Read Online Brilliant by Rachel Vail - Free Book Online Page A

totally cultivate that,” she suggested. I had to open my window for some air.
    “Maybe if you made out with Mason, you’d stop obsessing about what’s-his-name,” she said.
    I jolted toward her. “Who? Why do you think I am obsessed with somebody?”
    “Oliver,” she said meekly. “Who you have been obsessed with since, I don’t know, ever. Jeez, Quinn. What?”
    “Nothing. I’m just…in a weird mood,” I said. “Sorry.”
    “Perpetual bad mood, Q. Seriously, lately. It’s July, dude. We are going to get kissed this summer, and get wild, shed our outer dorkiness. But you have to chill.”
    “I will.”
    “Okay,” she said. “Could you hurry, though? Because Saturday is coming up.”
    “I know. But, Jelly, honestly, I am not obsessed with Oliver.”
    “Yeah, right. Uh-huh. And did you know ‘gullible’ is written on the ceiling of my car?”
    “Ha, ha, ha.”
    “No,” she said. “Actually, it is.” She was bursting with laughter. “It is, Quinn.”
    “Jelly, that’s like a fourth-grade joke. Shedding our outer dorkiness?”
    “Is it?” She looked deflated. “I still think it’s funny.” She pointed up.
    I rolled my eyes and looked. There, in black Sharpie, in Jelly’s beautifully perfect, neat handwriting, was the word gullible written small and dark against the tan felt.
    I had to laugh. “Okay, I think that’s funny, too. I can’t believe you did that!”
    “It’s the worst thing I ever did. How sad is that? I’m in,like, living torment that my dad will see it and freak out. He will so take the car away. And yet, can I say I am loving the buzz of having done it?”
    I laughed again. “Wish I didn’t get exactly what you mean.”
    She shrugged, pulling into my driveway. “My worst rebellion is nerdy, though.”
    “Totally nerdy.” I grabbed my bag and got out. “But so darn funny.”
    “Let’s talk tonight about what to wear to Adriana’s tomorrow,” she yelled on her way down my driveway.
    I waved and nodded, though I fully intended to find an excuse not to go when the time came. I’d been to that kind of party before, without Jelly, who’d never been invited until now. I’d explained to her, after each, that they were boring: The people who got drunk made fools of themselves and the rest of us pretended to look for somebody so we wouldn’t seem as bored as we actually were, and then eleven o’clock finally arrived and a person could leave with only shrugs and groans about unfair, though completely made-up, curfews (because my parents had never given me one, but nobody needed to know that) and not be thought a loser. Jelly was too psyched, though. She was out from behind the stacks in the library and determined to find all the glamour she imagined at Adriana’s house, with a bunch of horny, drunk boys casting their eyes quickly over and past us, for sure.
    Inside, Gosia was standing beside all her stuff, hugging each of us good-bye. Phoebe had made her a card, and Allison gave her a string bracelet she’d made. They were both crying, and Gosia was trying not to. She’d never be in our house again. She promised to call and check on us, and made us promise to email her all the time. “You’re my girls; you always will be,” she said, starting another round of hugs.
    I just kept looking at the ceiling, and after she walked out the door, I went upstairs.
    After a few hours of hiding in my white room, I piled into the car with my family and headed for the summer-deserted high school. The five of us sat on a big sheet like we used to when we were little, but none of us could get too excited about the fireworks. Dad said “ooh” and “ahh,” especially at the grand finale, but to me it just seemed like a loud, profligate waste of money and time. The economy is in the toilet but we can blow up minibombs in the sky: Your tax dollars at work! When meanwhile some of my campers sometimes had nothing but ketchup and crackers for dinner. That’s what skinny little