Brilliant

by Rachel Vail

  I mean, the siren went off.

  Or, rather, went on.

  And on and on and on.

  Nobody was injured or anything. It was a small dent. I am not trying to make excuses for myself. I agree that the driving instructor was well within his rights to fail me. Though I will admit the thought crossed my mind that this is some impressive job for an adult to have—did this dude dream when he was seventeen of someday becoming the judge and jury on whether kids who were nervous and doing their best to block out the rest of their stressful lives and focus on making three-point turns (which never in my life have I witnessed a driver actually making) without committing a small mistake like, Whoops that is actually still in reverse!, should be given a second chance after their profuse and, I should add, immediately accepted apologies to the cops whose car they smashed?

  But what I said aloud was, “Of course, I understand. I hope your neck feels better soon.”

  Then I slipped quietly into the passenger seat of my mother’s car and waited for her to drive away.

  Instead, she turned to me, her hand loose on the gearshift of her Porsche. “What happened?” she asked, not unsympathetically.

  I shrugged.

  “Well, of course you passed.”

  “I didn’t,” I told her. “Can we go?”

  “You are so hard on yourself,” Mom said. “I’m sure you did much better than you think you did.”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Tell me what happened,” she cajoled, her voice smooth steel like always, despite her lack of cajoling practice. “It’s probably like that time you thought you’d failed your presentation in seventh grade because you hesitated for a second, and said, horror of horrors, ‘Excuse me,’ before you continued. Do you remember? And you got an A-plus on that, if I remember correctly.”

  She did not remember correctly. I got an A. I gritted my teeth. She was always bringing up that story.

  “Come on, Quinn, what happ—”

  “I smashed into a police car,” I said.

  She blinked twice. “By smashed, do you mean—”

  “Did you hear the siren?”

  She clapped her hand over her mouth. “That was you?”

  I tilted my head and half smiled. “Yeah.”

  “No!”

  I thought: We can’t all be as perfect as you, Mom.

  I said: nothing.

  “A cop car?” She was actually starting to laugh. “Seriously, Quinn? You crashed into a cop car on your driving test?”

  “Can we go?” I asked again, then added, “Please?”

  Mom turned the key in the ignition. “I can’t believe…Was anybody hurt?”

  “No,” I said. “Well, Driving Inspector Man was grumbling about his neck, but—”

  “Were they in pursuit of criminals, at least? And cut you off? It was probably their fault,” she tried, racing through a yellow light.

  “They were drinking sodas, parked,” I admitted.

  “No!” Tears were streaming down Mom’s cheeks, she was laughing so hard.

  “Air bags pop out at like the least provocation, don’t they?” I asked.

  “Oh, Quinn!” She pulled into a gas station and yanked up the emergency brake in front of the pump. “Did they really?”

  I shrugged. “Not in Driving Inspector Man’s car. Just the cruiser.”

  Mom was laughing so hard she banged her head down on the wheel, which beeped, causing everybody to look at us. Awesome, just what I needed.

  “You need help, ma’am?” a guy at the other pump asked, checking my mother out. It would be awkward if I weren’t completely used to such things.

  She waved her hand dismissively. “No, no, thanks. We’re fine.”

  She flung open her door and grabbed her purse. I sank down in my seat, feeling like the failure I absolutely was at that moment. Her knock on my door startled me.

  “See if you can find any change,” she asked me.

  “What? Where?” I asked.

  “Below the seat,” she said. “Glove compartment?”

  I dug down, trying not to think beyond the project at hand. After excavations with both hands, I came up with a pen, two dollar bills, eighty-seven cents, and a corner of a map showing far northeast Maine. And dirt under my short fingernails. I sorted the money out and handed it to Mom. “I have a ten,” I told her, grabbing for my bag.

  “No, this’ll do us,” she said, and strode across the gas place toward the convenience store/paying place like a lady in a perfume commercial.

  She had never paid cash for gas before, to say nothing about scrounging for change to buy it.

  Scrounging for change in her Porsche.

  She strode back out and pumped the gas expertly into the car. I had never witnessed either of my parents getting less than a full tank of gas before.

  By the time she got back into the driver’s seat, all my annoyance at her for distracting me from my driver’s test with her questions on the way there about whether I had any crushes and how was camp going and was I okay with taking a breather from piano lessons for the summer—all that had evaporated. Questions tumbled through my mind: What was going to happen to our family? Were we really going to have to move? To where? Could she even get a new mortgage? We weren’t going to be homeless, were we? And if we were, where was she going to park her Porsche? I don’t know if they have secure garages at homeless shelters. Why had she needed to burn her papers? Why had she really gotten fired?

  But I didn’t ask anything.

  I watched her face.

  Her beautiful face, fierce eyes that could turn in a fraction of a second from laughing Caribbean blue to cold hard steel; perfect, pert nose; unlined, unblemished skin…

  For the first time I noticed there were lines on her forehead. Two parallel lines shooting up from the sides of her nose, like railroad tracks splitting her forehead. Her lips were chapped; a fleck of skin tipped off the center of the bottom lip, ready to dive toward her chin but teetering on the edge of her smudged gloss. The semicircles under her eyes were slightly poochy, and shadowy, too.

  My stomach clenched.

  She forced another giggle, but it was not spontaneous anymore. “You have to tell Daddy about that. He will die laughing!”

  That didn’t seem like a consummation devoutly to be wished, at least not in the short run, but I forced a smile, too, and promised to trot out my failure for the amusement (hopefully not terminal) of my father, and then also my sisters. Sure, why not. If I couldn’t bring home the achievement, the certificate, the medal, I may as well perform the story of my failure for them all, I selfishly, self-pityingly thought.

  Mom was right. They all loved the story that night at dinner. Nobody actually died, but all of them, at various points, did gasp for air. Especially Daddy. He was banging the table, cracking up. I admit I embellished the story in a few places, like the Coca-Cola stains on the front of the skinnier cop’s pants. It’s hard to sort out what actually happened, because now I remember it as I told it, and more than that, I remember how delighted they seemed with my story.

  Even in flunking, I could bring joy to my parents.

  7

  THE NEXT MORNING ALLISON was in the kitchen when I got down. I knew better than to ask what was going on, or why she was awake. I went straight to the fridge to get the milk for cereal. There was barely a drop in the whole container.

  Without turning to her, I asked, “Did you drink all the milk?”

  “You just assume it was me,” Allison responded.

  I put the milk back in. Dad would want the dribble that was left for his tea. I chose a plum from the fruit drawer and shut the fridge.

  Allison’s crazy cell phone was freaking out on the counter in front of her. She was staring right down at it, her head tepeed on her hands, not answering it.

  A normal phone surrenders after a while and sends the caller to voice mail, but not Allison’s, apparently. It just kept right on going, playing an ABBA tune I knew I’d be condemned to h
um the rest of the day.

  “Phone,” I said.

  “You think?” Allison said.

  “Who are you ignoring?”

  “Tyler.”

  “Your boyfriend calls you at eight in the morning and you—”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Oh,” I said. News to me. “Okay.”

  The phone stopped playing ABBA. The silence was loud.

  I wasn’t sure if I should comfort Allison, and if so, how to go about it. I’ve known her since she was born, but still. Allison is a porcupine.

  Before I could choose my move, her phone started having a seizure.

  “I broke up with him last night,” Allison explained.

  “You broke up with him?”

  “Thanks,” she said. “Nice.”

  “I didn’t mean…” But of course I did. Busted. Change the subject: “That him again?”

  She looked at me like I was an idiot. “No, the mailman.”

  Tyler Moss was the widely acknowledged hottest guy in my grade. He went out with a senior at the beginning of tenth grade, and then fooled around with basically every gorgeous girl in the school, and then fell in love with my sister. I am not particularly looped into the gossip chains, but even I knew everybody was saying Tyler Moss was totally whipped over Allison. They were the IT couple of the end of the school year.

  He was the first guy Allison ever went out with.

  And she broke up with him? I couldn’t believe it. I am a big believer in female power and the desirability of offbeat, intense, different-drummer girls. I totally thought Tyler was lucky and smart to fall for Allison, but, well, nobody would break up with Tyler Moss.

  I am also serious about not prying. It was none of my business what happened between them.

  “What happened?” I asked her accidentally.

  She rolled her eyes. “Nothing.”

  “Did he do something to you?” Allison had never even kissed a boy before, and Tyler Moss was not exactly known for his prudery. “I’ll kill him.”

  Allison burst out laughing. “What happened to my sister, Gandhi reincarnated?”

  “I’ll chop off his private parts and staple them to his butt,” I vowed, shocking us both.

  “Quinn!” Phoebe said from the doorway.

  “Who goes from Zen master straight to Mafia enforcer without passing Go?” Allison asked, smiling a bit in spite of herself.

  “Seriously,” Phoebe agreed. “Holy Quinn.”

  They were both looking at me with renewed respect. I shook my head. “I didn’t—”

  “So who’s getting stapled?” Phoebe asked, helping herself to a smoothie from the fridge.

  “Ty,” Allison said. “It just wasn’t working out.”

  Phoebe’s face drooped in sympathy. She spread her arms and gathered Allison into them. “Oh, Al,” she murmured.

  I stood there like a stranger waiting for a train.

  Allison’s phone honked twice. We all looked at it. Allison’s eyebrows crunched in the center of her face. She shrugged and picked up the phone. After she said hello she just sat there on a stool, listening, so Phoebe and I turned away to give her some privacy, and also to look toward where Mom’s high heels were clacking across the foyer toward us.

  “The warranty on my vehicle may be expiring,” Allison explained, hanging up as Mom came into the kitchen.

  “What vehicle?” Mom asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee from the pot on the counter.

  “Exactly,” Allison said.

  “Ew.” Mom swallowed hard. “Your father makes the worst coffee. Where is he?”

  “Is everybody always up this early?” Allison asked.

  “Can I go over to Luke’s?” Phoebe asked. “And can I stay for dinner, because—”

  “Daddy and I may be out late; we have…” Mom checked her watch as she poured the mugful of coffee down the drain. “He didn’t go out for a run, did he?”

  “I’m going back to bed,” Allison announced, sliding off the stool, phone in hand. “This whole morning thing sucks.”

  Jelly beeped in the driveway for me. I said good-bye and stepped forward to kiss Mom on the cheek, but she bent her head at the same instant, checking her watch, so I just kind of jolted past her.

  “We have a meeting with the lawyers in forty minutes,” she said. “Where is…”

  Dad flumped down the back stairs at that moment. We all stopped short and watched him walk his long-legged, loose-limbed amble into the kitchen, because instead of his usual summer look (raggedy khaki shorts, loose T-shirt, battered old Keds) he had on a dark suit, crisp white shirt, and blue tie. His hair was even gelled back. He looked like the movie star who would play Dad in a big-budget film.

  “Who the hell are you?” Allison muttered.

  Phoebe was looking back and forth between Mom and Dad, so I turned to see Mom’s expression, too. She was half smirking, but her eyes were soft, and her head was shaking slowly. She lifted her arms as he approached her, and as I left, they were embracing in the kitchen. Allison didn’t realize I could see her spying on them around the corner, partway up the back stairs.

  I think it was the romance between them that infected my brain. That’s the excuse I made to myself anyway. I was slumped in the front seat of Jelly’s car, my stuff in my bag on my lap, my head tapping Morse-code messages of loneliness onto the window, as Jelly alternately rocked out (when she remembered a word or two of the song playing) and talked about Adriana and the parties we’d go to with her.

  Without letting myself think it through, I yanked my phone out of my bag and texted Oliver.

  It was nothing huge or horribly embarrassing. Just, Hi. I hit SEND before I could add to it, or subtract.

  “Who’d you text?” Jelly asked between songs.

  I shrugged. “Oliver.”

  “Shut up!”

  “He texted me the other night, so—”

  “He babysat you,” Jelly reminded me for the billionth time.

  “He babysat Phoebe,” I argued.

  “While you were there,” she pointed out. “And he got paid.”

  “A hundred years ago.”

  “I just don’t want you to get hurt,” Jelly said tenderly. “You know that.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

  I held my phone the rest of the way to camp, willing it to beep with a reply message. In fact I held it most of the day, so much so that Adriana asked me if I was waiting for my boyfriend to text me.

  “No,” Jelly said. “Her piano teacher.”

  “Your piano teacher?” Adriana asked, as if it were my SAT tutor or, ew, my driving test man.

  “He’s hot,” Jelly quickly explained. “And in college.”

  “Oh,” Adriana said, with renewed interest. “I get it. Practice, practice, practice…”

  “It’s not like that,” I said. When she raised one perfectly arched eyebrow, I clarified, “At least, it’s not…for him.”

  “I get it,” she said. “He thinks you’re just a high school girl.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Possibly because I am.”

  “That whole reality thing,” Jelly agreed.

  “Screw reality; I have a better idea,” Adriana said. We were leading the campers down the hill to the arts-and-crafts shack. Jelly and I had to wait to hear the better idea until all the campers had been seated at benches and given lanyard strings. While the arts-and-crafts counselors got them going on that, Jelly, Adriana, and I went out to sit on the steps of the cabin.

  “There’s this guy,” Adriana said. “I think you’d really like him, Quinn. His name is Mason. He’s sick hot.”

  “How about me?” Jelly asked. “I need somebody sick hot, too.”

  “No fears,” Adriana said. “Mason’s best friend is this guy JD. He’s mad wild.”

  “Perfect,” Jelly said, convinced. “Mad wild. I like that.”

  “I don’t think Mason sounds like my type,” I protested. “And this JD…”

  “
He’s anybody’s type,” Adriana insisted. “Tell you what: you guys will come over to my house Saturday. I’m having a few people over and you’ll see if you like them. They’re friends of my boyfriend du semaine, Giovanni. Who is so hot it’s probably illegal. No more mooning over Piano Man, though, right? Summer is for fun.”

  “Exactly,” Jelly said. “Well, fun and padding the résumés.” Jelly tilted her head toward our campers, who were already streaming out the arts-and-crafts door.

  “Come on, you rungs on our résumés,” Adriana said. “Who rules?”

  “Hawks!” they all shouted, all except Ramon, who slipped his cool little hand into mine as we walked back up the hill.

  The Saturday night fix-up plan was revisited a few times over the course of the day. I gave up arguing. I just shrugged and went along with the idea, knowing (well, thinking I knew) that nothing would ever come of it.

  It’s not that I think I suck, or am ugly, or that I am socially awkward to the point of should-look-into-a-convent. The opposite, almost. I can pass. I know I can. The pretty girls, the fashionable, socially buzzy girls, are and have always been very nice to me. Like Adriana, they tend to be, in my experience and counter to the stereotype of obnoxious “popular” girls, very inclusive. And I like them; I do—they are generally a lot more fun in some ways than my brainy friends other than (well, sometimes including) Jelly: the smart, sardonic, depressed and depressing, poetry-quoting, black-wearing, disaffected, self-consciously outsiderish nerd friends. The social girls are generally happier, for one thing, and up for a good time. The problem is, I get a headache when I spend too much time with them. It’s the accents, the whine in their voices, the entitled attitude, the grabbing one another’s arms and whispering in one another’s ears, the in-crowd behavior that makes me feel sleepy first and then itchy.

  When I am with the nihilistic geniuses I long for pastels and smiley faces. When I am with the materialistic supersocialites I fall into a pit of self-loathing and minor chords.