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

Mom about my temper tantrum. Mom’s supposed to talk to Megan about the problems dealing with a formerly magical teenager who has to live like a “normal” person, and Megan’s vowed not to divulge any secrets—mine or Mom’s—unless the situation is dire.
    When Megan set up that rule, I asked what dire was, and Megan said that dire was if one of us was getting violent or abusive or stuff like that. What about suicidal? Mom asked, and Megan looked at her like Mom had said a dirty word. I got the sense Megan didn’t want that idea floated anywhere near me.
    That was before we had officially left Mount Olympus, and I didn’t think depression was an option. Or suicidal depression. Or anxiety. Or loneliness.
    I just planned to swan through my life here, like I had swanned through my life there until Dad made us Interim Fates and everyone in the magical world started to hate us for not knowing how to do the job. Of course, they blamed Dad since it was his power-play, but still, it didn’t feel good.
    It really didn’t feel good to be used by my father for political purposes.
    I’m thinking about all that as I bust out the door of the building and head to the coffee shop. Eugene is kinda different from where I grew up. Okay, a lot different. There are cars here, for one thing, that just swoosh past as if no one’s paying attention to anything.
    In Eugene, the streets are regulated, so the cars go one direction on one street and the opposite direction on the next street. Away from downtown, that regulation changes, but downtown is ordered and everyone follows the rules.
    That’s different from home too.
    A few blocks from Megan’s office is the river. It’s wide and slow moving and has great trails beside it. I wish Mom’s appointment was longer because then I’d spend my Sunday afternoons walking along the river. But it’s not and I can’t so I have to go to the coffee shop.
    I stop anyway and look at Skinner Butte. It’s like the center of town, and it’s kinda the backdrop for the whole downtown. It’s covered with fir trees (we don’t have those at home) and it looks like the opening of almost every Christmas movie ever made, only without the snow.
    I want to climb to the top sometime, but I don’t think I have time for that either with Mom’s appointment.
    The butte makes the downtown seem like it’s shoved against a mountain (a tiny mountain) and kinda makes it feel protected. Even though I screamed at Megan that I didn’t like it here, I was lying.
    I like this part of it. I like downtown and I like how weird Eugene is compared with living in the clouds on Mount Olympus. I even like the way the traffic swooshes by and the way the traffic lights cheep at you when it’s time to cross the street (Mom says that’s for blind people so they know when to cross; I wonder how come somebody doesn’t just tell them) and I like the way the sun filters through the buildings to make everything seem sharp-edged and new.
    Mom says the sharp-edged and new look comes from the lack of humidity in the air and that it goes away in the winter, but right now, the height of fall, it’s great.
    The coffee shop isn’t half bad either. It’s better than any other place I’ve been in, including the ones in Los Angeles that I went to when we were first talking to Megan. First, it smells of really, really good coffee. My mouth waters the minute I enter. Second, it plays great music. Not the stuff the kids at school listen to. Stuff my mom says is old-fashioned. Jazz and popular song (which is a category: go figure) and blues.
    Last time I was here, they played someone called Ella Fitzgerald and showed me the CD which was Ella Sings Cole Porter and I loved it and mentioned it to Mom and she actually bought me a copy the next day, which I’ve been listening to over and over again in my room on a CD player, which my TV/YouTube/movie watching tells me is so ten years ago.
    But my cell phone isn’t smart—whatever that