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  surface. Each of the girls held a black candle before her with both

  “Hello?”

  hands. I paused near the door, uncertain. Was this some kind of

  “What’re you doing out there all by yourself, glass-licker?”

  sacrificial ritual? Kill the new girl to expunge the shame she has My heart slammed into my ribcage. I whirled around and looked

  brought upon them?

  up at Billings. Heavy curtains were drawn over each and every win-Noelle stepped forward. She handed me an unlit candle, took

  dow save for one. There, in the center pane, was Noelle gazing down my arm in her iron grip, and led me to the center of the room. The at me. She smiled slowly and I felt an overwhelming chill of fear.

  girls closed into a tight circle around us, the flickering light

  “If you want to know where your stuff is, you better get in here.

  contorting their faces.

  Now.”

  Run. Get out now. Run and never look back.

  “You have my stuff?” I said.

  Noelle took my hand that held the candle and forced me to hold

  But the line was already dead. I looked up at the window again

  it up. She tipped her candle toward mine and lit it. My fingers and Noelle was still smiling. She lifted her hand and crooked her shook as I gripped the taper. My mouth was gummy and sour.

  finger, beckoning me inside. And then, ever so slowly, the curtains Noelle stepped back and faced me. Her eyes were as flat as weath-fell closed.

  ered stone. What were they going to do to me? Why was I here?

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  P R I V A T E

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  “The women of Billings House receive you, Reed Brennan, into

  It’s just Ariana. What’s wrong with you?

  our circle,” Noelle said.

  Noelle stood next to me and faced the others. I stared at Ariana, My pulse raced ahead so fast I felt dizzy and faint. All the colors transfixed, unable to look away. I was desperate for a glimpse of the and faces in the room rushed together and I had to force myself to girl I knew, but there was something wrong there. Something off.

  breathe.

  “Ladies?” Noelle said.

  Receive me into their circle? What did that mean? Did that

  “Welcome, Reed! To our circle!” they chorused.

  mean . . . ?

  Ariana’s flame finally held still and she came into sharp focus.

  I found Kiran in the dim light and her frank gaze solidified me.

  My breath caught. As she looked through me, I saw through her.

  Next to her Taylor struggled to stifle a grin. That was when I knew And all I saw was blackness.

  for sure.

  Noelle leaned toward my ear. Her whisper so hushed, it was

  I was in. At Billings House. Somehow, someway, I had been cho-

  barely a breath.

  sen to live here. Yes, they had taken my things, but they had taken

  “You’re one of us now.”

  them and brought them here. I wasn’t expelled. I was, in fact, even With that, the candles died as one and darkness consumed

  more accepted than I had ever been.

  us all.

  I was now a Billings Girl.

  It was happening. It was actually happening. Overcome with glee and relief, I searched the ring of faces for Ariana. My first friend.

  The one who had brought me in, who had started it all. I wanted to thank her with my eyes. Let her know how much this all meant. I owed it all to her.

  But when I found her, she was staring right through me again,

  just like that first night when I had spotted her through the window at Bradwell. With the shadows from the candlelight dancing across her face, it was difficult to focus. With every moment her features morphed and changed. In her face, I recognized nothing, and my

  pulse pounded with uncertainty.

  Keep reading for a sneak preview

  of PRIVILEGE!

  © 2008 Alloy Entertainment

  2

  K a t e B r i a n

  CHAPTER

  NEVER

  P R I V I L E G E

  “It’s not fair.”

  It wasn’t a whine or a complaint, just a statement. A statement of the obvious, as far as Ariana Osgood was concerned. As she stared b Y

  out the window of the Brenda T. Trumbull Correctional Facility for Women, it was all she could think to say. Outside, the leaves on the K ate Br i a n

  trees swayed lazily in the warm summer breeze—a breeze she would be allowed to feel against her skin for exactly fifty-five minutes during midday recess. Recess. That was what the warden called it. Who ever heard of a teenage girl looking forward to recess?

  “It’s just not fair.”

  Across the wide oak desk, her “therapist” smirked. Shifting in his seat, Dr. Meloni leaned back, forcing his expensive leather chair to let out the loud creak that he knew made Ariana’s skin crawl. Just outside the fence that encircled the grounds, about a hundred yards from SIMON PULSE

  where Ariana now sat, Meloni’s precious Doberman, Rambo,

  New York London Toronto Sydney

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  K a t e B r i a n

  p r i v i l e g e

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  barked nonstop, as always. The inmates of the Brenda T. listened to he’d have the chance to torture the daughters of all the deep-pocketed that damn dog bark all day long, every day. It was as if Meloni was classmates who had never accepted him into their inner sanctum. And trying to remind them that he was always there, always watching, even torture them he did. He smiled when they cried. Laughed in the face when they weren’t in session with him. The man also couldn’t be away of their desperation.

  from the dog for more than two hours at a time. He was always going Smirked . . . all . . . the . . . time.

  out there and feeding him treats, cooing to the animal like it was a

  “It’s not fair, me being here for twenty years,” Ariana said slowly, newborn baby and the apple of its father’s eye. Revolting. Someone stating the obvious. Stating the point she’d made four thousand times should have been analyzing him.

  before.

  “What’s not fair?” he asked.

  “Twenty years to life,” he corrected, his blue eyes taunting.

  Ariana flicked a glance at Dr. Victor Meloni, sitting there in front

  “I don’t think about that,” Ariana said, averting her gaze again.

  of his elaborately framed diplomas from Johns Hopkins and Stanford.

  Outside the window, the lake glinted in the summer sun. A lone sail-Thick, leather-bound books sat on the shelves to his right, most of boat sliced across the window frame and disappeared.

  which she was sure he hadn’t even opened, let alone read. Her lip

  “About what?” he asked. “The life part?”

  curled at the sight of his fake tan. His overly gelled salt-and-pepper He sat forward now. Interested.

  hair. His heavily starched blue shirt. His capped teeth.

  “Yes,” Ariana said. “It’s unacceptable.”

  Two hundred dollars a tooth, but can’t spring for a pair of shoes That was when Dr. Meloni laughed. Not just his usual amused

  with leather soles. Ariana could ascertain everything she needed to chuckle, but a big, hearty, guttural laugh. Ariana tried not to cringe.

  know about a person through his or her footwear. In the sixteen She reached up and casually ran both hands through her soft, chin-months she had been in residence at Brenda T. Trumbull just out-length blond hair, securing it to the nape of her neck with an alligator side Washington, D.C., she had only seen Dr. Meloni wear two barrette. She waited patiently for him to stop, curling her toes inside different pairs of shoes. The same exact style, one pair in black, one her state-issue white sneakers. It used to be that she would grab her in brown. Clearly, the man thought that everyone he m
et would be own arm when she was tense, letting her fingernails cut into the flesh.

  so dazzled by the veneer of his face, they wouldn’t take the time to Then one day last year Dr. Meloni had noticed this habit and pointed notice his shoes.

  it out to her like he was oh so insightful. She hadn’t done it in his But Ariana did. And they screamed white-trash-turned-scholarship-presence since.

  student-turned-poseur. He’d probably taken this job because it meant

  “Unacceptable,” he repeated.

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  p r i v i l e g e

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  She looked him in the eye, her gaze unwavering. “Yes.”

  If only he’d stopped when she’d asked him to.

  “You do realize you killed someone,” Dr. Meloni said, in the tone

  “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.

  and felt an unexpected jolt of hope.

  Dr. Meloni stared at her. She was gripping the arms of her metal Oh, just try something, please. Touch me inappropriately. Try to hurt chair now, her heart pounding. As he stared, Ariana realized that she me. Whatever you’re thinking, do it so that I can get your pathetic, low-had just shown emotion for the first time in a year and a half of these rent ass fired.

  daily sessions. She had let the pressure get to her. And Meloni was Dr. Meloni leaned down and braced his hands on the arms of her

  now smiling.

  chair. He brought his face within inches of hers. His breath smelled

  “One mistake that ended someone else’s life,” he said.

  like soy sauce. Ariana wanted to recoil, but she forced herself to stay I know. I know this. I see him every night. Every night as I start to fall completely still.

  asleep. Every night I jolt awake in an ice-cold sweat. I haven’t really slept

  “I have been working with psychopaths like you for the past in almost two years, thinking about how he made me kill him. How he twenty-five years,” he said quietly. Up close, she could practically see didn’t give me a choice. Isn’t that torture enough?

  her image reflected in those teeth. “You are not capable of change.

  “I just want this to be over,” Ariana mumbled. She straightened If you were ever to be released from this facility, I am categorically her posture and stated it more firmly. “I just want this whole thing to certain that you would kill again. So no, Miss Osgood, you are never be over.”

  getting out of here. Not today, not tomorrow, not five years from now.

  Dr. Meloni leaned back in his chair again, the creak setting Ariana’s Or ten. Or twenty. Not as long as I’m the one signing your chart. And arm hair on end, and let out an amused yet frustrated-sounding groan.

  believe me when I tell you I plan to stay in this job until they wheel He looked up at the wood beams that crisscrossed the ceiling and shook my cold, dead corpse out that door.”

  his head.

  He pointed at the solid metal door for effect. Ariana held his gaze.

  “It’s always the same with you girls,” he said.

  Held it and tried not to smile. Willed herself not to smile. He had no

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Ariana snapped.

  idea how wrong he was. How very, very wrong.

  10

  K a t e B r i a n

  Finally, judging by the silence that his point had hit home, Dr.

  Meloni leaned back in satisfaction. His grin lit his entire face.

  “Guard!” he shouted, his eyes still locked on Ariana’s.

  The door instantly opened, and Miriam, the bulbous Ward Two

  guard, appeared, filling the doorway. Miriam, with her dyed red hair and piglike nose, had an impressive collection of steel-toed boots.

  Shoes that meant business. Ariana had never even rolled her eyes at the woman.

  “You can take this one back to her cell. I’m done with her,” Meloni said disgustedly.

  “Let’s go,” Miriam barked.

  Ariana shoved herself out of her chair and walked across
the room, biting down hard on her tongue to keep herself from tossing any sort of parting shot at Meloni. One wrong word, one angry glance, might give something away.

  “See you tomorrow, Miss Osgood,” Dr. Meloni sang in a teasing

  voice. “And the day after that . . . and the day after that . . . and the day after that. . . .”

  He was still chuckling when the door slammed between them.

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