Read The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet Online
Authors: Bernie Su,Kate Rorick
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #General
I . . . It’s been two days and I still can’t believe he said that—and I can’t believe how I responded! Oh, shit—I told him to watch my videos.
Watch my videos
. If there was one person in the world who I never wanted to find out about them, it was Darcy.
I manage to be polite when forced to be in company with him—sometimes even amused—but I don’t exactly hold back in my videos. At this point, I’m betting he’s
watching through the events of the Gibson wedding and our stay at Netherfield and realizing just how much restraint I practice in face-to-face situations. And some of the things I say . . .
they’re not untrue, but they are likely considered defamatory.
I could get sued.
I’m going to get sued.
Oh, shit.
And what am I supposed to do now, at Collins & Collins? Just go through every day pretending it didn’t happen? That Darcy didn’t confess his (erp)
love
for me, and he
doesn’t know about my vague Internet fame and his sort-of vague Internet fame because of it? That is going to make for one awkward budget meeting.
I can’t pretend everything is the same as before because nothing is the same. I’m not that good a liar. And . . . I can’t go on camera and pretend to all my viewers, either.
This is just too big to ignore.
I really want to talk to Charlotte. And she can tell something is wrong by the way I give monosyllabic answers and change the subject when we get back to her place at night. But I’m not
sure I can—I’m not sure how.
Hell, I could just show her the video . . . since Darcy decided to walk in and make his declaration while I was filming. I could show the world the video, and not go through the pain and
awkwardness of having to explain it to all of the viewers.
I’m of two minds about this, though. Part of me, knowing he’s watching, wants to spare him any further embarrassment—as distasteful as I find him, I’m not vengeful. Plus,
I’m not at my best, either. But then the other part of me knows that I have a contract with my audience. They are, frankly, expecting to see what happens in my life. And this is a big, big
thing that happened. A reenactment wouldn’t do it justice. And hey, he knew I was filming. What he did afterward on camera is on him.
Also, 95 percent of my comments are asking, “When do we get to see Darcy?”!
Sigh. Deep breath, Lizzie. Deep breath.
What it comes down to is this: any reservations I feel be damned. I wouldn’t be honest in my communication with the world, and that’s what this entire project is about, right? So,
how I come off, how he comes off—that doesn’t get to matter.
What matters is that I express the truth. In the clearest way I know how.
Well, everyone wanted to see Darcy—now they get him.
Darcy came by. I was filming Charlotte’s reaction to my last video when he just showed up. The bad news is, yes, he’s watched all the videos. The good news is, he
promised not to sue me. But the terrible news is that he handed me this letter.
And . . . I think I may be wrong. About everything.
Lizzie—
Don’t be alarmed. This letter is not meant as a reiteration of the feelings I expressed to you previously—and as I now know, on video. I
won’t do us both the insult of replaying that scene. But you once asked me to simply say what I mean, and though I made that my goal when I approached you last, apparently I had not
expressed myself well before that. You charged me with two very different crimes last night, and I feel I have the right to answer those charges.
The first is that I intervened in the relationship between your sister and my friend Bing. I admitted this freely, and I stand by what I said—the reservations I
expressed about your family (specifically your mother and younger sister) and our fundamental differences apply equally to Jane and Bing. But most especially I stand by what I saw when they
interacted. Bing is a person who falls in love easily, be it with a girl or a house in a remote town in central California. I have seen it happen half a dozen times, and it never lasted. But
Jane seemed to be different for him. Which is why it was painful for me to see that she didn’t seem to be as invested in their relationship as he was. The way she looked at and spoke to
him was pretty much the same way she looked at and spoke to everyone, including myself.
I will admit, I cannot account for Bing and Jane’s interactions in private moments and, having watched your videos now paints their relationship in a very
different light. It is possible Jane’s feelings for Bing were deeper than I initially thought. That said, it does not justify her indiscretion on the night of his birthday party, nor does
it negate the fact that Bing was so easily separated from her. If his feelings were as engaged as Jane’s, it would have been a much more difficult task. His summer was tumultuous, anyway;
it was time for him to get back to the reality of his life. Like I said, Bing falls in love easily. He also falls out of love easily.
I am sorry for any pain your sister may have felt, but perhaps it’s best in the long run. I am very cautious of situations where one of my friends might be
getting used. You will see why in a moment.
The second charge you lay at my door is that I ruined George Wickham’s future, by ignoring my father’s wishes for his education after my parents’
deaths. While you may feel the weight of your accusations about Jane and Bing heavier, this one is the far worse, in my opinion. Because it is patently false.
I’m sure it doesn’t surprise you that I didn’t have many friends growing up. But one friend I did have was George. He was the son of our housekeeper,
and she was practically family, having the charge of both my sister and me when we were young and our parents had to be away on business. As we got older, George and I started to go to separate
schools and run in different crowds, but I still considered our friendship bedrock.
My parents died when I was a freshman in college. Technically, I was an adult, but I didn’t feel like one. Suddenly I was the head of my family’s company,
and the guardian to my little sister. George—who since his mother had decided to retire had been less and less in our lives—came to me the day after my parents’ funeral. He
asked, as he’d been recently accepted to college, if he would still be able to go, as my father had promised to pay for his education. I told him of course—I was aware of my
father’s request and intended to honor it. But when I asked that George have the school send the bills to me, he said that he didn’t want to bother me with paperwork when I
obviously had so much going on, having to deal with the company and my sister on top of being in school. I must have been run over with grief, because I agreed to simply transfer $125,000 to
his bank account.
I didn’t hear from George again—which was unfortunate, because I could have used a friend then—until near the end of his first year. He said college
cost more than he thought, and could he please have some of the tuition bills sent my way, as my father no doubt had wanted?
I have no idea how he spent all the money, but there’s not a school in the country that costs $125,000 a year. I told him no.
Our relationship suffered after that.
I know, again from your videos, that this is not the story you were told by George. And also that your relationship with him was closer than that of mere friends. So
before you discount what I say as stemming from jealousy, please consider that I do have proof—bank statements, etc. I have also known George much longer than you have. And while he can
be charming, he can also be ruthless. But I didn’t know how much he hated me—and had probably hated me for a while—until he took things to the next level and involved my
sister, Gigi.
As George was around when Gigi was growing up, she naturally looked up to him. She even developed a bit of a childish crush on him, but as George was our close friend,
it was considered by all parties involved rather harmless.
Gigi grew up, and began college herself a few years ago. I hadn’t thought about George in quite a while when suddenly (and more recently than I think would make
you comfortable) I received an email from him.
It was full of the usual cordialities. He was simply “saying hi,” was eager to catch up the next time I was in San Francisco and put the “ugly
financial matters of the past” behind us. Then he included a photo. It was a penthouse apartment deck at sunset, with a girl in a hot tub. I knew that deck, that view, and that girl. It
was my sister Gigi, and the photo was taken at her apartment in the city.
I left for San Francisco immediately. When I arrived at the apartment, Gigi was—to put it mildly—surprised to see me. She knew nothing, and still knows
nothing, about the email George sent, which was as blatant as a ransom note. George was waiting for me to pull out my checkbook, so I did. He must have been hard up for cash, because it took
significantly fewer zeroes for him to remove himself from our lives this time. But as glad as I was to see him go, he left my sister devastated to realize that the man she was falling in love
with had just been using her.
I still don’t think she’s fully recovered.
I kept this quiet for my sister’s sake, even when I knew he was maligning me far and wide, buying friendship with a smile and a round of beers. But if you want a
secondary source, ask Fitz. He and Gigi are close and she confided in him everything, especially during that period when she was refusing to talk to me.
This was a very hard letter for me to write. And you may choose to not believe me. You can rip up this letter—and actually, I hope you will when you are done
with it. But as you allowed me to be privy to the truth of your perspective through your videos, I hope you will be accepting of mine.
Thank you for your attention, and giving this letter the benefit of the doubt.
Sincerely,
William Darcy
“Charlotte, have I gone too far?”
“What do you mean?” she asked. We had just gotten back to her place after another long day at the office—where we would likely be again in less than eight hours. The life of a
start-up. “I thought you decided to not reveal the contents of the letter in your video. Or to me,” she added, pointedly.
“I have, and I’m not going to,” I replied, letting my bag thud to the ground. “But did I go too far before? Telling every little aspect of my life, hell—posting
Darcy’s video . . .”
“The views you got off that video were insane,” Charlotte countered.
“I know. But still . . .” I hesitated, and took the glass of wine she had poured for me. It had been that kind of a day. “I was so wrong. About everything.”
Charlotte took a sip, thinking. “You have been showing events from your perspective. There’s nothing wrong with that. But now, because of Darcy and presumably the letter, your
perspective has changed.”
Yes, my perspective has changed, with every subsequent reading of the letter. I’ve pored over it at least half a dozen times, and each time, my worldview gets knocked a little more out of
alignment.
On the first read, the part about Bing and Jane basically had me seething, and convinced that his snobbishness and superiority made him blind to the true love they had for each other. I was
ready to write the entire letter off as completely self-serving, and its author a prime example of a jackass.
But then I got to the part about George Wickham . . . and while I scoffed at the notion of George being so callous as to ask for money the day after Darcy’s parents’ funeral, a
couple of little alarm bells started going off in my brain. Then, when he talked about his sister Gigi . . . You don’t make up something like that about your sister.
And Darcy may be many things, but I have only ever heard him speak with pride and love about Gigi.
On second reading, I ignored the queasy butterflies that kept popping up in my stomach as I read the Jane and Bing section and skipped right ahead to the Wickham part. And I began to realize . .
. I had only ever heard George talk about his and Darcy’s past. He didn’t offer any proof, he just told a story, and I believed him. Because I was happy to hear anything denigrating
Darcy. And then . . . I told everyone else, the entire Internet, without ever questioning it. Was I that blinded by a smile and a set of abs? He had me completely snowed—everyone completely
snowed. And here I was, priding myself on being the shrewd Bennet.
On third reading, I forced myself to go back over the Jane and Bing section. And as I did, I tried my best to recall the moments that I had seen Jane and Bing truly happy together. And while
there were a few, I also recalled how Charlotte once said that Jane is too nice to everyone, so that when she really likes someone, it’s hard to tell. Also, I recalled how for the last month
or so they were together, Jane was working like crazy and Bing was being pulled away to do interviews. If their relationship were on better footing, maybe they wouldn’t have been so easy to
break up.
God, even his arguments about my family held up in this new light! As much as I love them, how often had I been the one to try and filter Mom, or driven a drunk and rambunctious Lydia home from
the bar?
Basically, I’ve been blind. Partial. Prejudiced. Absurd.
I wanted to curl up into a ball and hide in the corner, thinking about how I acted toward Darcy. And while in my little mental ball, I had to figure out what to do about the videos. And I
realized—I couldn’t tell the entire Internet about the contents of the letter.
Especially
not the parts that involved George and Gigi. And no, this was not about protecting
George, or protecting my own self-image online. It was about protecting the details of the life of a young woman I’ve never even met.