Then an older woman shuffled up, eyes sharp as punctuation. She looked at Ari, then at the wet bench, then at the sky. "You waiting for something?" she asked.

"I want to know who made you," Ari said, not wanting to pester the world with another honestation.

That was the trouble. Truth was a heavy stone.

It looked like a theater mask, smooth and white, but when Ari turned it in their hands faint lines traced themselves across the surface like veins. A single word had been carved into the inside of the jaw in tiny, careful letters: "isaidub."

Rumors hardened then: the mask made people honest, yes, but honest in ways that could hurt. Couples who had worn it together found their polite arrangements dissolving into sharp edges. A city councilwoman said into it, "We've been padding the budget for a park that doesn't exist," and the audit that followed emptied more than her pride. The mask's honesty pulled the tidy wallpaper off the walls, and the raw plaster beneath surprised more than it soothed.