“Stand up straight. Shoulders back.” Gloria hadn’t softened a bit. She was still the coldest and most powerful person Sherri had ever met, and she seemed determined to find something wrong with her. She reminded Sherri of a younger, more exotic version of Mrs. Vogel, the Bavarian organ teacher who’d kept a folded wooden ruler on the music rack and slapped Sherri’s knuckles with it whenever she pressed a wrong key. Like Mrs. Vogel, Gloria was unsmiling and grim. She seemed to have it in for her. “Silly Sherri,” she called her, and Sherri supposed she was silly, and what was wrong with that? She was finally having fun, she really was. Somewhere along the way her grief had begun to ebb. She’d catch herself experiencing enjoyment without having to think about it.

But then she stepped on the scale and sucked her gut in, suddenly worried by the pounds that had been inching up at each weigh-in, and the expression of disapproval on Gloria’s face. She’d half-heartedly tried the grapefruit diet, but that hadn’t stopped her from drinking, and it hardly made a dent in the Texas-sized food she’d eaten a few weeks back on her vacation. Fried chicken, giant slabs of steak, baked potatoes with mounds of sour cream, pineapple upside-down cake, rum and Cokes. How could she have let herself go like that, in every possible way? She wanted a promotion from the Sidewalk Café and couldn’t blow it.

“You’re up seven pounds,” Gloria said.

“There must be a mistake.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the scale. And there’s nothing wrong with my eyes, either.” Gloria put a pencil between Sherri’s knees and nudged it up her legs. When she let go, it stuck in place between her thighs. Gloria shook her head. “Vacate the premises, and don’t come back until you drop some pounds. You can weigh in again next Monday, Memorial Day. We’ll be slammed. You gain ten, you’re back to being a civilian.”

Sherri was so mad at Gloria’s stubborn smugness that she wanted to hit her on the head with the sharp heel of her shoe. Vacate the premises? It didn’t matter a hill of beans to the Bunny Mother that Sherri was one of the best Bunnies they had. She was always on time, took extra shifts, and covered the ones she had to miss. Her daily write-ups were almost perfect, and, unlike the other girls, she never, ever made mistakes on her tickets. That ought to count for something, shouldn’t it? But it didn’t.