All Dolled Up!

Charlie’s POV

I had an awful time at work that night- I didn’t know if it was just the fatigue from all the past few months catching up with me, the financial stress, or just having to deal with my sister- but my body felt sore all over. More so than usual actually, though I got through the night without any major issues. This was mainly because, thankfully, it was a slow night.

I got back home from work, and as expected, my sister was fast asleep. Charlotte hadn’t texted me at all overnight, so I guessed that nothing remarkable had happened. I needed to have a conversation with her at one point regarding our future plans on how to introduce her to Suzy - the weekend was still a few days off, so it was going to have to be over the phone.

I crashed onto my bed and drifted off. I think at one point my sister broke something in the kitchen as I heard a loud noise, but I was too tired to care and simply turned around, almost immediately falling back asleep. After all, I had a job to get to later.

I got up and after I was ready, saw that my sister was at it again, typing away at the keyboard. My blender was suspiciously absent, which I guessed was the source of the loud noise I had heard earlier. “You owe me a blender,” I told her as I began making a cup of coffee.

“Really? Is that what you open up with?” she asked. “Not even a ‘Good morning’ or ‘How are you doing?’”

“First off, it’s nighttime. Secondly, why’d you break my blender?” I asked her.

“It was an accident, I wasn’t looking where I was keeping things and it just kinda… slipped,” she said. “And is there a raccoon or something like that in the house?”

“Not that I know of,” I said. “Why?”

“I thought I heard something in the hallway last night, but when I went to go check on it, there was nothing there,” she said.

Charlotte had likely been the source of that noise - she hadn’t told me about anything last night so that probably meant that she hadn’t noticed the noise she was making, but I needed to tell her to be more careful in the future. Otherwise, Suzy might get suspicious or even discover Charlotte’s secret before we were ready to tell her.

“Maybe this place is actually haunted, you know,” I said and then proceeded to make a spooky noise. Suzy was unimpressed.

“Anyway, I need to get to work,” I told her. I still felt strangely tired, maybe because I had been woken up in the middle of my sleep by my sister, but I was trying to roll with it.

When I got a free moment during work, I texted Charlotte and asked her if it was okay to call her. She said it was, and I did.

“So, how have things been? Did you accidentally make a ruckus last night?” I asked her.

“Unfortunately… yes, was she asking about it?”

“Yes, but she didn’t seem to think too much about it,” I told her. “What happened?”

She walked me through what it was, and when she talked about the phone call I started to panic. “Wait, if you called her, your name would’ve popped up… no wait, your phone is my old phone and doesn’t have a SIM card… it’s been so long since I last used it, I think she wouldn’t even have the caller ID saved or something? She has a new phone too…”

“I’m sorry I don’t really follow what you’re saying,” Charlotte said.

“Normally if you call someone, your name should appear on their phone if they have you registered,” I explained. “Did she call you back?”

“Once, yes, but I didn’t pick up,” she said. Her voice sounded small and distant now. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, no, it’s not a big issue, we can explain that away easily,” I told her. “That’s fine- but Charlotte, I don’t think we should tell Suzy about you. Not yet.”

“Really? Why?”

“Nothing it’s just that,” I started to say, wondering how to put my thoughts into words. I could tell she was already self-conscious about herself, and I didn’t want to make it seem like there was something she had done or that there was anything wrong with her that caused me to reach this conclusion. “I spoke with her earlier, and I think that well, just based on how she reacted to seeing you… she was very judgmental about the whole thing… I don’t think we should do it. At least not now.”

I heard her voice crack up a bit. “Oh… you don’t think that she’ll like me?”

A nasty pit formed in my stomach as I realized that despite trying my best, I had upset her. That wasn’t what I wanted to do at all, but it was also hard for me to explain why it was that I was saying what I was saying. “Charlotte, please, it’s nothing at all to do with you as a person. It’s just, I know that she’s stressed about her own job, and I don’t want to add any more worries onto her plate. I am her older brother after all, I’m not supposed to be adding to her own stress with my own problems. If I tell her about us, she might start worrying about our parents as well. I think that we should give her some more space for now…”

“Oh, I see,” Charlotte said. It sounded like her mood had improved ever so slightly. “Well, I don’t know your sister as well as you do, Charlie. I’ll let you decide when it’s right to tell her.”

“Thank you for your trust, Charlotte, it really does mean the world to me,” I told her.

“Of course I trust you Charlie, I love you. As a matter of fact, you’re the only person still alive who I can put my faith in.”

“I… thank you for saying that Charlotte,” I said to her. “And I want you to remember, you’ve enchanted me like no other woman ever has or ever will, Charlotte. You never need to be embarrassed of who you are. Even if I can’t bring you back to a human form, and I promise to spend the rest of my life trying to do that if I need to, I would gladly accept you just the way that you are, Charlotte. And even if my family doesn’t understand that - I wouldn’t care at all. Please never forget how special you are to me.” It was a good thing that we were speaking over the phone - I would’ve definitely fumbled over my words if I was talking to her in person.

“Thank you Charlie,” she said. I wish I could’ve seen her expression at that moment - and I thought about switching the conversation to a video call, but that would be bad if someone happened to appear behind me and peek at the screen.

“I love you Charlotte,” I told her again before disconnecting the line.

Thankfully the rest of the week went by without any further incidents, and the weekend rolled around. Granted, that didn’t seem to matter to my sister, who was still punching away at her laptop.

“Want to take a break?” I asked her.

“Can’t, I still have to finish this,” she said.

“It’s the weekend.”

“That doesn’t matter when you’re a freelancer.”

“I still think you should take a break,” I told her. “Want to go by the lake? You can take your laptop there and work on it for a while, so long as what you’re doing doesn’t need an Internet connection.”

She thought about it. “I guess I could use some change in scenery.”

The reason why I was pushing so hard was because I knew that Charlotte must’ve been cooped up in her room all this time, and having Suzy out of the house would give Charlotte freedom to run around for at least one day.

“And I could use some coffee, not the kind I make, the good kind,” I said, and this seemed to have convinced her.

“Is there anything in Pine Grove to see anyway?” Suzy asked as we drove away.

“Not really, there’s a few things I guess you could do like rock climbing or hunting, but I don’t think you’re into either of those things,” I said.

“No, no,” she said. “Don’t you get bored out here?”

“No, this is why I came here, to get away from anything exciting,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I think there’s too much excitement in my life right now rather than too little.”

She chuckled. “What could possibly be bothering you that much?”

“Oh, you know the usual,” I said to her. “How’s your work coming along?”

“I think I’ll actually be done with this project on time,” she said.

“Yeah, you look pretty dedicated to finishing it, what’s it about?”

“I really can’t say what it is, you know, client confidentiality and all, but it’s basically a novel. It's pretty long, but they’re paying good for me to go over it. Once I’m finished with these first edits, I’m going to send it to them,” she said.

Once we arrived near the lake, I messaged Charlotte that she was free to prowl around the house to her heart’s full desire. She gave me a ‘thumbs up’ emoji as a response.

Suzy and I found a bench in a place with good enough lighting. We were sipping coffees we had bought along the way.

To give Suzy credit, she did seem to be quite dedicated to what she was doing. She was tackling it with more focus than I’d ever seen her do anything before, but I guess the stress of adulthood can do quite a bit to put some work ethic in a person. I sympathized with her somewhat, I knew that things weren’t easy, and a part of me felt a pang of sadness at the thought that my usually happy-go-lucky sister had lost some of her easygoing nature.