The Latte Rebellion by Sarah Jamila Stevenson

ask “Who are you guys, really?”
    “If you don’t already know,” Miranda said solemnly, “we can’t tell you.” A few people laughed at that. The girl who asked the question got up and left soon afterward, looking bored, but we still had a bigger group of people than I’d ever expected.
    There were a few other comments, and then a girl got up and asked—demanded, really—to read a poem. Carey, Miranda, and I looked at each other. Bridget glanced at me meaningfully; evidently this was the loudmouth from her class.
    The girl, who had short, spiky black hair and what could only be described as a pierced face, pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and cleared her throat.
    “For decades upon decades
    We have been oppressed
    Suppressed
    Re-PRESSED into their MOLD!
    No longer! A new age has begun
    In which nothing is black or white
    But like coffee with milk
    Latte.”
    She paused for breath, and I chose that moment to jump in before anybody else decided to get up and leave.
    “That was … an unexpected addition to our evening,” I said. “Thank you, um …”
    “Radha,” she said, looking up, surprised. “I have four more stanzas if you want to hear them.”
    I was too appalled to speak. There was a brief silence, and then Maria McNally stepped in, waving a hand to get our attention.
    “We should read a stanza per meeting,” she said. “Maybe to wind things down at the end.” There was unanimous, possibly ironic, applause. I looked at Maria gratefully and she gave me a tight smile.
    “Tonight was just an introduction to the Rebellion,” Miranda added. “But we should have a plan for our next meeting. What do people want to talk about?” Carey pulled out her pen and sat with it poised over her spiral notebook. The room was suddenly filled with enthusiastic shouts, the awkward poetry moment forgotten.
    “The accomplishments of brown people!”
    “How to start a dialogue about mixed ethnicity!”
    “Where to meet hot chicks!” That one was David Castro, not surprisingly. Still, I was thrilled to the core that we’d done this. That we’d created a group people actually wanted to be involved in, that meant something to them—something more than just a new T-shirt.
    For the first time in my life, maybe, I was doing something meaningful and important. And maybe this was where I belonged: where people appreciated me for being mixed up. It didn’t matter if they couldn’t see my face. I was one of them, and we were the Latte Rebellion.
    When I walked through the front gate of University Park High School the following Monday, I screeched to a halt right next to the first bank of freshman lockers. Something was very weird. Sure, the same groups of kids were milling around the locker area and loitering outside various classroom buildings and smoking cigarettes just off school property. But the first thing I noticed was that there was a lot more coffee than usual. People were holding paper cups with cup warmers around them, draining the last dregs before throwing them away, or pouring hot liquid out of thermoses into the little screw-top cups. Even the campus security guard had a Styrofoam cup in his hand.
    Of course, it could have just been discount-coffee day at the convenience store down the street, and it was a cold November morning.
    But it didn’t seem like coincidence after I saw the number of people who were wearing Latte Rebellion T-shirts. Our T-shirts. I hadn’t had a chance to check on how many we’d sold by now, but it seemed like every tenth person was wearing one. I counted at least five on the way to my first-period history class alone.
    Was the Rebellion really so … popular? Friday night at the meeting, it felt serious but it felt underground, like we were an indie band that only a handful of people knew about. I mean, when I wore my T-shirt to the grocery store with my mom earlier that night, all I got were some strange looks and a free sample from the coffee counter.
    Then I