Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Privilege characters.

Ana's Secret Revealed

"Ana!" I screamed, as the line on the heart monitor went flat. Ana's eyes closed, and I desperately grabbed her hand. "Don't leave me here! No!"

Orderlies shoved me out of the hospital room, even as I tried to fight them to get back to Ana's side. No, no, no. This couldn't be happening. Ana and I should've been on our way to Portugal by now, not here at the hospital.

The two girls were also pushed out in the commotion. I sat down on one of the chairs outside the room, desperately waiting for any news.

A few minutes later, an orderly stepped out and I shot up out of my seat, hoping that a miracle had occurred. "She's gone. We did everything we could, but the damage from the gunshot wound to her heart was too great. I'm very sorry for your loss."

I let out a wail of grief. Ana was gone… forever. I would never see her again, or hear her laughter when she teased me.

I turned on the smaller girl – I couldn't remember her name. Rachel? Reed? It didn't matter. "Why did you shoot Ana? What did she ever do to you? You didn't even know her!"

"She was going to kill me!" she said, her eyes flashing angrily.

"Why would Ana do that?" I demanded. "Who the hell are you?"

The taller girl stepped in between us, her hand held up. "Okay, hang on here. First off, who are you?"

"I'm Jasper, her boyfriend," I replied.

"Okay. I'm Noelle, and this is my little sister Reed," she said, gesturing to the girl at her side. "Why do you keep calling her Ana?"

"That's her name," I said, deeply confused.

"No, what's her full name?" Noelle persisted.

"Briana Leigh Covington," I said.

Noelle raised an eyebrow and turned to Reed. "Well. That explains the tan and hair."

"Will you tell me what's going on?" I demanded.

Noelle and Reed turned back to me. "Look, Jasper… we don't know how to tell you this," Reed said slowly, "but your girlfriend…the girl you thought of as Briana Leigh… that isn't her real name."

"How could it not be?" I demanded. "She wouldn't lie about her name!"

Noelle pursed her lips before brushing a strand of her hair away from her face. "Her real name was Ariana Osgood."

I frowned. That name seemed vaguely familiar… "Who's that?"

"She was convicted of murdering her ex-boyfriend, Thomas Pearson, about two and a half years ago," Reed said. "And for trying to kill me. She was incarcerated in the Brenda T. Trumbull Correctional Facility for Women…but I don't understand…. There was a funeral held for her when authorities found her body in the lake…"

"She must've drowned someone else," Noelle said grimly. "This girl… Briana Leigh Covington. Maybe she drowned that girl to take her identity and come to your school. I'm guessing that the ashes at the funeral for Ariana were really Briana Leigh's."

My mouth was hanging open. "That's impossible!"

I remembered seeing a headline on the news several years ago now – "Jealous girl kills ex-boyfriend and tries to kill a friend dating her ex."

But Noelle and Reed were saying that that crazy psycho had been masquerading as Briana Leigh Covington. It seemed too crazy to be true. But I could accept for now, that my Ana hadn't been the girl I thought she was.

"Several years ago, Ariana went to Easton with us," Reed said. "I fell in love with Thomas Pearson, Ariana's ex, without knowing they'd dated before. The Billings girls didn't like him. Anyway, one night we had a party and Thomas was incredibly drunk but he left the party and I never saw him alive afterwards."

Noelle picked up the story from there. "The rest of the Billings girls and I were pissed at the way he'd acted around Reed. We wanted to teach him a lesson so we basically kidnapped him, drove to a nearby farmhouse, and tied him up to a pole. But we did leave the knots loose enough so he could escape and come back. It backfired. Ariana went back to the farmhouse at some point. To this way, we don't know what happened between them, but Ariana killed him with a baseball bat." She closed her eyes and opened them again. "To this day, I still actually have nightmares about how Thomas' body looked – it was beyond recognition. My friends and I felt so guilty about our little so-called prank."

"On the night Ariana tried to kill me," Reed began, "she said she went back to free him. But apparently Thomas was still really drunk and angry, and he yelled at her and called her names. She says she wanted him to stop and bashed him on the head with the baseball hat and killed him. Then, she tried to frame my boyfriend, Josh Hollis, for the murder. Ariana tried to push me off the roof but Noelle knocked Ariana down with a lacrosse stick. It wasn't long before the police showed up and arrested her. After that, she went to that correctional facility."

My mouth was hanging open again, and my whole world was spinning. This seemed like fiction, and not reality. I knew that they had no real reason to lie to me. But I couldn't accept that Ana might've been Ariana Osgood in disguise. "But…how can you prove to me that it's true?"

"Why don't you tell us everything you know about Ari- I mean Ana?" Noelle said. "We'll figure it out from there."

"She came to Atherton-Pryce this fall," I said. Noelle's mouth dropped before she quickly regained her composure. "I saw her across campus a few times and I thought she was the most gorgeous girl ever. We got to know each other better because of this…uhm, secret society we were in." I really hoped there weren't any Stone and Grave alumni around here, or I would be thrown out about now. "We kind of started dating behind her boyfriend's back before she broke up with him.

"Anyway, tonight she left her birthday party for some reason, and when I saw her again, her entire side was covered in blood. She asked me if I could leave the country with her, without saying goodbye to our friends or family, and she was acting so desperate and scared. I asked her why, but she wouldn't tell me anything. I thought about it before deciding I would go with her…but then I only saw her again after seeing her on the news at the airport and now she's dead."

There was a moment of dead silence before Noelle spoke. "I'd bet half of my money that she tried to kill someone else tonight, besides Reed here. That's probably how she got hurt. Mark my words – when we hear about another death tonight, it'll be because of Ariana."

"But… why did you try to shoot her?" I asked Reed, sitting back down.

"She came to my dorm at Georgetown and tried to strangle me," she said, pulling down her jacket to show livid bruises around her neck, and I winced at the marks. "I barely fended her off with a cup before she almost got me again, and I pushed her off and tried to hold her off with my gun. She kept blaming me for her whole life sucking. I tried to call the police while my gun was pointed at her, but she lunged. I had no choice – it was me or her, so…I shot her. But why would she try to kill me, even if she truly believed that it was because of me that her whole life was going downhill?"

"Again, there's a reason Ariana was sent to a place for crazy people," Noelle put in. "If she'd ever been let out, she would've killed again. She's a psychopath. And she has killed again."

My whole head was spinning. Briana Leigh Covington, the girl's identity whom Ana might've stolen… Another possible murder tonight, that had led to Ana's side injuries…and the attempted killing of Reed. "But… but why did she never hurt me?" I asked weakly.

"Think hard, Jasper. Are you sure there's never been a moment where Ari – I mean Ana – threatened or tried to hurt you?" Noelle asked, her eyes sharp.

I closed my eyes and tried to think back. Suddenly, the events of the Stone and Grave ball at Lexa's parents' home flashed back to me. I'd teased Ana when she was with Lexa by saying "I heard that the two of you have been very…bad….girls."

"At a party, I teased Ana when she was with a friend of hers because they'd been spending a lot of time together. She came after me and slammed me against a shelf before taking some shears and holding it up to my throat." Reed and Noelle gasped, looking horrified. I rubbed my throat, as though the shears were still there. I had been terrified, even though I'd done my best to not show it, and had forgiven Ana when she said she'd only been joking. "The secret was that I'd heard that Ana had had an affair with her female professor at her previous school. I thought that Ana and Lexa might've been having an affair since they were hanging out a lot, not that it would've mattered to me."

Reed gently put a hand on my shoulder. "Jasper, you were almost killed. That secret about the female professor may have saved your life. No matter how much Ari – Ana – cared about you, she would've killed you to protect her identity. Nothing mattered to her but keeping her secret. No matter what."

I buried my head in my hands. Oh, God. I'd been dating a murderous psycho the whole time. Now I knew the truth – that the girl I'd loved and thought was Briana Leigh was really the murderess Ariana Osgood. I didn't know how I would go on knowing this.

"You had to know the truth," Noelle said, her voice sounding softer than before. "I'm sorry about that. I'm glad that…in the end, you were the one who escaped her. You'll be better off without her."

I laughed humorlessly. "Well, sure doesn't feel like it right now."

"You'll be okay," Reed said, patting my shoulder. "You're still going to be really shaken up after this – who wouldn't be? – but eventually, you'll move on. You'll have a better life without her."

"I really hope so," I said softly, standing up. "And now… how do I tell all our friends about who she was? I could hardly believe it myself when you told me."

"We'll come to Atherton-Pryce Hall soon, and help you tell the truth," Reed promised. "It's going to shock the whole school, knowing that they had a murderess in their midst. But it'll be the only way to help everyone move on."