Emily Goldberg Learns to Salsa Read Online Free PDF

Spanish teen mags that our AP teacher uses to “stimulate cultural awareness.” There’s a calendar of impressionist paintings. June is Degas. There’s a stuffed gray Persian kitten on her bed, grinning at us incongruously. The curtains are pink, and the window looks out onto a backyard that contains a small, circular, in-ground pool. The pool is par for the course in Rosa’s development, I think.
    My biggest concern is the bed. I have no idea how my mother and I are supposed to share it. Neither of us is exactly a sumo wrestler, but, um, twin beds are kind of narrow. I realize, though, that this would not be the ideal time to point this out.
    Lucy leads us to the backyard.
    â€œThe pool is nice,” I say, aiming for “brightly” and missing it badly. My voice squeaks. I sound desperate.
    â€œWe can’t afford it,” Lucy says flatly. “But Papi put it in and now Mami wouldn’t dare cover it over.” She sniffs, showing us what she thinks of this attitude.
    â€œIt must be nice for the evenings, when school is out,” my mother says wistfully. She’d always wanted my father to build a pool, but he balked and made noise about the increase in property taxes.
    â€œI work in the evenings,” Lucy says abruptly.
    This is interesting news. I’d always wanted an after-school job—a discount at Abercrombie seemed like a jack-pot to me—but my parents were pretty insistent that nothing get in the way of my schoolwork. “We give you plenty of allowance,” they’d point out.
    â€œWhere do you work?” I ask, no longer scrambling to make conversation but honestly wanting to know.
    There is no reply. After a moment I realize why. I turn to see that Lucy has slipped away, probably before I’d even asked my question.
    Hopefully before I’d even asked my question.
    â€œI don’t think she heard you, sweetie,” my mother says. She reaches out to smooth my hair in a gesture she’d—up until this point—abandoned after I hit adolescence. I duck away from her touch, uncomfortable. She may be right—maybe Lucy hadn’t heard me at all—but really, there’s no way to tell.
    â€œShe heard you.”
    My mother starts, and I realize that we have company in the form of a smallish, pixie-faced neighbor child leaning challengingly against the tree that separates her backyard from Lucy’s. She pushes off from the tree, walks toward us. Her face is tiny, elfin, with enormous brown eyes and razor-sharp cheekbones. She seems very . . . intense.
    She stops just in front of me and holds out her hand. “I’m Marisa.”
    We shake, solemnly. “I’m Emily. This is my mother.”
    She nods. “You’re Lucy’s cousin, right?”
    â€œYes. Did she tell you we were coming to stay for a while?” If Lucy was talking about us, I can only imagine what she would say. . . .
    Marisa shrugs. “Nah. You just look like her,” she says, and promptly turns, marching off back to her own yard.
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    â€œSo you’re, like, stuck in Puerto Rico?”
    â€œMmm-hmm,” I say, pacing in small circles around the pool.
    I had remained outside after our preliminary tour for a much-needed moment alone. Of course, a moment alone basically consisted of frantically calling Noah, Isabelle, and finally Adrienne, who is the only one who picked up her cell. I explained to her what was going on: Mom freaking out (which, really, I hadn’t seen all that much evidence of beyond her newfound chain-smoking). Dad insisting that I stay behind for the whole summer . The vaguely unbelievable promises to pack up the remainder of my summer wardrobe and ship it over to me, lest I spend the next six to eight weeks rotating between four pairs of underwear and one set of velour track pants. The Puerto Rican family, all of whom seem to somehow know of Max and me, even though they don’t really know us.