Read It and Weep! Read Online Free

didn’t hurt myself, but I still haven’t recovered from the trauma.”
    Charlotte laughed sympathetically, relieved that Lauren hadn’t made fun of her for her phobia, and wishing she could be as frank and unembarrassed as her new friend. Then she remembered the card. She pulled it out of the pocket of her backpack.
    â€œCan I show you something weird? I found it yesterday. In a book. Do you have any idea what this is?” she asked Lauren.
    Lauren took the card and peered at it, frowning. Her wide-set eyes and pouty lips didn’t quite fit her face, but Charlotte suspected her features would all come together by the time she was a teenager. Braces and a gawky frame and unevenly proportioned features on a twelve-year-old looked like they might easily translate to supermodel good looks on a teenager. Now, though, she was a misfit like Charlotte. Smart, nerdy, awkwardly angular.
    â€œWhere’d you get this?” asked Lauren, turning it over and reading the message scrawled across the back.
    â€œInside a library book,” said Charlotte. “Weird, isn’t it?”
    â€œWell, yes and no,” said Lauren matter-of-factly. “It’s weird because it looks really old, like, from the middle ages or something. But I think it’s just a tarot card, actually.”
    â€œWhat’s a tarot card?”
    â€œPeople use them to tell fortunes,” she said with a shrug. “I don’t know much about them, but I have seen them before. At my aunt’s house. And I don’t know what this particular card means. Of course I don’t believe in any of that mumbo jumbo stuff, but I can show it to my aunt Marina if you want. She lives right near here.”
    â€œYou mean you are actually related to someone who can tell fortunes? I thought everyone in your family was into science like you,” said Charlotte.
    Lauren grinned. “They are, but it’s not like I’m from a huge family. My dad’s a scientist, and his brother Jack, the one who died in a car accident a few years ago, was a scientist too. Marina is my aunt by marriage. She was married to Uncle Jack. She still lives in the house the two of them used to live in when they were married.”
    â€œDoes she have any kids?”
    â€œNever wanted any. But I think she feels like she needs to mother me because she knows it’s just my dad and me, and I guess my dad is a lot like Jack. Sort of an absentminded professor type, and she knows that. And also because I have an artsy side.”
    Charlotte nodded, and Lauren went back to studying the card and shrugged. “I’ll ask Aunt Marina,” she said.
    Suddenly someone behind Lauren snatched the card from her hand.
    â€œHey!” said Lauren.
    Charlotte wheeled around.
    â€œWhat’s this? You two geeks into fortune telling now?”
    It was Stacy Matthews, the most popular and stuck-up girl in seventh grade. Behind her stood Ava and Maddy, giggling as usual.
    â€œIt’s nothing,” said Charlotte and Lauren simultaneously.
    Stacy raised her eyebrow. Then she looked down at the card. “Looks like some weird Goth thing,” she said. She tossed the card back down on the desk, having evidently lost interest.
    Charlotte picked it up and shoved it into her bag.
    â€œSo did you guys finish the math homework for today or what?”
    Lauren and Charlotte darted a look at each other.
    â€œYeah,” said Charlotte warily.
    Stacy waited, hands on hips. “So can I borrow yours to check my answers?”
    â€œI don’t have mine on me right now,” said Lauren.
    â€œMe neither,” said Charlotte, giving Stacy a little smile. Which was only a partial untruth. It wasn’t on her exactly. It was inside her backpack, under the desk.
    Stacy’s eyes narrowed. “Well thanks anyway,” she said in a voice that meant she felt the exact opposite. “Hey, have you ever thought about closing your mouth when