Private (Private 1)

“So you took the life of one of your schoolmates, one of your adults use when scolding naughty children.

friends, and yet you don’t think you deserve to be locked up for life,”

Ariana blinked, just barely betraying her internal flinch.

Dr. Meloni said.

Thomas’s blood. Thomas’s blood. Thomas’s blood. Just like that, she

“It was one mistake,” Ariana replied.

saw it on her hands. Under her fingernails. In her hair. She had made One of three, but no one other than Ariana herself knew that.

them chop it all off when she was waiting for trial and hadn’t let it

“A mistake,” he challenged, ducking his chin.

grow past her chin since. All that blood . . .

God, she was sick of this. Sick of him. Sick of his tiny little pea-No. She mentally wiped it away. Gone. Back to the present. She brained, one-sided take on her and every other woman in this hellhole.

focused in on Meloni’s quote-of-the-day calendar. Today, for the

“You see everything in black and white, don’t you?” Ariana twenty-ninth of June, was a Molière quote: “The greater the obstacle, snapped, her blood rising.

the more the glory in overcoming it.” Not a bad point.

“And what you did was somehow gray?” he retorted.

“Yes. I do realize I killed someone,” Ariana said, in a tone she

“I’m not in denial. I know what I did and I’m sorry for it,” Ariana reserved for idiots.

said, her words clipped. “But this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. . . .”

What no one here seemed to understand, or cared to hear, was that She was supposed to go to Princeton. Supposed to take the train she hadn’t meant to do it. Thomas Pearson had been the love of her life.

up to Yale to visit Noelle on weekends, or into the city to club hop He had been the only real thing she had ever possessed. It wasn’t her with Kiran and Taylor. Supposed to join a secret society. Supposed fault that Reed Brennan had swooped in out of nowhere and stolen him to hobnob with literary geniuses. Supposed to graduate magna cum away. It wasn’t her fault that her best friend, Noelle Lange, had come up laude and snag the job as features editor at Vanity Fair. Supposed to with the idea to kidnap him and tie him up in the woods to teach him live in a loft in Chelsea and meet some gorgeous artsy man who would a lesson after he’d humiliated Reed. And it definitely wasn’t her fault sweep her off her feet and take her to exotic places like Thailand and that when she had gone back to show him how much she loved him, to India and Sri Lanka. Supposed to be proposed to on a mountaintop show him mercy and untie him and set him free, he had chosen to mock as the sun set in the distance. Supposed to have babies and take them her instead of thank her. Had chosen to tear her down and act like her home to Georgia to visit her family’s estate and sit out on the porch devotion to him was worth no more than the mud under his feet. Had and sip lemonade and watch them play tag under the same peach tree chosen to push her and push her and push her until she snapped.

she used to climb when she was little.

8

K a t e B r i a n

p r i v i l e g e

9

This was her life. Her life the way it was supposed to be. It couldn’t She didn’t appreciate being likened to anyone else in this loony bin.

be over. The very thought made her heart constrict to the point where He glanced at her, then slowly stood up and slipped his hands into she actually thought she might stop breathing. Actually thought she the pockets of his white coat. Watching her the whole time, he walked might die over the futility of it all.

around his desk—the ancient wooden floor squeaking and cracking These were her dreams. Her mother’s dreams. They couldn’t be under his feet, and stood directly in front of her. For a long moment over. Not because of—

he stared down at her, his expression unreadable. Ariana stared back

“One mistake,” she said again.