Brilliant by Rachel Vail Read Free Book Online Page A

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, sometimesincluding) 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.
    Hard to believe I am the easy kid in my family. I am such a pain in the ass. Nobody usually knows that, though. I am the ultimate con girl. In American Culture AP this past year, we learned about the racial issue of “passing”—there was a thing, historically, that if you were an African American who had lighter skin, you could supposedly “pass” for white and therefore were likely to attain a higher rank in society. Pretty awful, when you think about the implications of that. In my school and my life, it isn’t so much a matter of race or ethnic background. There’s a money element, definitely, though how much impact that has I guess I will find out in the coming year, when we have none, or much less, anyway. But even more than money, and way more than skin color, I think, is social grace, or interest,maybe. Like, if you know how to whisper and laugh and say the right thing to a particular crowd, that’s who you hang with, even if that’s not who you really are.
    I could pass for anything.
    Well, not a jock. But I could pass for cool and hyper-social, or brainy, or even theater geek and, of course, band freak.
    People usually bought what I put on display.
    I had always thought of it as a skill, something good—I didn’t confine myself to one group. Also it was like a secret. I was a spy, able to pass undetected in any guise I chose, and