“Mice? Seriously?” asks Carla, dropping the ruined bag in a tuppercube.

“Unless you’ve been stabbing the flour to keep the sugar in line,” says her mother on the phone. “Get a humane thingy.”

I’ve got better ideas, Carla thinks, and returns to the spill. It actually looks like a pattern, maybe letters scratched into it. Gluten… Raus? She shakes her head and wipes it away.

That night she waits in silence, lights out, until she hears the rattling start. She yanks the cupboard open with ninja speed.

The raisins look up from their dice, shocked, smoke trailing from their tiny cigarettes.