Beach Day

2: Tiff Definitely For Sure Has Friends

The interior of her grandparents' house exactly the way Tiff remembers it. Her grandfather has never been one for change. Even on the old shoe rack by the door, there's the sandals she left here by accident, sandwiched under a pair of Uncle Mike's lawn-mowing sneakers. There's the prayer box on the table on the way in; there's the extensive collection of Jesus portraits on the walls of Meemaw Hilda's sitting room. It is the same as it always was.

Aunt Esther doesn't seem fazed, either. She stops by the door to slip off her shoes and sets the unwieldy platforms in an empty spot on the rack. Tiff still doesn't get how her aunt drives in those, in the same way she isn't sure she gets that the house hasn't changed since Esther was a teenager. Her keys still fit in the lock. She may have kept them in a shoebox in her closet until they started the drive down from Washington, but they still work.

"Esther, honey, is that you?" There's the telltale sound of Meemaw Hilda's voice, echoing from the kitchen.

"Yes, Mother. We're here!" she calls back, though they all know that Meemaw could have gathered that.

Tiff stays quiet. She isn't sure why, but something deep down inside her has made the decision to keep her mouth shut. She should fall into old habits: eyes cast downward, soft steps across old tiles, not speaking unless spoken to.

When Meemaw calls back that they should all join her in the kitchen, they do as they're told. It's hard not to. Living in Fort Reverence wasn't a total horror show. Meemaw Hilda certainly made it better. Maybe it's because she spent most of Tiff's childhood taking care of her, making sure she did her homework, making sure she wasn't totally miserable. The lessons on baking never stuck, but the feeling of someone loving her never really left, even if it was more or less conditional. There has to be love left for her, though. Somewhere in the left-behind water shoes and the hidden family photos in boxes in the old mausoleum, there has to be something left.

She keeps her hands out of her pockets. Good girls don't ball their hands into fists and stick them into shorts cut from jeans that acid burned through one time. (So much for lab safety.) She needs to be good, doesn't she? She needs to be who she used to be, and everything will be fine. That's the best course of action here, especially when her parents inevitably turn up.

No— no, that's stupid. That's stupid. She shouldn't have to go back into a shell she broke years ago just to be seen as a person. Tiff Sheridan is not who she used to be. She's eighteen, she's a demigod, she has saved the world three times over— if they can't see that she is someone new built from the same old spare parts, then they don't deserve to be around her.

That doesn't mean she isn't going to go through with it. It's just that the principle burns bright in her chest.

She follows her aunt and cousin into the kitchen. It's like she never left: toaster on the counter, cutting board held in place with rubber pips, towels on the handle of the oven door decreeing that Home Is Where The Heart Is and Love is Spoken Here.

She just has to keep it together. She can repeat that it's hard over and over again, but the fact is that it doesn't matter. She's going to do it.

Tiff takes a seat at the kitchen table. While her aunt takes care of something in the kitchen proper and her cousin heads out to pick up something from the store at her grandmother's request, Tiff takes up the art of peeling eggs without a word. In the back of her head, she wishes Kepler were in here with her. It kills her to be without him these days. She understands that there are places he can't go (bookstores, farmer's markets, McDonald's), but it's like leaving a piece of her soul behind, even if he's only a few hundred feet away.