Read Crystal Caves for Free Online Page B

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.
    Daddy, apparently, had to insist that Mother visit me every year so I would get to know the mortal side of my family. At least, that’s the story he told Megan. Mother has no idea. She just knew that visiting Greece—well, Mount Olympus—once a year was the requirement of getting me out of her daily life, so she jumped at it.
    I feel sick. My stomach aches and my shoulders feel like rocks. All the road grit and crap in the air make my eyes tear up. At least, that’s what I would tell someone if someone was walking with me. But the only people walking with me are the ones I’m carrying in my imagination.
    I stop by the big statue of some guy named Columbus as cars drive in circles around me. My heart