Tiffany Tumbles: Book One of the Interim Fates Read Online Free

blackboard, taking about French wars with Indians (I didn’t know the French went into India, and how come he’s talking about that in American History?) and the boy next me has actually fallen asleep.
    No one is listening—not even the teacher, I think—and I’m short pages 39-55. But I don’t say anything because I don’t want this teacher to yell at me again.
    Now I understand why everyone has all these backpacks because how do they carry the falling-apart books without them?
    The bell rings, stopping Mr. McGuillicuty mid-sentence, and everybody stands and starts talking at once, except the sleeping kid next to me.
    The girl who whispered to me stops beside me. She sticks out her hand. “I’m Jenna Foster.”
    I juggle the papers into my free arm and take her hand, shaking it once. Weird habit, this one. “Tiffany VanDerHoven.”
    “Where do you go next?”
    I have to juggle some more to find the schedule. “Journalism.”
    “Wow, cool. I don’t have cool classes like that one. You’re not on the total loser track.”
    I frown at that, not sure exactly what she means. She looks at my schedule, then helps me get organized.
    “Come on,” she says. “I’ll walk you there.”
    I’m really, really relieved.
    She takes me down this hallway, then says, “You don’t have to read those pages.”
    There’s a million kids and they’re all scurrying from place to place or hanging by the water fountain and yakking or watching me walk by. Lots of the girls are just staring at me, and a few of the guys too. Only the guys make me wish I had on more than my t-shirt.
    “Why not?” I ask.
    “Because Mr. McGuillicuty just repeats stuff out of the book,” she says, “and then he tells us what’s going to be on the quizzes so that we get good grades.”
    I actually stop in the middle of the hall because I’m so stunned. One kid bumps into me, mumbles an apology, and goes around, then so does everyone else.
    Jenna stops after a second and looks back at me. “You okay?”
    “Why would he do that?”
    “Do what?” she asks.
    “Mr. McGuillicuty.” I’m frowning. I can feel it. And Aphrodite, who likes to pretend she’s my aunt even though we don’t know who she’s really related to (except her son Cupid), says I should never frown because my face’ll get stuck that way. So I try to unfrown. “Why would he give us the answers?”
    Not even my dad gave us the answers when Brittany, Crystal, and I were acting heads of magic. He made us use books and stuff (which meant I had to use books and stuff because Brit and Crystal refused to study). He wanted us to think for ourselves.
    “Mr. McGuillicuty doesn’t like the new rules.” Jenna looks pointedly at her watch. “If I’m going to get you to the J room and then get to my class on time, we gotta hurry.”
    “Okay.” I walk with her again. The other students no longer flow around us. “What new rules?”
    “You know—oh, you probably don’t. Teachers get fired if their kids don’t do well these days. It’s that whole government Common Core Left Behind thing. Those are the only real tests we study for, at least in Mr. McG’s class.”
    I’m confused. She says all this like I should know what it is, and I suppose if I was a real good American kid, I would, but I’m not, so I don’t.
    “So I don’t have to study?” I ask.
    “Just for Mr. McG.,” she says. “You got some toughies on your schedule.”
    I put my schedule on top of the pile. “Like who?”
    She bends over it, like we’re studying together, forgetting, I guess, that we’re in a hurry. She points at each class and gives me the rundown.
    My math teacher’ll be tough, and so will science, but the social studies teachers—all three of them—are just “marking time to retirement,” whatever that is. Then there’s the English teacher who sometimes gets “a bug up her butt” and “makes people study” but sometimes doesn’t care, and the journalism teacher who thinks the