Read Online Tiffany Tumbles: Book One of the Interim Fates by Kristine Grayson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kristine Grayson
Tags: Fiction
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Whatever that means.
We get home and I go to my room to pretend to do homework (I already did the stuff for the teachers who check: amazing how quick I figured that out), and Mom goes into the kitchen to cook dinner. The house is pretty small for two people, and I can hear her banging around in there.
I kinda get the sense that she wants me to come and help, but what can I do in a kitchen? It was tough enough learning how to make my bed. But after a while, I go in there—the cookie wore off and I’m hungry—and Mom’s at the stove using two utensils to move food around in this giant pan she calls a wok.
The kitchen is a great room. It’s divided into the cooking part and the eating part. The eating part has this big table (and I wonder what Mom used it for before I moved in because it’s much too big for two people, let alone one) and there are windows all around it, with French doors (dunno why they’re French, maybe that’s where she ordered them from) that open into the backyard, where Mom has this great flower-filled garden and two hammock trees (her words). There’s a fence, so the neighbors can’t see in, and when I first got here, I spent a lot of time out there, lying in the grass and staring at the sky.
The blue sky sometimes feels like the only part of my past life that’s still with me. And even that’ll disappear, Mom says, as winter comes and everything here gets gray or rainy.
Still, I love the backyard, and I love the windows that look out to it, and I love the giant table.
In the other part of the kitchen are these granite countertops with tons of appliances. Mom loves gadgets. She’s a good cook too. I asked her why she doesn’t get someone to cook for her and she gave me this lecture on self-sufficiency and how non-magical people (what a mouthful, I want her to say mortals, but she won’t because she hasn’t come into her magic yet, and identifies with these people) do everything themselves and enjoy it .
I’ve watched mortals at work, and I don’t think they enjoy much of anything. Yeah, they laugh a lot, but they bitch a lot too. And they talk about money too much, like it’s all important or something.
I can see where they get that because no one gives you anything if you don’t give them some cash first, but I think there’s a lot more important things than money. Like being able to hang with your sisters or run with the centaurs or just sit on the stairs of Athena’s temple (she goes when the tourists leave—and sometimes she just banishes them [to where I don’t know]) and contemplate the universe.
There’s nothing like that here, and the one time I mentioned it to Mom, she shrugged and said, “There’s good stuff in Eugene. You just have to find it.”
Like I have the freedom to do that. She won’t even let me use her car because she says I need a license for that.
Anyway, I come into the kitchen and Mom immediately gives me orders. Set the table, pour the milk, make some tea. She’s training me to do all this manual stuff and she doesn’t care what I think about it. I have to “pull my weight.” I must “learn to be competent.” I need to “survive on my own.” And all of these things, the setting of tables, the pouring of milk, and the making of tea, will somehow do that.
I’m getting the plates from the cupboard near the sink, and as I stagger back with them (the cupboard’s kinda high for me), I hear myself say, “Mom, is it okay to like servants?”
Mom sputters and turns toward me, looking over her shoulder. At that minute, something in the wok pops and gets on her hand, and she curses and tells me to get butter. I do, but I don’t know what to do with it. She takes the wok off the burner, then holds out her hand.
There’s a red mark near her thumb that looks sore.
“Where’s the butter?” she asks.
I hold it out to her, and she grabs it with her other hand, then sticks her finger in it—which she expressly told me not to do that first
We get home and I go to my room to pretend to do homework (I already did the stuff for the teachers who check: amazing how quick I figured that out), and Mom goes into the kitchen to cook dinner. The house is pretty small for two people, and I can hear her banging around in there.
I kinda get the sense that she wants me to come and help, but what can I do in a kitchen? It was tough enough learning how to make my bed. But after a while, I go in there—the cookie wore off and I’m hungry—and Mom’s at the stove using two utensils to move food around in this giant pan she calls a wok.
The kitchen is a great room. It’s divided into the cooking part and the eating part. The eating part has this big table (and I wonder what Mom used it for before I moved in because it’s much too big for two people, let alone one) and there are windows all around it, with French doors (dunno why they’re French, maybe that’s where she ordered them from) that open into the backyard, where Mom has this great flower-filled garden and two hammock trees (her words). There’s a fence, so the neighbors can’t see in, and when I first got here, I spent a lot of time out there, lying in the grass and staring at the sky.
The blue sky sometimes feels like the only part of my past life that’s still with me. And even that’ll disappear, Mom says, as winter comes and everything here gets gray or rainy.
Still, I love the backyard, and I love the windows that look out to it, and I love the giant table.
In the other part of the kitchen are these granite countertops with tons of appliances. Mom loves gadgets. She’s a good cook too. I asked her why she doesn’t get someone to cook for her and she gave me this lecture on self-sufficiency and how non-magical people (what a mouthful, I want her to say mortals, but she won’t because she hasn’t come into her magic yet, and identifies with these people) do everything themselves and enjoy it .
I’ve watched mortals at work, and I don’t think they enjoy much of anything. Yeah, they laugh a lot, but they bitch a lot too. And they talk about money too much, like it’s all important or something.
I can see where they get that because no one gives you anything if you don’t give them some cash first, but I think there’s a lot more important things than money. Like being able to hang with your sisters or run with the centaurs or just sit on the stairs of Athena’s temple (she goes when the tourists leave—and sometimes she just banishes them [to where I don’t know]) and contemplate the universe.
There’s nothing like that here, and the one time I mentioned it to Mom, she shrugged and said, “There’s good stuff in Eugene. You just have to find it.”
Like I have the freedom to do that. She won’t even let me use her car because she says I need a license for that.
Anyway, I come into the kitchen and Mom immediately gives me orders. Set the table, pour the milk, make some tea. She’s training me to do all this manual stuff and she doesn’t care what I think about it. I have to “pull my weight.” I must “learn to be competent.” I need to “survive on my own.” And all of these things, the setting of tables, the pouring of milk, and the making of tea, will somehow do that.
I’m getting the plates from the cupboard near the sink, and as I stagger back with them (the cupboard’s kinda high for me), I hear myself say, “Mom, is it okay to like servants?”
Mom sputters and turns toward me, looking over her shoulder. At that minute, something in the wok pops and gets on her hand, and she curses and tells me to get butter. I do, but I don’t know what to do with it. She takes the wok off the burner, then holds out her hand.
There’s a red mark near her thumb that looks sore.
“Where’s the butter?” she asks.
I hold it out to her, and she grabs it with her other hand, then sticks her finger in it—which she expressly told me not to do that first
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