Page 128 of Switch!

“Or,” Trixie says, “you could be our teacher. Gismonda’s home for strangely gifted children. Live your favorite trope, that’s my motto. How many bedrooms does this place have?”

“None. I sleep in this chair.”

“That’s a lie,” Trixie says. Then she narrows her eyes. “Almost.”

“I have been known to doze off here on occasion,” Gismonda says, leaning forward in interest. “Tell me, this truth you can hear, is it objective?”

“Kind of. I’ve learned to distinguish when someone thinks what they’re saying is true.”

Gismonda frowns. “Monsieur Chastain always takes longer than necessary to trim the hedges out back. Is that true?”

“You mean him?” Trixie asks, nodding toward the window behind Gismonda. Through a gauzy curtain I can see an older man perched on a step ladder. He finishes drinking from a plastic bottle, uses his forearm to wipe his mouth, and tilts his face up to take in the sun. The hedge trimmers sit atop the ladder, not currently in use.

Gismonda also twists around in her chair to see before she grunts and addresses us again. “Let’s take a different approach. If I don’t know a truth but I happen to guess right and say it out loud, how would that sound to you?”

Trixie blinks. “I… I really don’t really know.”

“Then let’s find out. Albert, dearest, you adore tedious trivia. Give me three examples, but make only one of them true.”

We sit in awkward silence while Gismonda listens and nods, asking Albert to repeat himself once. Then she clears her throat and addresses us. “The sun is made of incandescent gas. Babies have one hundred more bones than adults do. Napoleon Bonaparte was actually tall.”

Trixie is silent for a moment. “You think that number three is wrong.”

“I already know my thoughts,” Gismonda says. “I want to know the truth.”

Trixie squirms, seeming uncomfortable. “Full-disclosure, I know the first ‘fact’ isn’t right. The sun is made of plasma. I did a report on it freshman year.”

“But how did itsound?” Gismonda stresses.

“Neutral. The same as one about babies.”

Gismonda tilts her head as if listening. Then she scowls. “But everyone knows that Napoleon was short,” she argues. “Five-seven isn’t very tall for a man.”

“It was at the time,” I say, unable to hold my tongue any longer. I have a passion for tedious trivia myself. “Napoleon was tall compared to the average Frenchman of his era. Not only that, but the five-seven measurement was taken on his deathbed, and most of us end up shorter by an inch or two as we get old.”

“Don’t remind me,” Gismonda says with a sigh. Then she perks up. “An interesting result! The second fact was also true, but it didn’t sound any different to you than the falsehood about the sun. You gravitated instead toward whatIbelieved to be true.”

“I guess so,” Trixie says. “What does that mean?”

Gismonda shrugs. “Who can say?”

“We were hoping you could,” I reply. “Is there a pattern to how these powers work?”

“Yeah, what about yours?” Trixie asks. “You can talk to dead people?”

“I can do much more than that or this marriage wouldn’t be as fulfilling.”

We respond to this with blank expressions.

“I can hear and see and touch the spirits,” Gismonda explains. “They are as real to me as either of you.”

I shift in my chair. “You have the sixth sense?”

“No. Not an extra sense. I have the same senses as you, but mine aren’t limited to the physical.”

“Including taste and smell?” Trixie asks. “Because that would be weird.”

“Says the girl who has fins for ears,” Gismonda shoots back.