The Latte Rebellion Read online

  contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Woodbury, Minnesota

  The Latte Rebellion © 2011 by Sarah Jamila Stevenson.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Cover models used for illustrative purposes only and may not endorse or represent the book’s subject.

  First e-book edition © 2010

  E-book ISBN: 9780738729879

  Cover design by Lisa Novak

  Cover images: napkin © iStockphoto.com/Maureen Perez

  coffee cup © Jonathan Kantor/Digital Vision/PunchStock

  Interior illustrations on pages 117, 154, and 199 by Sarah Jamila Stevenson

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  Prologue

  The jeering male voice came from somewhere behind me, waking me up from a heatstroke-induced doze.

  “Hey, check it out—Asha’s a towel-head.”

  I’m a WHAT? My neck got even warmer, and not just because it was sweltering at Ashmont Community Park.

  Whoever it was, was he kidding me? Nobody used that phrase anymore unless they were hopelessly ignorant about headwear, or still carrying around a post-9/11 grudge. I knew I really should be offended.

  Mostly, though, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Even if I did have a towel on my head.

  From the gasps and nervous whispers around me, I wasn’t the only one in shock. I lifted a corner of terrycloth off my sweaty face—I was tanning my legs—just in time to see a furious Carey dump her cup of iced coffee all over Roger Yee’s smirking face. Light-brown latte dripped in rivulets from his now lank and soaking black hair, down his pretentious A&F T-shirt, and onto his swim trunks. The smirk dripped away with it.

  One of Roger’s lackeys from the Asian American Club, looking up from a nearby umbrella table, saw Roger’s sorry, bedraggled self and snorted cola out of his nose, starting a ripple of laughter that drifted around the pool area and then died as people noticed the confrontation.

  Roger had probably just been trying to make a stupid joke, but I didn’t like his tone. It rubbed me the wrong way. And, knowing him, he’d probably said something obscene to Carey while I was snoozing away obliviously.

  Now, he stood stock-still and dripping as Carey hissed, “Don’t you ever use that word, buttmunch. I don’t call you Fu Manchu.”

  “Well, you’re half-Chinese,” he retorted. “Anyway, I wasn’t talking to you, Wong. I was talking to Miss Barely Asian over there.” He used a corner of his shirt to wipe the coffee off his face and neck.

  I sat up with a martyred sigh. I didn’t want to be part of this conversation, but I was involved whether I liked it or not. “Look, Yee, last I checked, South Asia was definitely part of Asia. It’s in the name. South Asia.” I pointed to my head. “And it’s not a towel. Learn some useful vocabulary words, like turban. Which nobody in my family wears, incidentally.”

  “Whatever,” Roger said, waving a hand at me dismissively. “You’re only a quarter or a half or something, anyway. And you had a towel on your head, okay?”

  “What does it matter? It’s still racist. And it’s not like Asha insulted you,” Carey pointed out. “What’s your problem?”

  They locked eyes for a moment, glaring at each other. Roger Yee had been our nemesis ever since he’d perpetrated the Backpack-Snatching-and-Dumping Incident of ’06, which we followed rather unwisely with the Toilet Paper Revenge Caper of ’07. He wasn’t my favorite person, but racial epithets were stooping a bit low even for him. I mean, this was Northern California. We were supposed to be past all that.

  A handful of other seniors started to drift over from around the patio like melodrama-sniffing dogs, eager for a scene. And Roger was no stranger to a good argument. He’d verbally clobbered three hapless rivals to become our student-body secretary, which made him responsible for this stupid Inter-Club Council pool party in the first place. But if it came down to it, my money was on Carey. She had that look in her eye, the ice-cold, do-not-screw-around-with-me look that she only got when she was really angry—or about to nail someone on the opposing soccer team with her cleats.

  After a minute, Roger dropped his gaze and stalked off. As he brushed past Carey’s lounge chair, I heard him mutter, “It was just a joke, you snooty bitch.”

  I bolted to my feet, the controversy-inspiring towel falling to the ground, innocuous and stripey. “You do not talk to my friends like that,” I shouted after him, but it was too late. He was gone, slamming the iron gate to the pool area with a loud clang as he left, leaving Carey glowering and redder than I’d ever seen her, and me torn between wanting to scream and wishing I’d decided to stay home.

  And that’s how it all started.

  The Inter-Club Council annual pool party.

  Unfortunately, that’s not how it ended. Not by a long shot.

  The following April:

  Ashmont Unified School District Board Room

  “Ladies and gentlemen.” The disciplinary hearing officer cleared his throat wetly, the sound reverberating into the microphone and around the room. I didn’t want to look at him, with his graying comb-over and his accusatory unibrow, so I looked down at my lap, shifting in the hard wooden chair. The murmur of voices temporarily rose, then fell. I heard a few clicks of the camera shutter from the newspaper reporter in the back row.

  I’d been the one to request an open hearing—I had a right to, according to California Education Code—but I still couldn’t believe how many people showed up. The room, which normally seated about fifty people, was full. Standing room only.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the presiding officer continued stiffly, “representatives of the Ashmont Board of Education, and”—I could feel him glaring in my direction—“members of the public, this open disciplinary hearing to consider the expulsion of Ms. Asha Jamison from University Park High School is now in session.”

  1

  Summer vacation, so far, w
as an epic failure. A truly monumental waste. Hot, interminable days that melted one into the next. The monotony of lying around baking in the heat broken only by the further monotony of work. Money we weren’t allowed to spend (because it went straight into the college fund), earned at retail jobs we yearned to quit (because they were embarrassingly menial, excruciatingly boring, and swarming with mallrats, half of whom went to our school).

  Then there was the unfortunate confrontation at the Inter-Club Council pool party.

  That was what planted the seeds of the Latte Rebellion. But when I really sit down to think about it, it started a hell of a lot earlier than that.

  Take this incident that happened a couple of weeks before, at the end of junior year: Carey and I were crammed into the auditorium bathroom before graduation, touching up our hair and makeup along with the other top-ranked juniors who got to march in the Honor Guard. Kaelyn Vander Sar—who had blossomed from mildly catty to full-blown bitch on wheels after we started high school—said, “Oh, Carey, you look so cute in that white dress. Like a little Japanese cartoon character.”

  Kaelyn turned to me, blotting her shell-pink lipstick with a tissue. “And your dress—wow. It takes some guts to wear something like that. I guess you have to have Mexican J.Lo curves to pull it off.”

  I stared at her, one hand going reflexively to my hip, where I’d just tied a gauzy scarf that I thought was not only sassy but also accented my waist. Evidently all it did was draw attention to my butt.

  The heat rose behind my cheeks, my head filling with any number of things I could tell her. Carey is NOT Japanese. And J.Lo is not from Mexico—she’s a Puerto Rican American. That is not even CLOSE to the same thing. There are these things called maps; you should look at one. And, am I dreaming or did you just say my butt was big?

  But in the end, I didn’t say any of it. It seemed futile. Kaelyn just didn’t get it. Maybe she really did think she was paying us a compliment. Or worse, she could have been deliberately trying to provoke us. We weren’t exactly the best of friends, after all.

  Anyway, because she had to bring up J.Lo, I obsessed about my round butt, round shoulders, and round face the whole time I was standing out there in front of the school, and Carey stood there in stony silence, convinced that being five feet tall made her a midget and pissed at me for not setting Kaelyn straight. It was a bad situation. But it wasn’t an isolated incident, not by a long shot. It was just one of many. And they all seemed to culminate in that scene at the pool party, the summer before our senior year.

  After Roger Yee stalked out of the party, everyone heard the squeal of tires and the growling engine as he pulled out of the parking lot in his rich-boy, tricked-out Honda. Carey and I looked at each other. She walked the few feet across to my lounge chair and sat down next to me as the small crowd dissipated, already distracted by someone else’s gossip-inducing faux pas.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I said, laying my head on her shoulder. She smelled like chlorine and the vanilla-scented lotion I gave her for her birthday last year.

  “Yeah,” Carey grumbled. “Waste of a perfectly good latte.”

  “Besides that,” I said, “I was thinking it’s too hot out for this kind of behavior. And I was thinking I’m glad you’re here. Who else would defend me by flinging refreshing beverages? Who else would care enough? I mean, I barely care.”

  “You should care.” Carey frowned, absentmindedly finger-combing her short, light-brown hair, still damp and wavy from our dip in the pool. “It’s serious. Roger shouldn’t say that kind of crap. And the way he was leering at me. It was gross.” She shuddered, delicately.

  “I know. It was uncalled-for.” I gave her an exaggerated smooch on the cheek, then leaned back. “He’s an ass. It makes me want to buy a billboard and stick it up in his yard. A billboard with little pictograms: Turban does not equal towel. U equals ass.”

  She laughed, a short bark. “Or a stone tablet carved with Thou shalt not be a massive jerkwad.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “I mean, you’re the one always telling me I need to express my anger more effectively. I think we could channel our entire scholastic career’s worth of annoyance at Roger into one well-placed piece of signage.”

  Carey sighed. “As if we could afford something like that. My parents would not be thrilled if we spent our work money on a billboard. Plus, unlike you, I have to share a college fund with my brothers. I probably need to get a second job.”

  “Oh, come on—I think it would be a worthwhile expenditure for such a quality human being as Roger Yee,” I said, unable to hide a smile.

  “He is so not worth the time and effort.” She frowned at her empty cup. “Let’s get refills, shall we?”

  We picked up our cups and headed back to the drinks table for more iced latte, making our way past the Art Club officers, who had set up camp conveniently near the caffeine supply.

  “At least the coffee here is free,” I said, waving at our friend Miranda Levin, who was VP of the Art Club. “We don’t have to shell out for our latte habit.”

  Carey snorted. “It’s the only good thing about this clique-fest, besides the pool. I mean, there’s Miranda, and Shay’s nice enough for a cheer clone, but look at these people. Look at Kaelyn Vander Sar.”

  “… Vanderslut,” I fake-sneezed, trying to make her laugh.

  “Asha. God. You’re as bad as Roger,” she said, swatting me on the arm. “Is name-calling really necessary?”

  “Sorry, sorry,” I said. “Please continue.”

  “Anyway, as I was saying. Check out the Queen of the Bimbocracy and her fleet of loyal toadies.” She pointed surreptitiously at the bikini squad on the other side of the pool, now featuring one less fawning beefcake since Roger’s departure.

  “Now who’s name-calling?” I set our clear plastic cups on the table and topped them both off with fresh iced coffee.

  Carey smiled wryly at me. “She only wishes she had ‘Mexican J.Lo curves.’ ”

  I studied her face for a moment. “You’re really bothered about this, aren’t you? You know, we really could do something with our cash. It’s our money.”

  “Yeah, here’s an idea,” Carey said, a little sarcastically. “We could print instructive T-shirts that say, No, I am not Mexican. Neither is J.Lo. Thanks for asking.”

  “Ha ha. I can think of way better things to spend money on,” I said. “We could pay for enough gas to drive to some little beach town where there are a ton of cute eligible guys who are all rich Internet millionaires. Who needs college?”

  “You,” Carey said. “Me. So we can get the hell out of here and away from Roger. That’s what we should be spending our money on.”

  I reached for the pitcher of half-melted ice cubes and dropped a few more into my cup. As I watched the smooth, tan liquid rise up the sides of the glass, wishing we could just leave and forget about senior year, something clicked in my brain.

  “Or,” I said, “we could do something really fun.” I stood up straighter. I’d just felt the stirrings of an idea, one I suspected might be the most brilliant plan I’d ever had in my life. Goodbye, Summer of Epic Hellish Boredom.

  Hello, Latte Rebellion.

  “Does your bright idea happen to involve coffee?” Carey said, as we gathered our stuff and got ready to ditch this overrated hot dog stand.

  “Oh, does it ever.” I couldn’t help grinning from ear to ear. “Now, take this latte we’ve been drinking. What does ‘latte’ mean to you?”

  Carey started laughing, and laughed all the way to the car before she was able to get a grip. “Are you listening to yourself? I mean, did you actually hear what you just said?”

  “No, wait,” I insisted, unlocking the car doors. “Think about it. Latte. It’s two things. Coffee mixed with milk. Sometimes with cinnamon on top. Just like us. We’re living, breathing lattes.”

  “Okay, now you’ve lost me,” Carey said, looking at me skeptically over the top of her sunglasses.

&
nbsp; “I’m serious,” I said. “You’re half-Chinese and half-European. Caucasian. Whatever. I’m half-Indian, a quarter Mexican, and a quarter Irish. We’re mixed up. We’re not really one or the other, ethnically. We’re like human lattes.”

  “Oh, killer simile. Brav-o,” Carey said as we pulled away from the curb and headed down the palm-tree-lined street next to the pool. “A-plus. Save that for the AP English exam.”

  “Perfectly blended, comes in all shades,” I said, smiling mischievously.

  “Please. No more metaphors.” Carey curled up on the passenger seat, her feet under her. “Not that those ignorant mall junkies even know what a metaphor is.”

  “Yeah,” I said, fervently, “and that’s why I agree with you about getting the hell out of here. Beach town, Disneyland, whatever. Something. College isn’t soon enough. We need a change of scenery.”

  “No kidding.” She left a maddeningly long pause, then sighed. “So let me guess. Your ingenious plan involves a vacation.”

  “A post-graduation outing. If you ask me, that’s what we need.” I thumped the steering wheel for emphasis.

  “Okay,” Carey said. “Maybe. You might be winning me over. But the latte thing. What does that have to do with anything? Are we funding this trip with coffee sales?”

  “I don’t know yet. Maybe. But the latte should be like our totem. Our good-luck charm. Our symbol of liberation.” I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye.

  “Who even needs a symbol?” she said, half-closing her eyes. “Let’s just go somewhere with cute, brainy, ambitious college guys, please. And good food.”

  As we continued discussing it, it seemed only fair. We’d been working our butts off. Tutoring every Saturday all last year; Key Club, Mock Trial, and Honor Society since we were freshmen, which was why we’d been at that stupid pool party in the first place; and straight A grades, if you counted the occasional A-minus. We deserved a vacation. Something low-commitment and high-relaxation, like a cruise to Mexico, which would be downright easy to organize. Easy as pie—or a pumpkin-pie-flavored latte.