Read It and Weep! Read Free Page A

ramrod-straight military posture. She’d inherited her mom’s crooked teeth, but not her glossy hair or her graceful, willowy figure. It wasn’t fair. Her twin brothers had gotten good teeth and perfect, shiny hair. She sighed as she adjusted her father’s framed photo on her dresser. He looked so handsome in his air force uniform. It had been a month since he’d been deployed to the Middle East. She felt the usual pang of worry in the pit of her stomach that she always did when she thought about her dad, which was often.
    At least she’d inherited her parents’ intelligence, she had to admit. It was nice not to have to struggle to understand everything, the way her friend Alicia, at her last school, had. She wondered how Alicia was doing. She hadn’t heard from her in a while. Well. That was normal. It wasn’t easy to maintain long-term friendships when you moved eight times in twelve years. She felt lucky to have met Lauren at her new school. And to have access to such an awesome public library.
    Her eyes fell on the red book next to her bed. Not that she was superstitious, but the last thing she needed was to worry about bad luck. She picked the book up and slipped the card from its pages. She’d return the book to the library after school today. Then she tucked the card into a pocket of her backpack.
    In the hallway outside her room she could hear her eight-year-old brothers running full speed toward the stairs. A herd of elephants would sound quieter, she thought, rolling her eyes. Where did they get all this energy so early in the morning? They were always having contests, racing each other to be the first one to get to the breakfast table, or arguing about who got the last cookie or whose turn it was to sit next to the window on the bus. It must be exhausting to be a twin, Charlotte thought, not for the first time. After all, it was exhausting to live with them.
    She was halfway down the stairs when she heard her mother call to her from her bedroom.
    â€œCharlotte, did you put the boys’ soccer uniforms in the wash last night like I asked you?”
    â€œYep!” she called back.
    â€œThanks, honey! Can you run them in the dryer so they’ll be ready for the twins’ game tonight?”
    â€œYep!” Charlotte called back, and ran downstairs to the laundry room. She liked being a help to her mom, who’d gone back to work for the first time since the twins were born. With her dad gone, Charlotte knew her mom was counting on her for a lot of help. Especially with the twins’ math homework. Her mom was really smart, just not at math—even third-grade math.
    When she opened the washer to transfer the load to the dryer, she froze, staring into the washing machine.
    The mostly white load she’d put in the night before had turned pink.
    Then she remembered throwing her new red sweatshirt in with the rest of the load. She began pulling out the damp, wrinkled clothes. She tugged a soccer jersey from the clump and held it up.
    It was decidedly pink.
    Maybe the pink will drain out somehow in the drying process, she thought, although deep down she knew that wasn’t really possible. This day had not started out well.
    Her mom was in her nurse’s scrubs when Charlotte dragged her feet into the kitchen a few minutes later. Her brothers were noisily arguing about which of two European soccer teams was better. Charlotte was pretty sure neither boy had ever even watched these teams play. But while they were busy arguing, she took the opportunity to speak quietly to her mother over near the stove.
    â€œMom, I kind of turned the twins’ uniforms a little bit pink. With my new sweatshirt,” she murmured into her mother’s ear, casting her eyes downward.
    Her mother let out an exasperated sigh. “Oh, Char. I thought we went over all that when I showed you how to do laundry. How to separate the whites.”
    Charlotte mumbled