Tahira shot Maria a look that clearly said “Yeah, right.” As they all piled into Ariana’s car, Ariana bit down on her lip to keep from giggling out loud. She had a feeling Tahira was going to throw the party to end all parties, all for her.
Ariana dropped into the bucket seat behind the wheel and her phone let out a loud beep. She fished it from the bottom of her bag.
“Hang on a sec. I have a voice mail,” she said.
“Make it quick. I’m starting to feel faint,” Tahira said, flipping the visor down to check her eye makeup in the mirror.
Ariana dialed into voice mail and held the phone to her ear. The voice that greeted her stopped her blood cold.
“Hello, Miss Covington, this is Dr. Victor Meloni, calling to inform you that your mandatory session has been scheduled for tomorrow, Monday the eighth, at ten a.m. in my office on the third floor of the administration building. Looking forward to seeing you then. Have a good night.”
The message ended with a loud beep, and Ariana flinched, but found she otherwise couldn’t move. She sat there for a long moment, staring at the streetlights outside the windshield, the phone stuck to her ear.
“Ana? Ana, hello? Are you in there?” Tahira asked, waving a mascara wand in front of her face.
“You look sickly again. Was that bad news? Was it Soomie?” Maria asked, leaning in from the miniscule backseat.
“No. No, it was nothing. Sorry. I just spaced for a second there,” Ariana said. She pushed down on the DELETE button so hard she was surprised the phone didn’t shatter, then tossed the phone in the well between her seat and Tahira’s. “So. Tapas?”
She revved the engine, threw the car into gear, and lurched out onto the street. Her fingers gripped the wheel as her jaw clenched so tightly she felt a pain in her temple. Hearing Meloni’s insipid voice on the phone, the authoritative tone he took while demanding her presence in his office, had brought home the urgency of the situation. She could not allow him within six feet of her or all would be lost. But she couldn’t avoid him, either. As he’d so helpfully mentioned, all student sessions with the grief counselor were mandatory.
As Ariana took a corner at top speed, eliciting a squeak of fear from Tahira’s throat, she knew with a cold certainty that the plan was going to have to change. She had wanted to do away with Reed first and then deal with Meloni, but obviously Reed’s death was going to be put on the backburner for now.
As of this moment, her number-one priority was ridding the world of Dr. Victor Meloni.
TOO EASY
Late Monday afternoon, Ariana begged out of her lit magazine meeting early, telling April she was late for a chemistry study group. She had, in fact, moved her car to the faculty lot behind the Administration Building that afternoon and planned to wait in it until Dr. Meloni left work for the night. She needed to follow him, needed to find out where he was living, needed to start formulating her plan. Once Meloni was gone, she could get back to Reed. And she was very much looking forward to getting back to Reed.
Quickly, she scurried across the frost-covered campus, hoping against hope that Dr. Meloni had yet to leave for the night. She finally got into her car just as the sun was disappearing behind the trees, and started the engine, relishing in the warmth from the heaters and keeping an eye on the back door of the Administration Building. Luckily, she wasn’t too late. Within minutes, Dr. Meloni emerged. Blowing into his hands, he unhooked Rambo from his running line and opened the passenger side door of a gold Lincoln Tahoe for the dog. Moments later, he was behind the wheel, and they were off.
“Let’s see what kind of place you’ve bought for yourself on my tuition’s dime,” Ariana muttered under her breath as she followed from a discreet distance.
She had skipped their mandatory meeting that morning without so much as a phone call to make an excuse and had kept her phone off all day, dreading his reaction. Now she wondered if he’d called her yet, or if he was going to leave it to the headmaster to deal with her scolding and punishment.
Ariana laughed bitterly to herself. No. No way. Meloni would certainly make sure he got to do all the scolding and belittling on his own. It was probably written into his contract.
Meloni headed away from the city and into the hills on the Virginia side of the capital. The move didn’t surprise Ariana in the slightest. Back at the Brenda T., Dr. Meloni had resided in a small cabin set back on a dirt road. She was c
ertain he made a ton of money and could have lived anywhere he wished, but instead he’d chosen a spartan existence, living like a colonial mountain man. No doubt he did it to make some kind of point—that he was a man’s man, or above the trappings of modern society, or some crap like that.
Ariana squinted against the dark as Meloni turned onto a slim, two-lane road, lined with towering, bare trees. When he suddenly pulled off into a circular driveway, Ariana’s heart hit her throat. She couldn’t exactly turn in after him. Thinking fast, she kept right on
driving, but she cursed under her breath, realizing she hadn’t gotten a good look at the house.
“Okay, it’s okay,” she told herself, adjusting her sweaty palms on the wheel. “Just turn around and go back.”
She pulled into a small clearing at the side of the road, counted slowly to one hundred, then flipped a U-turn and drove back to Meloni’s. She made sure to drive at a snail’s pace so that she could take it all in. The Tahoe was dark in the driveway—the only car parked there. A light glowed in one of the front windows of a long, low ranch house. It was bigger than the place he’d called home back at the Brenda T., but still unassuming. Ariana killed the Porsche’s lights and pulled off the side of the road. There didn’t appear to be a security system, and the closest streetlight was half a mile away. She sat for a long time, staring at that light in the window, but seeing no movement. An hour passed, then another. And in all that time, Ariana saw but one car go by.
Finally, the light went out, and a moment later another went on upstairs. Clearly, Meloni still lived alone. And on a street that hardly a soul ever passed through. Satisfied, Ariana slowly rolled out onto the road and drove a few yards before turning on her headlights again. Then she opened up the engine and floored it, headed back toward town with a huge, happy grin.
Good old Dr. Meloni. He really couldn’t have made this much easier on her.
MENTAL HEALTH
Thanks to her jaunt through the Virginia woodlands, Ariana was so late to dinner on Monday evening, her friends were already packing up to leave when she arrived.
“We were just on our way over to the Hill,” Maria said, slinging her scarf over her forearm and her messenger bag onto her shoulder. Behind her, Tahira shoved her cell phone and some books into her bag. “Want us to wait? We can sit with you if you want.”