 She's the author of a brand new book called Pretty Peg. It's a queer young adult fantasy novel. If that's not good enough, it's set in Oakland. All right, please welcome Skye Allen. So this is my book Pretty Peg. And I wanted to read a scene from the, it's kind of between the two main characters. So I thought I should tell you who they are. Josie is a 17-year-old girl. She's our hero. And Nicky is an elf. And they have been in and out of the fairy realm. And there's a magic puppet theater that makes a small appearance in this scene. We were at the corner of 43rd and Key Street now, my street. I watched my yellow high tops turn the corner. I didn't stop them. She's going to know where I live now. All I'm doing is bringing this fey problem home, like it's not already there, I thought. When I looked up, she was in front of me again. I stumbled and rocked on my heels to catch myself. She put her hands out as if to steady me, and they rested on my upper arms. I glanced down at the long fingers of her hand on my left bicep, the way the blood bustle snaked around the middle knuckle. I'm no good at saying what you do to me, she said. Oh, I thought. I breathed in fog and the cinnamon smell of her hair and wondered why I couldn't feel my feet. But you used me, I said. It came out in a whisper. I said, I was sorry, she said. She was searching my face from maybe two inches away. I could feel her breath on my mouth. Timothy said, you had a girlfriend, I said. Timothy is a lying sack of shit. May the lady forgive me, she said. What about never give your heart to the fey, I said. Just an old saying, she said. Her hands slid up my arms. We were between streetlights, arms length from the dense jasmine hedge that hid most of the black Victorian house on the corner from view. The creamy smell of the little white flowers filled my throat. She ran a finger and thumb along my right ear, and I took a shuddering breath to steady myself. She doesn't have a girlfriend. She likes me. This is where she wants to be, I thought. How did you know I was at the Winter Queen's Theater Place tonight, I asked. Neil tried to follow you. Blossom found him at Tilden Park and sent him home, she said. I hope you people didn't get him in even more trouble. He was already grounded, I said. She shook her head, tugged lightly on a piece of my hair, brushed my collarbone with her fingertips. I felt an electric charge through the thick fabric. I have to go home, I said. I felt confused. I needed to go sort out my feelings before this went any further. I pictured the blinking fluorescent tube over the kitchen sink and the cold metal of the door handle when I would go into the bathroom to run the taps and drown out the sound of scales. The pile of textbooks next to my laptop and the dirty dish architecture that must be in the sink. I was going to make banana waffles and write my Spanish essay and I am with Neil. I needed to do something normal, no matter how much my body was telling me to pull Nikki in until there was cinnamon on my tongue. Uh-huh, I'm coming with you, just to the door, she said. Her hand hooked into my elbow. Oh, well, maybe I didn't need to be alone to sort out my feelings. But what if Laura came home after all? I'd have to introduce them. Piano, savant, sister, meat, non-human, non-what? Girlfriend? She was definitely not my girlfriend. Date? Was there anyone else who dated elves? Besides my sister Margaret, of course. Me and her, we had our own little fetish group of two. I felt a little twist of emotion that was missing her and fear about what would happen to me if I got more involved with the fey. Too late, so too late, I thought. So, you know your sister's okay, right? Nikki asked. She managed to walk so that her shoulder touched mine and the zipper on her jacket pinged against my thigh. I'll call her again, but yeah, I said. I didn't look at Nikki's face when I said it. I was afraid of what she'd see on my face, the thought that we were headed to my house together and there was no one there. I didn't slow down when we got to the driveway, just ducked under the wet Camelia bush that covered half the front door. Through the big picture window, I could see the lamp on in the living room behind the ancient couch. I was glad Laura had left it on. I was still creeped out. I dug my keys out of my bag and leaned against the sticking deadbolt until it ground open. You mind if I look around, Nikki said? And she was passed me into the living room, head raised and sweeping the corners of the room with her eyes. Are you like my bodyguard now? I thought I had all this magic protection and stuff, I said. Josie, tell me honestly that you believe your own home is unknown to my winter kin. You have to understand who you are to the folk. A spy of the winter court found you just tonight. He had orders to, I know, I saw. I said, I put my palms up, I give. She grand, one front tooth crossed the other one at the bottom corner. I should have asked. Your person and your clan are safer than they were from any kind of fey mischief, yes. But it would put my mind at rest to see for myself that your sister remembered to lock the back door. She said, you did ask, I said. I shrugged my hoodie off and threw it over the back of the couch. I wondered how she knew Laura was so absent-minded. Nikki strode into the kitchen, kneeling at the back door with her hands on both sides of the knob. She bent her head and seemed to be concentrating hard on something I couldn't see. I watched her straight back disappear into Laura's bedroom and the bathroom, lights switching briefly on and then off again and I froze with dread as she headed for my room. But all she did was duck her dark head in and pull the door closed and turn toward the staircase. More up there, she asked. No doors up there, but yeah, I said. Had I made the bed? I did a frantic mental inventory of what was displayed on the shower rod. I remembered at least one hideous off-white bra with the lace all-pilly and gray. As soon as Nikki had taken most of the stairs, two at a time, I dove for the bathroom. There was a post-it shaped like a pot of gold stuck to the middle of the mirror. A rainbow framed the top and the blue sky was filled with thick pencil handwriting. I'm at rehearsal, L. Was it possible that I had left the house earlier tonight without going into the bathroom? I felt like an idiot. I texted Laura, you're still there, right? I pushed open the door to my room and stuffed the laundry that was on the dresser under the bed. A drift of crumpled mail and hair ties crested up against the puppet theater. I swept it all into the top drawer and skidded my palm across the remaining dust, but that only accentuated the sticky coffee ring. On the puppet theater stage, Paper Josie stood front and center with her round arms flung wide. She was smiling an open mouthed smile. I didn't think she'd been smiling before. I fist bumped the tiny orange heart on her t-shirt with a knuckle. Nikki was standing behind a chair at the kitchen table, gazing into the overflowing jade plant with a polite expression on her face. Oh God, she heard all that speed cleaning, I thought. My phone rescued me from eye contact by ringing. It was a text from Laura, yes. Can I get you something to drink, I said, as I set the phone down on the table? Suddenly I was 10 years old, having a friend over from school. The table was covered in dusty mason jars and the newspapers under mom's pottery wheel were moldy. I looked at the piano, where I knew the wood under that peach shawl was cracked and the wall covered in Grant family photos above that. In every one of me, I was grinning so wide my eyes almost disappeared into my fat cheeks. I cringed. So what time does Laura get home? Nikki asked, ignoring my question. She's gonna stay over at her teachers, I mean at Professor Hills. You must have heard us on the phone, I said. I met Nikki's eyes and hers widened and the skin of her face all seemed to lift as though she had breathed in some powerful smell and the horses in my blood bolted like a gun had gone off. I never eavesdropped, she said and her voice was a little unsteady. I'll make coffee, I said. It was 10 steps to the kitchen from the hallway where I stood. She stopped me as I passed the table tugging on the end of the stretchy scarf that was still around my neck. I don't need coffee, do you? She said. She twisted the scarf at the level of my navel. If she pulled it tight, it would choke me. I let my fingers meet on the fabric above hers. I was before at that revel thing, I said. I knew I was stalling. That was peach crazy, that wasn't me being crazy. And that music, when we, oh, you mean when we kissed? Fae musicians will dance you to death if they take a mind to. They can make you do whatever they want, she said. Her eyes were down, fixed on my wrists. I looked into the crisp forest of curls at her hairline. When she looked up, we were close enough that I could feel the heat from her skin on my face. She murmured to my mouth, doesn't seem fair. I was the one who closed her mouth with mine. I was not a virgin. I had checked off the technical side of the hookup with Isaac Washington after the sophomore winter ball. We picked each other because he wanted to get rid of his virginity, and as far as I was concerned, he was so soft and giggly, he was practically a girl. I was pretty sure boys weren't what turned me on even back then. In the two years since then, I had kissed exactly one girl. It was during service week for spring break when I spent every afternoon with my California history class painting the rooms of four Habitat for Humanity projects with the same donated mud yellow paint. Megan came with her church group. She was a junior at a private Christian school, and I was not the first girl she'd kissed. She had light brown hair and tiny moles all over her breasts, and we spent hours that week standing in freshly sheetrocked attics with a roofing shingle stuck under the door to jam it shut and our tops off, kissing until my jaw was sore and touching everywhere but below the waist. I still mentally traveled to a half finished construction site whenever I touched myself. Now, Nikki's fingers hooked my jeans where the scarf met them. We kissed with mouths closed for a breath or two until I felt the dart of her tongue, and I lost my balance and groped to the side for the table. Cinnamon, cigarette smoke, and something else, something warm and organic that was entirely her. Her hands crept across my shoulder blades and then up along my neck to rake through my hair. I felt heat drop a plumb line through my body, and there was a direct channel from where she was licking my neck to whatever was happening between my legs and my cheeks were burning coals, and when her hands strayed across one nipple and my legs stopped holding me up, and she stepped in between them until my weight was held up by the table. I thought, this is happening right now. Thank you. Thank you, Skye Allen. Skye has copies of Pretty Peg for sale, so you'll be able to buy them off of her at the end of the show.