Free Secrets of a Shoe Addict by Beth Harbison

Zappos.com and were worth every penny,
especially
after she got a French pedicure.) The shoes were fabulous, but she wasn’t going to add their weight to hers, though it occurred to her that, depending what the scale said, it might be better if she could blame the shoes for anywhere from one to six pounds.
    Then again, if she put on towering heels, really great stilettos, like the Hollywould ones she’d just gotten, could she possibly justify offsetting her weight by adding inches?
    It was tempting. And she was ready to vow to wear heels every day for the rest of her life, if that’s what it took.
    Then again, maybe she needed chunky heels, like they always advised in the Style Network shows about how not to dress fat.
A chunky heel can de-emphasize a chunky ankle.
    Right.
    But she knew she had to be honest and face the whole ugly truth.
    She stood over the scale for a good minute or two, considering the possibilities. As if one of them was to stay off the scale and thereby not gain an ounce since her last successful weigh-in, so many months ago.
    Do it
, she told herself, like a kid trying to talk herself into diving into a cold pool on a hot July afternoon.
Just do it. Face the truth. Get it over with. You can always join Weight Watchers again. It worked once; it will work again.
    She took a deep breath and stepped onto the scale. The spinner lurched and bounced, and she stepped back quickly.
    No. No, no, no. She couldn’t do it.
    She backed against the wall and slid down, then sat face-to-face with her enemy, the scale.
    It was just plain unfair. There were a lot of people who never even had to think about what they ate; they were just naturally slim and gorgeous, no matter what they scarfed down.
    Sandra’s sister, Tiffany, was one of those people. Where Sandra was short and mousy-haired, with nondescript hazel eyes, Tiffany was tall, blond, and slender, with eyes so insanely blue, they looked like they had to be contacts. In some ways—okay, a lot of ways—it had been absolute hell to grow up in Tiffany’s narrow shadow.
    You’re Tiffany Vanderslice’s sister?
    Come on, seriously?
    Is one of you adopted?
Turned out one of them was, though Sandrahad only learned
that
last year. Tiffany was adopted and had known it for years, all the while feeling a little bit inadequate compared to Sandra, their parents’
biological
child. It was ironic, since Sandra had felt the same inadequacy in comparison to Tiffany, whom she perceived as “the golden child” to her “black sheep.”
    Yet it didn’t make Sandra feel any differently about Tiffany, or about Sandra’s own big fat doughy comparison to her.
    To be fair, Tiffany was
not
one of those people who went around proclaiming that they could not gain weight “no matter what I eat!” She was the very definition of
disciplined.
She was the sort of person who could eat
one
Christmas cookie.
    She could even resist them altogether, if she feared her waistline was exceeding its twenty-nine-inch limit. (Or whatever, Sandra wasn’t actually
sure
what Tiffany’s measurements were, only that they were more flattering than her own.)
    Tiffany had, all her life, opted for water over Coke, plain milk over chocolate, and she actually
preferred
her salads without any dressing whatsoever.
    Sandra was always tempted to point out that it was actually
more
nutritious to eat those greens with a little bit of fat—she’d learned a few things from Weight Watchers—but she was afraid it would sound like sour grapes.
    And in a sibling relationship that had always been a little bit strained, Sandra didn’t want to add any sour grapes.
    Unless they were in the form of wine.
    But who was she kidding? Tiffany probably never even had more than a glass with dinner, if any at all. Far be it from Tiffany to lose even one iota of her legendary control.
    Which is why it was such a surprise when the phone rang and itwas Tiffany, calling from what she described as “the floor of the crappiest,