “We all decided—you and me and Megan and Zeus and your sisters and their mothers—that you girls needed to learn how to be alone. How to be separate. Otherwise you won’t have your own identities.”
    “Well, I have one,” I say. “It’s stupid, it’s dweeby, and I hate it. I want to go home.”
    Mom’s face goes gray. “You are home.”
    “No, I’m not. I’m in some backwards town with stupid servants and I’m supposed to be nice to everyone, and I have to lie to them, and I don’t want to. I just want to be me.”
    “And who is that, honey?” Mom asks in the voice she uses when she’s pretending to be Megan.
    Who am I? What kind of question is that?
    But I don’t have a ready answer.
    I glare at her. I remember what it’s like to make your body grow five feet in a second, to make yourself so big you scare the person you’re talking to. I remember how to spit fire out of my eyes, and how to take command of mortals as if they’re flies. I remember all that.
    I can’t do it anymore, but I remember it.
    That person, the one who could do all those things, that was me.
    This person, this one who has to lie and walk everywhere and be alone, this is someone else.
    “I’m using that iPhone thing,” I say and stomp to the kitchen. I take the box and the letter, and go to my room.
    And, for once, Mom doesn’t follow me at all.

 
     
     
     
    ELEVEN
     
     
    I LIE ON my stomach, reading the