Waking Up in the Land of Glitter by Kathy Cano-Murillo Read Free Book Online

snatched
     up her bag. “Sorry I’m such a loser. Fine. I quit. Happy now? I’ll put my notice in for December, and you’ll be rid of me,”
     she snapped.
    Her dad let out a sarcastic chuckle. “December? Hmmm, I seem to recall last Christmas when you opened La Pachanga in the middle
     of the night and cooked for all your friends. We didn’t have chorizo for the customers in the morning. The next day we sat
     here discussing this exact topic. You
quit
then too—and put your notice in for August. Dori, what is today’s date?”
    “August first,” she replied.
    So much for righteous indignation. Star had to come up with Plan B,
pronto
. “At least give me time to get something going. Can I stay if I pay rent?”
    “How much savings do you have, Star?” Dori asked.
    “Thirteen dollars. But that doesn’t count the money Nana left me in her will. And I could sell off some of my vintage jewelry.
     Let me prove myself. I swear I’ll make this debacle up to you a thousand times over. Please, Dad.”
    She could usually read her dad’s mind, but not now. She could tell even her mom didn’t know what to expect. The next few seconds
     passed as fast as a turtle on Valium.
    “Dori, get me a paper and a pen, please,” Al said to his wife. Dori got up, hustled to the kitchen counter, grabbed a notepad
     and a fine-point Sharpie, and handed them over. Al quickly sketched a makeshift contract.
    “This is how it works: You have six months to establish a new career and tie up loose ends of your abandoned projects at the
     restaurant. In December, if you haven’t fulfilled the agreement, you have to pay us three fifty a month for back rent—that’s
     twenty-one hundred dollars, and find a new place to live.”
    Star fidgeted and bit her thumbnail. He had backed her into a corner and she hated that. Why couldn’t he just trust her? “What
     if I just pay the twenty-one hundred upfront out of Nana’s money?”
    Al didn’t acknowledge the comment, and Dori flashed her daughter a scary scrunched-eyebrow look of disgust. “And what if she
     does meet the agreement, Al?”
    He finished scribbling out the terms without looking up. “She can have her job back if she wants it, keep renting her room—and
     depending on how she does, I’ll move her from employee status to partner.” He slid the paper across the table, and Star quickly
     signed to show her commitment.
    Of course she planned to move out
someday
, but not anytime soon. She loved this roomy, historic cottage that her parents bought when she was in second grade. Her bedroom
     could pass as a studio apartment, and the adjoining guest room came in handy as a walk-in closet for her massive wardrobe
     collection.
    “Sooo… um, what abandoned projects?” Star asked.
    “The back house,” Al said.
    Star groaned.
    “Don’t make that face, Estrella. You begged us to let you use it as your art studio and now it’s nothing but a pigpen.”
    Ugh,
Star thought. They just had to drudge up that stupid back house and rub it in, as if she didn’t feel like a loser already.
     When she finished college, she had come home with a mission to become an artist. Didn’t everyone who took fine arts classes?
     She pleaded with her parents to let her have the back house as her studio. Theo renovated it; Al and Dori bought her hundreds
     of dollars’ worth of art books, classes, and supplies. Star needed to find her signature style, but there were so many techniques
     and genres to choose from. If she waited, life experience would help. Why rush something so important? No, Star would wait
     for the perfect time to launch a serious art career. She didn’t want to end up in rickrack purgatory like Ofie. All of it
     overwhelmed her, and as the months passed, the more insecure she became. Instead, she invested her energy in La Pachanga.
    These days she despised that ugly back house because she had let it become a shelter for her pop culture souvenirs, impulsive
     eBay finds, and the