Illuminate Excerpt
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Part The Picture of Dorian Gray, part The Devil Wears Prada, this original and engrossingstory will keep surprising readers right up to the thrilling climax.
Josephine Angelini, author ofStarcrossed
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opyright 2012 by imee gresti
ll rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections
from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifin Harcourt Publishing
ompany, 215 Park venue South, New York, New York 10003.
Harcourt is an imprint of Houghton Mifin Harcourt Publishing ompany.
www.hmhbooks.com
ext set in MrsEaves.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
gresti, imee.
Illuminate / by imee gresti.
p. cm.
Summary: brainy, shy high school outcast interning at a hicago hotel discovers
that the hotel staff has an evil agenda planned for her classmates on prom night.[1. Supernatural Fiction. 2. Internship programs Fiction.] I. itle.
pz7.a268754i1 2012
[Fic] dc23
2011027326
Manufactured in the nited States of merica
K 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
45XXXXXXXX
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A Rare Opportunity
3 1 4
Up until that point, English class had been unremarkable. Wewere halway through The Picture of Dorian Gray. Mrs. Harris,with her voluminous behind precariously perched on the ront o
her strained wooden desk, scanned the room searching or fick-
ers o comprehension or, at the very least, consciousness in
a sea o clueless aces. I slid down in my seat, letting my long
wispy hair, still damp rom my morning encounter with winters
sloppy-wet sleet, all around the sides o my ace: trying to hide.
Ive never much been one or participation. I generally know the
answers I just dont appreciate the attention that comes rom
knowing them. nswer correctly and you have urther cemented
your reputation as a brainy, hopeless outcast. nswer incor-
rectly, and not only are you considered a bookish nerd, but now
youre even bad at that. It was a lose/lose situation. So I read
ahead in the book, tuning her out, glancing up every now and
then to the clock above the chalkboard or to the windows where
blustery, chalk-white skies hung over another rigid January day.Evanston, Illinois. he tundra that was the greater hicago area
would likely look this way until pril, but it never bothered me so
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much. I liked the way that braving its wind-whipping wrath could
make a person, even someone as easily tossed around as me, feel
stronger.
So lets talk about the nature of good, evil, and hedonism,
the teacher droned on.
t the mention of hedonism, on reex, my eyes darted two
rows in front of me. Buzz-cropped Jason bington, wearing
his basketball jersey, number 9, to advertise the big game this
weekend, nibbled on the cap of a blue ballpoint pen my blue
ballpoint pen. Somewhere inside my stomach, swarms of butter-ies uttered from their cocoons. It was for this very reason that
the front outside pocket of my backpack bulged at all times with
scores of these pens, which I had, optimistically, bought in bulk.
Jason never seemed to have his own, and he had asked to borrow
one from me weeks ago and then again and again and now this is
what I had become to him: a purveyor of pens. t the desk beside
him, a blond creature his blond creature named ourtney
twirled her artfully hot-rollered, bodacious curls. his is what
boys like him were conditioned to expect. his wasnt me, and
I couldnt imagine it ever would be, regardless of what magical
metamorphosis one was expected to undergo during high school.
I was a work in progress, but I had no reason to believe the n-
ished product would ever be quite like that.
I had stopped paying the least bit of attention to Harriss lec-
ture when she called, Ms. erra? Haven. Did you hear me?
o be honest, no. Scrambling, I shufed through the shards
I had caught of her lecture, searching for the most likely line of
questioning and then shooting out an answer that ought to t.
m, Dorian and Lord Henry believe in following the senses,pursuing whatever pleases them, uh, no matter the consequenc-
es, and, um, not worrying about right and wrong? I proposed,
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swea dampening my emples. Jason angled his head back jus a
ouch in my direcion. I fel oher eyes on me oo.
thank you, has lovely. She was holding a slip of paper she
had jus aken from a senior girl, bored, chewing gum, who now
lef he room. Bu your presence is requesed in he principals
ofce.
weak chorus of ooooh broke ou as I gahered my books
and boulder of a backpack. s I squeezed hrough he aisle, pass-
ing Jasons desk, he looked up for only a momen, expressionless
and sill chewing on my pen.In my wo and a half years of high school, I had ye o se
foo inside Principal tollmans ofce Im jus no ha kind of
girl. So I couldn imagine wha his could be abou. n he walk
here, fooseps echoing on he linoleum, faded voices mufing
ou from passing classrooms, I ried o hink wha i could be:
Was i Joan? Was somehing wrong wih her? this is how i is wih
me, always expecing he wors.
Bu in our case, his sor of overreacion was jusied.
this is jus wha happens when you are discovered, as I was,
a roughly age ve, in a muddy dich somewhere off Lake Shore
Drive in he dead of winer. lile Jane Doe, barely breahing,
no memories of anyhing ha came before ha nigh, no one o
ever come looking for you. nd you ge raised by he kind nurse
who evenually akes you in, names you, feeds you, clohes you.
fer a hing like ha, worry becomes more han a reex; i be-
comes an umbrella shading daily life, hovering closer every ime
someone ges home lae or doesn call when hey say hey will.
Ms. terra, have a sea, Principal tollman said over he op
of he rimless reading glasses perched on her nose when she sawme sanding in he doorway of her ofce. She squared up in her
chair. So i looks like congraulaions are in order. I fel my
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eyes involuntarily bulge. Weve just been notied that you and
two of your fellow eleventh-graders have been accepted into the
Department of Educations Vocational Illinois Leaders intern-
ship program.
It took me half a second too long to process.
h, wow. hats great, thanks, I said, more reserved than
she probably expected, but I was preoccupied. In my mind I was
sorting and sifting through everything Id applied for in the past
year. here was just so much. nything that could earn me extra
cash for college or would sound good enough to help me clinch ascholarship to one of my dream schools. Internships, fellowships,
essay contests my mailbox ooded with the constant stream of
applications and deadlines and hopes. nd yet, somehow, this
didnt even ring a bell.
he principal took off her glasses and stared at me with a faint
smile, a director waiting for the reaction shot she wanted. his
sounds fantastic, I said. I really am honored. But forgive me,
I cant seem to recall actually applying for this. nervous grin
propped up the corners of my mouth.
She laughed, a small, charmed chuckle. Yes, well, thats be-
cause you didnt. hats the beauty of this particular internship.
hey just pluck the best and the brightest and place those stu-
dents with a thriving Illinois enterprise for the semester. Its a
new pilot program the state is trying out. You will each be paired
up with someone at this business who will act as a sort of advanced
independent-study tutor and a mentor. nd Glasses back on,
she read from a paper. It appears youre going to be placed at
the Lexington Hotel in hicago. Why, thats really remarkable,
you know. heyre about to reopen, and the woman who ownsit has become the toast of hicagos business world practically
overnight. You may have seen her in the Tribune and on the news.
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his is a tremendous privilege. It says here that room and board
are provided, and theres a considerable stipend in exchange for
good old-fashioned hard work.
Her words rushed at me too fast to make sense of. So I would
be living at this place? Living at a hotel? Working full-time? No
actual classes? onsiderable stipend? It was a lot to wrap my
head around. Do things like this just fall from the sky? Perhaps
the near-perfect grades I worked so hard for, the afterschool job
I had held for pretty much a decade, the Saturday nights spent at
home studying, were nally paying off in something that couldgive me a shot at the pricey and prestigious schools on my college
wish list.
I know weve started our semester the timing is a bit odd;
I suppose the state board is still ironing out the kinks however,
well make it work since this is a rare opportunity. She said this
with a hands-clasped, tilted-head gravity that suggested she would
like some gratitude and gushing in return.
hank you, Ms. ollman. I appreciate it. his is really great.
My mind was already ve steps ahead, wondering what Joan would
say. Would she even let me go? What would I bring? How would I tell them at the
ho