Shy Charlotte’s Brand New Juju (Romantic Comedy) Read Online Free Page A

teensy waist and hugging herself,
though it wasn’t especially cold.  
    Charlotte raised one leg on the oversized chair and rested
her wine glass on her knee. The chair made her feel like a child, sitting, as
she was, in her favorite striped pink pajamas.
    She looked around, then, at the ceiling, in each corner of
the room, to ensure that there wasn’t some kind of surveillance. Was Fiona
sitting in a nook somewhere, munching Cheetos and Skittles and scrutinizing her
reaction? Taking notes on how to better help her poor, pathetic sister who once
thought she had the world by the tail?
    Charlotte had a vision of herself just then, throwing up her
hands and dashing the envelope into the fireplace, letting the flames lick away
whatever fate her sister had outlined for her. Whatever embarrassing words were
inside. Standing then, with hands on hips and determining that she would make
her own transformation. That she needed no one.
    She glanced toward the fireplace on the south wall. It was
still. Devoid even of ashes or the hint that it had once held a fire.
    There was a candelabra in the center of the table. Fourteen
tiny flames there. But that would take a lot of burning, and what if the table
caught fire and she had to explain to Kamal’s family how she destroyed their
magnificent, exquisite, rare and expensive Snakewood table? And then maybe the
sprinklers would go off. Surely a house this size would be equipped with fire
mitigation. No. She would just need to open this damn thing. Get it over with.
    She slid one finger under the envelope’s seal. Her nails
were chewed and ragged and the cuticles folded in on themselves. Instead of
long and pointy and dexterous, like her sister’s, they were pudgy and unkempt.
They looked like the fingers of a child. When had her fingers gotten chubby?
    Inside the envelope was a thick sheaf of papers, bound
together with a small silver fastener at the top. There were several paper
clips and different colors of ink, everything coordinated in pink and silver.
She imagined Fiona driving her Range Rover to the office supply store and
clicking up and down the tiled floors in her tiny heels, hand-selecting the accessories
for this most important document.
    As Charlotte scanned the front page, she was struck, first,
by the sheer volume of exclamatory punctuation. She and Caleb once joked that
Fiona spoke all day long in multiple exclamation marks—“Good morning!!! Did you
sleep well?!?!”—but to see them in print like this was really something.
Charlotte was more a period kind of person. Question marks, on occasion. She
saved the exclamation marks for, well…never.
    The cover letter did look to be a bit embarrassing, so she
skimmed it. Her sister loves her…yadda yadda… can’t stand to see her like
this…blah blah…just a sad shred of her former self.
    That didn’t feel good.
    But! There’s hope! Fiona had a plan.  
    Charlotte turned the page to reveal a typed document on heavier
bond.
    I, Charlotte MacDougall, do solemnly vow that I will use
this incredible summer to regain my precious juju.
    As per the supplementary materials presented herewith, I
do solemnly swear to…
    1. Get my body back! Leopold Sokolowski, our town’s foremost
Personal Trainer and Confidence Coach, has been procured to work with me one-on-one
until I meet the weight I was when I graduated high school. I WILL lose all
this flab! Generally, Leopold is booked solid, but he LOVES my sister and he
WANTS to help me.
    2. Create! I will take at least one art class. [And then
a handwritten note in pink sparkly Sharpie:] (Remember how you love to paint?
My clients say doing art is so, so healing, like a mani-pedi for your mind and
soul!)
    3. Have more fun! I will go out and have a good time. I
will no longer be content with my boring life, never leaving the house, waiting
for my low-down-dirty-dog of a husband to get home and tell me what to do next.
I will go out. Every day!
    4. Say yes! I will welcome and embrace