Brilliant

by Rachel Vail

  “JD, we need to pull over. Now.”

  “Whoa,” Adriana said, with a cruel laugh. “You’re actually kind of harsh, too, Q. What’s the third one like? Scary crew. Wouldn’t want to have dinner at your house, three bitchy daughters with your indicted-criminal mom and your sad little mousy dad.”

  It was like a door had closed. Click. Done. She had insulted my entire family in one sentence; it was almost impressive. I was speechless.

  “Don’t get mad,” she purred. “I’m just saying, avoid dinnertime at the Avery house, or do you not have one anymore?”

  “Shut up, Adriana,” I seethed. “No worries. You’re not invited.”

  “Oooh,” she said. “I’m crushed. Serves me right, trying to do a good deed this summer, get a couple of desperate, résumé-pimping nerds laid.”

  “Screw you,” I said, and leaned forward again, trying to speak calmly, reasonably. “I want to get out of this car now. JD, please stop the car and let me out.”

  “Relax,” Adriana slurred. “Don’t get your panties in a knot.”

  “Now!” I shouted. “Now!”

  JD slammed on the brakes and swerved to the side of the road. Hands were on me, pushing me out. My shoe got caught on something and my bag wasn’t budging but I was tumbling, pebbles scraping my knees and palms like a little kid falling off her scooter, and then I could taste dirt as pebbles hit me in the back, and the car I had been in screeched away with the door still open. I heard the laughter follow the car like a wake, until the door slammed. When the taillights disappeared around the corner, I was alone.

  24

  THE NIGHT WAS QUIET AND STILL.

  I had no cell phone, no wallet, one shoe, and no idea where I was.

  I stood crookedly, one leg propped four and a half inches higher than the other, courtesy of my mother’s fabulous shoe, and breathed the night air.

  Now what?

  I looked both ways, up and down the street. Neither way seemed especially promising. After briefly considering sitting down on the curb and crying, I instead took off Mom’s other shoe and stood on my bare feet on the patch of rough grass between the sidewalk and the street. I just stood there, waiting for some idea to come to me.

  I’m alone, I thought. I have never been this alone before.

  It’s not metaphorical: I can’t get home. I don’t know how to get to where my home is from here. I am out somewhere all by myself, no way of contacting anybody, and nobody knows how to find me. Nobody can save me.

  Not even Mom.

  Not even my Mom, who can do anything, who is not like the other moms, all small and petty, with their whiny, entitled voices and small concerns about junk food and screen time and PTA meetings. My mom, the colossus, the all-powerful, the world-shaking, sparkling center of everything, the most brilliant person I’ve ever met. She has no idea where I am. She can’t save me.

  I looked up at the sky. “I’m here,” I whispered.

  I concentrated on the prickly grass under my toes, then the ache in my calves from having worn such high heels, the tightness in my left hip, the weight of Mom’s shoe in my hand, the smell of beer and smoke clinging to my hair, the stale taste in my mouth, the crown of weight bearing down around the top of my head. I rebuttoned my button.

  “I’m here,” I said a little louder, to interrupt the silence, to test the possibility, or maybe the possible repercussions, of disturbing the night.

  Okay, I thought. I’m here. I don’t want to be here, though. So.

  Go.

  Which way?

  I looked again up the street, down the other way. Houses behind lawns behind bushes as far as I could see in both directions, and darkness beyond, both ways.

  One road diverged in a dark suburb, I thought.

  And sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood…

  Is that what I am? I wondered. One traveler? With pieces of me scattered around town, in some guy’s car, some guy whose last name I don’t even know, or really his first name, only two letters and probably an emoticon. My parents think I’m at a whole different place, think I’m a whole different person—how can these fragments add up to one traveler?

  I looked again up the road. Which way was less traveled? They looked about the same, as Robert Frost had observed in his yellow wood.

  Choose, I told myself. Just choose and go. Start walking. You’ll end up someplace. And that will make all the difference.

  I turned left and started walking, my bare feet gripping the rough, scratchy earth.

  It wasn’t until I’d been walking for a while that I realized I hadn’t cried, hadn’t fallen apart, hadn’t panicked or freaked out. I was in a pretty awful situation, the worst of my life. I had screwed up really badly. I was in huge trouble even if I managed to make it home unscathed by bad guys or worse. My parents were going to be shocked, and disappointed, and angrier than they’d ever been even at Allison. At me. And yet at this moment, I was handling the situation. I’d been drunk, yes, wasted maybe even, but I’d realized in the car that I had to get out, and I made them release me. Whether that was a smart decision or not was still up in the air, but it seemed right to me; I was confident about it.

  Great, I told myself, making a right turn at a corner, hoping I wasn’t walking around in circles. I’m competent. As expected. I don’t panic in a crisis. Welcome back to the good-girl box.

  But no. That wasn’t the whole of me. That girl at the party, that was me, too. Cinderella isn’t a fraud at the ball just because she’s in magic clothes. She’s just as much herself there as scrubbing the fireplace.

  Cinderella?

  I wondered briefly if I was still drunk. No, pretty sober, I thought. Mostly, anyway. Then it hit me: of course Cinderella. I was wandering around sometime after midnight with only one shoe. Who else would I be?

  I laughed out loud.

  Yeah, so where the hell was Prince Charming, my other shoe in hand, to find me and restore me to my rightful place at the palace? To rescue me?

  I stood at the next corner, holding the shoe, deciding which way to go again.

  Straight.

  I kept walking. I could damn well rescue myself, thanks very much.

  I could find my own way home. If that’s where I wanted to go.

  Where do I want to go?

  I recognized the house on the corner. The yellow house. Yes. I was someplace familiar. Okay, maybe not completely sober; my head was a little sloshy still. That yellow house is down the street from somebody’s house I know. Whose?

  I turned right and was already walking before I allowed myself to know whose house I was heading toward.

  25

  “OLIVER.”

  Nobody answered. Not that I expected him to hear me whisper his name from his driveway. I didn’t even know which was his window. Was he supposed to just appear, like Juliet, up there?

  I didn’t try the front door but tiptoed around his small house, over the rough stones on the side, to the back. The screen door to their garden was closed but not locked. I slid it open silently.

  Great, Quinn. Breaking and entering. Trespassing. You and your mom can rot in jail together.

  No, no; she’s not going to jail. She’s getting out of it. She may not be innocent but she won’t be found guilty. She’s Settling the Case. It’s all over the internet. She’s Settling.

  What a depressing word.

  Who would want to Settle?

  Not me.

  Not me.

  I don’t want to settle. Not ever.

  Anyway, I’m not breaking, I reminded myself, tiptoeing up the stairs to the bedrooms. Just entering. They’d let me off for that, probably.

  Excellent morals, I praised myself.

  Four closed doors off the upstairs hall. Okay, now I’m “The Lady or the Tiger,” I thought, and slapped my hand against my mouth to keep from laughing out loud. This is not funny, Quinn! Sober up!

  Choose.

  I reached for a doorknob and twisted it ca
refully. Not locked, at least. I pulled the door slowly open. My heart was pounding.

  Okay, linen closet. The towels and sheets were mute witnesses to my trespass. I closed the door and tried the next. Bingo.

  Tiptoeing across Oliver’s wood floor, I held my breath. It smelled like boy in there, a little sweaty and dark. I knelt beside his bed and touched his dark, wavy hair and whispered his name again.

  He turned over and his eyes flickered open. It took them a moment to focus on my face. Just when I thought he might jolt or scream, he gave me that half smile, half frown and said, “Quinn.”

  Like he wasn’t shocked I had appeared in the middle of the night in his bedroom. Like his first thought was happy to see me.

  I smiled back. “Hi.”

  He reached out and touched my hair and whispered, “You’re here.”

  That seemed to wake him up. His eyebrows scrunched. “What are you doing here?”

  I opened my mouth to tell him that it had been a crazy night, that I had wandered all over and come upon his house, or maybe I was heading here the whole time without knowing it, or at least without admitting it to myself, and my parents were probably going crazy-furious and that for the first time in my life I was furious right back; that my feet were cut and bruised and I was in deep trouble and I didn’t know what to do. But I didn’t.

  Instead I leaned forward and kissed his lips.

  To my surprise and delight, he kissed me back, his hand lightly touching my cheek. I knelt up higher. My eyes opened and looked into his, then closed again.

  We pulled apart slowly, our breath swirling around each other’s in the little space between us.

  “Hold on,” he whispered hoarsely.

  I sat down on his floor while he threw back the covers. He was in boxer shorts. He grabbed a T-shirt off his dresser and went to his door, where he held out his hand to me.

  I took his hand and followed him down the stairs, out the screen door to his backyard, across the garden, to the huge hemlock tree that dominated the yard.

  He kissed me again. I dropped my mother’s shoe. Our arms wrapped around each other, our bodies pressed against each other’s.

  “Quinn Avery,” he whispered.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “What am I going to do with you?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  He sucked in a big breath of air and let it out with a little chuckle. “I don’t know,” he said, serious now, and kissed me. His eyes were closed as he pulled slowly, gently, reluctantly away.

  “Okay,” I whispered. “You don’t know. Excellent place to begin. Scary, maybe, but if you’re brave enough to admit not knowing, you open yourself up to what might be. Does that make sense to you?”

  “More than ever,” he whispered.

  “So, then, how does it make you feel?”

  “Whole. Scared. Happy.”

  “And what does it make you think?”

  “I think…” he started.

  I kissed his neck, lightly, and heard him sigh.

  “I think…” He kissed my lips, hard at first, and then so lightly it could have been his eyelashes against my lips. “Mmmm. I think I…I think you’re in high school, Quinn.”

  “Not at the moment,” I pointed out.

  He laughed. “Good point.” He kissed me again, then pulled away, groaning a bit.

  “What?” I asked. “If you don’t want to…”

  “I want to,” he said. “Quinn, please. I’ve wanted to kiss you all year. I come over every week to teach you piano and it’s all I can do to keep my hands on the keys instead of on you.”

  “Really?”

  His hand on my cheek. “Quinn Avery.”

  “You don’t think I’m just some little kid who has a crush on you?”

  “No.” His lips were almost on mine. “No. You keep saying that, but it is so far from true. I wanted that to be what it was. But no. I think you are an intense, complex, shockingly sexy person, and I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  Only his mouth on mine kept me from saying, Seriously? Me? Brainy, geeky, good-girl me?

  He pulled away again. “But I also think I am in college and you are in high school, and there are rules against this.” His fingers traced my collarbone. “Laws, in fact.”

  “Okay, Grandpa,” I said.

  “Don’t.”

  “Okay, I won’t, Grandpa.”

  “Quinn.”

  “You’re what, two and a half years older than I am? When you’re twenty-nine and I’m twenty-six, we’ll be the same age. When you’re eighty-four—”

  “But not now,” he interrupted. “You’re not even seventeen, are you?”

  “Almost. In one month.”

  “Almost,” he said. “Urgh.”

  “And when we say what we think, you and I, it’s like a fugue,” I said. “Two voices, same melody.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Oh, Quinn. I know.” And he kissed me again. I touched his fingers with the skin of my neck, my back. “I’m so sorry, Quinn. I’ve been…All week…You were so right, and I deserved what you said. It made me realize what I’ve been trying so hard not to feel and…”

  “Well,” I said, touching his cheek as I looked him in the eyes, “my sister said everybody is a sleaze sometimes.”

  Oliver smiled his lopsided smile and closed his eyes.

  “I miss your piano lessons,” he said. “And not just the part about getting to be near you for half an hour.”

  “I do, too,” I whispered. “I miss…I miss piano.”

  “You haven’t been playing at all?”

  I shook my head. “I miss it. I really…I wake up and my fingers ache from needing to play; I hear the music in my head all the time…. I mean, I know I’m not that great a piano player or anything….”

  “How do you know?”

  “I wish I were. Maybe I should’ve switched to some other instrument, oboe, or…”

  “Oboe?” His face looked so confused I had to laugh.

  “No,” I said. “Just…I…I know I’m smart. I’m good at school. I’m good at piano, and taking tests, and writing an essay and following instructions. I’m a good girl. You know? But there have been teachers, and even my parents, who seem to think I could be, or am, brilliant. At something. And I can’t figure out what at.” I hiccuped. “Excuse me.”

  “You’re excused.”

  “But so, like with piano. I should just give it up, you know? Because clearly I am not brilliant at it, so why embarrass myself?”

  “Listen,” Oliver said. “You know what I think? I think you and I have to get over that whole brilliant thing. Brilliant is for later. Brilliant is for critics, and they aren’t going to agree with one another, anyway. If you love it, do it; follow where it takes you. Do your best. Brilliant or not won’t be clear until you die, and then you won’t care anymore anyway.”

  I laughed a little and moved to kiss him again. “Okay,” I said. “It’s a deal.”

  “And we will have to figure this out,” he added, kissing my neck.

  I pulled back a little. That sounded bad.

  “Because,” he whispered, looking into my eyes, “there is nobody like you, Quinn Avery.”

  “I’m a sleaze sometimes, too,” I warned him.

  “No doubt.” He smiled. “What happened tonight?”

  “I got mad,” I said. “I got really angry, and all hell broke loose. It was a sight to see, as you predicted.”

  “I bet,” he said. “Who were you mad at? Not me.”

  “No, you self-centered…At my…Oliver, is it okay if we sit down? I walked pretty far and I drank a truckload of beer tonight.”

  I plopped down.

  Oliver laughed and sat beside me on a rock.

  “What was I saying?” I asked him.

  “Nothing. Why are you barefoot?”

  “I lost a shoe. Her shoe. My mother’s.”

  “And you taste like beer.”

  “Sorry.”

  “
It’s okay. Sometimes that happens.”

  I smiled at him. “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “And besides,” he whispered. “You came here.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes. I am. And I’m glad you got mad. And I’m glad you survived it.”

  “Me too,” I whispered.

  “And now?”

  “And now…” I whispered. “And now…I don’t know. I’m still mad. But I didn’t disappear so far. I don’t know what happens next. What happens next? My parents send out the military to find me?”

  “Your parents don’t know where you are,” he said, more than asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Quinn.” He touched my lips with his finger, traced the shape of my upper lip, then the lower. His deep eyes closed and he lightly kissed the lips he had just anointed. “You know I don’t want to let you go, but…”

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “I have to figure out how to go home.”

  26

  OLIVER OFFERED TO WALK me in, but I asked him instead to drop me at the bottom of the driveway. I wanted to walk up myself. He insisted on lending me his flip-flops, but I left them in his car.

  I walked barefoot in the waning dark up the long hill to my house.

  I had a feeling my parents would be up, waiting for me, because, of course, when Mom went to pick me up at Ziva’s at eleven, I wasn’t there, and nobody there had seen me. It occurred to me that it would be good to have a plan of what to say, or how to behave, but nothing was coming to me, so I’d have to just wing it. I knew I was walking into fire.

  I had no idea how huge the inferno was until I opened the back door.

  Phoebe screamed. Allison said, “It’s her, it’s her. She’s here. She’s fine. She’s okay,” while Phoebe wrapped her arms around me and cried.

  I peeked around the corner to gauge my parents’ faces and saw there was a stranger in the kitchen with them—a stranger in a uniform. Or, no, not a stranger.