The Latte Rebellion (30 page)

I just looked at her, feeling the bottom drop out of the plans we’d worked so hard for. I wasn’t exactly surprised, but I’d still been hoping for … something.

She turned her head and stared out at the traffic on Oak Street for a minute, then turned back toward me and met my gaze with a sad little smile that felt like an ending. “I’m sorry, Asha. I know we had this vacation idea, but … things change.”

Things change. It was like everything in my life was summed up by that one simple statement. The only thing that hadn’t really changed was that both of us were eventually going to end up in the Bay Area after all, but I knew even
that
would be different than what I’d expected. Things weren’t the same between us anymore.

“Well, I’ll send you a postcard,” I said. “I’m still going to go.”

“Good for you,” she said, and then there was a long and painful silence. “Well, I’d better get moving. I have to baby-sit my brothers tonight. Talk to you at school on Monday?” I couldn’t help noticing it was a question rather than an assumption.

“Sure,” I said. I didn’t want us to ignore each other for the rest of the year.

When Thad came back with my iced tea and his iced coffee, I had my head resting in one hand, staring blankly at the graffiti-carved tree in the sidewalk in front of our table.

“So, you’re over the latte thing, huh?” he asked, startling me out of my thoughts.

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. I guess I am, kind of.” I tried to keep the angst from showing on my face, but failed miserably—emphasis on the miserable.

“What’s up?” He looked at me searchingly. “Was that a friend of yours, just now? Did something happen?”

“Um …” I just sat there for a minute with the words frozen in my mouth. I had no idea what to say, where to start. “That was Carey,” I finally began, lamely. “We were best friends.” It just slipped out that way, in past tense, but the second I said it I realized that it was true, and that I’d known it for a long time now. We were still friends but we weren’t close—not like we’d been before.

Thad just looked at me steadily with those blue eyes, then took hold of my hand in a firm, warm grip. And then, unbelievably, everything spilled out. Like a floodgate that had burst open, I was telling him the whole story, from that very first afternoon last summer when Carey and I thought of the Latte Rebellion, to the fear I felt when violence broke out at the school sit-in, to the latest blow—Carey not wanting to go to London anymore. I felt like I wanted to cry, but I clenched my jaw instead. The whole time, Thad just listened sympathetically, nodding every now and then, or asking a question, like how we got the idea for the manifesto or when we first realized the Rebellion was catching on as a real movement. He didn’t seem shocked, but he was definitely interested.

“I have to admit,” he said, smiling, “I sort of knew from the beginning that you were involved in some way.”

“Well, I was there at the rally and everything,” I pointed out. “Of course I was involved.”

“I know, but there was something about the way you talked about the Rebellion … I could tell it meant something to you. I could tell you had a personal investment. I didn’t know you were
the
Agent Alpha, though,” he said teasingly. “I should make you autograph my term paper.”

“I won’t! But you can acknowledge me as a primary source.” I smiled weakly. He’d suspected all this time but hadn’t said anything. He’d waited for me to tell him myself. I wasn’t sure what that meant.

“So what are you going to do now?” he asked, still holding my hand lightly in the middle of the table. His thumb stroked mine gently for a moment and I couldn’t help a slight shiver. “Do you have any idea what you want to do in London?”

“I’m not really sure, to tell you the truth.” I sighed. “Since Carey’s not going. I mean, it was supposed to be our big blowout before college starts. I feel a little aimless … I have this whole semester to kill after I get back, too, and I’ll have to look for a job. And I still don’t know what I want to major in. I told them Sociology and Public Policy, but I’m not really sure … ” I gave him a half-shrug and an embarrassed smile.

“I know the feeling,” Thad said. “My work-study job is only good for this year. I’m hoping to find a professor in Econ or Public Health who needs a research assistant. Or a slave.”

“I’m sure any professor would be glad to have you as an assistant,” I said, cementing my dork status for eternity, if it had ever been in doubt.

“Thanks.” He grinned at me and squeezed my hand. Then he sobered. “I’m just extra stressed because I’m also trying to get a foot in the door at that clinic that Greg and I want to work with and maybe model our ideas after.”

Then his face brightened. “Hey, maybe you can drop by there while you’re in London. It would help if we could send someone to talk to them personally, and I know neither of us will be able to get to England until at least next summer, even if we get a grant.”

“Mm-hm,” I said hesitantly. Something was taking nebulous form in the back of my head, something I didn’t quite understand yet. But Thad’s idea of sending me to the community clinic … it had just planted the seed of an idea in my mind, an idea that was melding and hybridizing with everything that had happened over the past year.

“You can be, like, our representative,” he wheedled, folding his hands together mock-pleadingly. “Tell you what; I’ll buy you another iced tea.”

“I can’t say no to you,” I said finally—a little flirtatiously, too, I might add, but it was starting to feel more natural. I relaxed back into the chair and let the sun’s warmth soak into me. “I mean, look at that face.”

“This face?” He gestured at himself. “This totally mixed-up face? I look like a Japanese gangster crossed with an English soccer hooligan and a Dutch … something. I’m Japanetherlish.” He looked at me mournfully. “American as apple pie, right?”

“Well, hey, I’m …” I thought about it for a second, then laughed. “I’m Mexindirish.”

“Or Irindican,” he said, after a pause.

“Either way you slice it, that’s one weird pie,” I said.

He grinned at me and grabbed my hand again. “Apple pie is overrated.”

Monday, June 15

Hayley McGill, Executive Director

Whitechapel Community Health Centre

12-16 Asquith Lane

London E1 1BU

United Kingdom

Dear Ms. McGill,

My name is Asha S. Jamison and I will be a student at Ellis Robbins College of Social Welfare beginning in January, intending to double major in Ethnic Studies and Public Policy with an emphasis on Social Justice. I am also a colleague of Thad Sakai and Greg Androvich, students at UC Berkeley, with whom you have been in contact regarding the practicalities of establishing and funding community clinics.

Later this summer I will be traveling to London and, at the request of Mr. Sakai, would like to meet with you in person to obtain valuable suggestions for starting his first clinic in rural Central California, and perhaps also discuss opportunities for a mutually beneficial partnership.

I would also like to herewith apply for your advertised student internship. It would be of immense value to me to work with your clinic, and I can offer excellent interpersonal skills as well as typing and organizational abilities. I am also extremely enthusiastic about working with different ethnic groups in the community, as I am of mixed ethnicity myself. It would be an honor to help you in your mission of educating the public about their health.

Thank you for your time.

Regards,

Asha S. Jamison

Epilogue

The July sun is shining warmly down as I walk across Westminster Bridge, so I take off my sweater and let my hair hang loosely down my back, feeling the welcome heat soak into my bare arms. Traffic roars past to my left, everything from big black cabs to ridiculously tiny minis. I stop halfway across and stare around me. The Houses of Parliament and Big Ben are golden Victorian monoliths just ahead; the Thames river winds sluggishly away below; and everywhere there are crowds of people. A passing car belches out a greasy smell, but it doesn’t bother me. The city itself is vibrant and alive.

The fourteen days I’ve spent walking around London have been some of the most incredible of my life. Scary (even though my mom’s cousin helped me find a spare room in a college dorm), but more exciting than the rest of my life put together. I’ve ordered pints of cider in the nearby pub with a Brazilian girl who’s staying in the room next door to me; I’ve spent hours with the treasures in the British Museum; I’ve walked aimlessly for blocks, from Bloomsbury Square to Trafalgar Square and everywhere in between, just watching the melting pot of people.

And, in a few short days, I’ll be part of that melting pot. I start my internship on Monday at the Whitechapel Community Health Centre. I’ll mostly be filing and typing letters and helping set up the conference room for seminars, but it feels like I’m going to be part of something important, like I’m going to be helping people in a way that’s so much more tangible and long-lasting than clubs or rallies or T-shirts. And I’ll get to do some serious research for Thad.

Speaking of Thad, he was practically bouncing up and down when we kissed goodbye before I left (and I was, too, but possibly for different reasons)—he’s really looking forward to what I’ll be able to tell them about the clinic. He’s already planning a cross-campus independent study with Greg and me for the spring semester, when I’m at Robbins. I’ll be living in North Berkeley; Thad still lives with Greg and another guy a handful of blocks south of the Berkeley campus. Close enough that I can realistically hope for a repeat of that kiss.

It all seems far away now, though. I feel like my life is taking place in the middle of a wide-open road, with high school and the Latte Rebellion far off in one direction, out of sight, and college and my future hidden off in the other direction.

I start walking back toward the Tube station so I can ride the subway back to the dorm. My small but cozy room is on the third floor, overlooking a tree-lined square full of rosebushes and wrought-iron benches. I feel lucky every time I look out the window.

Overheated, I buy an iced coffee from a cluttered and musty convenience store before taking a long stairway and an even longer escalator into the depths of the station. Waiting for the same Northern Line train as me, standing near the edge of the platform, is a young woman who looks about my age—maybe a little older. She’s playing the guitar and singing in a raspy but heartfelt voice.

She reminds me a little of Miranda, in a way—she seems like a free spirit, someone who doesn’t worry about how other people perceive her. She has skin almost the exact color of mine, only with more of an olive tint, and reddish-brown dreadlocks bound into a blue kerchief.

The train pulls up with an earsplitting whistle of brakes and a gust of warm wind. I follow the guitar player onto the train car. She sits in an open seat near the door, still playing soft chords. I sit next to her. Then, on a totally crazy impulse, I take the latte I just bought and hold it up in a friendly mock salute.

She looks up at me with startlingly green eyes, smiles, and hands me a photocopied flyer with a coffeehouse name and address.

Her band’s name is Beyond House Blend.
Every Friday Night!
the flyer proclaims.

“I’m there,” I say. And I mean it.

Acknowledgements

Without the input, help, and moral support of countless friends, family, and colleagues,
The Latte Rebellion
would never have come to be and would most likely still be a half-finished NaNoWriMo project drifting in the ether of my laptop’s memory.

Thanks, Mom, for teaching me to read voraciously and for encouraging me to write. Thanks to Mike Wiley and Steven Horn at IGN.com for giving me the opportunity to make writing a part of my day job—and planting the seeds of a future career. Thank you to the MFA program at Mills College for giving a struggling visual artist a fancy degree in creative writing.

Thank you to National Novel Writing Month for providing the excuse—er, opportunity—to take a snippet of an idea and turn it into a full-fledged story, and thank you to Jeffrey Callison and the folks at Capital Public Radio’s Insight for allowing me to read a passage of my embarrassingly horrible first draft on NPR.

Endless thanks to the inspiring (and brutally honest) members, past and present, of my critique group, WritingYA: Erin Blomstrand, Yat-Yee Chong, Tanita Davis, Kelly Herold, Meeta Kaur, Anne Levy, Jaime Lin-Yu, Katina Bishop, Jennifer March Soloway, JoNelle Toriseva, Mary Whitsell, and Sarah Zacharias. You all rock. Special thanks to Tanita Davis for pie, lemon curd, Finding Wonderland, dealing with my random freakouts, and being willing to read about eighty million different drafts of this novel without complaining.

Thanks to the far-flung yet closely connected kidlit blogging community—there are too many of you to name, but without your support buzzing through the intertubes, my day-to-day writing life wouldn’t have been the same.

Thanks to Sheela Kinhal Shah for answering questions about Diwali, and Russell Irwin for providing insider info from a high school administrator’s perspective. Thank you to my teen test audience Molly Souza, and to the myriad of friends and family who read my novel at different steps along the way—Rob, Mom, Don, Beth, Shin Yu, Cindy, Jay, Ross, Mike, and anyone else I might’ve forgotten (sorry, the Rebellion ate my brain cells).

Thanks to Lee Bailey for making me look like a normal human being in that beautiful, beautiful author photo.

Epic thanks to my editor, Brian Farrey, for insight, advice, and putting up with my occasional pestering; Lisa Novak, who created the incredible cover design; Sandy Sullivan, for her editorial eagle eyes; and everyone else at Flux for giving
The Latte Rebellion
a chance to see the light of day.

Thanks to my cats, Roxie and Zelda, for being awesome writing companions. Thanks to Mom, Dad, Gramp, Grandma, Dadi, and Dada for creating a complete ethnic mutt (i.e., me) and therefore making the idea for
The Latte Rebellion
possible in the first place. And thanks to Rob—fellow latte, partner in crime—for love every step of the way and giving me the time and space to make this a reality.