Cherry was fuming, too. She stopped the cart at the end of the condiment aisle while their mom kept walking. “I’m not being an asshole,” she hissed. “Ididn’t leave you off the thread. Honny started anewthread—”
“I expect this from Honny.” Hope put her back to their mom, facing Cherry. “She’s a gossip. And she can’t tell the difference between funny and mean. But I don’t expect it fromyou, Cherry.”
“Look. I’m sorry you’re feeling left out. Iam. But, you cutusoff first. You’ve been completely dishonest with all of us!”
Hope huffed again in disbelief. “How have I been dishonest?”
“Hope, you lost a hundred pounds, and you told us you werewatching your carbs.”
“Iamwatching my carbs.”
“Okay.” Cherry rolled her eyes. “Well. This is why we have a new group thread.” She started pushing the cart toward their mom.
Hope stayed where she was. “It’s nobody’s business how I lost weight.”
Cherry looked back over her shoulder. “It is when you lie about it!” She was still trying to be quiet. “It’s an indictment of the rest of us!”
“That’s paranoid and narcissistic, Cherry.”
“?‘Narcissistic,’ huh? Spare me your internet therapy.” Cherry stalked back toward her sister, abandoning the cart. “If you sit there at Thanksgiving saying that you did this by counting carbs, it makes it seem like everyoneelsejust needs to be more disciplined. But it isn’t aboutdiscipline—it’s aboutGLP-1 agonists.”
Hope clenched her jaw. And her fists. If this was Honny—or maybe even Faith—Cherry might actually worry about getting punched. “Youwant me to be honest,” Hope said, “is that right? You think that would go well? If I told everyone that I was taking...” She stalled out.
“Ozempic,” Cherry supplied.
“Mounjaro, actually... All it would do is make everyone uncomfortable. You’dalljudge me. And you’d thinkIwas judgingyou.”
“Hope! All of those things are already happening!”
“Yeah, on the group thread that I’m not on!”
Cherry threw her hands in the air—right into the shoulder of a man who was trying to get by. “Sorry,” she said. She looked around for their mom, and found her standing at the end of the aisle, watching them, holding a jar of mayonnaise. Cherry walked back to the cart and pushed it toward their mom. Hope followed her.
Cherry’s mom set the mayonnaise in the cart, ignoring their tense jaws and flushed faces. “I just need a few more things.”
“Lead the way,” Cherry said.
They followed her to the frozen food aisle. Cherry could hear Hope’s huffy, angry breathing behind her.
“You can’t even look at me,” Hope said. “I talked to your boyfriend for an hour at Thanksgiving, and you didn’t say a word.”
Cherry didn’t look at her.
“My therapist says it’s jealousy, but it feels like you’re all trying to punish me.”
“I’m not trying topunishyou.”
“Then why can’t you look at me, Cherry?”
“I can look at you.” Cherry didn’t.
“Do you hate me that much?”
“For fuck’s sake, Hope”—Cherry wheeled on her—“I don’thateyou. I just—I feel completely betrayed by you.”
“Be-trayed?”
“Yes!” Cherry was crying suddenly. (Maybe not suddenly—her cheeks were already wet.) “Because you’ve been telling me my whole life that it was okay to be fat. You used to say to me—when I was just a little girl—that I would never be skinny, so I shouldn’t worry aboutthat. That I shouldn’t starve myself or pin all my dreams on losing weight. I should just worry about being healthy and being the best me I could be.” Cherry wiped her nose on the back of her wrist. “You’d say,‘I’m never going to be skinny, and I don’t care, because my life is better than all my skinny friends’.’”
