Crystal Caves (5 page)

“What’s the question?” I ask in the same snotty tone Gordon uses. I learned something from him, obviously.

“Where’s home?”

“Why don’t you know that?” I ask, raising my voice. She’s being deliberately obtuse (which is one of Tiff’s favorite words, but I mean, really, what the heck? Megan
knows
where I lived before everything changed).

I clench my fists. Megan watches and I swear there’s a small smile on her face. Plus, she can
feel
my emotions, even if I try to hide them, and I
hate
that. I think I’m beginning to hate her.

Then I start wondering if I’m just doing what she wants. She’s pushing me to get mad, so I’m getting mad. Does that mean I’m really mad or does that mean I’m getting mad because she wants me to get mad?

I let out a breath. I’m just confusing myself. I unclench my fists, even though it’s hard. Yes, I’m mad. But she wants me to yell, so she can lecture me on being out of control.

I
hate
being out of control.

“My rules in this room are simple,” Megan says (and something in her tone tells me she’s told me this before, and I wasn’t paying attention or maybe I’m just paranoid or maybe she’s just as damn snotty as Gordon. I don’t know). “My rules are that I don’t make any assumptions. I know what you tell me and nothing more. If I ask a question, it’s because I want you to be specific.”

Oh, it sounds so reasonable. Be specific, be specific. I take another deep breath, and Megan watches. I
hate
that she can feel everything. It’s not fair.

But I’m not going to yell at her about that.

I’m going to be frickin’ specific.

“Home is pretty damn obvious,” I say, and she doesn’t yell at me for swearing, like the au pairs do or like Mother does when she’s around. “Home is Mount Olympus.”

I want to add
you stupid idiot
, but I don’t, because that would be rude. Besides, it would make me seem like I’m out of control. It seems like everything will make me seem out of control.

(Megan would ask,
What’s wrong with being out of control?
And I’d say,
Nothing, if you want to be Brit or Dionysus or someone,
which I don’t. I don’t like the way they take over a room with their stupid moods and their crazy behavior. Especially Dionysus, who always blames it on what he ate or what he drank.)

Megan’s green eyes seem even sharper than they had a minute ago. I swear, I’m going to contact Athena if I can figure out how and ask about empaths. Because it seems like Megan’s doing more than reading my emotions. It seems like she’s reading my mind.

“What part of Mount Olympus is home?” she asks.

“
All
of it.” I raise my voice even more. “
All
of it, don’t you get it?”

“The entire community?” she asks, as if she’s surprised.

“Yes,” I say. “And the palaces and the dogs and the stupid statues and that horrid library,
all
of it.”

“But not the people.”

“You asked about the community,” I say. “Isn’t a community
people
?”

She gives me a little teeny smile. “I guess it is. My mistake. So, you miss your siblings—”

“I told you that,” I snap.

“—
all
of your siblings?” she asks.

“I don’t know all of them. I don’t even know how many there are. I mean, I didn’t know the four I had here before this summer, and my dad has hundreds, literally, some of whom have completely stopped communicating with everyone at home.”

Megan nods. “You’re right. Now I’m not being specific. Do you miss all of the siblings you’ve interacted with? Athena as well as Tiffany and Brittany? Hermes? Pan? Persephone?”

“Yes,” I say. Even if they’re annoying in person, I miss that. I really, really miss that.

My eyes start filling with tears, and that pisses me off more than anything.

No. Wait. The fact that Megan would know that my eyes are filling with tears even if I turn away from her pisses me off even more.

I don’t like Megan, I really don’t. I don’t like how she makes me feel. I don’t like how she pushes, and I don’t like that she makes me angry.

“What are you thinking?” she asks.

Veronica tells me that
her
shrink always asks “What are you feeling?” and some of the other girls with shrinks agree that
feeling
is the word shrinks usually use, not
thinking
. But Megan knows what I’m feeling, and not what I’m thinking, and thinking is the only thing that I can keep (somewhat) private.

“It’s none of your damn business,” I say, then realize how childish that sounds.

“Crystal, when you’re in this room, your business is my business.”

“And you won’t tell anyone what I say and blah, blah, blah.” I stand up. “I don’t care. I really don’t.”

Tears are running down my face, but maybe if I don’t wipe them off, she won’t notice.

“I miss my family.
All
of my family. I miss my home. I miss my room. I miss my sisters. I miss my life. And I left it because of
you
.”

She hasn’t stood up, so I’m looming over her, but she doesn’t seem freaked out about that. Most people hate it when someone stands over them.

She just folds her hands over her round little tummy and says, “You agreed to leave. You thought it was a good idea.”

“I did
not
,” I say. “I didn’t want to go.”

“You said you did.” Megan is so calm. I hate that she’s so calm. She should be mad too. “All I can go on is what you say—”

“In this stupid room, I know,” I say. “But I wasn’t in this room. I was in Lost Angeles with Tiff and Brit and Daddy and you, and everyone wanted me to leave and live with Mother, except me, and I thought, how bad can it be—and
you have no idea!
”

“You’re right,” Megan says. “I have no idea. Why don’t you sit down and tell me?”

“That they hate me? That my little brothers make fun of me? That I don’t understand this place? That I want to go home? What else can I tell you? I don’t want to be here.”

She sighs ever so softly, and says, “You promised you’d stay until the winter holidays.”

“And then what?” I’m yelling now. I hope that makes her happy. It doesn’t make me happy, but I don’t know how to stop. So I start walking the length of the little room, and it takes all of my strength to keep my thumbs hooked on the pockets of my jeans. Because if my thumbs aren’t hooked, then I’ll slap those stupid plants to the floor and kick the pots.

“Then we can talk—”

“I’m already out of magic,” I say. “I didn’t want that either. And you all are going to make me wait to get it back until I’m really old. Older than Mother is now. That’s just not fair.”

And in my head, I hear Danny’s voice, mimicking Owen,
Fair is in July—
whatever that means. Half the stuff in this town means nothing to me and the other half is just plain confusing.

Megan sighs really loud this time. “I know you’re unhappy—”

“Unhappy?” I ask. “Un
happy
? Try miserable. I didn’t agree to this. Fix it.”

“I can’t,” she says. “You gave your word you would try this. That binds you. It’s only a few months, and then we all get together and talk, and I would hope that this time you speak up—”

“A few months.” I run my hand through my hair. It’s so full of gel that the strands stick together, and I wish I hadn’t done that. I almost—almost—slap a pot to the ground, but part of my brain knows better. “I don’t know if I’ll make it a few months.”

“You’re strong, Crystal,” Megan says. “You’ll make it. Let’s see what we can do to get your mother to come—”

“She’s never coming,” I say. “She hates anything to do with me. She thinks talking about feelings is stupid.”

Megan opens her mouth, and I know what she’s going to say, and if she says it, I’ll throw one of the plants at her, I will.

And as I have that thought, she closes her mouth, and nods, like some queen beckoning me to continue.

“And she thinks you’re stupid and she thinks anything to do with Daddy is stupid and she’s decided magic doesn’t exist even though someday she’ll be magical, and she’s also decided that every time she goes to Mount Olympus someone drugs her and lies to her or hypnotizes her so there’s no talking to her, besides, she’s like this Really Important Person who doesn’t have time for her real kids, let alone me, and—”

“Her real kids?” Megan asks. She would jump on that, because it’s the least important thing I said.

“Ethan and Danny and Fabian and Gordon. Her real kids. Me, I’m just the mistake,” I say, and as I do, I calm down just a little. Facts are calming, even if they’re ugly facts.

“She’s said that to you?” Megan actually sounds shocked.

“And everyone else,” I say. “Hasn’t she said it to you?”

Megan shakes her head. “I’ll call her. I’ll get her here next week.”

“Yeah, right,” I say. “There’s a better chance of sending me home than there is of you seeing Mother again. Tell you what. You get her to come here and have a session, and then I’ll come back, okay?”

“No,” Megan says. “You gave your word that you would do this every week. It’s one of the things all three of you agreed to. You have a lot to work out—”

“And our mothers agreed too, didn’t they?” I ask. “And part of what we’re supposed to do is work with them. Well, if I’m not worth working with, then I don’t need to be the only one doing the work. I—”

“You’re not,” Megan says, and now she stands up. She’s giving off her
I think we should hug
vibe. I ignore it. “I agreed to work with you too.”

“Whoopee ding,” I say. “You just judge me and ask stupid questions. You’re not working with me. No one is working with me. I’m done.”

“Crystal—”

I raise my hands so she doesn’t have to keep talking to me anymore. I back away, and then I walk from the room with as much dignity as I can manage.

Megan just makes me miserable, and Mother’s not trying, and I can’t talk to Tiff and Brit, and I can’t go home, so why should I even play this game anymore? If no one else is trying, why should I?

I slam my way out of the office, then take the stairs because the elevator will make me feel like I’m in a cage.

I burst onto the street filled with honking and people walking by and construction noise. Nobody cares here either. One guy in a suit gives me a startled look, then walks around me, but no one else looks at all.

I take a deep breath. The air tastes like exhaust and burned coffee, nothing like the fresh air from home.

Where I can’t go for months and months.

I’m on my own.

I just have to figure out what I want to do next.

FOUR

I WALK DOWN the streets of New York. The buildings tower over me, and cars zoom by. People stream in clumps from one traffic light to the next.

I learned traffic first, then lights, then how to negotiate all of it—the people, the cars, the sheer noise. I can’t tune it out, although Veronica says I will after a while, but I don’t have to pay attention to every shout, every honk, every banging door any more.

I keep my chin up and don’t make eye contact, weaving around people like they’re moving statutes.

I have a credit card. I could just get a hotel room, or I could figure out how airplanes work and fly to Tiff or Brit and hang out there, maybe move in with one of them. (Oh, yeah, that would work. Because they’d just call Megan, or their moms would throw me out or something, because we all
gave our words
, like that means something.)

I walk past the big complex that’s Lincoln Center, with the confusing traffic circle and the subway entrance right in the middle of all of that, and think of giving it all the finger (because Agatha says that’s a New York thing to do, giving everything and everyone you want to diss the finger), but I don’t. It’s not Lincoln Center’s fault that it’s become a thing for me.

It’s my brothers’ fault for making fun of me because I don’t know New York landmarks. My
half
brothers. No one in my family is a full anything. My half brothers have full siblings, but I don’t. I’m the product of a one-night stand (or maybe a one-week fling—Mother won’t tell me, exactly, and Daddy can’t remember), and the only way Mother knew I was Daddy’s girl was the magic that sparked from my fingers in the delivery room itself.

Daddy showed up right after that. I had apparently tried to turn the entire delivery room into a womb (
Hey!
Daddy had famously said [at least according to Mother].
Smart kid. She knows what she wants.
) Mother was anxious and terrified and not willing to raise a magical daughter on her own, particularly since back then, E’s father was making noises about revisiting custody, and so Mother just gave me to Daddy without asking many questions.