“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.