The Latte Rebellion Read Online Free PDF Page A

handful of cooking lessons.
    Yet here I was, stuck in the kitchen with a half-burnt pot of onions, an assortment of indistinguishable spices in varying shades of brown, and a grandmother attempting to hide her despair at my clear lack of culinary talent.
    I really needed to get out of here.
    “Mom,” I said over dinner a few evenings later, making sure I’d finished every last grain of rice and mopped up all of my lamb korma with a piece of naan, even though I was full to bursting and did not need the extra carbs. “I have to ask you something.”
    She eyed my clean plate suspiciously.
    “Can I go out with Carey tonight? We’re supposed to go to a workshop at school on college application essays.” I crossed my fingers under the kitchen table. Carey, of course, was already done with her essay. As for the workshop, I’d been planning to go, but our current project took precedence.
    “College essays?” Mom glanced at Dad, who gave a quick nod. “I suppose it’s fine, if you’re back by nine thirty.”
    I let out a silent, relieved breath.
    “Such a good, studious girl,” Nani said, patting me on the arm and beaming.
    Her familiar scent of curry powder, sandalwood soap, and mothballs wafted over me as she hugged me goodbye half an hour later. I tried not to flinch guiltily.
    When I got to Carey’s house, she was in the middle of cleaning jam off her brother Davey’s head with a damp dishtowel.
    “I’m sorry, Ash,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I just need a second. My dad’s in the shower and of course this happened. Could you just go make sure Roddy’s still watching cartoons in the living room?”
    “Poor you,” I said, peering around the corner to where Roddy was sitting raptly in front of some anime show, watching ginormous robots bent on annihilating each other. “He’s fine. He’s just enjoying some wanton cartoon violence.”
    “Great. Now I know why he was trying to build a giant homicidal robot out of Legos.” Carey sounded exhausted. With three boys under the age of twelve, the Wong household was always a few incidents short of complete chaos.
    “You really do need to move away for college, don’t you?” I leaned against the counter next to the sink, where Carey was washing her hands. Davey was now jam-free, sitting in his high chair and happily shoving crackers into his mouth.
    “No freaking kidding. Mom is still on my case about going to U-NorCal so I can live at home. Can you believe it?” She shook her head. The University of Northern California was conveniently located here in town, but it wasn’t an option for me, either. I had my eye on bigger prizes—namely Stanford, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and the über-selective Robbins College, also in Berkeley.
    I hadn’t mentioned it to Carey yet, but it was a recurring daydream of mine that she and I would both get into schools in Berkeley and move into an apartment together. A sibling-free, parent-free, grandmother-free, Roger-Yee-free apartment. With an ample supply of frozen enchiladas—something I actually could cook.
    Over the burble of the dishwasher, Carey’s mom shouted something about being home on time so she could finish her homework. Carey sighed.
    “So,” I said, “your car or mine?”
    “My imaginary Lamborghini’s in the shop,” she said. Not for the first time, I felt relieved to be an only child—because I had my own car. It was ancient, it was slow, and it was surely not pretty—hence its nickname, the Geezer—but it was all mine. We piled in and immediately cranked open the windows to let in the cool evening air.
    “What’s first on our list?” I asked Carey, Keeper of the Master Plan. She shuffled a few papers.
    “Um … Mocha Loco. Tenth Street and Oak.”
    We drove in silence for a few minutes. The sun was almost completely down, and the streetlights were already on. As we got close to the university campus, the sidewalks grew more clogged with students. I could smell garlic from the Italian deli