Free The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet by Bernie Su, Kate Rorick

our heads around, searching for Lydia. She was by the Whac-A-Mole game, all right, but what she was whacking wasn’t a mole.
    Her shirt was pretty much off, and her hand was down David-not-Ben’s pants. They seemed to have forgotten the existence of other people.
    Jane and I were on our feet, immediately sober.
    “Hey, Lydia, we have to go home now,” I said, and then turned to her partner in crime. “Sorry, David.” Who, for his part, at least seemed sheepish about his state, and
the encroaching reality that yes, he was on second base in a crowded bar against a Whac-A-Mole machine.
    “No,” she whined.
    “Lydia . . .” I tried, but she pushed me away.
    “No!” she yelled, belligerent. “I wanna keep playing the game!”
    “Well, you’re out of quarters, honey,” Jane said in her nicest voice. “There are more in the car.”
    Lydia blinked at Jane. “Can Ben come to the car, too?”
    The noncommittal noise Jane made was enough to have Lydia willingly go with her sisters. We said our good-byes to Bing and the others quickly and got Lydia into the car. I was the designated
driver, and I even dropped David-not-Ben off at his place on the way. Luckily, by that point, Lydia was asleep and could not protest the loss of her gaming partner.
    This is what worries me the most about Lydia. She isn’t a thoughtless person. She can actually be really sweet. But she is careless. And mostly, she’s careless about herself.
She’s home right now and asleep in my bed, thank God, but what if we hadn’t been there to take care of her? What if she’d been out on her own, met up with David, and ended up
getting arrested, like Carter threatened? Or ended up in David’s car, and he drove her home drunk? Or they ended up together somewhere, and she passed out, like she did in the car on the way
home—only this time, Jane and I weren’t there?
    Anything could have happened to her. Yes, women should be able to go out and have fun without fear of consequences the way men do—but that’s not the reality. There are a lot of
unenlightened douchebags out there. And my biggest fear is that Lydia is going to fall prey to one of them.
    But right now, I’m tired, and Lydia seems to be in the non-thrashing part of her REM cycle, so I’m going to hold my baby sister and try to get some sleep.

F RIDAY , M AY 25 TH
    I am in term paper/studying hell, and this is the time that Charlotte decides to annoy me about annoying things. Namely, Darcy.
    “I’m telling you, he would have played Just Dance with you.”
    “I’m only
decent enough
,” I said. “Why would he play Just Dance with me?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t think you’re
decent enough
anymore.”
    “No, after my performance, one has to assume he thinks I’m worse.”
    Charlotte shot me her patented “you’re-an-idiot” look. Which is awfully close to her normal face, but after years of study I can tell the difference.
    “You didn’t hear what he said to Caroline,” Charlotte said. “I did. He was saying that you actually looked really pretty when you were dancing. Especially your eyes. That
you have ‘fine eyes.’ ”
    “And by that he meant my eyes are just fine. Passable,” I countered. “Again, decent enough.”
    Charlotte just rolled her eyes this time. “Or he was trying to give you a compliment. He might just be, oh, I don’t know . . . shy?”
    This wasn’t the first time Charlotte had tried to convince me Darcy is anything other than the boorish snob I know he is. Ever since that night at Carter’s, she’s been on a
mission. But that’s Charlotte—always looking for a narrative where there isn’t one. And it was nice to see her in a good mood. More often than not these days, she’s all
about schoolwork. And Charlotte is normally very practical, but that practicality is starting to feel very . . . cynical.
    Again, I think she isn’t telling me something, and it’s starting to itch at the back of my mind.
    “Shy is