Last Christmas (Private 0.60)

A single moment of peace. She raised the bat over her head once more and closed her eyes.

And everything went black.

THE GOOD GIRL DECEMBER OF JUNIOR YEAR

***Ariana Osgood just wanted to go home.

She knew it was insane. She was, after all, standing at the edge of the ballroom at the Driscoll Hotel, playing

witness to the most decadent party of the year. The party she had circled in red on her social calendar three

months ago and had been looking forward to every day since. But now that she was at the Winter Ball,

watching all of Easton Academy mingle and chat and dance, all she wanted to do was go back to Billings

House and be with her friends. Her sisters. Inside Billings it was simple. Inside Billings she could just be.

Ariana reached up and touched her light blond hair, making sure for the fiftieth time that the chignon she'd

worked so hard to achieve had held. How could she have forgotten how these events always put her on edge?

Always made her feel hot and clenched and breathless. She was going to say something stupid. Or do

something wrong. And everyone would see. Everyone would know.

Which was why she had spent the past fifteen minutes leaning against a grooved marble column on the

outskirts of the room, just out of view of the table where her friends and boyfriend, Daniel Ryan, were sitting.

Sooner or later they were going to notice her marathon bathroom trips and the current column-hugging, and

she was going to have to rejoin their reveling. Better make these last few minutes of invisibility count.

Taking a deep breath, Ariana let the sounds of laughter and clinking silverware fade into the recesses of her

mind and watched the scene around her unfold like a movie on mute. She committed every detail of the black

and white marble room to memory as if her life depended on it. Noting details, cataloging a scene, always

made her feel calm, in control.

There were her classmates, stiff and formal in their suits and dresses. The twelve-piece band singing pop

versions of Christmas carols on the stage up front. The light December snow falling outside, the large flakes

kissing the leaded windowpanes. The waxy mistletoe and the candlelit wreaths that-if she squinted her eyes

just so-looked like explosions of gold.

But the curtains ...well, those she had to remember down to the last filigreed stitch so she could report back to

her mother about them. They were exquisite, all burgundy velvet with shimmering gold-thread fleurs-de-lis.

Her mother, a New Orleans native, loved fleurs-de-lis. When Ariana was nine, her mother had given her a

gorgeous gold fleur-de-lis necklace for Christmas. That had been Ariana's favorite Christmas. The last happy

one she could remember.