Tiffany Tumbles: Book One of the Interim Fates Read Online Free PDF Page A

that was too dorky.
    They probably could see me, and they’d think I was weird, and that was all I needed.
    But at least they’d think about me. No one had talked to me—except teachers—since Jenna had after my first class. I went through the rest of my day all silent, like the invisibility spell carried.
    When I got home, I wanted to tell Mom, but I couldn’t. I still can’t. She’s making a special dinner—a celebration of me surviving my first day of high school—and she seems pretty cheerful. She’s happy I seem so calm.
    And here’s the sad thing: My mom doesn’t know me well enough to realize that I’m always calm when I’m upset. It’s Brittany who cries and wails and makes a scene.
    I usually don’t say much of anything, just hunker down and do whatever I need to do. Megan, my therapist, says Brittany does the crying for all of us.
    That’s something else I’m supposed to learn. How to emote for myself.
    Like that’ll do anything.
    I’m in my room, which is pretty nice, with my books and my ripped-up history text scattered on the heavy wood desk that Mom says belonged to her father, and papers alongside it, and my bed, looking really pretty and girlish with its white spread and its overflowing pillows and the pile of stuffed animals that Mom put there to make me feel at home.
    (I don’t have stuffed animals at home, but I’m not going to tell her that.)
    I don’t have a TV or a computer in here. No phone either. My cell has to stay in the living room where Mom can see it.
    The room smells like oregano and something tomatoy—whatever Mom’s cooking—and I suppose I should feel comforted.
    But I just feel invisible.
    Still.
    Like I could do nothing for the rest of my life and no one would notice. No one would care.
    I put my head down on my desk.
    I’m not sure I’m going to survive this.
    I’m not sure anyone can.

 
     
     
     
    FOUR
     
     
    SATURDAY DIDN’T COME soon enough. I actually started marking the days off on my calendar. P.E. turned out to be easy stuff like running and climbing ropes and throwing balls. I can do that, so there’s one class I understand. Mom had to help me with the Greek government thing for Comparative World Studies because she saw my first paper (she’s reading all my stuff just to make sure I don’t slip) and she says there is no such thing as Powers That Be in the real world—or the Muses or the Fates, who rule over everything, especially true love.
    That’s one of those things that makes my head spin. Because I know the Muses personally, and I was an acting Fate when my dad tried to get rid of true love. (Long story. The short version, according to Megan, is that he wanted to get rid of true love to live the way he wanted to; Mom thinks it was so that he could get a divorce from Hera [who believes in true love for some reason I can’t fathom]; and my sisters think my dad just likes to be in control of everything. I’m with my sisters.)
    Anyway, Mom told me about Greece’s parliamentary system (and she explained what that was) and she showed me how to research stuff on the internet (even though she prefers books—she has a lot of them in the room across from mine, which she calls an office, but she says should probably now be called the library).
    No one’s been talking to me except Jenna, and she always apologizes because she thinks she’s a big loser and I’m not, and I have no idea how she comes to that conclusion, but I figure maybe I still have some glimmer of magic or something.
    I eat lunch alone, I walk to class alone, I sit in the back of every room, and now that the teachers have autographed my schedule (which I had to hand in at the office), I don’t talk to anyone (except Jenna for five minutes before and after American History [and yeah, she was right: I didn’t have to read that stuff, which just frosts Mom because she thinks I need an education]).
    So, Saturday.
    I get to have my conference call. Then, on Sunday, I get my