Crystal Caves Page 14

  But Owen strides over, and pulls both me and Gordon close.

  “Thank God,” Owen says. “Thank God. We were so worried, Crystal.”

  He’s actually shaking, and beneath that expensive cologne, he smells of sweat.

  I look over his shoulder to see E hovering just behind him, and Mother standing nearby with her hands clasped as if she doesn’t know what to do with them. Danny and Fabe have gotten up as well.

  “Ms. Wright,” one of the cops says, “are you okay?”

  Owen steps back, but Gordon isn’t letting me go. I put my hand on his head, and try not to wince at all the greasy product he uses in his hair. What eight-year-old uses product? (Gordon, apparently.)

  I am about to correct the cop about my name, and then I realize that would sound snotty.

  “I’m okay. My dad wanted me to come home with him, but I, um, got…”

  How do I explain this?

  “I got away,” I say, finally, deciding that I can’t tell these poor cops the truth.

  “Where is he?” one of the cops asks. “We can still press charges if Mr. Wright is willing.”

  Owen looks at my mother. She shakes her head once, lips tight.

  “It’s all right,” Owen says. “Crystal’s father is a difficult man, but we can handle him from here. No need to press charges.”

  “Mr. Wright,” says one of the cops (at least, I think he’s a cop, since he’s not wearing a uniform or anything), “in my experience, someone who tries this once will try it again.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Owen says in his best businessman voice. “But the situation with Crystal’s father is legally complicated. He’s a foreign national with unprecedented access. I’m not even sure the NYPD has jurisdiction over anything he does. So I’ll work with my lawyers to see what we can come up with. Thank you men for your time, and I’m sorry that we brought you here for naught.”

  “You were distressed,” says the fourth man. Good cop? I have no idea. “It’s all right. We’re glad it worked out. These things so rarely do.”

  They say their good-byes, and all four men shake my hand on the way out, telling me they’re happy I’m safe.

  Then the door closes and Mother says, “What really happened, Crystal?”

  Her voice is chill. Does she think I did this?

  My spine straightens, and I disentangle myself from Gordon.

  “Daddy heard what you said yesterday, and decided to take advantage of the situation,” I say.

  “How could he have heard?” Mother asks. Then she closes her eyes for one small second. “He’s not spying on us, is he?”

  “No,” I say. “I handled it, Mother.”

  She frowns, then looks at everyone else. Owen is about to tell them all to leave when she shakes her head at him again.

  “One thing, though,” I say. “I’m not leaving after the winter holidays.”

  “You had a fight with your father?” Mother asks.

  “The Fates made me choose where I’d spend the next few years,” I say. “I chose here.”

  Mother looks stunned.

  “I don’t have to stay in the apartment if you don’t want me,” I say. “I can stay long enough to learn how to survive on my own, and then—”

  “Nonsense,” Owen says. “You’re family. We take care of family. You’re staying here as long as you need to.”

  Only he’s not saying that to me. He’s looking at Mother as he says it.

  Then he turns back toward me.

  “We’ve been insensitive to your needs, Crystal,” he says. “Ethan was telling us how unhappy you were, and I’ll be honest, I had no idea.”

  I look at E. He half shrugs, then grins at me.

  “We have behaved abominably, haven’t we, Monique?” Owen says.

  “We—”

  “Don’t apologize, Mother,” I say. “We know where we stand now.”

  She meets my gaze.

  “I promise,” I say, “no more crazy Daddy stuff. If he shows up, I’ll call you or Megan or someone.”

  Mother nods. She looks a little uncomfortable, then she totters over to me, enveloping me in perfume. She doesn’t quite hug me and I’m relieved, but she does pat me on the shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” she says so softly that I think I’m the only one who heard it (except maybe Gordon. I think I like non-clingy, sarcastic Gordon better than this Gordon). “I was so caught up in my own issues—”

  “It’s okay,” I say, putting a hand on her beringed one, and almost removing it from my shoulder. “I’m sorry too.”

  We all stand, staring at each other. I’ve never felt this awkward in my life. I’m not sure I like being the center of attention in this family.

  So I reach into my purse and grab my phone. I wave it at them. “I’ve got to plug this in,” I say. “I think Daddy broke it, but I’m not sure.”

  Then I flee to my room.

  It looks welcoming, even with its big bed and all of the stuff that isn’t mine. I find the phone cord and stick it into the phone, listening for the phone’s little beep of acknowledgement, which it makes.

  I grin. The phone works, which means this place works, and maybe I can work too. I didn’t mean to scare everyone—

  “Hey.”

  I turn.

  E is peering into my room. “That magic stuff. It’s real, isn’t it?”

  I shrug.

  “Because I’ve never seen Mother so freaked out. Your father scares her. I’ve never seen her scared before either.”

  “Daddy’s more powerful in his world than Owen is in yours,” I say.

  E’s eyes narrow. “And you’re here?”

  I shrug again.

  “Why?” E asks.

  I look at the room, at the phone, at him. “I think I can learn not to be evil here.”

  “What?” he asks.

  I shrug a third time. “Long story,” I say.

  He stares at me. I don’t say anything else. After a minute, he gets the hint.

  “Well,” he says, “if you ever want to tell it, I’m willing to listen.”

  Then he disappears down the hall.

  I’m telling it, but not to him. That’s why I’m writing it all down. I’m not even going to tell Megan, although I’ll probably go back and talk to her. If she can explain the differences between the non-magical world and the magical world. If she gets all empath-y on me again and pulls emotions out of me, I’m not staying.

  I want to handle this on my own. I want to be my own person. I didn’t think I did, but I’m kinda liking who I am. I’m kinda liking the way I speak my mind, and cheese omelets, and wearing green.

  I look down, and let out a giggle. I went through all of this in my stupid school uniform.

  I step into the closet and change into the outfit I initially put on this morning. Then I put the nose ring back in. I’m heading to the kitchen because I missed dinner, and if there’s nothing for me to eat, I’m ordering pizza.

  If my brothers want to join me, so be it. If not, I think I’m going to watch a movie or something. Or maybe read about those witches for Mr. Rosenfeld’s class.

  Time to settle in—and figure out how to enjoy life in this city, instead of just live it.

  Time to learn how to be a New Yorker, instead of some weird Greek transplant.

  Time to be Crystal Chandler, whoever the hell that is.

  Guess I’m going to find out.

  Following is a sample chapter from the final book in the Interim Fates Trilogy, Brittany Bends.

  ONE

  AS MY STEPBROTHER Eric pulls his car into the nearly empty parking lot behind the Burger King, he keeps one finger on the door lock, frowns at me, and asks, “Do you want my coat?”

  Eric’s totally nice to me, and he doesn’t have to be. We’re not related, and he thinks I’m pretty weird. He’s heard of me, of course. Everyone in the Johnson family had heard of me before I moved in. I was Mom’s “mistake,” a cautionary tale for all the girls, because if they �
��do it” just because they “lose their head,” they might end up pregnant and alone and faced with lots of tough choices.

  Tough choices doesn’t even begin to describe the complicated stuff that happened around my birth, and tough choices doesn’t even begin to describe what’s been happening since July, when I finally moved in with Mom.

  Besides, I don’t like to think about Mom “losing her head” and “doing it” with my dad. Like, shudder.

  And that’s the kind of stuff I say that makes Eric cringe. Not the mom and dad stuff, which is bad enough. But what he calls Outdated Valley Girl Speak. He says it makes me sound totally stupid, but then I tell him that his accent makes him sound totally stupid, and he says I don’t know anything about Northern Wisconsin, which is true. I don’t.

  I don’t know much about anything in the Greater World, which is where I live now, without magic, and without any real support.

  Mom tries, but she doesn’t know what to do with me. I’m her oldest biological kid, but not the oldest in the Johnson Family, which is how the brood I’ve found myself attached to now describes itself.

  Eric is the oldest kid, and he goes off to college next year. He says he can hardly wait.

  He’s holding out his coat to me. It’s a tweedy plaid thing that hasn’t been in style maybe ever, but he’s really not asking about coats. In the month that I’ve lived with the Johnson Family, I have learned sideways speak that they all use. Or at least, I think I’ve learned it. And I’m pretty sure that Eric’s coat offer is sideways speak.

  “What’s the real problem?” I ask, groping for the door handle. I hate being seen in this car. I’m not from this town, and even I know the car’s a piece of junk. The outside isn’t painted and the inside smells of mothballs.

  Karl, my stepdad, says that the upholstery has to be removed, because Eric had it steam cleaned and that only made the smell worse. Plus, now that he turned on the heater, little white pieces of something that looks like paper keep floating out of the ducts or whatever they’re called.

  It seems that before Eric bought this thing (long before I moved in), some mice had nested under the hood. They chewed through wiring and stuff, and Eric’s really proud of himself for fixing that.

  I think if he fixed wiring and stuff, he could’ve taken a little extra time and fixed the leftover mouse nests too.

  “What’s really going on?” Eric repeats. “Pretty simple, Brit. You’re walking. You’ll freeze.”

  He calls me Brit. Everyone here calls me Brit. I guess Brittany is too big a word for them. (And okay, that’s mean, but sometimes, all this nicey-nicey stuff the Johnson Family does makes me want to be mean.)

  I look at him. He actually seems concerned.

  I frown.

  Eric looks like his father, all brown hair and square-jawed handsomeness. His head brushes the car’s ceiling, and his wrists stick out of almost every shirt he wears. The Johnsons are big and bony.

  I take after Mom, mostly. She’s willowy and blonde. Pale blonde. So blonde that her hair almost looks white. She says she always thought she was the whitest person on the planet until she met me. I’m even fairer skinned than she is, which wasn’t a problem until July.

  Then I learned what sunburn really is.

  Now I’m going to learn what “cold” really is. Or at least everyone says that’s what’ll happen. Apparently, I live in the coldest place in the world—well, maybe not the world, but the United States, anyway. (And yes, I’m just learning what the United States is.)

  I now live in the Midwest or, more specifically, Wisconsin, or even more specifically, a place that calls itself Superior, even though I have no idea how it can be superior when there’s an even better place (Duluth, in something called Minnesota) across a giant inland sea from here.

  The giant inland sea, which everyone insists on calling a lake (even though they try to cover up their mistake by calling it a great lake), is also called Superior and it is superior because it’s bigger than all the other inland seas (I mean Great Lakes) combined.

  The inland sea—I mean lake—has an effect. So it’s colder here in the summer and even colder in the winter.

  I’m braced for it, kinda sorta, but what my stepbrother Eric is referring to is that for that first two months I was here (July and August), I kept asking if the fifty-something degree nighttime temperatures (in this scale that everyone adds the word “Fahrenheit” to as if they expect me to know some other scale) were the “really cold” temperatures I had heard of.

  That made my step and half siblings laugh so hard my mother would shush them for being rude. To be fair, she’s their mother too, even though she didn’t give birth to some of them. My step siblings lost their real mother to cancer. (I’ve seen the movies; I know what cancer is [again, kinda sorta, but I understand enough of it to know it’s a real tragedy and it makes even the strongest people cry].) Mom married Karl about a year after I was born, not that it matters, because by then my father was raising me.

  Well, my father wasn’t raising me. He’d assigned me to some wood nymphs at first, and that was when I “met” my sisters Tiffany and Crystal, who also have the same dad but different moms. Tiff, Crystal, and I were Interim Fates together, which is a long story. But we’ve been each other’s best friends and close family before we became Interim Fates. We’ve known each other since Tiff and Crystal got assigned to the same nymphs I had back when we were all babies. Of course, none of us remember this because we were preverbal, even if we did have our magic by then.

  Magic, which is now gone.

  “I am not going to freeze,” I say to Eric archly. I’m good at archly. If there’s one thing I learned from my Greek family, it’s how to be arch when I need to, especially with mere mortals.

  “Brit, I know you,” Eric says, even though he doesn’t, not really, because Mom won’t let me tell any of my nine half and step siblings the truth about who I am and who my dad is and who my other half siblings are. “You’ll start shivering the minute you get out of this car. It’s nearly freezing out there.”

  I square my shoulders. I hate this part of my new life, the way that everyone takes care of me or makes fun of me, and I can’t tell which it is just from the tone.

  “You’re just saying that.” I gather up my denim purse, which is the most embarrassing thing I own, but I can’t get rid of it or trade it away because Mom accented it with this thing she has called a BeDazzler, and the purse has all these rhinestones and fake jewels all over it, and tons of fringe underneath. It looks like the 1970s vomited all over the purse, which I muttered one day to my half sister Anna, and she said archly (maybe the whole family is good at arch), That stuff is back in style, Brit, and Mom worked hard on that purse. Be nice.

  Be nice. Be nice. That’s all they ever say to me here. I have no idea how to be nice. We weren’t nice back at Mount Olympus, which is where I’m from (kinda sorta because I was actually born here in Superior, believe it or not). And the Mount Olympus I’m referring to isn’t the Mount Olympus that shows up on Google maps. I mean the Mount Olympus that people here call “mythical” because they think it doesn’t exist, just because they’re not magical enough to get there.

  Yeah, I’m a snob. My half and step siblings accuse me of that all the time. When they’re not berating me for failing to be nice.

  Eric shakes his ugly plaid coat at me.

  “I am not just saying that you’ll freeze to be mean. It’s barely forty degrees and there’s a wind. Let me drive you to the store. Mom’ll be mad if I don’t.” Eric has this tone that he uses when he’s frustrated. It’s kinda nasal, but kinda not.

  Everyone in this town speaks with a sing-song accent that I’ve never heard before, except in the movie Fargo, which everyone here says makes fun of the people of the real Fargo (and I don’t even know where that is. I didn’t even know there was a real Fargo until I moved here). Besides, everyone says real Fargo is far away, and they all claim that no one here sounds like anyone in the movie, al
though they do sound like that all the time.

  Heck, I’m beginning to even sound like that, like using the word “heck” and stuff, although my half brother Leif says I’ll never sound like I’m part of the Johnson Family because I have this snotty accent. And by snotty, he means British, but really, my accent isn’t British.

  I speak English with a mixture of accents. I mostly learned English from American movies, but I also had tutors from what Crystal’s mother calls The Continent (it took forever for me to figure out that she meant Europe), and yes, a few British teachers as well. Plus, the base-line accent is Greek. Not modern Greek, but Ancient Greek, because, you know, my family invented it.

  My dad invented it. Or part of it. Or at least he helped coin a few terms.

  It’s hard to tell with my dad, because he lies all the time, except when he’s telling the truth. And usually the truth is harder to believe.

  Like who my dad really is.

  My dad is Zeus. Around here, they call him the Greek God Zeus, like there’s some other Zeus in the world.

  There is only one Zeus. He’s my dad, and he’s a real pain in the rear most of the time, although when I said that to Mom shortly after arriving here, she pursed her lips together (which I would learn is something she does a lot when she disapproves) and reminded me that no matter what he does, he’s my father so I should show him some respect.

  Yeah, whatever.

  “You want me to drive you or not?” Eric asks. “Because if you sit here much longer, you’re going to be late.”

  I sigh and open the car door, and this blast of totally frosty air hits me. I didn’t even have to get out to start shivering. I hate it that Eric’s right. I’m not sure how I can walk the six blocks to the shopping plaza without turning into some kind of gigantic blue ice cube.

  I mean, it’s not like I’m dressed for this. I’m dressed for success, or at least, I’m dressed for success Johnson Family style.

  Nine kids, all under the age of eighteen, two parents and only one with a full-time job. Even though Karl works as some kind of major project manager and has something called an engineering degree and gets paid pretty darn good (whatever that means), it doesn’t cover the cost of housing and feeding and dealing with all of us. Mom works part time in an accounting office (full time at tax season, whatever that means), but that doesn’t bring in enough to “make up the difference,” whatever that means.