The Latte Rebellion (19 page)

“That was Ben Alonzo, and we were sophomores,” Carey pointed out. “Bowling and cheese fries at the Park Place Lanes hardly counts as a date, don’t worry.”

“That’s the
problem.
” I sighed. “That’s the entire sad story of my dating life.” I felt a stabbing pang of loss, the loss of something I’d never had in the first place. And if I was perfectly honest with myself, this wasn’t really just about Thad, or relationships. It was about my whole life, about what I had and hadn’t managed to accomplish. It was about lost potential, embodied by those stupid rejection letters.

Carey paused. “Asha. What did I tell you when you were crying all over yourself, right after Ben said he ‘accidentally’ kissed Andrea Wilson?”

“You said I was way too awesome for him.” I let out a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. “You said I was an unstoppable force of nature.”

I felt like my heart was breaking, saying that, because I felt as far from a force of nature as it was possible to get. It seemed that all of my high hopes were unrealistic, unscalable mountains. My voice echoed dully across the phone line. “Carey. I …” I wanted to tell her about the letters. But then I thought of her overjoyed dance around the kitchen, and I couldn’t.

“Asha, I promise it’ll be
fine
. You will not be an old maid. In London, I bet all the cute English boys will fall all over themselves to talk to you. And then you’ll get to college and all those smart, articulate hotties will
converge
on your dorm room. I swear.” Carey sounded just a tiny bit annoyed. I knew I’d rained on her parade.

“Okay,” I said, just so we could put an end to this conversation. “Thanks, Care. At lunch tomorrow we can talk more about celebrating, ’kay? Congratulations. You
rock
.”

“Thanks! … But you’re okay, right?”

“Fine, fine,” I said, dismissively, glad she couldn’t see me wiping my eyes.

“Well, good. That’s great! I, uh … I guess I’ll call Miranda now.” She sounded like she couldn’t wait to get off the phone. I knew Miranda would be a much more receptive audience, so I let Carey go.

I wasn’t much of a friend myself, because all I could think about after she talked about the hotties converging on my college dorm room was the fact that Thad could never possibly be interested in me. Not only that, two of my four college possibilities were now nonexistent. Officially, I was now halfway to failure.

After wallowing in my misery for a while, I decided to turn on my laptop and try to console myself by looking at our T-shirt sales numbers. I went to the Latte Rebellion site first, just to see what was going on, and signed into the forum as an anonymous guest.

When the page loaded, I swallowed hard.

It was hard to believe how
big
this had gotten. Each of the different chapters of the Rebellion that Maria and Miranda had talked about had its own section of the forum, with names like “Lansing Heights Rebellion Chapter” and “Portland Friends of the Latte.”

I clicked into one of the topics in the main forum, “Vive la Resistance,” and found a long post by Sergeant Echo about disassociating ourselves from any violent activity. I felt a surge of relief. Despite Maria’s comments about a little controversy being good for the cause, they weren’t going to do anything drastic. I quickly hit “reply to post” and added my two cents, not that a post by “A. Nonymous” was going to really matter anyway.

“Bravo, Sergeant E. et al, for standing up for the Rebellion’s core principles and not getting sidetracked,” I typed. “We want to make people think, we want to stand up and speak out for what we believe in, but we don’t want to be associated with violence and mayhem. Kudos to you for furthering the real mission. A.”

I logged off, feeling reassured. At least something in my life was going according to plan. More or less.

The following April:
Ashmont Unified School District Board Room

It was eerie, but it seemed like almost every person in the boardroom was seated, and waiting quietly, even before the disciplinary hearing officer called the session back to order. There were rustlings of paper and the slight sounds of people shifting in their seats; there was an occasional whisper and, from time to time, the flash of the newspaper reporter’s camera. But on the whole, it was so silent that I was holding my body stiff, tensing my muscles into rigidity so I wouldn’t draw any attention to myself. My can of soda sat on the wooden table in front of me, untouched and dripping condensation.

I jumped when the hearing officer’s voice boomed into the microphone. “Will the board secretary please note that the hearing reconvened at ten forty-five.” Sheesh. He must have found a cough drop somewhere.

“Let’s continue quickly.” He consulted his notes. “Next we have Ms. Maria McNally. Come up here, please.” Of course, Maria was already halfway out of her seat. She looked prim and proper in her granny glasses, a button-down white shirt, and a plaid skirt, with her two long braids coiled up in Princess Leia buns on either side of her head.

“Ms. McNally, it says here that you’re a junior at University Park. Is that correct?”

She nodded, a little spastically.

“And I’m to understand that you’re the one responsible for the school Latte Rebellion group, despite its failure to gain approval from the Inter-Club Council?”

“That’s right, sir. I’m the president of the Latte Rebellion, University Park High chapter.” She stood straight and proud in front of him, seeming to feed off the incredulous stares of the audience. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my dad narrow his gaze at her. He was probably trying to construct an elaborate scenario in his head where she was the instigator and I was an innocent bystander who got sucked in against my will.

“From your standpoint, Ms. McNally, I’d like to hear more about Ms. Jamison’s role in the events that led to this hearing. Of course,” the hearing officer said dryly, “
your
rule-breaking is hardly in question, but that’s been dealt with.” He shot a sidelong glance at Vice Principal Malone, who nodded.

Maria frowned. “Asha was only involved to the extent that we asked her to give a brief speech. Which she did. End of story.”

“Obviously it isn’t nearly that simple,” one of the school board members said, rubbing her temples tiredly. I flushed with guilt, even though there was no way they could read my mind, no way they could know about everything I’d done behind the scenes.

“Sir, she may have come up with some of the original ideas behind the Latte Rebellion, but the responsibility for the incident last week lies entirely in the hands of the individuals who broke school rules by bringing—”

“And what about the school rules
you
broke,” he interrupted, frowning, “and Ms. Jamison? That’s what we’re focusing on here. The rules about Latte Rebellion materials on campus, which you violated both in letter and in spirit.”

“With all due respect, the letter and spirit of those rules are
wrong
,” Maria said passionately. Noisy whispers broke out among the school board panelists, and the audience fidgeted. I clenched my jaw. It was getting harder and harder to sit there quietly while everyone else had their say.

“The rules, Ms. McNally, are there to protect the school population and maintain a safe educational environment. Your enthusiasm for your ‘cause,’ however, is duly noted.” It sounded like the hearing officer was trying not to roll his eyes. I could feel my frustration building slowly like kindling catching fire. What gave him the right to be dismissive?

“What I still want to know, however, is specifics, which you seem to be refusing to provide. Specifics about how Ms. Jamison’s actions resulted in flagrant violation of school rules and dangerous behavior.” He glared at me, then Maria. “Well?”

Maria seemed to shrink a little under his scrutiny. I swallowed, my throat dry.

“I’ve said all I have to say,” she said finally. There was a very long silence.

“Fine,” the hearing officer said, sounding aggrieved. “We need to move on. We still have witnesses to hear from. And we all want to leave on time, I’m sure.” He shared a condescending smile with one of the hearing panel members, a white-haired woman in a purple suit.

More
witnesses? Who could possibly be left?

10

Half a week went by, and I had so far succeeded in hiding the unpleasant evidence from my parents. They were atrociously nosy, asking me if I’d gotten any news from colleges yet because so-and-so’s son or daughter had already heard blah-freaking-blah from the University of Smart and Successful People. I just told them I hadn’t gotten anything yet—which was, of course, a fib—and that lots of people at my school were still waiting to hear—which was true. I didn’t tell them about Carey’s successes. If I did, it would just invite a lot of conversations I really didn’t want to have.

I could see it now. My mom would say, wistfully, “Oh, wouldn’t it be so nice if the two of you could be roommates at college? You could study together every day.” Puke city.

Meanwhile, my dad would say, “So why haven’t
you
heard anything? I knew those grades from last semester would come back and bite you in the ass. You’re lucky we were so proactive or you might have to be taking summer school instead of going on that vacation you think you deserve. Speaking of which, ha ha.”

It was such a hideous vision of things to come that I completely threw myself into school activities, mindless busywork,
anything
to keep my mind off the confrontation that would hopefully never happen. In the meantime, I got a letter that I was on the waiting list for Berkeley, which wasn’t so bad, but wasn’t so good, either. I hid that under my mattress, too. The only school I still had to hear from was the one that had also, over the past few months, become my top choice—Robbins College. I started to get a recurring stomachache trying not to think about it.

I did continue going to the Mocha Loco Rebellion meetings—always as myself now. Even Carey made the occasional appearance; despite what she said about being “too busy” for the Rebellion, she was still pseudo-dating Leonard, and she and I were on better terms since we’d mutually decided to avoid the topic of colleges. There were a lot of other people from our school going to the meetings, too; in fact, to my smirking satisfaction, I recognized a few of Roger Yee’s Asian American Club groupies.

I hadn’t worn my paper bag hat in ages, and it was a relief not to have to hide or worry about being recognized. It was freeing. I felt like I could sit back and watch everything unfold. And I couldn’t help feeling a little proud. Sometimes I even found myself having to hold back a little, when some of the college students started to wonder why a random high school student was so knowledgeable about the Rebellion.

Of course, I wouldn’t be a high school student for much longer, even if college was still out of reach. When the time finally came that I no longer had to endure the sweaty-feet-and-diluted-bleach smell in the hallways, I would cavort in celebration.

In the meantime, I started looking online for deals on airline tickets. I sent a bunch of web links to Carey, who kept promising to look at them and then forgetting. It was frustrating, but typical. She was probably still dancing celebratory jigs about Stanford and Berkeley.

About a week after she told me about her college acceptances, I called Thad, willing myself not to be a downer like I’d been with Carey. I was sure he didn’t want to hear me spazzing about getting rejected.

“Hi,” I said uncertainly, fiddling with the water glass on my nightstand, watching the accumulated bubbles disappear as I tipped the liquid to one side.

“Oh, hey, Asha,” he said. He sounded happy that I’d called. “What’s up?”

“Not much.” Part of me felt like spilling my guts about everything—the rejections, my crappy winter report card, even the Rebellion. It was like a volcano building pressure until one day it would have to blow. But I settled for “How’s school?”

“Well, I’ve got a term paper due in Dr. Malik’s class in a few weeks.”

I couldn’t help laughing a little. “You could write about the Latte Rebellion.”

“Actually, I was sort of thinking about doing that,” Thad said.

I almost spilled my water all over myself. “That would be hilarious.” Well, kind of.

“I’m serious,” Thad insisted. “We’re supposed to write on the topic of race and social change. You know, like the Black Panthers, that kind of thing.”

“But the Latte Rebellion isn’t really …” I trailed off. “We haven’t
changed
anything. I mean, I doubt the people in charge think it’s, like, historically significant.”

I had to think about it for a second, though. We
did
want to see social change, even if it took place on a small, personal scale. But … seriously, the
Black Panthers?

“Oh, it’s pretty major,” he said. “I’ve been doing some research, and I’m blown away by how quickly the numbers have been growing and the philosophy itself has been spreading.” Thad sounded effusive, excited. “You know, whoever originally thought of the idea was probably very intelligent and most definitely very, very lucky to be in the right place at the right time in history for something like this to catch on.”

“Really,” I said, neutrally. “Yeah, I’d say ‘lucky’ sounds about right.”

“I mean, you have to wonder whether this Agent Alpha and Captain Charlie, or whoever put up the original website, were incredibly skilled at judging public readiness for this sort of thing, or if they did serious research first, or what.”

Or what
, I thought, but I kept quiet. My mind was spinning. Why was he telling all this stuff to
me
? Sure, he was all into his term paper topic, but what if he suspected something, especially after my conveniently late entrance at the rally? I mean, my identity swap was about as subtle as changing my clothes in a phone booth. But if he did suspect, why wasn’t he saying anything?

“Penny for your thoughts,” Thad said. “That’s a whole dollar adjusted for inflation.”

“I’m not sure my thoughts are worth a
whole dollar
,” I said teasingly, trying to think of something nonincriminating to tell him.

“Lots more than that, I’m sure,” he said.

I swallowed nervously. He
had
to know. But I wasn’t going to tell him. Not yet. I wasn’t ready for that. Our relationship—or long-distance friendship, or occasional flirtatious conversation, or whatever—had not yet reached that level.

“I guess …” I hesitated. “I guess I was just wondering how these kinds of things get started. I wonder if people can ever really
know
how things are going to turn out. Like the Latte Rebellion Organizers. What if they thought it was just something local? I don’t know if they ever realized it would be
relevant
anywhere else.”

“On the contrary, I think that’s how all these things get started.” Thad sounded passionate now, excited again. “One or two people have an idea, they start small, and then they hope that someone else, some
place
else, will take up the reins. It’s like Greg and me. If we start a clinic in, say, the ’hood in Oakland, and someone in Africa or China or New Orleans decides they want to try the same thing … It’s so powerful, the spread of ideas, Asha. It can make the world a better place.”

“As long as nobody misinterprets those ideas, it’s all fine and dandy,” I said in a low voice. “Like that hostage guy. Who knows
what
he thought we were about.”

“He was probably against the whole philosophy. You’d be surprised how many people still think that mixed-race relationships are doomed to fail, that people are just ‘too different.’ ” Thad paused for a moment. “I mean, there used to be laws against it. It’s a sore topic for a lot of people. No wonder the ideas of the Latte Rebellion have been sparking so much dialogue.”

There was a longer silence, but an easier one.

“You know, this conversation really got me thinking,” he said. “I’m still going to write about the Rebellion, but you brought up a lot of points I might have missed otherwise.”

I beamed.
I
had helped
Thad
. With a college assignment, no less.

Harvard doesn’t know what they’re missing
, I thought recklessly.

“Okay,” Maria McNally said, impatiently tapping a purple dry-erase marker against Mrs. Carville’s whiteboard. “Any more ideas for upcoming events?”

“I still think we can come up with something better than another poetry slam,” I said, rolling my eyes. Miranda smirked, and at the front of the classroom, Maria nodded, crossing it off the list she’d written on the whiteboard. The rest of the people attending the meeting murmured, some disgruntled, some in agreement. I sighed. I hadn’t planned to be here, but Maria had guilt-tripped me into it, claiming my “expertise” was needed.

I glanced at the clock. We had about fifteen minutes until the bell rang, which meant we should be out of here in five if we didn’t want to run into Mrs. Carville or any over-eager sophomore history nerds coming early to fifth period. After all, the Latte Rebellion technically didn’t exist—at least, not at University Park High School.

Suddenly, someone opened the classroom door in a rush, slamming it against the wall with a loud bang. I jumped, whacking my knee painfully against the desk. As I rubbed it, wincing, three people crowded into the doorway, scuffling and laughing in a tone I didn’t like. All three were wearing paper bags over their heads. That had to be deliberate, and I felt hot anger rise in my throat. A male voice, the one in front, said, “You better stay in here where nobody can see you, or you’ll be some sorry-ass mutts.”

“Hey,” I said loudly, but that was all I was able to get out.

One of the intruders threw something that was smoking into the middle of the floor. It exploded with a bang, billowing noxious yellow smoke, and several people screamed and practically leaped out of their desks. The three intruders laughed and ran out, slamming the door behind them. Those of us left in the room started coughing and gagging on the rotten-egg stench. Angrily, I rushed to the door and opened it, scanning the hallway on either side of the classroom, but I didn’t see anybody. Of course, my stinging eyes weren’t helping much. Echoing footsteps were disappearing rapidly, and I couldn’t tell where they were coming from. They could have turned down any one of the maze of hallways.

I slumped and walked back into the room, shaking my head when everyone looked at me expectantly. “I didn’t see who they were.”

I helped Maria open the few windows that could be opened, replaying the scene again in my mind. Obviously there were a lot of people—Roger, Kaelyn, the vice principal, even my parents—who thought the Latte Rebellion was trouble. But who would hate us enough to want to throw a smoke bomb?

I wasn’t able to speculate any further due to a sudden, earsplittingly shrill beeping noise echoing around my skull. The fire alarm. I looked around helplessly; everyone was either plugging their ears or fleeing the room. Soon it was nearly empty except for Maria, her lap dog Faris, Miranda, and me, grabbing our stuff and getting ready to evacuate to the football field. The room still smelled like sulfur, but what other choice did we have?

First, though, Miranda carefully picked up the still-smoking firecracker, using her paper lunch bag. “I’m going to save this as evidence that we’re doing the right thing, if people are pissed enough to firebomb our meetings,” she said grimly. I nodded in agreement. Just then, I saw Mrs. Carville standing in the doorway.

Oh,
crap
.

Behind her was Vice Principal Malone, looming over her shoulder with a grim expression on his mustached face.

Double
crap. Double crap on a cracker.

We were so incredibly lucky to get off without detention. Fortunately, all four of us were honors students—Maria was even a front office assistant—which meant we got the benefit of the doubt when we said
we
hadn’t had anything to do with the firecracker.

But then there was the list on Mrs. Carville’s whiteboard that we hadn’t had a chance to erase—the list unmistakably titled
Ideas for Future Rebellion Activities.
The administration was already all too aware of the Latte Rebellion, as I’d discovered back when Ms. Allison asked me her nosy questions. Under pressure and in the face of obvious incriminating evidence, we were forced to confess that, yes, we’d been holding “discussions” for people interested in the Latte Rebellion, since we had been denied the opportunity to form an official club.

Ominously, all Malone said to that was, “hmm.” Then he dismissed us from his office. I was so relieved not to be blamed for the incident that I didn’t even care that I was walking straight back to a French test.

But then, after school, I came home to find this.

Office of Admissions

Ellis Robbins College

Dear Ms. Jamison,

This year has been one of the most exciting ever for us as we choose the entering freshman class from a pool of thousands of prospective applicants. Although we receive applications from many talented students, we are unable to admit all of our promising high school seniors for the fall semester.

Although we are not at this time able to offer you admission to the School of Social Welfare at Ellis Robbins College, we feel that your academic records and extracurricular activities show accomplishment and dedication. You have therefore been placed on a waiting list for admission, and we will contact you should a space become available in our entering freshman class.