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

is—so I can’t put digital music on it, not that I would know how. So I’m stuck with no magic and old tech.
    Today in the coffee shop, they’re playing something all instrumental—pianos and stuff—and I like it but not as much as Ella and Cole.
    There are fresh pastries in the little window beside the coffee machine and money’s in the tip jar, and no one is sitting at my favorite table, which is by the window, across from the big clock on the post office so that I can keep an eye on the time.
    I reach into the pocket of my jeans, checking to make sure I have money. I’ve learned to do that much, at least. I have a crumpled five which is just barely enough for a regular mocha with sprinkles and one of those great-looking chocolate-dipped cookies.
    I get in line to order, and the guy behind the counter turns around, and who is it but that Josh kid who talked to me on the first day.
    My cheeks get all hot and I actually look at the door, wondering if he’d notice if I bolt.
    But he hasn’t noticed me so far, and if things are anything like they’ve been lately, he won’t notice me anyway, so I just wait, clutching my five.
    The girl in front of me is talking to him about piercings, probably because she has dozens of them, all on her face, and he manages to speak to her anyway when I’d be saying, “Dude, gross!” right to her face. He hands her a paper cup with a lid and one of those cardboard cup holder thingies. She steps away to put in sugar or something and I step up, and he says,
    “Hey, it’s the Interim Fate. Can you believe it?”
    My face gets really hot and I almost drop my money. How does he know who I am (or more precisely, who I was)? Then I remember the t-shirt I wore the first day of school, and I flush even hotter. He read it. And remembered it. Which meant that when we were talking, he wasn’t looking at my face.
    Which should, according to my stepmom, bother me, but it doesn’t. Instead, I clutch that five a little tighter and say, “Wow. You have a long memory.”
    He winks at me. “For pretty things.”
    I’m not a thing, and I don’t think of myself as pretty, but I don’t argue with him. My Aunt Aphrodite says never to contradict a man who finds you attractive, so I don’t.
    Instead, I just stand there looking dorky.
    “You want something?” he asks.
    I want this conversation to go on and on, I think, but I don’t say, because that sounds needy and I promised myself that today, even with my appointment with Megan, I wouldn’t sound needy.
    He tilts his head, like I’m some strange bug, and then I realize he’s waiting for an answer to the question. A coffee-style answer, not a life-style answer.
    “Um…” By the Powers, I’ve forgotten what I want.
    “Hey,” the guy behind me says, “if you haven’t read the menu, can I go first?”
    “A regular mocha with sprinkles,” I say as if I’ve just remembered the answer to a pop quiz (man, that sounds even worse than needy), “and a chocolate-dipped cookie.”
    This Josh kid grins at me, then shouts the order to the guy at the coffee machine. Not that the guy couldn’t have heard me; the store’s that small. But Josh shouts anyway, and the guy nods anyway, because it’s a coffee store tradition or something, and then Josh says to me, “That’ll be four-fifty.”
    Which leaves me barely enough for a cheesy tip. Tips I get. Tips are how you impress the servants here. Which makes me flush even more. Josh’s a servant, and I’m thrilled he’s been looking at my chest.
    I hand him the crumpled five.
    He punches the cash register, which makes beepy computery noises, and says, “You ever find that room?”
    School. Yeah. That conversation we had that first day, which apparently he remembers better than I do, which is weird because I thought I’d been replaying every single sentence anyone voluntarily spoke to me.
    “I found it,” I say. “Not sure I wanted to.”
    “Mr. McG isn’t bad,” Josh says. “He just