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

that movies as a source for life in America aren’t always good.) I have money, but I did see Supersize Me , and I know better than to make a steady diet of fatty foods, especially now that I don’t have magic to counteract any weight gain.
    Mom didn’t pack me a lunch—some kids have these brown bag things that look a little greasy by the middle of the day—so I had to buy food at the cafeteria. Food there is provided free for really poor kids (who show some kind of card) and everyone else pays by the item.
    I’m beginning to figure out the rules behind buying stuff, which feels like real progress.
    Anyway, I looked at all the food behind glass cases and the stuff that looked edible (which wasn’t a lot of it) seemed to have a lot of cheese and noodles and fatty stuff, so I didn’t order it. I could also get a slice of pizza reheated in the microwave (yeah, I know what those are) or someone could fry me a burger.
    So I was right back at the burger conundrum.
    I finally grabbed an apple, a banana, and a piece of cake, just because I was so stressed out. I took a bottle of water from the iced display and paid for everything, then sat down at the closest table.
    All by myself.
    I knew better than to sit at someone else’s table—every teen movie has that scene, and it’s always bad—and unlike in the movies, this lunchroom has lots of open tables. I brushed all the crumbs off mine, then sat down and thought about opening a book, but changed my mind.
    A book made me look too nerdy.
    But if I just sat there, watching everyone else, I looked needy.
    I realized that I had never, ever eaten a meal by myself before. Not once in my whole life. It was either me and Mom (on our trips together) or me and Brittany and Crystal (most of the time) or me and the whole dysfunctional family at some heroic banquet or something.
    Never just me.
    I didn’t know what to do.
    I ate the cake first. It was too sweet and kinda gooey, and I set it aside.
    No one noticed. No one even looked.
    Then I ate the banana kinda slow. It was a little green, but I didn’t care. I was really hungry.
    The kids one table over were playing cards with real cards. The boys two tables over were passing around some pictures on their phones and giggling—I mean giggling . I’d never heard boys giggle before.
    A couple of girls were sharing earbuds, with a phone between them, like they were listening to the same music or something. Some guys leaned against the wall, phones in one hand, messing with the screens with their thumbs. For some reason, that made me really nervous.
    Three girls sat at separate tables all by themselves. They read their schoolbooks. Another girl sat alone and read a novel. They were all either overweight or wore ugly glasses or had awful clothes.
    A boy sat alone too, but he was tapping stuff on a tablet computer thingie, and seemed like he didn’t care about what was happening around him.
    Kids came from the cafeteria, talking and laughing and gossiping and texting all at the same time, and they didn’t notice me either. It was like, by sitting alone, I’d done an invisible spell or something. I almost—almost—wanted to go to some table and start a scene, but I didn’t.
    I didn’t have the stomach for it.
    I was still pretty afraid.
    I ate the apple. The crunches seemed like they echoed, even though they didn’t. They just sounded louder than normal apple crunches because I felt like everybody was listening, even though I had a hunch no one was.
    Then I drank my water, threw out my banana peel and apple core, and left.
    I was shaking by the time I got to my next class (English, home of the Shakespeare poems, if you’re wondering). I almost walked out the front door and just went home. I’d never been invisible before, not even when I had magic. I never saw the point.
    Twice I checked to make sure my hands were still visible. They were. To me, anyway.
    I thought about asking someone if they could see me, but then I decided