Read Will the Real Raisin Rodriguez Please Stand Up? for Free Online Page A

night when we were on the phone, Jeremy mentioned that he found one stray whisker growing out of his chin. The next day we saw that his whisker and my red patch were in the exact same areas of our chin. So we knew the whisker was the culprit. From then on, our secret signal for wanting to go mess around became rubbing our chins.”
    By that time we were taking our seats inside the theater. I was a little jealous that Lynn and Jeremy had a secret signal and we didn’t. Suddenly words were coming out of my mouth that hadn’t been cleared by my head. “We have a signal too!” I said, hoping that CJ would play along.
    â€œWe do?” he asked.
    â€œYou don’t have to be shy, CJ,” I said, trying to cover for him. “It’s okay to talk about. It’s just more findings for the study.”
    â€œWell, don’t findings need to be true in order to get into a study?” he asked.
    â€œI guess CJ’s a little more private than I am,” I said, giggling nervously just as the first preview started. “It’s really nothing, though,” I shouted over a cartoon monkey telling his girlfriend that he loved her. “We just clear our throat, and that’s how we know.” It was the best I could think of under pressure. Not that it mattered. Lynn and Jeremy were already fully absorbed by the monkey, who was now putting on his space helmet. I would have been fully absorbed by the monkey too—after all he was a monkey—but the way CJ was staring at my fibbing Band-Aid-covered mouth was too much of a distraction.
    By the time the preview for Space Monkeys was over, CJ had turned away from me and toward the movie screen. And by the time Alex/Alexandra was over, he seemed to have forgotten about my little white lie. Which some might call a big black lie.
    And others still a medium-gray lie.
    Like most other things, it all depends on who the person is. Whether they’re a giant, a Lilliputian, or a regular-sized person, whether or not they happen to be color blind. You know . . . like that.
    But I digress.
    Allow me to gress . . .
    Â 
After the movie, we all walked over to Towne Pizza to get something to eat. CJ and I were a couple of yards behind Jeremy and Lynn, who were laughing so hard I thought one of them could throw up any second. They were probably trading one inside joke after another.
    Their laughter made me feel like CJ and I were boring, so I tried to think of something unboring to say. But nothing I thought of seemed right. Eventually the quiet got too weird and uncomfortable and I had to say something.
    â€œWhat’d you think of the movie?” I asked CJ, settling on the absolute least unboring question of all.
    â€œI liked it a lot,” he said.
    â€œYou did?” I shouted, feeling encouraged. “So did I!”
    â€œOooookay, Raise,” said CJ, giving me the pre-Alex /Alexandria stare.
    â€œSorry. I didn’t mean to overreact. But maybe that could be an inside joke we share. That we both liked the movie.”
    â€œBut it’s not a joke. Or really that inside. I mean, it’s not private or secret or anything like that,” he said. Maybe he had a point, but couldn’t he just humor me? I was doing it for us.
    â€œWell, what’d you like about it?” I asked, as if my job was Boring Question Asker and I was hoping for a raise.
    â€œI liked how she was everyone’s favorite as a boy, but no one really noticed her as a girl.”
    â€œThat’s what I liked!” I said, keeping my excitement to myself while silently reviewing for inside-joke potential.
    By the time we were seated at Towne Pizza, I still hadn’t come up with anything close to an inside joke. I was out of ideas and very hungry. Once our food arrived, I practically swallowed a whole pie by myself without even chewing. Which resulted in part of that pie getting caught in my throat. Which resulted in my need to clear my throat.