Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet (9781476763248) (2 page)

She actually didn't.

“My cousin Mary just got a job there,” I told her.

“I didn't know you have a cousin who lives here!”

I opened my mouth to explain that Mary, who previously lived maybe an hour away—and whom Harriet had met numerous times over the years—was moving in with us for the summer now that Jane's and Lizzie's rooms were more or less free (the “more” being that no one was sleeping in them, the “less” being that my mom always managed to find some exotic use for any spare inch of space in the house—her brief foray into meditation when Lizzie was gone for a month earlier this year was proof of that).

“Irregardless, let's leave that kind of demeaning work to those who are in need of the money, shall we?”

I felt a twinge of discomfort at her words (one of which I'm pretty certain isn't real), unsure if maybe they were a jab at my family, who, at this point, everyone knows has fallen on somewhat rough times. Or it could have just been an offhand, thoughtless remark with no intended underlying meaning.

Like the thing about my hair.

“Now, which class are you taking? I'm enrolled in some goth book course. My brother took it a few years ago before he transferred and said it was such an easy A. And you know if
he
says something's easy . . . although that was before they had all this ridiculous plagiarism-detection software, and I can't imagine Zach getting through anything without copying someone else's work.”

“I'm in that one, too. Gothic Literature? With
Dracula
and Edgar Allan Poe, that kind of stuff?”

“Exactly!” Harriet beamed. “Won't that be fun! We haven't been in the same class since . . . well, I suppose we were both in Classics with McCarthy during the spring, but that hardly counts, seeing as how you disappeared for most of the second half of the semester.”

There. There it was.

I wanted to think of something clever to say, or at least redirect the conversation. But instead I just bit my lip, locking in the words that weren't coming to mind, anyway.

“Oh! Not that anyone blames you,” Harriet continued, as if the tension undoubtedly radiating from me like a freaking Bat-Signal somehow surprised her. “Honestly, I'm impressed you're staying in town for the summer at all. If it had been me, I'd have just packed my bags and finished up school a town or two over. Or state, just to play it safe.” She considered this for a moment. “Though with the Internet being so permanent and
everywhere
, that wouldn't likely make much of a difference, would it?”

“I'm also taking Intro to Psych.”

Harriet wrinkled her brow. Yeah, way to segue there, Lydia.

“Cute,” she finally replied. “Speaking of!” Her hand shot past me and snatched something off the shelf. “Isn't this notebook just the most precious little thing you've ever seen? Cats and lasers! It's
so
you!”

It definitely fit my adorbs quota. Sure, it was lasers, not glitter, but nothing's perfect.

I tentatively reached toward it, but Harriet immediately dropped her hand, and the notebook, to her side.

“Anyway, it was so good to run into you, Lyds. Everyone started to wonder if you were just locked away in your room or something. I mean, I told them that wasn't your style, but I guess if there's one thing we've learned this year, it's that sometimes you just don't know people the way you think you do, right?” She tucked the shiny array of cats and lasers under her arm and smiled. “I'll see you tomorrow?”

Without waiting for a response, Harriet flicked her wrist in a quick wave and disappeared off into the main aisle.

That was a sign of control. Having the last word, making your exit, not waiting to see—or caring—what the other person had to say.

See, Ms. W? I totally get this psychology stuff.

Besides, I'd taught Harriet that, back when we were friends.

Were we still friends? Yeah, we'd always done this hot-and-cold thing—granted, usually with a little more give-and-take—but that's how it's supposed to be, right? Girl friendships and all. That's how it is on, like, every TV show. Then again, this was the first we'd really interacted since before I started skipping classes, and that didn't seem . . . friend-y. She hadn't talked to me on the days I did show up, and I hadn't heard from her on the days I opted to stay home.

But to be fair, I hadn't heard from anyone.

My sister is kind of famous. Well, Internet famous. I've decided recently that being Internet famous doesn't count as being real famous. Some people would disagree with me, but that's my opinion and I'm keeping it.

I have to. Hopefully you'll understand why.

I have two sisters. The tea-bearing, awesome Jane, and the nerdy, academic middle sister who wears a lot of plaid, Lizzie. I'm the youngest. Obviously when my parents had me, they realized they'd achieved perfection.

So my sister is kind of Internet famous. Lizzie, not Jane. Though Jane kind of is, too. And so am I, but in a different way now, I think.

Lizzie and her best friend, Charlotte, started a video blog for a grad school project last year. She's not any good at stuff like makeup or video games or being funny, like you're supposed to be when you have a video blog (okay, that sounds so stupid, I have to start calling them vlogs), so she just decided to dress up like people we know and talk about her life.

The vlogs were actually pretty cool. And me and Jane and Mary and other people we knew got to be in them, too. Lend our awesomeness to Lizzie's somewhat-less-awesomeness.

A lot of people watched her videos.

And followed her on Twitter.

And followed her on Facebook.

And then they started following all my stuff, and Jane's, and Mary's, and everyone else's. Even my cat, Kitty, had a Twitter following.

And then . . . I started my own videos.

It's this thing you sort of get caught up in. You don't really think too much about sharing your life with strangers online, because you aren't thinking about them as strangers online. It starts with just a few people, and then a few more, and a few more, and before you know it, it's this giant network of fans telling you how awesome and cute you are and how invested they've gotten in your life, and defending you when you get into fights with your sister or when people are being mean to you. They're like friends. And non-Internet-famous people have online friends, so it's totally legit.

Except when there are so many, they aren't your friends. They
don't actually know you, and you don't know them. They're just strangers, watching like you're in some sort of glass cage. Only, you're the one who put yourself there, and you don't think about trying to get out because you don't even notice the walls surrounding you. In reality, you're just existing, raw and exposed, on display for everybody's amusement. To dance when they scream for you to dance.

So you dance. And you flip and you twirl and you get caught up in the music—

And then you trip.

And all the applause and laughter goes dead silent. And before you know it, the silence has morphed into heckling, a taunting audience that doesn't resemble the one you thought you knew, shrieking about how much you deserve whatever karmic retribution you're about to get. It throws you. And as you keep tripping, as you keep screwing up, you can't help but wonder if you've always been dancing on two left feet. If their amusement has always been at your expense and the only difference now is that for whatever reason, nobody's amused anymore.

You're not amused, either. Not by them, not by yourself. Not by much of anything. All you can do is try to stop tripping. Try to stand still.

But they've already seen so much of you. Too much. Everyone has. And anyone who wants to for the rest of existence will be able to because, like Harriet said, that's how the Internet works.

Everything gets remembered. Forever.

And people . . . they aren't afraid of using stuff against you. Of taking your lowest, most regrettable moments and saying that's all you are.

All you ever can or will be.

Ms. W says it's to make them feel better about their own failures. But I think it's because we've made it easy to think of people online as
not
people. If they aren't, we can never be them. We can't make the same mistakes, fall into the same ugly traps. I guess what me and Ms. W think aren't that different. It's all about distance. Us versus Them. Me versus You.

Everyone at my school versus Lydia Bennet and George Wickham.

Who's George Wickham? Yeah. He's . . . well, that's a good question.

I can tell you what I know.

• George Wickham was this guy my sister Lizzie dated for like six seconds.

• He was super hot and had great abs and was really nice. Seemed really nice.

• Lizzie and I got into a huge fight. We went our separate ways for a while.

• My way accidentally crossed with George's way.

• We started dating.

• We didn't tell Lizzie.

• He said he loved me.

• I think I loved him.

• We made a tape. The kind you don't want to get out.

• Except he did. Want it to get out. And tried to sell it on the Internet for money, using my pseudo Internet fame. And my videos. And my face. Pictures of us.

• Lizzie's new boyfriend and George's childhood-friend-turned-nemesis, William Darcy, cleaned it all up and nobody's seen or heard from George since.

• I don't know why he did it. George, I mean. I don't know.

Oh, and all of this? Happened on camera.

So, there you have it. There's my very own personal tale of the consequences of televising my private life across social media. I'd have given you a PowerPoint presentation to go along with it but you can just Google me to get the gist. Even watch it happen—all my videos are still online.

I thought about taking them down. Lizzie wanted me to, even
offered to take some of hers down—and she believes in the public record. She said she didn't want me to ever go back and relive any of that. But I haven't. Taking anything down—videos, tweets, all of it—wouldn't change what happened. What it meant.

But the point is: everybody knows about it. Everybody at school. Everybody in the whole town. All of it, right up until the moment the site that would have sold the video to anyone with PayPal was shut down.

Everybody knows.

Anyway, that's why I missed some classes last semester. That's why I'm in counseling. That's why Central Bay College took pity on me and is allowing such an extremely late application for fall enrollment (well, that and Ms. W put in a good word for me. And it didn't hurt that Darcy is a long-time benefactor of the school and made a few calls “suggesting” they allow me to apply). That's why I haven't been out partying with my friends, and why I'm not convinced I even have any friends left here to party with.

And that's why I'm not entirely thrilled to head home right now. I love my family, but they've been so overbearing since all this happened. Not in a bad way. They just want to make sure I'm
okay
.

All the time.

Sometimes I want to ask them how I can be okay if they keep treating me like I'm about to break.

But I guess sometimes I wonder if I am.

Texts with Lizzie

Lizzie: Didn't your session end at 1? It's almost 2.

Lydia: I got kidnapped and trafficked into Canada. Oops.

Lizzie: Figures.

Lizzie: I have to leave earlier than I thought. Meet me at Crash in 20?

Lydia: Omw

Lizzie: OCSYS

Lydia: That sounds like a disease. Leave the acronyming to the pros, nerd.

Crash is this ancient twenty-four-hour diner across the street from our bestest local bar, Carter's. It's not actually called Crash, but that's the only name people remember. Ask anyone in town how it got its name and you'll hear a different story. The one they tell at the diner is that a couple was arguing about where to eat lunch and the wife was so insistent on getting a specialty burger from Crash that she yanked the steering wheel to turn into the parking lot and blasted right through the sign out front.

I'm old enough now to realize they probably just tell it that way to sell more burgers, but when I was a kid it seemed like the coolest story in the world. I always wanted to get a Crash burger because I thought if someone wanted one so badly that she'd risk her life to make it happen, it must be pretty epic.

They're okay. Once, Lizzie found a grasshopper leg in hers.

Either way, the sign really was plowed halfway down and never
replaced, and everyone started giving out directions by pointing to “that diner where someone crashed into the sign” until eventually it just became easier to call it “the crash diner.” Which was still too much effort, hence, Crash.

Lizzie was messing around on her phone in a booth by the window when I got there.

“Sexting DarceFace?” I threw my bag onto the seat and slid in after it.

“What? No.” Lizzie blushed through her obvious lie.

I rolled my eyes. It is almost cute how she still acts like a preteen with a crush. Almost.

“You're allowed to text your
boyfriend
, dummy.”

“Okay, fine,” she said, pushing her phone away from her. “But I'm not anymore.”

Bzzzt.
Her phone disagreed.

Her eyes flicked to the lit screen and I raised my eyebrow, waiting. When she didn't reach for it (I totally saw her fingers twitch), I sighed. “You can answer him, it's no big deal.”

“Nope!” She snatched the phone up and shoved it into her purse. “I'll see Darcy when I get to San Francisco later tonight. Right now, I'm getting lunch with my sister.”