"All right," she said. "Enough torture. When do I get to meet your
family?"
"You can't," he said, writhing on the pine needles, which worked their
way up the back of his shirt and pricked him across his lower back,
feeling like the bristles of a hairbrush.
"Oh, I can, and I will," she said. She twisted harder.
He slapped her hand away. "My family is really weird," he said. "My
parents don't really ever go out. They're not like other people. They
don't talk." All of it true.
"They're mute?"
"No, but they don't talk."
"They don't talk much, or they don't talk at all?" She pronounced it
a-tall.
"Not at all."
"How did you and your brothers learn to talk, then?"
"Neighbors." Still true. The golems lived in the neighboring caves. "And
my father, a little." True.
"So you have neighbors who visit you?" she asked, a triumphant gleam in
her eye.
*Damn*. "No, we visit them." Lying now. Sweat on the shag of hair over
his ears, which felt like they had coals pressed to them.
"When you were a baby?"
"No, my grandparents took care of me when I was a baby." Deeper. "But
they died." Bottoming out now.
"I don't believe you," she said, and he saw tears glisten in her
eyes. "You're too embarrassed to introduce me to your family."
"That's not it." He thought fast. "My brother. David. He's not well. He
has a brain tumor.
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