Raisin Rodriguez & the Big-Time Smooch Read Free

have my face feng-shuied?
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10:06 PM, EST
    Are false eyelashes too much?

Thursday, November 18
    6 AM, EST
    Kitties,
    Forget the team of beauty experts; call 911. I’m having a hair emergency.
    I set my alarm for five today, figuring if I paced myself, two hours and eighteen minutes would be just enough time to get ready for CJ. I finally settled on an outfit last night (sassy student from The Raisin Rodriguez Fall Line), so it was just a matter of getting my hair and makeup together. Of course, there are some things in life we can’t prepare for. Friends doing weird things with their tongues, the sudden-onset birth of a sibling, natural disasters . . . I learned about that last one the hard way.
    This morning I woke up to a weather report of 8o percent humidity. Actually, I didn’t even need to hear the weather report. My hair told me everything I needed to know. It said, “We have a code-red situation.”
    My hair was right. Luckily, Samantha has secret hair issues of her own. Turns out she’s not spending all her time contemplating the introduction of iambic pentameter and its influence on the atmosphere of Uranus (your anus! Ha!). Based on my observations regarding her use of the flatiron, I happen to know for a fact that she’s spending at least some of her time like the rest of us girls—worrying about frizz!
    Usually she keeps the flatiron in the cabinet under the sink in our bathroom. But today there was nothing in there but a box of tampons. Now, really, what good are those? If I were curling my hair, maybe. But for straightening?
    I checked everywhere, but the iron was nowhere in that bathroom. By this time I was starting to panic a little. Which made me sweat a lot. Which made my hair frizz even more.
    There was only one thing to do. I had to get inside Samantha’s room and find that iron.
    Luckily Samantha suffers from advanced-stage snoryitis, so I didn’t have to worry that she’d hear me coming in. It amazes me that a perfect Barbie doll nose can manufacture such ugly noises.
    The iron was sitting on her bookshelf, its metal plate shining like a beacon of hairstyle hope. “We’ll fix you up for CJ,” it seemed to be saying.
    Until . . .
    I stepped on her radio alarm clock and set it off. It was so loud and startling, I was afraid she’d hear it over her snoring. So I flipped back the switch as quickly as I could and ran out of the room without even throwing a glance her way.
    I was hoping that the nightmarish experience might have scared my hair straight. But it did no such thing. I had to come up with a new plan.
    What about using a clothes iron? I thought. It can’t be that different from a hair iron. They both use heat to smooth things out.
    I headed straight for the laundry room to check out my theory. Then I plugged in the iron, put my head down on the ironing board, put a paper towel over my hair, and ironed away.
    It worked so well, I was ready to alert the fashion media. I just had to go over my hair one final time.
    And that’s when I found out the hard way why people don’t use household appliances to style their hair. Because most of them are smart enough to know that if they’re not super-careful, they’ll SINGE THEIR BANGS INTO BURNT STRAW ON THE MOST IMPORTANT AND LIFE-CHANGING DAY OF THEIR WHOLE ENTIRE ROMANTIC LIFE.
    Yes, ladies, once again, Raisin Rodriguez has turned her hair into a sideshow attraction.
    Now what am I going to do? I look like the scare-crow from The Wizard of Oz. One look at me and CJ might hop on the Yellow Brick Road and take it as far away from me as he can.
    I better go reevaluate my wardrobe plans for today. Something that hides my head would do nicely.
    PS—I wonder if I can still work in the eyelashes somehow.
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7:03 AM, EST
    What am I going to wear? I don’t own anything that goes with this hair!
    I’ve gone from preppy punk to punky prep, then to all pink, which is the