Her eyes widened in glee as she pulled out a huge roll of cash, all hundreds. Jackpot. Swiftly, Ariana peeled off three bills and shoved them into her pocket, then carefully replaced the stash exactly where she'd found it--in the back right corner of the drawer. There was no way Briana Leigh would miss a measly three hundred. And now Ariana could breathe a little easier, even buy a round of drinks, without Briana Leigh catching on.
Ariana was just about to slide open the second drawer when she
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saw a brochure sticking out from under a tangled pile of scarves and necklaces atop the dresser. Her pulse quickened at the sight of the redbrick buildings, the word Atherton spelled out in an elaborate font.
This couldn't be what she thought it was.
Ariana slid the brochure out and held it up in both hands. It was a brochure for Atherton-Pryce Hall. Only the most prestigious boarding school in the entire nation. Home to dignitaries' sons and celebrity daughters. Princes and princesses and international oil heiresses and even the president's children. Atherton-Pryce Hall was the school everyone wanted to get into. It was the school that most of her friends from Easton Academy would have killed to attend.
Was Briana Leigh enrolled at this hallowed institution? How could a place with such impeccable standards accept a walking crime-against-fashion like her?
Suddenly the door to the bathroom swung wide and Briana Leigh strode into the room dripping wet, clutching a towel around her body. Ariana froze like a statue, her heart hurtling into her mouth. What would a psycho like Briana Leigh do to a person who was pawing through her things?
"Forgot my new conditioner," Briana Leigh said, snatching a bottle from her vanity table. She was about to stride right back to the bathroom when she paused and glanced at Ariana. "What're you doing?"
Ariana couldn't breathe. Her brain was suddenly blank, anticipating the wrath she had already witnessed in slight snippets that day.
Think, Ariana! Think, think, think!
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"I just saw this sitting on your dresser," Ariana said finally. She held out the brochure. "Are you going to Atherton-Pryce?"
Briana Leigh groaned and her shoulders collapsed. Ariana breathed a sigh of relief. Briana Leigh had bought it.
"You mean the epicenter of boredom?" Briana Leigh said. "Unfortunately."
"Unfortunately?" Ariana repeated, casually flipping through the glossy pages. "Everyone wants to go there."
"Not me," Briana Leigh sniffed. "I want to be with Teo, and Teo is here. In Dallas. Besides, D.C. is, like, one huge slum. I'll probably be shot."
Ariana's teeth cut into her tongue. "The school isn't in the city." Ariana paged through the gorgeous photos of Atherton's campus--the rolling lawns, the bucolic countryside. "This place is incredible."
"Whatever. It doesn't matter. Grandma is, like
, obsessed with me going there. She even threatened to cut me out of her will if I didn't enroll," Briana Leigh continued, adjusting her towel.
Ariana nodded, even though she didn't quite understand. If Briana Leigh cared about Teo so much, why not just blow the grandmother off? She was already independently wealthy thanks to her dad, whom she had murdered to achieve that very end.
"So you're going there in the fall," Ariana clarified.
"I have to. What Grandma says goes." Briana Leigh turned toward one of the many mirrors in her room and checked herself out, lifting her chin to inspect some unseen blemish. "Authority figures. Can't live with 'em..."
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Can't shoot 'em, Ariana finished silently. Then her face turned beet red as she realized that Briana Leigh already had shot an authority figure. Perhaps that was why the girl had suddenly gone pale and hadn't finished the sentence herself.
"Anyway, you should get ready," Briana Leigh said. She grabbed the brochure from Ariana's hands and tossed it onto her bed. "You do have a bathroom in your suite, remember?"
"All right. I'll come back down when I'm ready," Ariana said.
"Good."
Ariana waited until Briana Leigh had closed the bathroom door behind her, then picked up the brochure again. After a moment's hesitation she went back into the cabinet and grabbed the copy of Atonement as well. Never in her life had Ariana left a book unfinished, and she wasn't about to start now. On the way down the hall to her room, she slowly paged through the glossy pages of the Atherton handbook, feeling as if her heart was being tugged from her chest at the sight of the austere buildings and studious-looking coeds. Atherton-Pryce Hall. God, that would be a dream come true. A diploma from this place meant a person could go anywhere, do anything. But of course Briana Leigh couldn't have cared less.
Curling the brochure into a cylinder in her palm, Ariana shoved open the doors to her suite. After being caged like a rat for the past sixteen months, there was one thing Ariana couldn't stand, and that was a person who didn't appreciate what she had. This girl had to be taken down, and fast--before Briana Leigh left for school in August, which was only a month away. Ariana did not like working under a ticking