Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet (9781476763248) (7 page)

“Um, yeah, I guess,” Cody said. “Good to see you, too, Hairball.”

“Don't call me that,” she said, swatting him playfully. Then, she turned her lips into a fishy pout. “I texted and told you I was saving you a seat.”

“Sorry about that,” Cody said. “Hey, do you know Lydia?”

Harriet just laughed. “Oh, yeah, we go way back. Everyone knows Lydia. Right, Lyds?”

“Um, yeah,” I mumbled.

“Cody goes to school with my brother. We go way back, too,” said Harriet.

“Right,” Cody said, blushing a little. Then, taking a half step away from her, he turned back to me. “So, what are you doing now? I owe you a foodstuff/beverage combo, and probably some groveling.”

“What?” Harriet said, and laughed, confused. “Why?”

“Sorry, I'm late for my next thing,” I said. I didn't have a next thing, but I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the day. I was not up to a beverage or foodstuff, let alone a combo. And I admit, I was wondering if Ms. W was still at her office and if I could stop by for a sec. Just to . . . sort through my feelings, as Ms. W likes to call it.

“Okay,” Cody said, a little deflated. “Next time.”

“Well, you'll just have to grab a drink with me,” Harriet said, pulling Cody away. “Have you been to Carter's yet? It's the only place in town with more than just Bud Light on tap. And it has a two-for-one special for opening day of the summer session.”

Harriet had Cody halfway out the door, but he turned. “See you Wednesday, then?”

“Wednesday,” I said.

“Bye, Lyds!” Harriet called out as they disappeared down the hall.

I waited. Counted to ten. Then I grabbed my bag and followed.

I didn't wait long enough, it seemed. Because as I rounded the corner, I heard them from the other end of the hall.

And sound carries really well in that hallway. I'll have to let Mary know about the acoustics.

“. . . never called,” Harriet was saying. “But I forgive you.”

“Cool. It's good to have a friend in town,” Cody replied.

“Right,” Harriet said. “ ‘Friend.' ”

“Speaking of, what's the deal with your friend Lydia?” Cody said.

“What do you mean?”

“She's, I dunno . . . interesting.”

Harriet snorted. “Oh, yeah, she's interesting. Everything's total drama in her life.”

“Why?” He sounded concerned.

Harriet laughed. “I don't know. Because she thinks she's
famous
.”

I have this dream sometimes. It's not like a crazy unicorn-riding, purple-octopus-eats-my-feet type of dream. It's more like a memory of something that never happened.

It's one of those dreams where you wake up and think everything is real. Everything feels real. My sheets. The sun in the window. The warm body against my back.

“Ly-dee-ah . . .”

I flip over. I don't see him at first. I feel him. How close his breath is to me. How warm he is, like an electric blanket, just covering me and making me safe. Then he comes into focus. His blue, blue eyes. His sleepy smile. The weird freckle on his shoulder that I told him he should get looked at but I secretly love because it's the one part of him that isn't perfect. He plays with the necklace he bought me, the one I still haven't brought myself to take off, even now.

“Hey, peach.”

When I wake up, I tell myself I should have known right there that it was a dream, that this wasn't the real him, the real me. He never called me peach, not like he did with the other girls. Said I was more than that to him. But in the dream, he does. And I don't catch it until it's over.

“Hey,” I reply, my voice weirdly echoey. Like I'm not really there, but actually in the next room.

“I haven't seen you in a while.”

“I know. I'm sorry. That's my fault. I've been . . .”

But why haven't I seen him? I don't remember.

“It's okay,” he says. “I forgive you.”

“But we're together now,” I say, smiling as he kisses my cheek, pushes my hair back behind my ear. I even feel his foot brush against my calf. “All I want is to be alone with you.”

“But we're not alone,” he says, laughing. “We're never alone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everyone else gets to see.”

He nods over my shoulder. I turn my head. And everything in my body freezes.

The camera sits on the tripod, just . . . staring at us. Like the
computer in that space movie Charlotte likes so much and tried to get me to watch. The red light on top glows, pulses a little. Recording everything.

Like it did when we . . .

That's about the time that I wake up. That warm body against my back dissolves, replaced by one that is fur-covered and purring. The red blinking light of the camera becomes the red digital time of my alarm clock. George isn't here. I'm okay.

I'm safe.

So why is it that all I want to do is crawl under my covers and pretend I don't exist?

“So how's it going? Still the star of your psych class?”

“Yep,” I said, nodding, hoping my smile didn't come off as super false. “It's going great.”

I was sitting across from Ms. W again, two weeks later. After my first day of classes, I made my way to her office, but the person at the desk told me she was out to lunch. So I went to my car and pulled out my phone, contemplating texting her a million times like my freaked-out self really wanted to. When she gave me her number and told me to text if I had any anxiety about classes, I thought she was overreacting. I thought I had moved on past this strange . . . panic.

I'm not used to panicking—not when it comes to what other people are saying about me. Because, come on, if they're talking about me, it means that I made some kind of impression—and that's all I ever wanted. For you to remember the Ly! Di! Ah!

But I didn't. Text her, I mean. I calmed down. On the drive
home, I turned the radio way up, sang loud enough for the cars who pulled up next to me at red lights to appreciate my spot-on rendition of Taylor Swift (you're welcome), and felt better by the time I got home to find Mom in the kitchen, putting actual icing on actual cupcakes to celebrate my first day of school.

Just like she did when we were little.

After a couple of cupcakes, I decided I was okay enough to wait until my special Tuesday appointment with Ms. W. Because when faced with Mom's cupcakes, anything Harriet Forrester could possibly say just sort of fades into a buzz of nothingness.

I decided it isn't a problem, Harriet filling in Cody about my past. Someone was going to do it eventually, anyway. Besides, he must have caught my last name when Professor Latham super unfairly yelled at me. Google is no longer just the tool of the stalkery—it belongs to all of the mildly curious masses.

Nor is it a problem that I made a bad first impression on one of my teachers (oddly, Natalie seems to like me. Even though she wasn't the teacher I set out to impress, I'll take what I can get). First impressions are just that . . . first. Not last, not deepest. Just an initial blunder. And in no way an indicator of what a person is like. Trust me, I've spent plenty of time watching my sister Lizzie figure out that little life lesson.

Second chances are key. And I was totally certain that someone who had dedicated his life to the study of the human mind would understand that.

That's what I told Ms. W, at our session the next day. Or at least, that's what I intended to tell her.

But something weird happened.

“It went great,” I'd said. “Seriously, best class ever.”

I don't know why I did that. Maybe we'll eventually get to a section in psych class on overcompensation. But in that moment, with everything Ms. W had said to me in the session before, with everyone wanting me to do well . . . I just wanted to do well, too. So when
she looked at me with that patient expression she has down pat, I just told her what she wanted to hear.

Or, what I wanted her to hear.

“And the other students?” she'd asked gently.

“There's not a whole lot of people in class who I know.” I'd shrugged, not lying, but not exactly telling the truth.

After that, we talked about the questions I'd written for myself as if I were my own therapist, how my application for Central Bay College was going, and how Pavlov's experiments were really about the digestive system and he sort of fell into behaviorism. Then, my hour was up.

I know I'm not supposed to lie to my counselor. Kind of a waste of the school's resources, right? And my time, too, I guess. I told myself I'd ease into the truth at the next session. Besides, the whole thing would probably have blown over by then. I wouldn't be the girl texting in class, I'd be the girl who did all the reading and had all the answers. And Harriet would have given Cody all the sordid details on my life and he most likely wouldn't even bother with buying Drama Girl her foodstuff/beverage combo and just leave me alone. Everything would be totes back on track to be exactly the hardworking summer I had planned.

Wrong.

*  *  *

It was psych class that Wednesday that messed things up. Or, messed them up more.

I did the reading. I did it twice—because it was in another freaking language.

Why can't scientists ever express themselves normally? Say, “We did this, thought it was going to do that, but it ended up doing this other thing, which means something else.” Instead, it's all hypotheses, objectives, outcomes, and “corollary and causative effects as shown on this four-hundred-point graph of disparate data.”

Sorry, scientists, but in my twenty-one years of experience, human nature can't be reduced to data points.

But regardless of my determination to completely understand the text (which was even more of a chore considering I spent half the time trying to get my ancient computer to stay connected to the Internet so I could Google the definition of every third word), it was all for nothing. Because on that Wednesday, when discussing the reading, Professor Latham didn't call on me once.

My hand was up. A dozen times. But there was always someone else to call on. And there are totally valid contingent factors (thank you, online dictionary spiral). It's a big class, lots of other students. Also, I sit a couple of rows up, and the lights are a little lower, so it's entirely possible he didn't see me. Plus, we had to move on to the lecture on the Milgram Experiment, so good-bye, Pavlov.

Still, I couldn't help but feel like an idiot, with my hand raised but still ignored, every time. And somehow I couldn't ignore the little nagging voice in the back of my head (the voice always sounds like Lizzie, btdubs) that said, “He's made up his mind about you already.”

And then I started having the dream again.

I hadn't had it in months. Not since right after everything happened with the website. Ms. W told me a long time ago that dreams like that are normal—after all, my mind was still trying to process everything.

But it's so cheesy and lame to dream about George now! I thought I was way past this stage. But it's like I'm trying so hard to move on from that chapter of my life and there's one tiny part of my brain that just doesn't want to let go.

But I didn't end up talking about that in my next therapy session, either. Because I skipped it entirely.

Before you get all disappointed, I had a completely legit excuse. It's all because my mom took up tennis.

“And then the instructor said I had the best backhand he'd seen since he started at the club and how is it that I never played before,”
my mother had been saying, her arm in a sling. “And the very next serve this happens! I've never been more mortified in my life!”

Mom recounted her trauma to us over breakfast, the morning after it happened. I'm pretty sure I caught her practicing her rendition in the mirror not fifteen minutes before, but knew well enough to look super interested and horrified.

“Was your mortification because of your serve or because the tennis pro at the club happens to be exceptionally handsome?” my father asked with a smirk.

“Oh, you.” She'd swatted his shoulder with her good hand. “But the bigger tragedy is your father won't let me drive until I've had this checked out. I keep telling him it's just a case of tennis elbow. . . .”

“Yes, and the dent in the front bumper was just a case of restless leg syndrome,” he'd replied, and disappeared back behind his paper.

“We have an appointment tomorrow, but I need to run some errands this afternoon. . . .”

“I'll drive you, Mom,” I'd said. “No biggie.”

“Are you sure?” she'd asked, her eyes sliding to Dad's.

“Yeah, it's fine.”

So I skipped, and drove my mom to and from the grocery store. I was sure one of them knew about my therapy session, but neither said anything. I texted Ms. W; she said it was cool. And I got to slide another week.

*  *  *

So here I am two weeks later, and Ms. W doesn't know about my dream, or Harriet, or Cody, and has spent two weeks thinking I've been killing it in psych class.

“I have to admit, Lydia, I'm impressed,” Ms. W said with a small smile. “I remember my first couple of classes—all those case studies and scientific language was impenetrable.”

“Well, it's not easy,” I admitted. “But I'm getting there. I just turned in a paper. On the Milgram Experiment. And I totally rocked it.”

This, at least, was the truth. Or I hoped it was. I wrote that paper and rewrote it just to make sure it was bulletproof. I cited the text. I used
footnotes
. Which means I finally had to figure out what footnotes
are
. If that doesn't get Latham's attention, I don't know what will.