Crystal Caves (20 page)

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, although 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, what
ever
.

“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.

Since I added a strain to their budget (and I do know what that means), I have to get a part-time job so I can start saving for school (whatever that means, since I’m already in school, not that I’m very good at it, because my education at Mount Olympus is nothing like my education here).

Which is all a long way of saying that what I’m wearing is a hand-me-down dress from my stepsister Lise (and the dang thing, while it’s a lovely sky blue, is one size too big for me) and panty hose that are all my own (and what a joy
those
things are [and Lise says no self-respecting teenager wears them, so I guess I’m not a self-respecting teenager]) and the only pair of dressy high heels that fit me (not that they really fit me; they’re one size too small because they’re my half sister Anna’s, which means they hurt like a son of a gun, as Karl would say).

“Last offer,” Eric says, “because I’m starting to get cold now.”

I look at him, and can’t really decide what the heck to do. Karl says you have to show up for a job interview looking like you don’t need the job, and Eric’s car screams
I need money
(at least, that’s what my half brother Ivan says). You can hear the car from miles away because it needs a muffler, and it needs a bumper and it needs—well, a lot of stuff. But Eric is giving it some TLC, which I don’t entirely understand but take to mean he’s trying to fix it, and—

“Screw it,” he says, and puts the car in drive. He starts to pull out, and I have to yank the door to close it, which is hard because there really is a wind, and it’s turning the door into a sail.

“Hey!” I say, because really, I can’t say much more given that I’m fighting with the door and something’s beeping and thank heavens I still have my seatbelt on.

“You don’t get a vote,” he says. “I’m driving you. You dithered.”

He has to stop before he pulls onto Caitlin Avenue, which is when I finally get the car door closed. I want to glare at him, but I’m still shivering and I think he might’ve saved my butt, since these heels aren’t that stable either.

He pulls onto Caitlin and I peer at the red brick buildings of the University of Wisconsin-Superior (which always look nice unlike the rest of the town, which needs paint) and then he turns onto Belknap Street and heads the few blocks toward the store.

It’s in this old plaza. There’s a grocery store “anchoring” it, at least that’s what Mom says, and a liquor store that’s been there “forever” (even though I don’t know how long
forever
could be since this town didn’t even exist until 1854, which certainly isn’t forever ago [and I know how old the town is because I had a stupid “forever” argument with Ivan, who’s ten and thinks he knows everything about everything, which I’m beginning to realize he doesn’t]).

There’s an AT&T store, which I keep wanting to go into, ever since my sister Crystal bought me and Tiff iPhones that our mothers made us give back, and a pizza place and a Subway across the parking lot, and a couple of other retail stores. One of them went out of business and a new one is opening, and it’s pretty easy to tell which one that is because it’s got a big sign on its only window that says,
Now Hiring
.
Apply Online
, which is exactly what I did (with Eric’s help).

The store is some kind of chain bargain store, at least that’s what Eric says, and he says they’re putting a toe into Superior to see if they want to open a big box store outside the city limits. I have no idea why a place that sells a little bit of everything wants to open a store outside of town that sells only large boxes, but hey, I don’t understand most things about this world I find myself in.

Eric seems to know that I’m nervous and he also seems to know that I don’t want anyone to see the car, so he parks behind Subway.

“Walk on over,” he says. “I’m getting a snack.” Then he smirks at me. “And don’t freeze.”

Sometimes he’s really nice, and sometimes he’s a real jerk, and sometimes he’s both at once.

Can you tell that I’m confused by just about everything? Including everyone in this town, I swear to God (as Anna always says before Mom tells her to stop swearing to anyone).

I get out and totter my way across the parking lot. Now I regret not having Eric’s coat no matter how terrible it would look. Every part of me is cold. And the wind reaches under my skirt like it works for my nephew Pan (who is waaaaaaay older than me, by the way, like by centuries).

I clutch the purse to my side, and the stupid bedazzled fake jewels are turning cold under my palm, which means that my hands are as cold as I think they are, which is just not a good thing.

I get to the sidewalk and almost trip climbing up the curb. Up close, the store looks dark and creepy and empty, but as I wonder if I should turn around, a woman opens the door.

“Are you Brittany Johnson?” she asks. I can barely see her through the gloom.

“Um, yeah,” I say, even though technically, I’m not a Johnson. Mom just decided to give me Karl’s last name to avoid the confusion. Because my birth certificate calls me Lundquist, which is Mom’s old last name, and Mom doesn’t want me explaining to everyone why all her other kids are Johnson and she has one Lundquist because no one in town, apparently, knows she gave birth “out of wedlock,” which is, I guess, something totally frowned on here.

(Pretty dang common where I come from. In fact, all except like a handful of my half siblings on my father’s side are the product of his wandering eye. His wife Hera has other choice words for us kids, which I don’t want to use. She doesn’t like the fact that he’s spent the past several thousand years fathering kids on other women, but she can’t really complain too much since her eye wanders too. Which I said to Mom once, and she held up her hands and said,
I don’t want to hear it, Brittany, I really don’t
in a tone I haven’t heard her use before or since.)

“Well, come on in,” the store lady says, “before we both freeze.”

I want to pump my hand in the air and say,
Yes!
, like Leif does when his favorite sports team scores, but I don’t. Instead I smile and slip inside.

The store is warm, and I let out a little sigh. It’s nice to be out of the wind.

It’s not dark and gloomy in here as it looked from the outside. It only seemed that way because the store lady has the lights off up front. Toward the back, there are lots and lots of fluorescent lights, and shelves that are in pieces, and boxes everywhere. Some tubby guy who’s older than Karl and wears a plaid shirt that makes Eric’s coat look stylish is piling even more boxes against a far wall.

The store lady smiles at me. She’s wearing blue jeans and a denim shirt that would actually look pretty good with my ugly purse. She has on no makeup (which is unusual around here), and her dark brown hair is pulled back into a ponytail. She pulls off some big gloves and extends a hand toward me.

“I’m Jill Larson,” she says. “I’m the manager here. And, I’ll be honest, I know your mom.”

Ah, nepotism. I know the word because it was the center of my life not too long ago. My dad excels at nepotism.

That’s why he chose me and Tiff and Crystal to become the Interim Fates. And that’s how we got approved. You see, my dad decided (in a fit of pique, Hera says) to get rid of true love, and he figured the best way to do that was to make the actual Fates step down.