A Red Queen Black Friday

The Real Way to Grocery Shop

Ella, Tyton, and Rafe quickly realized what to do with their grocery list.

As the social media influencers of Twenty-Nineteen, the TikTok trio had done what any rational trio might do if faced with the mundane and awful task of purchasing groceries.

Ella, Tyton, and Rafe made grocery shopping into an insane TikTok-worthy competition that was bound to become a trend.

They sent out a Tweet to their thirty-million loyal fans. The first ten locals who responded—it took all of five seconds, by the way—were privately invited to none other than the brand-new home of Mare Barrow to face the biggest challenge of their teenage lives.

The challenge? To take one-tenth of the Barrow's grocery list, along with one miscellaneous item, such as a Tyton Jesper signature bobblehead or a seven-hundred-and-fifty piece jigsaw puzzle of the Manhattan skyline, go out, and come back with the proper things. The first to return with their share of the groceries and the miscellaneous item would win the prize of their lives: the chance to be in a TikTok dance video with Ella, Tyton, and Rafe.

From there, Tyton started the live stream, hoping that somehow, Mare wouldn't find out about it.

Perhaps the route that the three were taking was low, but it wasn't like Ella, Tyton, and Rafe could go much of anywhere without getting mobbed. Rafe scoffed as he raided the various cabinets of the kitchen, finding next-to-nothing inside. He supposed that Missus Barrow had only bought everything she needed to cook a few meals before she expected somebody to go grocery shopping.

But how dare she make him buy groceries in the middle of a snowstorm.

"And that," he told his camera as Ella pointed it towards him, probably overselling the whole ordeal, "is how you buy groceries, my people."