Brilliant by Rachel Vail Read Free Book Online Page B

nobody would know the real me.
    Except Oliver. It has always felt like he could see right through, like he wasn’t fooled, though he was maybe amused. It’s that, I think, that makes him so irresistible to me. Not just how his butt looks in jeans, no matter what my crass sisters say, too loudly, as he leaves our house after lessons. It’s just that it feels like he sees who I really am when he looks in my eyes.
    Or maybe that is all just my fantasy. My horribly deluded fantasy, and something I have to move on from.
    Because he didn’t respond to my text. My phone stayed limp and lifeless as a sandwich in my hand all the sweaty day.
    Nobody even wanted to let me know my nonexistent warranty was about to expire.
    “Screw him,” Jelly said when she caught me checkingit on the drive home. “Not literally, of course. Excelsior. Bigger and better and sicker and wilder guys await us. Right?”
    “Right,” I agreed.
    “There’s wildness in us,” she insisted, making all the windows go down at once. “Before the grind of junior year starts, we have to let our crazy wildness out !”
    So that, plus the romance of my parents and the twittering of Adriana and Jelly and their escalating plans for fun this summer with the mad-sick-wild, etc., Mason and JD, and the lack of response from Oliver and maybe even the humid heat had sent me into a bit of a crazed and desperate funk even before I got home to find the house echoingly empty until the doorbell rang.
    None of that is sufficient excuse, I am aware, for what happened. I’m just saying they are all pieces of the reason.

8
    I HAD TO INTERRUPT MY PARENTS at the lawyer’s office. No way was I letting those three bulky men in the door without finding out if I was even supposed to, or allowed to.
    Dad answered Mom’s cell.
    He answered all my questions, sometimes saying, “Hold on,” to confer with Mom and the lawyer. I had to read him the document handed to me by the short guy with the stubble darkening his cheeks. All three of them stared at me with arms crossed but not objecting as I listened to murmurs of discussion through the phone. The men seemed kind, patient, and way out of proportion for our mudroom, which had until that moment been plenty big.
    “Okay,” I told Dad, but then added, “You sure?”
    “Yeah,” he said. “Gotta go.”
    His voice cracked.
    I closed my phone and turned to the men. “Okay.”
    “Can you show us where the piano is?”
    I led them through the kitchen and around through the foyer to the living room. I pointed at the piano, though at that point it was probably obvious to them where the piano was.
    There was some muttering and measuring, and a bit of difficulty with unjamming the second double front door, which I had actually never seen open before. It looked unseemly, embarrassing to have such a gaping opening to our house, like a girl wearing a skirt with her knees spread.
    I leaned against the living room wall while they worked, then went and sat at a stool in the kitchen. It occurred to me I should probably be overseeing what they were doing, making sure they weren’t denting the walls or stealing the coasters, but I couldn’t rouse myself to give a crap, and honestly I didn’t really want to watch them removing the piano.
    When the piano was out, presumably in the truck, the head guy brought me a paper to sign. “We just need your autograph,” he said jovially, but his squinty eyes showed he knew this was awkward. He shrugged with one shoulder as I placed the crinkled papers on the granite counter to sign on the line.
    I closed the double doors behind them.
    I tried to get up the courage to go into the living room and see it all empty and stripped, but I just couldn’t. Instead I opened both the double doors again.
    I stood there and looked out at the front yard for a while.
    Then I turned around and forced myself to go to the living room.
    There were deep indents in the carpet where the piano feet had been. Above them was