Will the Real Raisin Rodriguez Please Stand Up? by Judy Goldschmidt Read Free Book Online Page B

It has Wi-Fi. I can narrate the whole ride, INCLUDING THE IN-FLIGHT MOVIE. Just as long as my battery doesn’t run ou

Comments:
    Logged in at 12:30 PM, EST
    Lynn: This is SO totally excellent, woman! It’ll be like you never left. And I’m glad we’re keeping it between the sisterhood. There are certain things guys aren’t biologically wired to understand. And that’s cool. We’re all just people.
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Logged in at 12:31 PM, EST
    Fippy: Thanks for including me, Raise. This is so much fun! I’m also glad it’s just us girls. There are certain things guys aren’t wired to understand. Like how to be a good boyfriend and resist asking girls who look like Dylan the fake underwear model to back them up on the triangle for “Black Christmas Totally Rocks.” He doesn’t even really need someone to play the triangle. In fact, the triangle is so totally not rock ‘n’ roll.
    Hey, Raise . . . I don’t mean to bogart your space. I’m just so totally over Roman. I’m glad you’ve decided to write. Word.
    1:07 PM, PST
    Sorry about my battery dying before. I hope you guys aren’t too disappointed about missing my full play-by-play of the movie. If it makes you feel any better, you didn’t miss much. A documentary about penguins standing still for six months straight is less exciting than you might have guessed.
    Anyway—I’m here! Hello from the kumbaya capital of the world. Where underarm hair is worn with the pride normally reserved for the season’s most glamorous platform sandals and getting dressed to the nines means putting on a bra.
    I forgot how much I like my dad’s apartment. My bedroom walls are painted purple and pink, and there’s a bunk bed for when Lola and I are here at the same time. I sleep on top; she sleeps on the bottom. When we first started coming here after the divorce, it took a while for Lola to get used to sleeping in a “big girl’s bed.” Sometimes she used to fall on the floor in the middle of the night. It never woke her up, though.
    I miss that chubby little munchkin. I wish she was here to fall out of our bunk bed this week.
    As soon as I shower, my father, the wonderful Peter Rodriguez—yoga instructor, sailboat renter, and close personal friend of Madonna—is going to drive me over to Pia’s house to see her and Claudia.
    It’s nutty—when he first picked me up from the airport, I didn’t even recognize him. His beard was shaven off and he was driving a brand-new car. It looked just like the car in Herbie the Love Bug, only his is silver, with a convertible top. It was weird seeing him in a nice car, but I forgot to ask him about it because I got sidetracked by something he said.
    â€œRaise, I know how excited you are to be here,” he began. We were driving down Highway 13. “But just don’t be too discouraged if you feel strange at first or if things with Pia and Claudia don’t go right back to normal immediately. All that means is that you’re taking time to adjust. Okay, Swami?”
    â€œOkay,” I said. But I was lying. There was nothing okay with what he said. All he did was start me worrying and realizing that things were already not back to normal. For instance, what was with the expensive car? The closest thing his old car ever had to a convertible roof was a passenger’s door that fell off unless it was held down with electrical tape. And the color? Sure, the old car was silver, but it was also gold, black, white, and every other color of the rainbow from all the cars that had sideswiped it in the tiny parking lot of his yoga studio, Chakra Center.
    Seeing my dad without a beard and driving a fancy car was really weird. It was like seeing Jeremy without his freckles speaking in an inside voice. Or CJ without his eyelashes, speaking.
    I just hope that my dad’s wrong and that there’s nothing strange about seeing Pia and