Prologue
It’s hard to remember a time when the Switch sisters didn’t live in the house on Tamany Lane. It seemed like all of us grew up hearing about them in our bedtime stories, even though they must have been not so much older than ourselves. Eventually, we would meet them–in the supermarket, on the playground, during recess and lunch at school–and realize that they were just people like us. For they looked more or less like us, once we were accustomed to the black hair, Chinese eyes, and flat noses. Certainly, they were more beautiful than to be expected, especially in a small town, but they walked with their feet and survived on water and food just like the worst and best of the townsfolk. We would wonder about the things we had been told, and tell more stories, spreading rumors in our eagerness to prove we knew them. We would wonder if there was something about their beauty that captivated us, put a spell over us, so that we would be drawn to them and love them. We fell in love with them, and feared them for the power they held over us. The Switches, they were called, four Switch sisters with a mother who seemed to never age. Their presence lingered over the town like an eerie mist of living, breathing myth.
