The Latte Rebellion (29 page)

From Robbins College.

I ripped it open, not caring that I destroyed the envelope in the process, and pulled out the cover letter. My mom leaned over my shoulder to read it for herself, too impatient to wait for me to tell her what it said.

Dear Ms. Jamison,

We have reviewed your letter of appeal thoroughly. Your unusual circumstances were intriguing, and it is clear that you have given careful consideration to your academic future and why it should include attendance here at Robbins College. We have also taken into account your present status on the waiting list.

Although we are unable to offer you a place for the fall semester, it is with great pleasure that we extend to you an offer of admission to Ellis Robbins College, School of Social Welfare, for the spring semester. We hope that you will want to join one of the most vibrant and stimulating intellectual communities in the world.

Congratulations!

Christopher Blake

Office of Admissions

Ellis Robbins College

As I read these words from the Office of Admissions, I experienced a mixture of emotions. At first, elation was all I felt—I’d gotten in. I’d gotten in! This big fat envelope was most definitely full of admission information, dormitory request forms, and all the other paperwork that would make it official that I was a Robbins student.

But after a minute, my spirits came back down to earth. In fact, they sank slightly below the earth’s crust, to be specific about it. I wasn’t admitted for fall after all. They were saying yes—but it was a deferred admission, for the spring semester.

My mother sighed and put a gentle hand on my shoulder, and I wondered if she was as disappointed as I was. I hadn’t exactly
failed
her, but I sure hadn’t lived up to my parents’ original expectations. Or mine. And there was nothing more I could do about it. This was the best I’d been able to manage, and it still wasn’t good enough.

What hurt even more than that, though, what made me want to hide in my room forever in abject humiliation, was the thought of telling Miranda and Carey that I wouldn’t be moving out with them after all. After everything that had happened, after all the work I’d done to make up for getting distracted and slacking off, I was still going to be left here by myself—no Miranda, no Carey. And no Thad, either.

The weird thing was, even though this wasn’t the ideal situation—getting into my dream school, but having to wait a semester to go—my parents ultimately seemed to be relieved. They released me from my punishment a week early, in honor of my eighteenth birthday on May 13th, and right after that they encouraged me to invite a few friends over to have pizza and watch movies. I didn’t miss the gesture—they’d forgiven me for the sit-in incident and the near-expulsion, even if they weren’t saying it explicitly, and even though they still wanted to keep an eye on me.

Part of their reason for relenting was the long heart-to-heart I’d had with them when we went out to dinner at the Thai Palace to celebrate my Robbins acceptance. They’d reacted to the situation more positively than I’d expected, telling me that in the long run, one semester wouldn’t matter.

“Sometimes the right school is worth the wait,” my mom said, smiling as she filled my plate with spicy green papaya salad.

I poked the papaya strips with my fork. “Yeah, but I should have been able to get in without writing the appeal.”

“There’s no point in dwelling on that now. You should think of this as an opportunity rather than a setback,” my dad insisted, between mouthfuls of peanut-crunchy pad thai. “You can get some real work experience, and by the time you get settled in at Robbins, you’ll be much more mature and focused than all those other students who went in straight out of high school.”

My dad had had to enter college late himself, working tough hours at the same time that he was taking classes for his A.A. degree. He’d been the first in his family to even
go
to college. So I tried not to be offended by the implication: that I wasn’t mature enough right now; that I’d wasted time on pointless moneymaking schemes when I could have been valedictorian and working at some mind-numbing grunt job for minimum wage and “life experience.” Like Carey, who was Mother Teresa as far as my dad was concerned, even after everything that had happened.

But in the end, I felt like I
had
matured, like I’d learned something about myself at least. It was hard to explain that to my parents, because they couldn’t get past the fact that I’d kept it all a secret from them. And maybe I could have been honest about the college letters, if nothing else …

But there was no sense in “brooding,” as my mother referred to it. And she was right in this case. The whole saga was over, as my parents reminded me a few nights later when I asked them if I could go out to meet Thad sometime.

“That is,” I said meekly, “if it’s okay with you guys. If my fun allotment for the rest of the school year has been severely curtailed, I’d understand.”

My dad turned down the TV and both of them looked at me with that weird, unique parental mixture of pride and sympathy. Since I wasn’t letting the Rebellion rule my life anymore, they said, they had no reason not to trust me to make the right decisions.

I’d faced the consequences, and I’d been punished enough.

“Asha, we want you to know you can always talk to us if things in your life are getting out of hand, or if you need help figuring things out.” My dad’s voice was uncharacteristically gentle. “There’s no need to suffer in silence. We’re here to help.”

“I know, Dad,” I said, a little choked up.

“So go call your friend,” he said. “Just make sure I get to meet him before you decide to get too serious.”

Paradoxically, the minute they said I would always have them to fall back on, I realized this: I wouldn’t always be able to—or even want to—rely on them to bail me out of every catastrophe. And they knew that, and it was okay. If I could handle the Latte Rebellion on my own, I could handle whatever came next. It’s just the way life is.

I did have one more big argument with my parents, though, when I told them that I still wanted to use my share of the T-shirt earnings to take a trip to London this summer. They almost had a fit around the breakfast table. It was like they’d forgotten about the monetary side of the Latte Rebellion (to be honest, I had too, for a while), and so my mom was arguing that I should give the money to a worthy cause like the tutoring organization I used to work for, and my dad was saying I should invest it in an IRA or put it in the bank for college.

“It’s never too early to save for retirement,” he said, between bites of English muffin. “Believe me, I know. If I’d started putting money away when I was your age—”

I dropped my cereal spoon into my empty bowl with a loud clink.

“I’m eighteen,” I said pointedly, in the silence that followed. “And it’s not like I’m blowing the money I saved up from my job last summer. This isn’t going to affect my plans for college. It might,” I said to my dad, “even make me a little more ‘mature and focused’ than I would be otherwise.”

“I frankly just don’t know if you’re ready for something like that,” my mom said, tilting her head and looking at me with a cool, assessing stare.

We went back and forth a little bit, my dad protesting that I didn’t know what I was getting into, yet again, and me pointing out that European kids did this kind of thing all the time, spending years backpacking through the mountains before going to college, which may have been a teensy exaggeration; but ultimately, his protests were halfhearted. My mom sat quietly for the rest of the debate, but I could tell she still had reservations, too. She was just better at not saying anything.

At one point, though, she asked me, “Carey’s still going with you, right?”

That stopped me short. If I admitted the truth to myself, I realized I didn’t know the answer to that question. Given everything that had happened over the past school year, Carey probably wouldn’t want to go anymore; but I couldn’t picture the trip without her. I gave my mom a noncommittal answer, but I knew that I needed to talk to Carey. I just couldn’t seem to work up the courage to ask her about it.

A week and a half after I stopped being grounded—and only a few weeks before graduation—I finally saw Thad again. I’d only spoken to him once since I’d ceased being monitored by the Powers That Be. I hadn’t even said much about the hearing; just the outcome, though I made sure to tell him that my letter of appeal to Robbins had been successful. But because we hadn’t seen each other since the rally, I’d started having this horrible sinking feeling about ever getting to see him again. Such a promising meeting of the minds, dashed before it ever had the possibility to grow into something more.

Then, one Saturday morning he called me while I was still sitting in my PJs on the couch, lazily watching reruns of some insipid 1950s sitcom with a perfect Barbie wife and 2.5 clean-cut kids. The late-May sun was shining in, making me warm and sleepy. I heard my cell phone ring distantly from where I’d left it somewhere in the kitchen.

After a moment, my mom walked in and said, “It’s Thad.” She smiled and handed me the still-ringing phone. I quickly downed a swig of orange juice to try to clear the cobwebs out of my brain. I couldn’t help feeling excitement in the pit of my stomach.

“Hey,” he said when I picked up, rushing back to my room for some privacy. Was that eagerness in his voice, or was it just wishful thinking?

“So what’s up?” I toyed with a still-unbrushed tangle of hair, glad he couldn’t see me in my ratty shorts and Powerpuff Girls T-shirt.

“Sort of depends on whether you’re ungrounded yet.”

“I’m ungrounded,” I said, flushing with embarrassment but grinning at the same time. “Ungrounded, unsuspended, and not-expelled.”

“Good,” he said. I could hear the smile in his voice. “The thing is, I’m going to see a speaker at U-NorCal this afternoon and I was wondering if you wanted to grab coffee afterwards. Know anywhere good in your neck of the woods?”

“Sure!” I winced at my chipper tone of voice and tried for nonchalant. “Yeah, that sounds great.”

We settled on four o’clock at Mocha Loco. I didn’t really want to go there—I wasn’t sure I was quite ready yet to face Leonard, in case he wanted to talk about the Rebellion—but it was the closest place to campus. When I pulled up and parked my car across the street, I could see Thad sitting at one of the outside tables in the shade under the awning, his shock of black hair as out-of-control as I remembered it. A quick thrill sent goose bumps up my arms. I couldn’t suppress a wave of relief at seeing him actually there, smiling as I approached.

“Hey, how was the lecture?” I walked up to his table and stood in front of him, shifting a little from foot to foot. This was the first time we’d seen each other in person since the rally.

“Great,” he said, beaming. He got up and pulled me into a hug, and my entire body buzzed with the pleasure of actually touching him, in public, like it was meant to be after all. I put my arms around him, a little belatedly, and realized I’d trapped him into a longer hug than was probably normal. Reluctantly—and a little sheepishly—I let him go. He took a step back, but he was still smiling.

“Yeah, the lecture was pretty good. Not as much fun as the Latte Rebellion rally, though,” he added with a mischievous wink. I rolled my eyes. “Have a seat—want me to grab you a coffee or something?”

“Sure.” I sat gingerly in the plastic patio chair, which was hot from soaking in sunlight, my hands fidgeting nervously in my lap.

“Let me guess—a latte?”

I looked up at him sharply, then noticed the cheerful crinkle at the corners of his eyes and realized he probably didn’t mean anything by it. It wasn’t
his
fault I was sick of the whole thing.

“Actually, an iced tea would be great,” I said. “I’m kind of over the latte thing.” He raised his eyebrows, but went inside the crowded café to order, and I tried to relax enough that I wouldn’t sound like an idiot when he got back. I was just reapplying my lip shimmer when a familiar voice said, “Hey, Asha.”

I looked up. It was Carey; she was just coming out of Mocha Loco. I hadn’t seen her outside of school for a week at least, and we’d only had one quick phone conversation about physics homework.

“Hi,” I said, a little uncomfortably. I wiped a sudden prickling of sweat off the back of my neck. “Um … how’d you do on the lab?”

“I did okay,” she said, which probably meant she got an A-minus.

“Here to visit Leonard?” I’m happy to say I asked this without a trace of sarcasm.

“Yup, I was taking a study break,” she said, not looking directly at me but instead making a show of cleaning her sunglasses. “What about you?”

“Meeting Thad,” I said, a little proudly. “He’s in town for a lecture on campus.”

“Oh, was that him walking in? Finally, I get to see this alleged college man.” We grinned at each other, and for a second it was like things were okay again. Then I had to go and ruin it with my big mouth.

“So I wanted to ask you,” I started, nervously. “I’m thinking that July might be a good time to go to London.” I could hardly breathe, waiting to hear her response.

“Yeah,” she said, sounding reluctant, and then it was like I knew what she was going to say. “You know, about this summer … I’m not sure I’m going to be able to take any time off. I agreed to take full-time hours at Book Planet. I want to be able to afford a car, even if it’s a crappy one, before I leave for Stanford. Then I can come home on weekends and help my parents out.”