Jessie's Journal (10/18/26) (Patreon)

Dear Journal:

I went grocery shopping with Mom today.  As we went down the holiday display aisle, she grabbed a Super-Sized bag of Halloween candy and heaved it into the cart like a sack of potatoes.

“Somebody got into the bag I got last week,” she said, shooting me a sideways glance.

My body went rigid.  Well, as rigid as a body like mine can go.  “It wasn’t me,” I said defensively. 

“I know, hon.”

For years, the trail of missing candy, junk food, or leftovers always led to me.  Now that sissy was growing, the suspect list was too.  It was refreshing.

“You may want to start hiding it,” I said as we continued down the aisle. 

“I’ve tried,” Mom sighed.  “But your sister knows all my usual places.”

I blushed. Oops.  Mom had me to thank for that.  Part of getting sissy out of condition was conditioning her to where all the junk food was hidden.

“It’s OK,” she continued, steering the cart toward healthier pastures.  “At least she’s helping us avoid temptation, right?”

I gave her a fragile smile, but it faded quickly.  I’d never heard Mom say something so conspiratorial--so spiteful--about my sister before. 

As she reached for a tin of cumin on a high shelf in the spice aisle, her sweatshirt rose, revealing a flat stomach and a gap between her waistband and her waist.  Had she lost more weight?  More importantly, was she using Michelle’s gain to motivate her own loss?        

That, of course, is what I was doing, but this was Mom.  She wasn’t supposed to think like that.

When we got home, I helped Mom put the groceries away, then started for the stairs--

“What the hell!”

Whenever Mom does the laundry, she sets Michelle and my clothes at the base of the stairwell in neat, folded stacks for us to take to our rooms.  Sissy’s clothes were gone, but mine were toppled over like dominoes.  Two garments, a pair of sweatpants and a V-neck sweater I’d recently bought with Rachel at the mall, lay in crumpled heaps on the first step.

Mom appeared behind me.  After staring at the sartorial crime scene for a moment, she grimaced.  “Sorry.  I think I mixed some of your clothes in with sissy’s by mistake.”

That explained why the sweater and the sweatpants had been unceremoniously dumped on the floor, but it didn’t explain why the rest of my clothes had been toppled.  Unless Mom had accidentally mixed some of sissy's clothes in with mine, too. 

I turned to ask her, but Mom was back in the kitchen.  The silly little smirk playing on her lips made me wonder if it had been an accident at all.

--Jessie