They passed a row of six different Smagma bookshelves, each of them holding hundreds of copies of the same book (Design Is Good, orange and black dust jacket; Orsk bought them by the truckload), and then finally reached Kitchens, Amy’s favorite part of the store. Her secret shame was that, after growing up with a two-burner hot plate and a toaster oven, she dreamed of having an Orsk kitchen.

She stopped in front of a gleaming all-white Harb-blo display and turned to Ruth Anne. “Could you imagine being able to afford something like that?”

Ruth Anne’s breathing was shallow; a sheen of sweat glistened on her upper lip. She hunted through her pockets and pulled out a tube of Blistex. Applying it seemed to calm her breathing.

“I have that kitchen,” she admitted. “Only my cabinets are slate gray instead of arctic white.”

Amy felt stupid. Of course Ruth Anne could afford a nice kitchen. She wasn’t drowning in loans for a college she’d dropped out of. She wasn’t shopping for clothes at Goodwill. She probably had retirement investments and her car wasn’t pissing oil all the time. As for Amy, she couldn’t even conceive of paying for something that cost more than a hundred dollars.

“What’s that noise?” Ruth Anne asked.

Amy listened. It was coming from the sink—something scratching on metal. She walked toward it.

“What is it?” Ruth Anne asked.

“Ergh!” Amy said, jerking back.

A plump black rat slithered bonelessly out of the drain. It scrabbled against the side of the sink and then its claws found purchase and it heaved itself up onto the counter. Ruth Anne clapped her hand over her mouth.

“What do we do?” Amy asked.

Both watched in horror as the rat waddled along the counter and then squeezed into the narrow gap between the refrigerator and the wall. They heard it slide down the drywall and plop onto the floor.

Ruth Anne grabbed Amy’s wrist. “My feet!” she exclaimed.

“What feet? Where?”

“I don’t want it touching my feet!”

Ruth Anne darted up the Bright and Shining Path, and Amy followed. They had reached Dining Rooms before they stopped. Ruth Anne anxiously reapplied her Blistex.

“I’ve never seen a rat in here before,” Amy said. “Basil is going to freak.”

“The plumbing’s not even hooked up,” Ruth Anne said. “That means it was inside the cabinet. And rats are real social animals. Where there’s one, there’s always a dozen.”

Amy shuddered, and they started walking again. The store felt endless, sprawled out around them all silent and secret, branching mazes and warrens full of furniture, like an infinite dollhouse. She tried to speed up, but Ruth Anne kept slowing down.

“Maybe we should go back and check Kitchens again,” she said. “We came through there pretty fast. We might have missed somebody.”

“Let’s just keep going,” Amy said.