Read Online If the Shoe Fits (Whatever After #2) by Sarah Mlynowski - Free Book Online

“Cinderella? How are you doing in there?”
    “Wonderful! I need another hour! Do you think you could start dinner? Maybe make a chicken Caesar salad? We have leftover chicken from last night.”
    “Um, I don’t know how to make Caesar salad,” I say.
    “Can’t we just order a pizza?” Jonah asks.
    “The cookbook is on the counter! It tells you how to make the dressing,” Cinderella calls out.
    “Oh. Okay.”
    How hard can it be?
     
    We follow the recipe. We mince. We chop. We whisk. We finish the dressing. Then we make the salad.
    “This was easier than I thought!” I say, munching on some loose lettuce.
    And who knew? Cooking is fun! Cookbooks make it so much easier, though. Cinderella has the Official Floom Cookbook . There is a section on stew. There is a section on pizza. There is a section on something called Kingslingions , a Floom specialty, which calls for rice, shark fin, olives, and pineapple (which I never, ever want to try). There is also a section on desserts. Chocolate chip cookies! Lemon meringue pie! White chocolate cake! Yum.
    When all the prep is done, we go back upstairs.
    I knock and call from the hallway, “Cinderella? You still there? How’s it going?”
    “All done!” she says. “I’m just trying it on. Come in!”
    “I can’t wait to see it!” I squeal.
    “Here I come!” She steps out from the closet and cheers, “Ta-da!”
    Oh.
    Oh, no.
    It is not good.
    It is not good at all.
    The edges are jagged. The sleeves are uneven. There are random slashes in places that shouldn’t have slashes. It looks about seven sizes too big.
    She looks like the bride of Frankenstein.
    She pirouettes. “Is it gorgeous? This was easier than I thought.”
    Jonah tugs at my arm. “That’s what you said about making the Caesar salad.”
    Very true. Except the Caesar salad actually looks like Caesar salad. This dress does not look like the dress she wore to the ball. It doesn’t look like a dress at all. It looks like a tablecloth that got attacked by a class of preschoolers with scissors.
    Cinderella does another twirl. “I’ll make you a pair of undies with the leftover material.”
    Thanks, but no thanks. “Cinderella, I don’t know how to tell you this but —”
    Her face falls. “What?”
    I sigh. “You really need a mirror in here.”

O h my,” Cinderella says. We’re in the stepsisters’ room, examining the dress in one of the mirrors. She looks at herself from all angles. “Oh my, oh my. I am really not a good designer.”
    “No,” I say. “You’re really not.”
    “You can keep practicing,” Jonah says. “You don’t get good at something overnight.”
    “That’s true,” I say. “But it’s already Sunday evening. It’s almost dinnertime. We only have a day and a half left to raise a hundred dollars!”
    Cinderella sighs.
    “What?” I ask.
    “It just seems like an awful lot of work for something that’s not going to be needed in the end. I mean, if this convinces Farrah to help me, I’m going to marry the prince and live in the palace. I won’t need the apartment after all.”
    “You could keep the apartment for your office,” Jonah says.
    She makes a sad face. “My office for what?”
    “Your job,” I remind her. “I want to get married one day, but I still want to be a judge. Even if you do marry the prince, you might discover you like being self-reliant. Even a princess should feel self-reliant. In the meantime, you still need a job. Are you sure you don’t want to be a cleaning person? Or maybe just a clothes washer?”
    “I hate washing clothes,” Cinderella says. “My hands are all chapped. And it’s boring. I want to make something.”
    “You’re making something cleaner,” I say.
    Cinderella shrugs. “Is the chicken Caesar salad done?”
    “Yup. All set.
    “Oh, good. Did you make anything for dessert?”
    “No, were we supposed to?”
    “I can do it. But we’d better hurry. They’ll be home soon, and they eat at seven.”
    My