The mysterious older woman from the flight formally introduces herself to the reader. Her name is Cherry—not Cheryl, a distinction she feels strongly about. She recounts a frustrating experience at an industry function where a woman named Jan pressured her for an introduction before she had a moment to settle in, revealing Cherry's sensitivity about her social skills and the way people in her profession are perceived as "strange," "weird," or "scary."

Cherry explains the origin of her name: the night before she was born, her mother dreamed of a pale pink cherry blossom tree against a bright blue sky, and her mother took dreams as seriously as her complexion. Cherry shares a workplace anecdote about a man who called her Cheryl twenty-eight times despite repeated corrections, culminating in Cherry throwing a spring roll at him at a team-building lunch at a Chinese restaurant called Wok n' Roll during a difficult period in her life.

Cherry digresses into various topics—Ed Sheeran's wife sharing her name, the Neil Diamond song "Cherry, Cherry," Australia's 1966 switch to decimal currency, and fond memories of dancing in the kitchen with her mother while peeling potatoes and shelling peas. She notes her mother used probability daily but called it intuition, and that her mother disliked math despite being more mathematically inclined than she realized.

Cherry acknowledges her tendency to become overly chatty and veer off topic when nervous, to be too literal and accuracy-focused, and to notice by people's faces that she is being perceived as "odd." She pinches the skin on her wrist to make herself stop talking. She concludes by simply restating her name: Cherry.