The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet

Chapter Two

School Supplies

Shopping for school supplies is, hands down, the best part of being in school. What's the easiest way to make something mega-dullsville like chemistry or geometry a tiny bit more exciting? Glittery note- books with cats all over the front. Obvs! I never understand classmates who just grab whatever plain notebooks and cheap ballpoint pens they see first and call it a successful shopping trip. Like, way to be sheep.

Even Lizzie isn't that basic, and that's saying something.

So I took Jane's car—now my car (I may miss Jane, but I looooooove having my own wheels!)—through Main Street and turned into the pharmacy/pet shop/school supply store that has kept me in strawberry pencil sharpeners and scratch 'n' sniff stickers since I was old enough for my parents to think I knew that just be- cause something looked or smelled like food didn't mean that it was. (Keyword: think.) It's the only place to shop.

No, seriously. There's nowhere else in this town.

I made my way down the aisle, keeping an eye out for anything that popped—glitz, glam, bright colors, unique and fun crap other people won't have. That's how I roll.

Tossing some gel pens and a bedazzled pencil bag into my shopping basket, I reasoned that using different color pens for each book we discuss in my Gothic Literature class will for sure keep my notes properly organized. And of course I need something cute and pleather to carry them in.

"Lydia?"

I stopped and turned toward the unmistakable voice of my fourth- closest BFF from the prior school year, Harriet Forrester.

So maybe that whole thing about everyone I know having left town wasn't entirely truthful.

"OMG!" She strode over to me, her dangly earrings clinking against themselves amid her glossy brown waves. Though we were never super close before last year, I've known Harriet since we were little kids running around giving ourselves cootie shots on the playground.

And I haven't seen anything about her look remotely out of place since then.

Her arms wrapped tightly around my neck.

"I thought that was you! It was just difficult to be sure with this color." She brushed her fingers through my fading red hair, examining it. "Or lack of." I guess it usually is more lively. Must've forgotten to do anything about it the past few weeks. Or months.

"Never mind that! How have you been?" She let out a small gasp and looked around the aisle. "Are you doing summer classes, too? I got my associate degree in the spring like everyone else, but I thought it would be a good idea to take a few easy things before I move on to USC—that's the University of Southern California, not South Carolina, of course. Get ahead so I have time for extracurriculars, God knows we didn't have any good ones here." She leaned in closer, and I could practically taste her Marc Jacobs perfume. "Besides, my parents said I'd have to get a job if I wasn't taking classes. Can you imagine? The only place even hiring is that weird coffee shop near campus. A service job. Cleaning up after underclassmen and, heaven help us, high schoolers. I shudder."

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 some- thing'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.