Brilliant by Rachel Vail Read Free Book Online

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 coffeedown 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. Iwas 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