The Latte Rebellion Read Online Free PDF Page B

it, but go ahead and put it up for now.” He smiled at Carey, and handed me my latte without even looking at me. Of course. Like I even had a chance. Let’s just say that, standing next to Carey, I was not the one you’d notice first.
    Carey pinned up the flyer with a stray thumbtack and then turned back toward the counter, flipping back her short hair coyly. “So what’s the tattoo of?” she asked with a sly smile. “I don’t read any Chinese.” And it drives her dad crazy , I considered adding, but I refrained from doing so.
    “It’s the symbol for luck, combined with a horse, for year of the horse. My birth year.” He leaned on the counter with one elbow, the better to show off his ink.
    “Sounds pretty lucky,” Carey said. “I heard horses are supposed to be intelligent and sensitive.” She looked up at Leonard through slightly lowered eyelashes. “So what’s your major?”
    “It’s my first semester, but I’m thinking about philosophy. I’m reading Kierkegaard’s journals for a class, and they’re really thought-provoking.” Absent-mindedly, he took our two coffees from the barista and set them on the counter.
    “Wow, Kierkegaard,” she said, nodding. “Have you ever read—”
    Ugh.
    “So, this was fun. Thanks, Leonard.” I grabbed my coffee and pulled on Carey’s arm before I became the first person in recorded history ever to die of nausea. She simpered at him as we pushed our way out of the crowded café.
    “What’d you do that for?” Carey glared at me as she yanked open the passenger-side door. “He was nice.”
    “We have nine more cafés to visit. We can’t afford to chit-chat at every single one of them.” It was sort of sickening watching her in action sometimes. Especially when you were the one who faded into the background as a result. I started the car and pulled back into traffic, narrowly missing a girl with a humongous backpack riding a bike.
    “Chit-chat? Please. You sound like a schoolmarm,” Carey said.
    “The word ‘schoolmarm’ makes you sound like a schoolmarm.”
    “I seriously think you’re just jealous of me. Me and Leonard.”
    “Now you’re goading me.” I sighed.
    “It’s my job. Some of us take our work seriously.”
    “That better not be a veiled reference to Calculus,” I said. But I relented and smiled over at her. She laughed and poked me in the arm. We were both starting to spaz out on coffee already, with nine stops to go.
    The rest of the evening went pretty much the same way; sometimes we didn’t need to approach the cashier to hang our flyer and sometimes we did, but at each stop we ordered a latte. Counterproductive, maybe, since we wanted to make money, not spend it, but it seemed fitting. After we’d each had two coffees, we dumped the rest we bought, but it had become like a superstition to buy one so we had to do it. We kept the cups as souvenirs.
    “Too bad we don’t have, like, a club hideout. A secret meeting place,” I said. We were getting silly by now. “We could decorate it with garlands of empty coffee cups.”
    “You mean like my brothers’ tree house? Adorned with empty candy wrappers?”
    We both laughed. “Yeah, I guess it’s dumb,” I said. “We don’t need a hideout. After all, we’re a secret Rebellion. We’re already hiding in plain sight.”
    “We’re all around you and you don’t even know it,” Carey intoned in a Twilight Zone voice.
    “Exactly! Hey, maybe we should be dressing up like our alter egos.”
    “No offense,” she said, still laughing, “but I don’t want to look like the female Clark Kent.”
    “Not like Clark Kent. We’re more like … the Masked Mavens of Mayhem,” I said in a spooky whisper.
    “Out to subvert the dominant paradigm?”
    I bounced a little in my seat. “You know, that would make a great propaganda poster. We should totally make some like that.” I was inspired, envisioning our logo causing havoc (or, more likely, mild puzzlement) at places like bus