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

be tougher than I thought.”
    She gets up and goes into the cooking part of the kitchen. She opens the fridge and gets a bottle of wine and a glass, then brings them back to the table.
    It’s like the short walk gave her time to think because after she pours the wine (it’s red and looks as good as some of the stuff Dionysus used to bring us), she says, “To answer your question, yes, it’s okay to like servants.”
    “But there’s more to it, isn’t there?” I ask.
    “Only the entire history of our race,” she says, then rubs her forehead again.
    “So what should I do?” I ask.
    “Stop thinking in classes,” she says.
    “Then why go to school?” I ask.
    She looks at me through her fingers, and I get the sense that she meant something else, something I didn’t understand. She sighs a third time and says, “Just eat, Tiff. Okay? Just eat.”

 
     
     
     
    EIGHT
     
     
    SO I EAT . Then I hang out a bit and watch some TV (weird, seeing it live. I don’t like those commercial thingies) and then I go to bed. Mom doesn’t say anything more about servants. Not that night, not the next morning, not all week.
    I go through my routine and I try not to say stupid stuff. I don’t call anyone a servant. I barely call people by name. I almost never get called on either—the teachers avoid me, like they expect me to be dumb or behind or both.
    The only thing I seem to be good at is P.E. I can run faster than anybody, especially at short distances. I’m really good at jumping too, so Mrs. Yates wants me to go out for basketball in a few months. I’m too embarrassed to tell her I don’t know what basketball is. I actually have to Google it when I get home, and then I learn that it’s this important American game that I should be honored to be a part of, that it’s like a religion to hundreds (maybe thousands, maybe millions) of people, and if I’m really good, I can get scholarships to college when I’m older.
    The girls in my P.E. class hate it that I’m good. I guess one of them—Helen?—used to be the best runner, but I can beat her with my shoes off. She says I’m good because I’m Greek, and she doesn’t make it sound nice. So finally I turn on her one morning.
    She’s this flashy blonde with no fat at all. Her gym suit (we all have to wear these dorky two piece things that the school provides [for the poor kids] or that we buy and leave [again for the poor kids] so no one feels left out or dorkier than someone else) has pink embroidery around the collar and some rhinestones on the sleeves, even though we’re not supposed to “tart things up” as Mrs. Yates says.
    Mrs. Yates never yells at Helen because Helen’s too good to get yelled at, I guess. Helen always stands near the bleachers when she’s not participating. Our gym is regulation-sized (whatever that means) and has a full basketball court. We’re going to have to use a community center in the winter for swimming (I don’t know how you swim in a center, but I guess I’ll learn) but everybody’s really proud of the gym floor. We’re not even allowed on it without special shoes, which my mom calls tennis shoes, but everyone here calls Nikes even if they’re not.
    Anyway, during class on Monday, Mrs. Yates tells everybody that I’m the best runner she’s seen in twenty-five years of teaching, and Helen’s all smiley. (I looked; I know she hates it when I get attention.)
    Then we go into the locker room to shower and change out of the stinky gym suits, and Helen says, really loud, that the only reason I’m good is because I’m Greek.
    I can’t take it anymore. Helens have been trouble for my family since the dawn of time. I glare over my shoulder, wishing for some kind of magic power, any kind or maybe even just a guardian: y’know, someone from my past who’d zoom in and zip up Helen’s lips or turn her into a baton or something.
    “I thought Africans were good at running,” one of the other girls says. I never learned her