Read Online Tiffany Tumbles: Book One of the Interim Fates by Kristine Grayson - Free Book Online Page A

frowning.
    Josh sees it and says, “You know. Like his dream is to be an actor, but his goal is to be a teacher.”
    “Why would he do both?” I ask.
    “So he can afford to act, I guess.” Josh shrugs. “I don’t pretend to understand my brother. You got a brother?”
    “I’ve got about five hundred of them,” I say before I stop myself.
    He raises his eyebrows.
    “Or, I mean, it seems that way.”
    He grins like I said something funny, and I feel sad. Mom said that would be how people reacted when I covered. It seems that way is one of the phrases she taught me to fool people into thinking my honest answer was a jokey one, and I hated having to do it just when it seemed like me and Josh were becoming friends.
    “You come from a big family?” he asks.
    I nod.
    “Did they move with you?”
    I shake my head. “I’m my mom’s only child,” I say. “My dad—he’s—um—”
    I don’t know how to say that my dad has been fathering children for thousands of years and while he’s married to Hera, he doesn’t even know the word faithful.
    “He’s been married a few times, huh?”
    “Just once,” I say, and flush.
    “But there are other kids?” Josh tries not to look shocked. He sets his coffee cup down. “I’m prying again, aren’t I?”
    I shrug.
    “Look,” he says. “I think you’re interesting. That’s why I’m asking so many questions. The people who come to Eugene are usually pretty white bread, if you know what I mean.”
    I nod, even though I don’t.
    “So I’m sorry if I’m butting in.”
    “It’s okay.” I look over at the clock. I only have five minutes to get to the waiting room. “I gotta go.”
    He nods and looks down, and for the first time, I wonder if I’ve hurt his feelings. I did sound kinda harsh.
    I touch his hand really lightly. His skin is warm. He looks up, surprised.
    “Thanks for talking to me,” I say, and then I bolt out the door. As I run toward the streetlights, I see him reflected in the window’s glass. He’s watching me like he’s never seen anything like me.
    Which he probably never has.

 
     
     
     
    SEVEN
     
     
    SO MOM EXPLAINS white bread on the drive home. I tell her about hearing the word (and hearing it describe Eugene) without telling her that I actually had a conversation with a guy from school. She’d freak out more than I did. I’m still wondering if I pissed him off leaving like that.
    Mom says white bread means bland, plain, normal. She says it could also mean racially similar. When she moved here, she says, she was one of the only black people, and there still aren’t that many.
    Now I’ve seen enough movies to know that black people doesn’t mean black, like so dark that you disappear into the night. I know it refers to people who look like my mom and people who look like me, even though Mom thinks I’m pretty Mediterranean-looking, like those ancient Greeks on the vases. It’s the dark eyes, I think, and the thick eyebrows, and the shape of my cheekbones, which aren’t nearly as sculpted as Mom’s. But I’m guessing because I don’t really understand this racial stuff. It doesn’t make any sense to me.
    Mom says there’s more ethnic diversity now, with all the Hispanics who’ve moved in in the last decade and the Asian-Americans who came down from Portland, but she says the town is still pretty white bread, and then she looks at me (she’s driving, but she’s not looking at the road, which I’m not sure is a good thing), and she says, “No one gave you trouble, did they?”
    I don’t know what trouble would be, and I’m not sure I want to guess. “No.”
    “Good,” she says in that tough Mom voice that I haven’t heard since the first day of school. “Because if anyone does, you send them to me.”
    Now, I’m not sure what Mom can do about anything, being without magic and all, but I don’t ask anymore. The one time I did, she got all huffy and said that people without magic are still people too.