Brilliant (10 page)

“S
ATURDAY
?” M
OM ASKED AGAIN.

I shrugged one shoulder, not even a shrug, really—a twitch. If she said no, that was it. Even if she said,
Is it really important to you?
, I’d end up not going. I could only go if she said,
Sure, of course, no problem.

She took a deep breath and let it out, then managed a small smile. “I guess that would be fine.”

“If you don’t want me to…” I started. “If you need me to—”

“No,” Mom said. “It’ll work out. I just…Quinn, you really have to clean up your whole room ahead of time. Everything has to be gone.”

“Gone?”

“You know what I mean. I can’t—”

“I’ll make it look like Allison’s,” I promised.

“Well, you don’t have to get carried away.” Mom kissed me on my forehead. “You’re the best.”

I ran up the back stairs and started right in on cleaning.

I actually did load up a big bag to give to charity and another for garbage before I got distracted by
The Remains of the Day
, a book I love and hadn’t reread recently.

I looked up, startled out of the old English manor I was in, in my imagination, and back to the bright white room that looked vaguely familiar, to see four bare legs in front of my slowly adjusting eyes.

“Quinn!” Phoebe said.

“Yeah,” I answered, blinking. Allison was grimacing beside Phoebe, looking longingly back out my door. “Hey,” I said as nicely as I could, folding down my page, forcing a small smile. “What’s up?”

“I think we need a conference,” Phoebe said, and pointed at my closet.

I stood up fast. As much as I deserved whatever Allison wanted to dish out, and as much as, to be fair, she is such a drama queen and makes Armageddon out of one poorly placed, never-should’ve-happened kiss, I still was beyond shocked that she was bringing in Phoebe—Phoebe!—to continue harassing me over it. Fight your own battles, you know?

That’s what I was thinking as I held open my closet door and let my sisters precede me into my huge closet. Allison refused to look at me as she passed me. Following them in, I told myself to just sit there and take it, not
defend myself. Whatever Phoebe had to add to what Allison had said to me and about me earlier couldn’t really hurt that much more, and was nothing in comparison to what I thought of myself, anyway.

I sat down on a pile of my old crap and waited for the onslaught to begin.

“Here’s what I think,” Phoebe said.

Allison and I glowered, our jaws clenched as tight as our fists.

“They’re really sad, and we need to do something to cheer them up.”

“Who?” Allison asked.

“Mom and Dad,” Phoebe said. “Duh. Who did you think?”

Allison shrugged.

“So I had an idea,” Phoebe continued, leaning forward and whispering. “I’m not sure if we can manage, but maybe if we work together we could get it up before they get home.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Allison asked.

“The piano,” Phoebe said, exasperated, rolling her eyes at me like,
Isn’t Allison so thick?
But I think I looked just as confused as Allison did.

I slowly explained to her, “Phoebe, they took the piano away. It’s gone. They bought it on credit, and when Mom—”

“I’m not a mental defective, Quinn,” Phoebe said.
“The other piano. The little one. The…uptight one.”

“Upright,” I corrected, before I could stop myself.

“Exactly,” Phoebe said.

“Wait.” Allison yanked Phoebe by the knee. “Quinn didn’t get you to call this meeting?”

“No!” I yelled. “I thought you told her—”

“I didn’t tell her anything!” Allison yelled back. “You think I’m such a—”

“But then why did she—”

“Hello!” Phoebe held up her hands in front of our faces. “I am still here; remember me? Nobody told me to call this meeting. I am a person here, not a puppet, not a toddler. It was
my
idea, and if you two can’t stop bickering over whatever petty nonsense for long enough to do a nice thing for our parents, who are, hello, going through the worst time of their life right now, well, fine. I’ll get some friends to come over and help me instead.”

“No,” Allison and I said at the same time.

Our eyes met.

“Jinx,” Allison muttered. All three of us squelched unwanted smiles. Five years ago, maybe more, Allison went through this annoying phase where she loved to say
jinx
to people, mostly me, and swore I was absolutely not allowed to talk until she said my full name. I usually didn’t even realize we’d said the same thing simultaneously until after she’d triumphantly yelled, “Jinx!” and then said my whole name and waited impatiently for me to thank her.
I remembered, suddenly, how annoyed I’d get. I wouldn’t thank her because jinx was such a stupid, nonsensical game, and she’d accuse me of being no fun at all, and then for a while refuse to say my name after jinx, as punishment. I just went ahead and talked anyway, which drove her nuts. She’d have a huge blowout tantrum over it, and I would walk away sighing and shaking my head about what an impossible, immature jerk she was—but never thinking,
What’s the big deal?
Why couldn’t I go along with it, wait the half second for her to say my name, then say thank you and smile at her? It’s just a silly game, true—but who was making the big stinking deal about it?

She looked at me, waiting for me to talk. So did Phoebe.

I mouthed the words,
Say my name!

Allison closed her eyes. When she opened them again she picked up an old stuffed lion from my closet floor and twined her fingers into his mane. We sat there together in silence for a while.

Allison dropped the lion. “Quinn Miranda Avery,” she whispered.

“Thank you,” I whispered back.

The tears that came dripping down my cheeks surprised me.

“You’re welcome,” Allison answered, and when I looked up I saw a tear making a track down her cheek, too.

“Can somebody tell me what just happened?” Phoebe asked.

Allison and I both chuckled.

“Nothing,” Allison said, and sniffed. “You are absolutely right, Phoebe.”

“About what?”

“That we have our heads up our butts,” I said. “Let’s try to get that piano up. It’s a great idea.”

Phoebe looked warily back and forth between me and Allison. “What did I miss?” she asked as we filed out of the closet.

“Nothing,” Allison and I both said, and for the first time ever, I said
jinx
first. She crossed her arms and waited. I pretended to be thinking over my options. Just as Phoebe was opening her mouth to say Allison’s name, I said it in a rush: “Allison Beatrix Avery.”

“You guys are freaks,” Phoebe said.

We spent the next hour or maybe two cursing, breaking all our nails, smashing my pinkie toe and Allison’s hip, chipping a hunk of paint off the basement banister, learning some new, shockingly obscene expressions from Allison, and, finally, placing the upright piano in the center of the living room.

It looked tiny in there.

“Should we put it against the wall?” Phoebe asked. “It looks kind of fragile like that—doesn’t it?”

We stood back and looked, the three of us in a clump.

“I think it looks kind of…defiant,” I said.

“Yeah,” Allison agreed. “Fierce.”

“Yeah,” Phoebe said. “I guess. Like, ‘Okay, I’m way small for the job, but I’m still here, damn it.’”

“Yeah,” I said. “It looks like an Avery.”

When Mom and Dad got home, they saw the note we’d left in the kitchen saying they should go to the living room. We were hiding on the steps as they headed there, note in hand, wondering aloud what the heck we’d done. They didn’t glance up to see us peeking down at them as they passed us.

They didn’t make a sound after they rounded the corner into the living room. We waited. Nothing. We glanced at one another from the corners of our eyes, waited, shrugged, and finally tiptoed in to see what they were doing.

Mom’s hands were up at her mouth. Dad’s mouth was hanging open and he was blinking up at the ceiling as he reached for Mom with his long grappling arm and drew her toward him. As she curled into his chest, we saw her see us, but before she could say anything to or about us, Dad said, “We are rich beyond measure.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, we are.”

The three of us tiptoed upstairs to leave them alone there. Allison gave Phoebe a hug and whispered good night to her, but wouldn’t even look in my direction. I didn’t push it. We each went to our own rooms, but we closed the
doors soundlessly, gently. We fell asleep to the tinkling, familiar sounds of “Summertime” being played on our old not-at-all uptight piano.

As I slept I was having a dream of being the soloist, marooned on a piano bench between an orchestra on my left and a huge, oceanic audience on my right. There was no sheet music on the piano and I had no idea what I was supposed to be playing. I was in a long black dress, my hair blown out and hanging long and straight down my back (though when I actually perform I always wear it in a bun), and, peeking out from under the dress, toes on the pedal, my feet were in my mother’s fuchsia stilettos, the ones I had taken and hidden in my underwear drawer. I got distracted by them in the dream, maybe—I don’t know, but anyway, I was sitting there at the piano, clueless and frozen, as the conductor tapped his baton on his stand and glared at me.

Tap, tap.

Tap, tap.

Tap, tap.

I opened my eyes.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
It was Allison. She was outside my window, clinging to the ledge so she wouldn’t fall off the roof into the bushes below, and mouthing my name.

I pushed the window open. “What the…”

“Jeez, Quinn, how heavily do you sleep? I’ve been out there for…How long have we been tapping?”

She turned around to ask it as she climbed over me, and coming in through my window, onto my bed, was Tyler Moss.

“Five minutes at least,” he said. “Hi, Quinn.”

I blinked a few times, trying to figure out if one dream had interrupted another.

Allison grinned and lifted her finger to her lips. “Shhh. Go back to sleep.”

She grabbed Tyler’s hand and started across my room.

He smiled sheepishly at me. “Excellent window.”

My mouth dropped open.

“No way,” I whispered. “Allison!”

She turned around and glared at me, her hands on her narrow hips.

Tyler turned to Allison and whispered, “She’s right. I’m past curfew already. My dad’s on the warpath as it is. I should go.” He reeled her in and they made out, standing in the middle of my rug, as if I weren’t a couple feet away in my bed, watching them like an insomniac kid with one of
those
channels playing on her TV.

“Hello,” I said.

Tyler ran his hand across Allison’s choppy hair and traced the line of her jaw with his fingers. “Night,” he said.

He was crawling across my bed when Allison answered, “Night.”

I dropped my head into my hands. “Go!”

I didn’t lift my head, but his wicked grin was unmissable anyway. “See ya,” he whispered as he backed through my window. I shut it behind him.

I turned to Allison, who was for once just smiling, so happy and relaxed, not talking, not arguing, not defending herself or tearing herself to bits.

“Good night,” I whispered.

“Yeah,” she said, and drifted out of my room the other way, toward the hall and her room beyond.

“Hey, Al?”

She turned around.

“I’m really sorry,” I said. “About…you know. I was just…It didn’t mean—”

“Okay,” she said. “Everybody is a sleaze sometimes. Even you, apparently.”

I nodded. “Thanks, Allison.”

She turned around slowly and floated toward her room. I lay back down in my bed and fell asleep looking at my window, soon to not be my window anymore, imagining sand emptying out of a cosmic hourglass for somebody someday to climb up for
me.

I
GRABBED
M
OM’S SHOES
and skipped barefoot out the door to wait for Oliver outside. I didn’t want him to have to decide whether to ring the doorbell or honk his horn, didn’t want him to have to come in and face my parents and sisters. I wanted to be outside, a light breeze whispering through my hair, reading a book on the bench at the top of the driveway and then, when he pulled up, I’d lift my eyes from the page, and he’d smile and look into me with those eyes of his….

I knew it wasn’t a date. I just wore Mom’s shoes to please myself.

I had sworn to myself, to my parents and sisters and both Jelly and Adriana all week, that it wasn’t a date.

But on some level I guess I kind of thought it was a date.

Which was why it sucked so horribly much when Oliver pulled up with a beautiful girl sitting in the front passenger
seat. I climbed into the backseat, where another couple was sitting. They made room for me. Oliver introduced me to them and I forgot all three names instantly, maliciously.
I don’t care,
I was thinking. I didn’t want to look like a petulant toddler, but when Oliver tried to include me in the conversation the most I could manage was, “Yeah,” or, “I dunno.” Eventually he gave up.

I squished as tight as I could against the door and did my best imitation of not existing, despite my sparkly shoes, the whole ride and after, as we parked, then wandered into a beautiful park. We spread out the blankets they’d brought, and the picnic Oliver had packed; I barely said a word. They poured wine in a plastic cup for me. I took a sip but it felt like liquid fire going down, so I surreptitiously poured it out, drop by drop, into the grass when they weren’t looking at me (which was basically at all times). My head felt hot and then kind of swimmy as the concert started, and then I got really chilled, despite the little black cardigan I had stolen from Phoebe’s closet to wear over my tight blue tank top. I had thought, with my tightest jeans and Mom’s stilettos, that I looked kind of cool, funky, a little older, like maybe nobody would think,
Is that guy babysitting that little girl?
Instead they’d think something like,
Hot young couple.

If anybody at the concert thought anything of me, it was probably that one of those four cool-looking, funky, college-age, laughing, flirting, happy people had been
forced to bring along the cranky little sister, bummer.

Oliver glanced over at me but said nothing, then slid his eyes away, back to the Girl, and laughed at some dumb thing she said. The depth of my hatred of my life right then had never in history been plumbed.

Eventually, maybe midway through the concert, it became clear to me that I was actually getting sick, not just from embarrassment or disappointment but also truly, legitimately sick.

I put my head down on the blanket and closed my eyes to listen to the music, trying to block out the quiet murmurs of the two couples on the blanket with me. I didn’t want to see the girl whose slim, hard body tilted toward, then leaned against Oliver in the dimming light of dusk, as he whispered into her delicate ear with its dangly earring. I had no interest in looking at her wavy black hair, her black-rimmed eyes, her cute white shirt with the pretty little buttons down the front, unbuttoned to let her tan skin and pink camisole peek out the top, her platform sandals kicked off and toppled right in front of my eyes. I closed them (my eyes) and tried to think,
It doesn’t matter,
but what I actually was thinking, horrifyingly, inappropriately, was
I want my mom.

I want her to come get me. I want her to show up here at the concert and tower over this blanket and have us all look up at her, stronger, more beautiful, more powerful and brilliant than any of us, and she’d be looking only at me. I want to stand up
and let Mom wrap her arms around me and bring me home. I want her to carry me up to my room and then to sit on the side of my bed and push my hair off my sticky, steamy forehead with a damp but not wet, warm but not hot washcloth and sing me the “okay” song she made up for me when I was a baby, which goes:

And makes me feel taken care of and loved.

I want to go home.

Well, that was the crappiest thing I could possibly have thought, that word:
home
.
I want to go home? Yeah, well
(came the nasty voice in my crushing skull, drowning out the music),
good luck to you, because you can’t go home; you are stuck here with these strangers who don’t really know you or love you or even care about you at all, and you’d better get used to it because this is just a metaphor for life. You are alone. Everybody is a stranger. Soon you’ll head off for college anyway, and after that, a series of anonymous apartments, probably, and you will be an adult. This is called growing up, dork. Only a baby whines, “I want to go home.” Grow up. The house you picture when you think the word
home
is just a house, a house your family basically no longer owns, a borrowed, temporary house that some other poor, deluded kid will picture when she (or he) hears the word
home,
until she (or he) learns the truth:
You are alone, and there is no such thing as home. It is a made-up concept, an illusion. Get over it, you naughty kitten.

That’s when I knew I had a fever.

That terrifying (trust me, terrifying) phrase is from a picture book Mom bought and read to me when I had a really high fever in kindergarten. In it three adorable little kittens are warned by their mother not to lose their mittens, because if they do, they’ll have no pie. And then they do, of course, lose their mittens, and their harsh cat mother says, “You naughty kittens! You lost your mittens! Now you shall have no pie!” At the end I think the kittens manage to find their mittens and the mom is satisfied enough to tell them, “Now you shall have some pie.” I hated that book. So horrible! Partly it was wondering why the kittens even had mittens (just because they rhymed? Why didn’t the mom cat have a hat, then?), and why, if the mom was so worried they’d lose them, she sent them outside wearing them, and then I couldn’t help wondering if the kittens even liked pie. I didn’t. I did, however, tend to lose my mittens.

I knew which of the kittens in the book was me (the one who always went first, no smile, serious), and which was Allison (wide-spaced eyes), and which was Phoebe (the littlest, the cutest). It was so obvious, it never occurred to me that the kittens might
not
represent us.

Nobody knew I hated that book. I didn’t want Mom to think I was wimpy (who is scared of a picture book?)
or ungrateful, a complainer, for fear that maybe she’d say, “You naughty kitten, you don’t like this excellent book that your loving mother is so generously reading to you instead of doing the million things she needs to do! Now you shall have no pie!” And despite my abhorrence of pie, I would cry if she ever talked to me that way, the way I knew she might if I did the wrong thing. If I messed up someday that’s what would happen—it was always looming out there; maybe the book had been bought as a warning? I remember lying there at five years old in her bed, all feverish and sweating, thinking maybe she had read me that book because she wanted me to know that if and when it happened, if I disappointed her, if I messed up, she would look at me that way, talk to me in that horribly disgusted, shaming voice.

And then I would disintegrate into crumbs and blow away.

Since that day, I have been on constant guard against bringing out that
you shall have no pie
Mom, the one who talked to Allison that way so often, the one I knew was one mess-up away for me. Allison could handle it, somehow. I knew that I couldn’t. Mom’s disappointment in me would destroy me. I knew it all the time but could shove it out of my mind unless I cooked up a fever.

I managed not to puke on the way back to the car after the concert ended. The pretty girl was no longer draped on Oliver, who looked like he was in a foul mood himself.
We piled into the car. Oliver, surprising me, put in an Elvis Costello CD and it blasted the whole way. I think I fell asleep, because the guy beside me was gently shaking my shoulder the next thing I knew. I pried my eyes open.

“You’re home,” he said.

“Ha, ha, ha,” I responded, and stumbled out of the car. Oliver didn’t even say good night, and neither did I. He backed fast down the driveway.

All I could focus on was
Do not puke on Mom’s shoes
. After I finished my barf-fest into the hydrangeas, I went in the mudroom door.

“I’m home,” I called, kicking off the shoes and hiding them behind my suddenly clammy back, just in case anybody barreled into the mudroom to greet me.

And then I cried, not just because on their way behind my back the shoes had revealed mud stains halfway up their heels, and Gosia, who had said that dirt stains are almost impossible to remove but would have helped me try, was gone forever. It wasn’t even just because of that whole “I’m home” thing. I was crying, weeping really, because nobody else was home; I was alone, and cold, and sick, and shivering, with impossible-to-fix muddy stolen shoes and no mittens at all.