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and her co-workers had first discovered Angelica was taking over. And
     she’d learned that Angelica had taken the glossy, gossipy magazine with its endless features on Latina stars and their boob
     jobs and made it into the most successfully interactive Web site Sandy had ever seen. Readers were invited to comment and
     vote on every photo on the site, and it was chock-full of contests and promotions by advertisers. Even though
Mujer
had gone out of print, it was apparently making all kinds of money in its new incarnation as a Web site, and Angelica was
     the one responsible. Sandy had to admit that it was exactly the kind of entertainment that would appeal to her mother, and
     to thousands or maybe millions of other women like her.
    “Is your new Web site going to be for Latinas?” her mother asked.
    “Sort of,” Sandy answered, keeping her tone vague. Nacho Papi would be like Levy Media’s other new sites, Don’t Call Me Sassy
     and Banana Nation. Sandy hadn’t examined those sites in depth yet, but she could already tell that they’d follow the lead
     of Levy Media’s flagship “news” site, Hate-O-Rama.com , where celebrities, politicians, and media professionals got the “hater” treatment on a daily basis. She didn’t feel like
     trying to explain the ironic, irreverent, mean-spirited-but-funny tone to her mother, for whom
Mujer
magazine and the occasional romance novel were the highest-level reading.
    Having finished the last bite of her quesadilla and washed it down with the pink saccharine juice, Sandy stood. “All right,
     Mom. I’d better go upstairs. I have a lot of work to finish.”
    “Work? Baby, it’s Friday. You’re young. Why aren’t you going out tonight?”
    Enough of the third degree
, Sandy thought. It was time to resort to a dirty trick to get her mother off her back. “Speaking of going out, who was that
     I heard at your door last night?” she asked.
    Immediately, like magic, her mother clammed up. “Never mind,” she said primly.
    Sandy smiled. She may have been secretive, but she came by the trait honestly. Her mother could be quite the secret keeper
     herself when she wanted to be. Sandy knew Mrs. Saavedra was probably dating someone, but that was all she knew, because that
     was all her mom would let her find out.
    They cleaned up the snack debris in relative silence and then Sandy turned to go.
    “Wait, Sandy, I forgot to ask you: Can you still go with me to Aunt Linda’s house tomorrow? Remember, I told you last week?”
    Sandy hadn’t remembered, actually. She’d completely forgotten until that moment that she’d half promised to help her mother
     clean her recently deceased aunt’s house and finish putting the old woman’s affairs in order. That meant a long drive out
     to the dusty, hilly middle of nowhere. Not exactly how she wanted to spend half her weekend.
    She wanted to make up an excuse. She
had
the perfect excuse—she had her Nacho Papi audition posts to write. But her mother was looking at her so hopefully that Sandy
     decided to give in. She could write the posts after, she told herself.
    “Yeah, I’ll go,” Sandy said, feeling relieved at having something else to do, all of a sudden.
    She ignored the fact that the relief only barely covered an underlying, slow-simmering sense of panic about her career.

7
    Blog entry from My Modern TragiComedy, Saturday, March 11
I love my mother, but
    sometimes she drives me crazy. I’m sure you’re familiar with the feeling.
    In my particular case, it’s like my mother and I are complete opposites. The way we act, the way we dress, the things we watch,
     listen to, and read (or don’t read)… Everything about us is different.
    I take after my dad. Which is strange, when you think about it, because that means he married someone completely different
     from him. I wonder, sometimes, if those differences are why they divorced.
    And I wonder, sometimes, if he’s ever realized how much he and I are alike.
    Maybe