"I am innocent." That was all my father said before his execution. I wasn't there, but I knew the story. My father repeated those words every chance he got to every member of the Tricelcian government he encountered during his final weeks of life. I didn't know why he met so many members of the Tricelcian government, only that he said, "I am innocent" to all of them, and they executed him anyway.
"These things happen." That's what my mother said. She also said, "Let it go, Taye," and I knew that I might, someday. My mother wouldn't tell me what my father didn't do that got him executed. This was fine with me, of course, and I wasn't angry with her because I knew that I could look up the information anytime I wanted to. It could only take a few minutes. Anyway, I already knew how my father died. The Tricelcian executioner had to electrocute him twice. The first time, it didn't kill him, and my father said, "You see? You cannot kill me because I am innocent." It worked the second time, though. I didn't know what that meant, exactly.
Let it go.
As soon as my father was executed, my mother decided that it was time for the two of us to move back to Alpha XCVII, the Earth colony where she grew up. It was more like a collection of small towns and farmlands than a proper civilization, but I didn't notice that. I mostly noticed that everyone on the colony except for me was completely human, and most of them didn't like Klingons at all. My father was a Klingon, but my mother was human, and she wanted very much for everything to work out on Alpha XCVII. Because my mother wanted everything to work and had my best interests in mind, I did not resent the lack of non-humans on the colony.
I was fourteen, and the sort of teenaged girl who throws rocks at ducks. Not that I ever threw rocks at ducks when I was upset. You can kill ducks that way, even if you didn't mean to. But I was the sort of teenaged girl one might expect to throw rocks at ducks. There was a duck pond close to my mother's house on Alpha XCVII. There were lots of Earth ducks there, but very few Earth teenagers.
My mother often asked how well I was doing over dinner. "Do you get along well with your classmates?" she would say.
"Of course."
"Do you have any…problems?"
"No."
"I know it must be hard, being…"
"I look human enough."
"Taye…"
"What?"
"If you aren't happy here, just say so. We can always move somewhere that works better."
She thought I was weak. Spencer Lowell was the only weak person I knew. I would have broken his fingers when he pushed me over that park bench, but I didn't feel like it. I must have imagined his death about a thousand times that day.
I sat on that park bench, watching the ducks swim peacefully around their little duck pond. Spencer Lowell happened to walk by, presumably on his way home from school. He stopped to talk. "What are you doing?" He said.
"Nothing."
"It looked like you were throwing rocks at the ducks." He assumed that I had to be violent because I was half-Klingon, I'm sure. I didn't answer. "You were throwing rocks at the ducks!" He said. He added something like, "Klingon freak."
I stood up and took a step towards Spencer Lowell. He pushed me, and I fell backwards over the park bench. That escalated quickly. Like I said, I could have broken his fingers. I settled for quietly imagining his death. One of the ducks might have died that day, but I'm not sure what caused it.