Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet (9781476763248) (26 page)

“I'm sure you've heard it all,” I said.

“Probably,” she agreed. “But that doesn't mean there's nothing to talk about.”

“We can worry about that when you get back.” I shrugged it off.

“Okay.”

I blinked.

That was it? No concerned Jane gently pressing me to get to the heart of the issue? About what I'm doing next? I don't have an answer, sure, but I was still surprised she'd let it go that easily.

Then again, Bing was waiting to take Jane to the airport, so she probably didn't have the time for an hours-long heart-to-heart.

“Have you talked to Mary lately?”

“Uh-huh.” Once Jane and I got home and she rushed to start
packing, I rushed to get my phone charger. Once my poor baby had some juice, I had found a text waiting for me:

Not bad. Sorry, been working all day.

Yeah, of course she's busy. I get it. I texted back, and told her I was in New York.

The three little loading dots tortured me for a couple of minutes until—

Neat. Say hi to Jane for me.

I could have responded, but it felt weirdly distant. Talking to Mary is hard enough; it turns out that texting with her is even more emotionless. Or, now it seems to be, anyway.

“I think that's it,” Jane said, grabbing a sun hat off a hook. She came over and hugged me. I inhaled her Jane smell. “I'm so sorry I won't get to see you.”

“You will in three days. Don't worry,” I said, and then gave her one of my brightest smiles. “I mean, Lydia Bennet loose in New York City? What could possibly go wrong?”

Jane was
not
kidding about my feet. The minute they touched the creaky floors next to her tiny bed this morning, they transformed from regular feet to swollen stubs.

The throbbing paired nicely with the throbbing in my head.

It had nothing to do with last night's wine. I barely had one
glass. No, it had to do with the construction crew jackhammering the sidewalk, starting promptly at 7:00 a.m. I think I'll have to resign myself to never getting a good night's sleep here. But hey, for the next three days, at least I'm not out on the couch.

Deciding a shower could wait, I grabbed the essentials (my phone and Jane's personal laptop she said I could use while she was away), hobbled into the kitchen, and brewed a pot of coffee.

I grabbed my phone and pulled up the notifications.

I'd slept past multiple Jane texts (
Just landed! Check your email for that list!
;
Morning! Sleep ok?
;
Oh, I forgot, there's some construction on our block. Just so you know!
), a couple of Lizzie's (proddy about having Darcy talk to Central Bay again, ugh) and . . . even one from Mary.

Any thoughts on what you're going to do after New York?

Yeah . . . I might need more coffee to respond to that one.

Because, what are my plans? Now that I'm here, I've gotten to the end of any previous planning. There's this great big question mark that can't be ignored much longer. And since Mary asked the question, and Jane is expecting a conversation when she gets back, I should go into that conversation with some ideas.

Hey, I could still move to Winnipeg and spin signs while standing in three-foot-deep snow most of the year. Epic career plan.

If there was ever an argument for finding a way to get into a real school, that's it.

“Hey.” A raspy voice drew my eyes away from my phone and toward Shea entering the apartment and looking more asleep than I felt prior to coffee.

“This coffee claimed?” she asked, pointing to the pot.

“All yours,” I said.

She swung her backpack down on the floor next to the table before rummaging through the cabinets for a coffee mug, and I
realized she was dressed in the same clothes she was wearing when I'd seen her briefly last night.

“Fell asleep at the library,” she said, noticing my stare.

“They just forgot you?”

“School library's open all night,” she explained, pouring coffee into a white mug with hipster glasses and a mustache on it. “Everyone's got too much work to do for it not to be.”

“That sounds awful.”

“It is. You dodged a bullet missing that transfer deadline.”

I swept past the (totally logical) realization that Jane must've told her roommates about me, because I didn't want to think of what else she might have told them. This is New York. I'm New York Lydia here. Looking forward.

“Do you regret grad school?” I asked.

Shea swirled her coffee around in the cup. “No,” she finally answered. “But I jumped right into it from undergrad. Sometimes I wish I'd taken a breather. But I didn't, so . . . more studying.” She grabbed her bag off the floor and left the room.

So that's one vote for finishing college, one against.

Maybe it's time to do some research of my own.

I flipped open Jane's laptop and started typing “cool jobs you can do without a college degree” into the search engine.

Dental hygienist . . .
ew, no . . .
cosmetologist . . .
I'd be stellar, but pass . . .
court reporter
 . . . bor-ing  . . .
refrigerator mechanic
 . . . okay, seriously?

Surely a bunch of people I went to high school with opted out of college; I could see what they're doing. I directed the browser to Facebook for the first time in ages (seven new messages from Denny—oops, sorry, Denny) and started going through the list of old classmates I haven't talked to in years.

After scrolling through a number of profiles featuring colleges and marriages and babies—seriously? We're barely past our teens, guys, enjoy it while it lasts!—something caught my eye.

Casey, a girl I went to high school with and had known since our Girl Scout years, was living in New York. I checked her page—her occupation was listed as freelance, but all her pictures were of really cool parties, so she had to be doing something right to make it in NYC.

I jotted out a quick message:

Hey, Casey! We haven't talked in forevs, but I'm in New York visiting my sister and I've got some free time. Wanna catch up?

I was about to close the window when I saw the indication that she was typing a response back.

For sure! Are you around tonight?

Well, I don't have Jane. Shea's a library zombie. Allison's . . . somewhere. Might as well do something, right?

It wasn't long before we'd come up with a plan to meet, and I shut Jane's computer, pretty pleased with myself. While I knew going back home with even some sort of vague life plan was unlikely, this was at least one step closer to figuring out what I could do as a maybe-non-college-grad (besides sign spinning).

And I was certain that had earned me the rest of the day off watching Netflix. My feet would thank me.

It took me about three minutes into drinks with Casey to remember why we'd never really hung out past Girl Scouts.

I couldn't freaking stand her.

We'd agreed to meet at this place in the East Village, near Alphabet City.

“Wait, is Alphabet City the name of the restaurant?” I'd murmured to myself as I put the address in my phone before leaving the apartment. In my mind, they probably served a lot of soup.

“It's the name of the neighborhood,” Allison said from the couch. She was simultaneously reading a book and watching something about insect mating habits on the Discovery Channel, but managed to tear her eyes away long enough to roll them at me with pity. “You know, because the avenues aren't numbers there, they're letters?”

“Oh,” I replied. “Got it. Do you know the best way to get there? I'm meeting a friend from high school.”

“Planning on a late night, huh?” She flashed me the exact same smile that I'd seen from her before.

“Probably not, but I don't know.”

“Well, try not to get into any trouble. Jane would have my head if anything happened on my watch.” Her smile didn't budge. “Or, if you do, just . . . keep it out of the apartment. The less I know the better.”

“Sure,” I murmured, turning toward the door again.

“Oh! Um, did you bring anything less . . . princessy with you?” I frowned as Allison looked over my outfit. I wasn't even wearing sparkles. “
I
think you look impeccably . . . cute, but New Yorkers can smell an out-of-towner a mile away. Better if you can blend in a little bit.” She laughed, and I wasn't sure why.

I nervously smoothed out the blue dress I was wearing. “This is Jane's dress,” I said. “I stole it from her closet.”

Allison's head cocked to the side. “Jane's in fashion,” she said by way of explanation.

I don't know what she meant by that, but I ducked back into Jane's room and grabbed a cardigan before I finally made for the door.

“Lydia,” a voice emerged from the shadowed room of Shea. She
blinked into the outside light. “Take the G train to the L, it'll drop you off on First and Fourteenth. The G and L suck, but that's the closest stop.”

“Thanks,” I said, surprised. But I don't know if she heard me because she re-turtled herself back into her darkened room-shell.

That was enough of the roommates, I thought, as I made for the train.

I got to the restaurant where I'd agreed to meet Casey ten minutes early, but the waiter refused to seat me until my “whole party arrived,” so I sat down on a bench outside and resisted the urge to play battery-sucking games on my almost fully charged phone, instead imagining what Casey's deliciously vague freelance job description meant.

Freelance what? Freelance writer? Freelance designer? Freelance
assassin
?

“Lydia?”

I recognized Casey approaching me, though if we hadn't planned this and I'd just seen her on the street, I may not have. Gone were the spaghetti-strap tops and brightly colored jeans, traded in for a decidedly more New York wardrobe of slim clothes in dark colors.

“Hey! It's so good to see you,” I said, doing my best Jane impersonation as I got up for the obligatory greeting-hug.

“Look at you!” she squealed. “I can't wait to catch up, come on!”

This was a level of enthusiasm I was unprepared for.

She pulled open the restaurant door and we walked in, ready to actually get a table this time around, thank you, Mr. Waiter.

It was a trendy place with dim lighting and lots of artwork that was clearly done by locals on the walls. Everything in the East Village seemed a little grungy, but expensive grungy. We passed the bar at the front and ended up at a small booth in the center of the restaurant. Everyone was a little crammed in, so close you could easily touch fingertips with the people across the aisle, but nobody seemed bothered by it.

“So how have you been?” Casey asked as the waiter dropped off two glasses of iceless water. “You said your sister's living here now?”

“Jane,” I replied. “She moved here for work a few months ago. Fashion stuff.”

“That's a tough industry, but hey, she's trying.”

“She's doing pretty well,” I said.

“A lot of dreams don't go anywhere.” She sighed.

“Anyway, what about you?” I continued, dodging the original question. “I saw on Facebook you're freelancing . . . ?”

“Yeah, just, whatever, here and there, you know,” she replied dismissively.

“Must be some impressive ‘here and there' if it's enough to live in the city,” I said, determined to coax my potential future out of her.

She shrugged. “Last job I had was PAing on a reality show. That was almost three months ago. I'll have to get another one when my funemployment runs out.”

“So you . . . work in TV?” I said.

“Sometimes. I thought I'd be an actor but . . . it's a lot of work, you know?”

“And you can be a PA without a college degree?”

“A PA just stands around all day with a walkie telling people where to go. The day you have to go to college for that? Although . . .” She leaned in super close to me, excited to share a secret. “Don't tell my résumé, okay? It thinks I graduated early from Georgetown.”

Wow. Okay, not the glamorous freelance life I had pictured. Or the glamorous TV life. Or the . . . anything.

Casey's life seemed to be put together piecemeal. And the work she was doing, she was super down on. Yeah, there was a time that “funemployment” might have put dollar signs in Lydia Bennet's eyes, but now . . . to work just long enough to collect on it seemed weirdly hollow.

“My parents keep threatening to cut me off, because they don't get how much work it is to make it in this city. But soon, I'm not
going to have to worry about all that, because I have the perfect gig coming up!”

I perked up. “Really?”

She nodded enthusiastically. “I met this guy, he's an animal wrangler. And it seems like the easiest job, because he just has a lizard. Put the lizard in a tank in the background and he gets paid for it. So I've started training my two rats—”

“
Rats?
”

“I figure every movie shot in the city needs a rat or two to run down the street, for grittiness? And I won't have to do anything, the rats do all the work.”

“Wow, that's . . . something.”

“Would you like to meet them?”

“Your . . . rats?”

“We can head there after dinner.”

“Um, I don't think—”

“Or tomorrow?” Casey said, hope drenching every syllable. “What are you doing the rest of the week?”

Not meeting your rats
, I thought.

“Just, things . . . Do you keep up with anyone from our class?” I asked.