“Do you want help?” Krystal asked, startling me. She had suddenly appeared behind me. A cloud of insecticide hovered around her.

“No,” I said, and picked up a large empty box and started filling it with the village buildings, ignoring her. I needed to finish it once I started it, or it would never be finished.

An hour later the town was gone. The sixty-two smaller boxes fit into ten large boxes. The absurdity of life seemed contained in these ten boxes, the vanity of living at all. A spider drunk-walked across the floor, strangling and frightened, and I watched it slowly die and curl, looking five times smaller once dead.

I went upstairs for a glass of water, and looked out the window above the sink. Three crows were pecking at the grass outside. They seemed out of place, out of time. The weather felt like mid-June. Shouldn’t October be cool, crisp, apple-flavored?

Nothing felt right anymore. Since the Scheeles had left, I felt like I knew less and less about the world.

I wanted to go home. The lottery drawing would be on later that night, televised as usual, and I had not told Krystal I’d bought three tickets. The subject had come up, actually, the night before at our weekly Friday dinner; the winning pot of money had become something of a national sensation over the previous couple of weeks after it broke some kind of record, and she had bought ten tickets on a lark. “Shouldn’t you be paying your bills?” I had asked her. Over the past year she had let herself go somewhat, and usually this kind of snarky comment would make her flinch.

But this time she’d just shrugged and smiled. “Well, since you’re such a doubting Thomas I won’t give you any of my winnings.” Then, being Krystal, she added, “Just kidding, Bonnie—I would buy you anything you wanted.”

I had smiled back. I knew she meant it. She was my only friend, and I felt sorry for her. Also a little disgusted. She clearly lacked discipline if she was already promising other people stuff.

But on that Saturday, in the basement, she seemed jumpy and bright, excited, as if she really thought she had a shot at winning. I also may have been a tad more chipper than usual, at least before I came across the Christmas village.

As I stood at the kitchen window and watched the crows, Krystal climbed up the basement stairs. She stood at the doorway and asked if I wanted some ice cream. I said yes, thinking it was a good excuse to get away from this place. But, to my amazement, she walked over to the fridge and took a carton of ice cream out of the freezer, then fetched an ice cream scoop and bowls from the drawer and cupboard, and began spooning it out.

I had packed up the bowls and kitchen utensils the week before.

“So. Is this your house now?” After all the bug spray and old memories I was feeling punchy. She looked up at me. She seemed taken aback but smiled peacefully, dreamily. “No,” she said. “But if I win tonight it will be.”