She heard the creaking of floorboards directly overhead. She looked up, and as she did, a drop of goopy, clear fluid fell from a crack and landed in her left eye.

“Ssi-bal!” Shit. It didn’t sting, but its cool, jellylike contact came as a shock.

More creaks from above. Mrs. Park ran to the hallway where, sure enough, her suspicions were confirmed. A ladder perched under the open attic hatch.

“Mira!” she screamed. “Mira, what for you steal my eggs?”

She grabbed a flashlight and started up the ladder, and as soon as she neared the opening, an odor as pungent as fish sauce rushed through her nostrils. She shone her light into the black. There, a frantic shuffling began. Eventually the beam of light found Mira, crouching in the darkness, her arms bent like shields against the glare.

“Mira!”

The girl had eggshells in her hands. When Mrs. Park moved the spotlight around, she saw little maggot-looking pods everywhere. Some were perched in the centers of cobwebs, their tiny feet hanging onto the weave. They were her dried shrimp, which she used—very sparingly—to flavor soup. There was more: Little firecrackers dangling from the rafters? No, wait, they weren’t firecrackers at all—they were tampons, at least ten of them, stained with use, hanging from their strings like crimson party lights.

“Mira! What are you doing!”

“Stay outta my Kool-Aid, ho.”

“Speak English! Why you no going to school?”

“You’re making us move to Korea so what does school matter?” Mira showed her the empty bottles of Thai fish sauce. “Every white person’s nightmare.”

“Why you do this? Why you steal my eggs?” Mrs. Park sounded more hurt than angry. “Why you keep tampons?”

“I’m feeding my termites.”

Mrs. Park started down the ladder solemnly. “Quellie Soo is coming today. She helping me sell this house.”

Without a further word, Mrs. Park shut the hatch to the attic and bolted it from the outside. Once she got back to ground level, she squeezed the two legs of the ladder closed and carried it out to the garage.

Arik led Rosemary into his room and engaged the clumsily installed dead bolt, forcibly tilting down the clasp so it would catch. He lunged toward her for a kiss, grinning so wide that her tongue smashed into his wall of teeth.

There was a pungent, sterile odor in the place. She looked around for its source. His room was slightly smaller than hers, even with the bed pushed against the wall to make space. Posters of baseball players she couldn’t name lined the walls, limited edition Beanie Babies sat on a shelf above his bed, strangely dust-free; Arnold Schwarzenegger watched over everything from a faded Terminator 2: Judgment Day one-sheet.

“Why’s it smell like rubber in here?”

Arik reached into the trash bin under his desk and fished out a crushed-up wad of notebook paper which he unpeeled to expose three oily condoms.