As far as tricks went, that one was pretty basic. The fey spoke to see who could hear them. Katherine mastered ignoring faeries when she was barely out of diapers.
"Hello? ¡Hola!"
It was the brief word in Spanish that caught Katherine's attention. The fey, even the most Americanized of them, tended to speak Gaelic if they weren't speaking English. They came from a Celtic culture, and their language reflected it--but maybe that was different in the Southwest.
She glanced around, trying to find a not-entirely-awkward space between the pretense of not hearing if the speaker was fey and not looking like she was thoroughly rude if the speaker was human. Being half-fey didn't come with a "how-to" book, so in such cases, Katherine just fumbled around as best she could.
"New neighbor," the girl said, louder now. "Take out your earbuds."
Katherine fumbled at her ears as if there were earbuds in them. Her hair covered her ears, so it was a semi-believable gesture.
“Hi . . .”
“Gina.” The girl stuck out her hand as if to shake. She was brash and friendly, and Katherine fumbled with it.
“Kat.” She accepted the hand and tried to shake. That was another on the “don’t do” list, as if she somehow wouldn’t notice the person in front of her was fey. As if she’d expose her heritage by accidentally touching them.
“I was starting to think you’d never come outside. Too hot?” Gina nodded, but then continued as if Katherine had answered. “A lot of people from back East are like that. Just wait until you acclimate! Then all the ‘it’s a dry heat’ jokes will begin.”
Katherine opened her mouth.
“So what do you do in there?” Gina continued before Katherine could speak. “Like I hear the fights. Your Mom, right? Fight lady? Butthat . . .” She nodded toward the house where the gong and drum cacophony were still on high. “Make me lose my ever-loving mind, right?”
“Family.” Katherine shrugged.
Maybe having a friend would be easy if she wasn’t really required to talk—and Gina was a fountain of words.
“Are you too East Coast to walk?” Gina motioned. “I’m meeting some friends. Desert’s cold, got to walk when you can, right? You’ll learn.”
“Walk? Like . . . out there?” Katherine gestured to the scrub, Palo Verde trees, and darkened evening.
Out there was dangerous.
Out there was the domain of the faeries.
Out there was forbidden.
But, then again, so was stealing the car. Katherine vacillated. There wasn’t a great answer here. She had no friends, but what if there were faeries? Should she go to protect Gina?
“Afraid of cactus? Or the coyotes? Or ‘dangerous immigrants’ like the news talks about?” Gina’s voice took on an edge. “I was trying to be friendly, but if you have some sort of racist—”
“Whoa! No. My dad was dark,” Katherine said hurriedly.
By “dark,” Katherine meant he leaned toward the Dark Court, allgancanaghsdid, but the truth was that his skin was also brown enough to have people ask intemperate questions. She was thought to be American Indian in South Dakota, Black or maybe “Mexican” (as if all of Latin America and South America was Mexico) in North Carolina. Katherine couldn’t ever talk about herself in terms of what her race was, though. She wasn’t any of those. She was half-fey—and that wasn’t a category that humans understand. Her mom was white, but Katherine’s own skin was darker because of her fey side.
The bottom line was that Katherine Miller fit exactly nowhere. She wasn’t all human, all fey, actually Brown, or able to discuss any of it without lying—and oh, yeah, lies physically hurt.
She cleared her throat and said, “I was going to, umm, borrow the car and go for a drive, but I could walk.”
Gina smiled. “Excellent. No one moves here, so we’ve been waiting to meet you.”
“We?” Katherine echoed quietly.
“Those of us already trapped here,” Gina said in a teasing tone. “Seriously. Unless you’re a survivalist or your car breaks down or you have dreams of being a meth cooker, why in the name of all that’s good would you move here?”
This was one of those moments where lying would be an excellent skill to have, but more and more, it hurt to lie. She could still do it, but it felt like Katherine would choke or cough uncontrollably, like her throat was closing when she lied. So she aimed for evasive but true.
“My mom picks where we move. Since my dad died—”