Gabrielle Hovendon's writing has appeared in the Writer Advice E-Zine, Newport Review, Eric's Hysterics, and Ampersand.

Change (July 20, 2011. Issue 29.)

This time, she is actually going to lose weight.

Amy drives to the supermarket with this solitary goal in mind, speeding along in an abstract unfocused state that makes her wonder, three blocks later, if she even braked at the last stop sign. She arrives at Rod's Shop 'n Save an hour before it closes and takes a cart. The other shoppers are exhibiting the kind of narrow-eyed focus that she has seen in predatory birds on the Discovery Channel, and she avoids them with caution. She is on a mission of her own, selecting foods she has never, or at least rarely, heard of real people eating.

She adds produce to her cart furiously, indiscriminately, a rampage of kumquats and rutabagas and okra. She thinks she remembers reading something positive about kiwis in a waiting room magazine, so she selects two of the squishier ones for her cart, which is beginning to resemble a Hungry Hungry Hippos game. The kiwis dangle in their flimsy plastic bag like hairy, oblong testicles, and she adds a third just so she can clear her mind of this disturbing image.

Drawn by a pyramidal display of tangerines, Amy reaches for an orange and accidentally sends a dozen rolling onto the floor. She scrabbles about frantically to pick them up, praying that the other shoppers will not see her as she envisions herself, a beached walrus lurching around the store in too-tight stretch leggings. When she straightens up she tries to look as if she is not about to die of embarrassment. The internal voice that dictates her eating habits is telling her sternly not to take refuge in the frozen desserts section.

She avoids the aisles she knows, the ones whose topography she can call to mind at any given moment. 13A: Baking goods, candy, spices. 7B: Drink mixes, iced teas, sodas. 12B: Chips, nuts, snacks. (What an innocuous-sounding word, snacks. So crisp, so concise, so perfectly connotative of their salty crunch. Snacks.)

The difficult part comes when she reaches the checkout. Like running a gauntlet in slow motion, she crawls past the shoulder-high display of candy and mints, pushing her cart forward until she bumps into the man in front of her and has to mumble an apology. She tells herself to focus on something else, but there are no magazines in this aisle, no lurid photographs or hot pink print to deride and secretly devour: 50 Ways to Pleasure Your Man! Never-Before-Seen Housekeeping Secrets! The 31 Things You Need to Know About Your Shoes!

She spots the gum with a sense of relief: finally, something she can allow herself to look at. Not the sugared kind, of course, but the chemical-laden, phosphorescent, less-than-five-calorie turds that come in blister packs like Tylenol. She settles her gaze on an inviting package, pale blue with dancing candy canes on the front, and nearly nods in approval when she sees the Dentists Recommend! logo.

The man in front of her is buying chocolate.

SUGAR FREE CENTER FILLED GUM, she reads angrily. She is determined to puzzle out how this should be punctuated, to look anywhere but the racks of candy. Sugar-free center, filled gum? Sugar-free-center-filled gum? Sugar-Free! Center-Filled! Gum? The man in front of her finishes paying, and then it is her turn.

She wonders if the cashiers silently judge their customers, thinking he can't afford name-brand tuna or no wonder she's so skinny if that's all she eats, and decides they must. The bill comes to nearly seventy dollars, and Amy forces herself to look noncommittal as she writes the check.

"That won't be cashed till tomorrow, right?" she nearly asks, then stops herself. She has enough in her account to cover this. She thinks.

When she gets home, she struggles to fix her Greek yogurt with almonds and just a dab of honey (how exactly is she supposed to measure a dab?) like the Weight Watchers guide suggests. She ends up trailing her sleeve through the concoction as she reaches for a spoon, and after two grimacing bites she empties the bowl into the sink. She opens the fridge, but it is like entering a foreign country, one full of shiny green objects she doesn't know how to pronounce or peel.

Her stomach growls painfully. She has bought nothing that can be eaten without pride and disgust, nothing that won't require a cooking dictionary and two hours of preparation to fix. She remembers that there is a package of Oreos and a bag of store-brand chips in the cupboard over the fridge, and she climbs onto a chair to take a closer look. That is all she will do: look, not touch or open. She will leave the perfect, beautiful polypropylene packaging intact and congratulate herself on her willpower, and in the morning she will try fixing the new food.

Her gaze falls to the countertop and she spots the tangerine she bought. Her mind flashes to the incident on the supermarket floor; cheeks burning, she recalls how she crawled on her hands and knees, trying not to be aware that everyone was watching her huge, spandex-encased body heave about the aisle.

Something inside her crumples. She reaches into the high cupboard.

Next time, she is actually going to lose weight.