Ariana's hand dropped along with her heart. She couldn't believe that the Kaitlynn she knew had written such awful things, but there it was, staring her right in the face. She had been duped. Duped again by someone she loved. What was wrong with her? She had
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always prided herself on being able to read people, but clearly she was always wrong. Always wrong about the people closest to her. Her first boyfriend, Daniel Ryan, Thomas, Noelle, and now Kaitlynn. Everything she had believed for the past year and a half had been a lie. She was so, so stupid. Her fingers closed around her forearm and clamped down.
For the second time in as many days Ariana saw her long-term dreams go up in smoke. There would be no perfect house with Kaitlynn in Australia. The Kaitlynn she thought she knew had never even existed. Ariana was so disoriented she had to sit down on the bed again to catch her breath.
Briana Leigh crouched to the ground and picked up the letter, which had fluttered to the floor.
"Scary, isn't it? I can't believe she was ever my friend."
Ariana swallowed against her dry throat and nodded. She knew the feeling.
"My father was all I had left. And now every single day that I'm in this house I'm reminded of him and of her and of what she did to us...." Briana Leigh let out a long, shuddering sigh. "I can't take it anymore. I just want to get out of here and start over with Teo. Is that so wrong?" Briana Leigh said, her face desperate. "To want to start over? I mean, it is my life."
It sounded so familiar Ariana wanted to cry. Or laugh. Or throw something. She took a deep breath and tried to calm her frayed nerves. When her mind cleared again, she realized that, as awful as Kaitlynn's betrayal was, it made what she was going to do next so much easier. She
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no longer had to concern herself with fitting Kaitlynn Nottingham into plan B.
Buoyed by this realization, Ariana looked over at Briana Leigh. Everything hinged on what sh
e said next. Everything.
Briana Leigh teared up again and Ariana shoved aside all her confusion and self-loathing, compartmentalizing it to deal with later. She pushed up from the bed, walked over, and hugged Briana Leigh. The girl hugged her back tightly--so tightly she almost squeezed the breath out of Ariana. It was as if Briana Leigh hadn't been hugged in years. Ariana closed her eyes and hoped she got the next words right.
"No. It's not wrong. But your life isn't over. You have AthertonPryce. It's only for two years and then you can do whatever you want," she said, pushing her hands into the back pockets of the jeans she had changed into after shopping. "I would kill to go to Atherton."
"Yeah. I suppose," Briana Leigh said automatically, drying her cheeks with her fingertips. "It's too bad you can't--"
Briana Leigh stopped and her eyes suddenly lit up. Ariana's heart stopped beating.
"Wait a minute."
Briana Leigh walked past Ariana over to the bed. For a long moment, her back to Ariana, she clung to the post at the foot of the bed, bringing her other hand to her mouth. Ariana could hardly breathe.
Please. Please, please, please...
Suddenly, Briana Leigh turned around. Her eyes were bright with excitement. "What if you go to Atherton in my place?"
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Perfect, Briana Leigh, Ariana thought. You got there even faster than I thought you would.
She let out a slow breath. "What?"
Inside, Ariana was doing a happy dance. Even after everything she had just realized about Kaitlynn. Because her plan B was working. The plan B she had devised thanks to that loser bleach blond back at the boutique. The reason she had revealed her "lie" to Briana Leigh. But now, of course, she had worked it so that Briana Leigh would think it had been her idea all along.
"I'm serious!" Briana Leigh said. She looked around the room as if the details of the plan were falling into place all around her. "You go to Atherton-Pryce Hall and I'll go to Ibiza with Teo!"
"I think you've lost it," Ariana said, stepping toward Briana Leigh with a concerned look on her face. "How are we supposed to do that?"
"Easy!" Briana Leigh announced. "Nobody at the school has met me. I did my interview by phone. And even if they've seen a random picture here and there, so what? You said yourself some girl mistook you for me today. You definitely fit my description. The hair, your nose, our sense of style. We could be twins!"
Ariana pretended to be considering this for the first time. "But what about your grandmother?"
Briana Leigh rolled her eyes, growing impatient. "She'll still be getting progress reports and whatever--they'll just be about your performance, not mine! It'll be perfect!"