Brilliant by Rachel Vail

Author:Rachel Vail [Vail, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General Fiction, David_James, Mobilism.org
ISBN: 9780060890506
Publisher: HarperTeen
Published: 2010-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

15

I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING absolutely, resolutely cheerful.

Adamantly cheerful.

I was so damned cheerful, any negativity that dared encroach on my space would get punched in the nose. That’s how fricking cheerful I felt.

I didn’t know if I’d had a dream or what, but my eyes popped wide open at five fifty-five, which I took as a good omen because five is my lucky number, and I knew what I had to do:

I had to be my very best self. It was so obvious I spared three seconds wondering why I hadn’t seen it before. But then I moved on. Because I was cheerful!

I just needed to be my best self. Isn’t that what everybody always advises? I think it was Gandhi who said we are more afraid of our power than of our powerlessness, or something like that. And Gandhi is my freaking hero! Here I’d been sinking into gritted-teeth annoyance and petty resentments, fearing—no, dreading—my powerlessness: losing my home, losing my image of Mom, losing my grip on myself as a good and moral and gifted person. But I was just looking at everything the wrong way, which was why I had been acting so badly, doing such flesh-crawling stuff as kissing two boys. Obviously!

I smiled and got up, brushed my teeth a double round, and then got into the shower, where I lathered, rinsed, and repeated. Vigorously. All while thinking, Life will throw at me what it will. But meanwhile I will hold my head up. I will remember who I am, who we are. We are the Avery family. I am Quinn Avery. I have a piano recital to practice for, and tests to ace, and disadvantaged children to influence positively. I have my eyes set on the horizon of the Ivy League, possibly Harvard, but Yale or Brown would also be good choices for me, and all it will take is hard work, nailing the SATs and ACTs and SAT IIs, which is just a matter of working on it, no problem, and then I just have to manage an excellent audition tape to submit along with my applications, which I am already working on.

Good, water off. And about paying for college? That should not be a problem, really, I realized as I towel-dried my hair. Dad worked his way through college. Mom was proud of never having asked for spending money from her parents. I didn’t need them to provide everything for me on a silver platter. I didn’t even want them to. And I had an easy way to make some cash—trumpeters and cellists and even, yes, oboists like Jelly always have to pay pianists to practice with them and accompany them to auditions, even for stuff like when they try out, in September, for all-state and all-county band and orchestra. So that would be quick and easy money. And fun, too! I was getting more cheerful by the moment!

So there were no problems ahead, with the possible exception that I was starting to levitate, I was so heliumified.

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