"What's not fair?" he asked.
She flicked a glance at "Doctor" Victor Meloni, sitting there in front of his elaborately framed
diplomas from schools like Johns Hopkins and Stanford. Her lip curled at the sight of his fake tan.
His overly gelled salt-and-pepper hair. His heavily starched blue shirt. His capped teeth.
Two hundred dollars a tooth, but can't spring for a pair of shoes with leather soles. In the sixteen
months she had been in residence at Brenda T. Trumbull (nicknamed "the BuTT-hole" by its
inmates) just outside Washington, D.C., she had only seen Dr. Meloni wear two different pairs of
shoes. The same exact style, one in black, one in brown. Clearly the man thought that everyone he
met would be so dazzled by the veneer of his face, they wouldn't take the time to notice his
shoes.But Ariana did. And they screamed white trash turned scholarship student turned poseur.
He'd probably taken this job because it meant he'd have the chance to torture the daughters of all
the deep-pocketed classmates who had never quite accepted his low-income self at his various
fancy schools. And torture them he did. He smiled when they cried. Laughed in the face of their
desperation.
271
Smirked... all... the... time.
"It's not fair me being here for twenty years," Ariana said slowly, stating the obvious. Stating the
point she'd made four thousand times before.
"Twenty years to life," he corrected, his blue eyes taunting.
"I don't think about that," Ariana said, averting her gaze again. Outside the window, the lake
glinted in the summer sun. A lone sailboat sliced across the frame of the window and disappeared.
Ariana almost craned her neck to keep an eye on it for an extra second.
Almost.
"About what?" he asked. "The life part?"
He sat forward now. Interested.
"Yes," Ariana said. "It's unacceptable."
That was when Dr. Meloni laughed. Not just his usual amused chuckle, but a big, hearty belly
laugh. Ariana tried not to cringe. She reached up and casually ran both hands through her soft,
chin-length blond hair, securing it to the nape of her neck with an alligator barrette. She waited
patiently for him to stop, curling her toes inside her state-issue white sneakers. (The most awful