The Latte Rebellion (8 page)

“It kicked ass,” Bridget said, putting one arm around my shoulders. “Asha managed to lure in the poor, unsuspecting, and very hot speaker while hardly saying a word.” She grinned and I cringed. “Thad, wasn’t it? He took one look at you and he was toast with a side of jelly.”

“Right.” This was stupid. Why was Carey sneaking around to see Leonard? This was supposed to be all about us, about getting away next summer, not about roping in men like it was a cattle drive. But if we did form a club, like Miranda had suggested … maybe it would keep us focused, and keep idiotic stuff like this from getting in the way.

There was a brief, awkward silence.

“Well,” I said stiffly. “We were just grabbing a snack before going home.” I tried to smile bravely.

“Okay,” Carey said, fiddling with her pencil. “Talk to you later?”

“Sure. I’ll call you tomorrow.” Just to get the Leonard scoop, if nothing else.
If
she was even going to tell me. I sighed and put my hand out, palm up with my fingers split in a Mr. Spock “V”—the first stage of our secret handshake. For a minute she just looked at it, twiddling her pencil awkwardly. Finally she put her own hand out in a “V,” palm down. I looked at our hands there together, hers a pale creamy brown, mine a little darker and more olive-colored, and felt a little sad.

I stepped up to the counter with Bridget.

“So what do you ladies want?” Leonard sounded bored, as usual. He didn’t even really look at us.

“How’s it going,
Leonard,
” I said. “Thanks again for letting us put up our poster.”

“Oh,” he said, finally making eye contact. “That’s right, you’re the Latte girl. Carey’s friend. Yeah, a lot of people saw the poster.”

“Cool,” I said, trying to sound like I didn’t care. “Can we get two lattes? Bridget, what else do you want?”

“I’ll have a cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese. What are you getting?”

“I’m not really hungry,” I said.

“Is everything okay?” Bridget asked quietly, in my ear, as Leonard left to retrieve our order. “What’s up with you and Carey?”

I sighed. Maybe this was one of those problems where, if you just ignored it, it would go away. “Nothing. Just … I’ll tell you later.” Leonard came back with two clear-glass coffee mugs and a plate holding Bridget’s bagel. I was about to put a couple of quarters in the tip jar when I noticed another jar next to it. Taped to it was a slip of paper that said “Rebellion Collection,” with a crude pen drawing of our logo. Next to it was a stack of our flyers.

“What is
this?”
I pointed at it, incredulous.

“Oh, Carey and I thought of that,” Leonard said. “We thought it’d be a good way to get a few extra donations for the cause.”

“Oh
really
. Well, thanks, but I think we’ll be okay with the T-shirts.” I crossed my arms and glared at him.

“Hey, don’t knock this idea so soon. You might need the Rebellion Collection to pay for overhead costs, if you don’t sell enough shirts.”

Bridget laughed. “Unbeliever! You wouldn’t be saying that if you’d
seen
the shirt.”

“Believe me, I already ordered mine. I can’t wait,” Leonard said dryly.

I’m sure you can’t
, I thought.
I’m sure you can’t wait to get into Carey’s pants. If you think she’s going to fall all over you just because you said you’d help with the Rebellion, then you’re in for a surprise.

Then again, judging from Carey’s intense interest in his tattoo, maybe Leonard was the one who needed to watch out. And maybe I’d just have to let Carey chew him up, spit him out, and get over him.

“This shirt is
amazing
,” Miranda said, reverently. “It’s really cool.”

“The v-neck looks good on you,” I said, packing away the remains of my lunch and wadding up the paper bag.

“Thanks.” She beamed and turned around in a circle to show it off.

“The Latte Rebellion thanks
you
,” I said with a satisfied smile. “We wouldn’t even have the shirts without you. And you’re helping us augment our London fund.”

Miranda had been enthusiastic, earlier, when I told her about my idea to try to make it as far as London, but she’d been just about delirious when I agreed to maybe form a club after all.

“This is so perfect,” she’d said, jumping up from our table in the quad and pacing back and forth behind me, her long braids swinging. “Our school
needs
this, if we ever want to move past these dated, static racial categories. I mean, if you order a latte, it’s not just going to be a latte. It’s going to be a soy milk half-caf, or a double with no foam, or a single with a shot of vanilla and a sprinkle of cocoa. Tons of ingredients, tons of options.”

I thought
I’d
had the monopoly on goofy coffee metaphors, but when combined with the jargon about “static racial categories,” Miranda had reached new heights of absurdity. Absurdity so classic it would go straight onto the Rebellion website.

“I’m half-caf, double strong,” I said, flexing my biceps Arnold-style and grinning.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Carey said. “Those cancel each other out.”

“Come on, guys, I’m serious. With the Latte Rebellion, you can be whoever you want to be, because we’re all mixed up.” Miranda sat back down next to me, but I could tell she was still fidgety. “Even the
President
can’t disagree with that.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I was still smiling, but when we tried to get Carey to be more enthused about the idea of a club, it didn’t go quite as well. I told her about Thad and Greg’s presentation, and she accepted the London proposal without comment, but as I expected, she was hesitant to add anything new to her schedule. Plus, things were still a little tense between us since our run-in at the café with Leonard. Every time I promised myself I’d talk to her about it, I always ended up convincing myself it would be better to just let it go.

It was easier, and less awkward, to talk about the Rebellion instead, even if she wasn’t on board yet with the new plan.

“I know it sounds like more work to hold meetings,” I said to her in the car after school, trying to sound reasonable. “But you have to admit it would be another college application bonus. ‘Launched extracurricular group’ sounds pretty good, right?”

“I guess so,” Carey said. “But do you really want to add
that
to everything else we’re doing? You’ve already got that other new club.”

“Maybe.” I thought about it. “But that’s Bridget’s thing. The Latte Rebellion is
our
thing. And it isn’t really a bad idea. It could be entertaining to see where this goes. And it’s perfect for all your leadership scholarships.” I didn’t add that it was perfect for
my
college applications, too, which needed some padding to separate them from all the other honors kids with the same AP classes and club activities as everyone else.

“Um, hello, our anonymity? I only agreed because you said we’d only be doing publicity, and then the shirts would basically print themselves.” Carey’s voice was tired. “I’m not interested in being a spokesperson for anything.”

“Seriously, we can put bags over our heads for all I care,” I said quickly. “But it’ll still be worth it. At least our college applications will be memorable.” Having a chaotic mess of different cultural backgrounds—that wouldn’t really help me, especially when I ended up having to check the “other” ethnicity box. Having a personal statement topic that instantly showed exactly how different I was—
that
would be huge. “It’s prime essay material,” I concluded. “You could totally use that.”

Carey snorted. “Like you’ve got entirely altruistic motives.”

“Okay, maybe not. But what I do have is an idea for a club that could really be worthwhile. Not to mention it would liven up the next few months.” I took one hand off the steering wheel and flicked her arm playfully. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“My sense of
adventure
? I’m saving the ‘adventures’ for when we’ve actually got the money earned and graduation is over. Right now I’m just a teensy bit more concerned with actually getting my applications finished,” she said, looking at me meaningfully.

“Come
on,
you sound like my mom.” I was annoyed, again, that she was being so resistant. Maybe she
was
feeling guilty about spending all her free time with Leonard.

“You don’t have to be mean about it,” Carey said, and stared out the side window. I could feel one of her icy silences coming on—she could give the cold shoulder like nobody else. Sophomore year, Chris Naysmith had been idiotic enough to ask her for an Oriental massage and she was still not talking to him. I’d gotten the silent treatment a few times myself, because stupid things did tend to come out of my mouth. She always forgave
me
, though.

“Come on, I didn’t mean it that way.”

More silence. Then she heaved a martyred sigh.

“We wouldn’t have to make that big a deal out of it,” I said, relieved. “Miranda and I will make all the arrangements. I just don’t want you to be mad. I want to do this together.”

“We can
talk
about it,” she agreed, sounding sulky. “I need time to … entertain the notion.”

“It isn’t a
notion
. It could help us sell more T-shirts if people actually want to join a club. And maybe we can do something meaningful while we’re at it, instead of just being greedmongers.”

“‘Greedmongers’ isn’t a word. And you never complained about being greedy before,” Carey pointed out.

“Yeah.” I laughed edgily. “But Miranda’s right—it could actually work. A club for people who are just … generally brown. Not one particular race. Not one particular nationality. People besides us might really be interested in something like this.” I realized I had unintentionally echoed what Thad had said about his clinic project.

“You’re right about that,” she said ominously.

“What do you mean?” I looked at her out of the corner of my eye as I turned onto her street. She was still staring out the side window, drawing squiggles in the condensation on the glass with one finger.

“Have you even looked at the guest book on the website?”

“Not since you first put it up. Why?”

“Well … it’s interesting. One person was all ‘you go, girls’ and that kind of thing. I think it was Miranda’s friend Ayesha. And then someone else was like ‘people like you need to go back where you came from.’ Can you believe that?”

“Wow,” I said, my voice coming out in a squeak. I hit the brakes jerkily and pulled up to the curb in front of Carey’s house, reeling. Who would say something so blatantly offensive and ignorant? It felt even worse than what Roger had said. At least he wasn’t afraid to own up to his dumb comments. This could have been anyone. It was the
Internet
, for cripes sake. I felt a little sick. “Why didn’t you mention this before? That’s crazy.”

“No kidding,” Carey said, opening the car door. “You need to take a look, then tell me if you want to form a club.”

I blinked, not sure why my eyes were suddenly stinging. I couldn’t tell if I was shocked, affronted, or enraged—or some unholy combination of the three.

“Carey, if there are still psychos out there who think brown people should ‘go back to where we came from,’ then we really
should
form a club. Maybe the Latte Rebellion is sorely needed. Maybe we have real work to do.”

Carey snorted and got out of the car. “Sorely needed?
Now
who sounds crazy?”

I didn’t care how it sounded, though. I knew this was the right thing to do. I mean, seriously.
Go back where you came from
? If people were actually spewing that garbage
now
, in the twenty-first century, there was zero doubt in my mind that something had to be done. As Carey herself liked to say before getting on the soccer field, the best defense was a good offense.

“Hi, Mr. Rosenquist,” I said a little shyly, shaking his hand as Miranda and I arrived outside the Student Council office. I’d never had him as a teacher, but he was famous around school for being younger than most of the other teachers—in his late twenties—and for doing a lot of unconventional projects in his psychology classes. Miranda said he’d be interested in the Latte Rebellion club, and she was right about that.

“Asha, right? Call me Chris. Ms. Allison speaks very highly of you.” He grinned. Ms. Allison was my English teacher this year, and as far as I could tell, she hated her job, so her liking me was news to me. “I’m flattered you’ve asked me to help with your club. It sounds very avant-garde.”

I wondered what, exactly, Miranda had told him about it. “Well, we’re glad you’re willing to be our advisor,” I said nervously. “Thank you.”

“Not a problem, not a problem.” With a flourish, he pulled our neatly rolled-up paperwork out of the pocket of his leather jacket. “My John Hancock’s already at the bottom. Let me know when you want to start holding meetings.”