Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet (9781476763248) (5 page)

I threw up into my bowl of Trix.

Correction: I threw up the Trix I had just eaten back into the nearly empty bowl. Which meant I literally threw up rainbows.

That's how I felt when I woke up for my last first day of
community college. Simultaneously so nervous and so excited that I thought rainbows could come erupting out of my mouth at any moment.

Just to be safe, I skipped breakfast and made it to my Intro to Psych lecture by 8:42 a.m. Eighteen minutes to spare. I was the second person in the room; even the professor (
Professor Latham
, I reminded myself, fully committed to this Prepared Student persona) wasn't there yet.

The lecture hall is one of the bigger rooms the school has, probably about eighty seats. Most of the classrooms fit twenty or thirty at most. Small class size is touted as one of the benefits to attending our community college. Seriously, it's all over the brochures. And it's something I used to love—not because we got more “teacher-student attention” (and ew, that sounds super gross now that I say it), but because you know everyone and everyone knows you. And, yeah, okay, it was easier to get everyone to pay attention to you—I won't deny it! Attention is nice. Or it can be.

But that's also one of the reasons coming back last semester was so difficult. Now, I'm glad to be taking a psychology class, but I'm also glad it will be a little easier to just blend in.

I pulled my blue spiral and a fountain pen out of my bag, trying to fill the silence of the room. Opening up to the front cover, I carefully printed:

INTRO TO PSYCHOLOGY, SUMMER 2013

Most of my notebooks for my previous classes have been filled up with whatever notes were on the board or PowerPoint, and doodles. Lots of doodles. I've gotten pretty fantastic at drawing spirally things that bleed into more spirally things. Too bad that's not something you can make a career of.

“Cool pen.”

I raised my head to see the only person who beat me into class that morning.

A guy. A not unattractive guy. Maybe even bordering on, like, super cute and possibly even handsome.

Hey, I can take academia seriously, but I still have eyes.

He was turned around in his seat, looking up at me from a couple of rows ahead. Should I be sitting closer to the front? Would that show Professor Latham a dedication to the subject?

“Thanks,” I said, looking down at my dad's fountain pen. I stole it off his desk—it's the most serious pen I know of. Serious pen for a serious student.

“Did you get the time wrong, too?”

“Huh? Oh, no,” I replied. “I just . . . wanted a good seat.”

“Cool.” He nodded. “I screwed up and thought classes started an hour ago.”

He had a half smile. So I half-smiled back.

“I'm new. Just fulfilling some requirements so I can change majors at my regular school.”

“Makes sense,” I said.

“What about you?”

“I . . .” was saved by a bunch of other people filing into the classroom. As the newcomers settled into their seats, scattering, chatting, the new guy kept his chair turned my way.

“I'm Cody,” he said. “Would it be too soon to ask for your number?”

He must have seen my internal freak-out, because he held up his hands immediately. “I'm not hitting on you, I swear.”

“Just so you know, when you have to tell people you're not hitting on them, it's kind of a given that you're hitting on them,” I replied.

“You're the first person I've met, and you seem to know what you're doing,” he said. I admit, I might have blushed a little. I guess this commitment to academia thing was really working for me. “It would be just in case one of us misses a class, or if we want to compare notes.” He pulled out his phone. “Buddy system, you know?”

I hesitated. On the one hand, yes, it's totally valid to get assignments from someone if you're absent. On the other hand, I didn't
want Cody to take my giving him my number as a sign to ask me out. But on the other hand . . . he certainly was cute.

On the other hand, I definitely only wanted to concentrate on school this summer. Apparently I have too many hands because when he offered his phone, one of them typed in my number and handed it back. Freaking hands.

“Well . . . ‘Lydia,' ” he read, and grinned. “It's nice to meet you.”

That moment, a man about my dad's age, looking effortlessly uncool in a sweater vest and short-sleeved shirt, entered. Professor Latham.

“Here we go,” Cody said, winking at me before turning back around in his seat and whipping his laptop out of his bag, ready to take notes.

A lot of other people took out laptops, too. And I would have joined them . . . if I had a laptop. Sadly, I'm stuck with my phone for most communication and my ancient, inherited desktop for typing up papers. Seriously, it's so old, it has a tower. And if you want to do something crazy like watch more than five YouTube videos in a row, the tower overheats.

But on the plus side, Kitty likes to sleep on it.

“I'm Professor Latham; this is Intro to Psychology. Now, who wants to learn how to manipulate people to do their bidding?”

Everyone in the room stopped talking and started paying attention.

“Or how about, you want to be an investigator and track killers and get them to confess their crimes?”

My eyes went wide. Yes, I wanted that. Without the whole having to hang out with killers part. But yes.

“How many of you just want to listen to another person's problems and help solve them?”

I immediately sat on my hand to keep it from waving around above my head like a dork.

“Believe it or not,” said Professor Latham, “by studying the human mind, you are opening yourself up to all these possibilities. A research psychologist tries to direct people and study the outcomes. A forensic psychologist helps law enforcement dissect crimes and criminal intentions. And a psychological therapist helps people by listening and guiding their thought processes to helpful conclusions.”

Where has Professor Latham been all my academic life?

Before, with math or history or whatever, I took down info and regurgitated it like one of Kitty's hairballs come test time. Here, I'm being given the chance to learn how to help people
as well as
manipulate them. Where do I sign up?

I looked around the room. No one else seemed as engaged as me. But they were probably here to finish out a credit requirement or kill six weeks, not because they'd found their calling, I thought, preening a little.

Professor Latham is going to love me. Just like Ms. W loves me.

“In this class we will discuss the different perspectives of psychology, such as psychoanalysis, behaviorism, humanism, cognition. We'll look at some tentpole studies of modern social psychology, like Pavlov's classical conditioning, as well as the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Milgram Experiment, the Kitty Genovese case . . .”

I was taking notes as fast as my dad's fountain pen would let me. Unfortunately, about six minutes into the lecture, the pen ran out of ink. I reached into my bag for one of my trusty gels, and that's when my hand brushed against my phone. Which was vibrating.

And I've been classically conditioned to answer my phone any time it buzzes (which I didn't realize until Latham got to that point in the lecture), so I didn't know how to stop myself.

He likes the sound of his own voice, doesn't he?

I looked down the stadium seating of the lecture hall through other students to Cody. I could see on his computer screen that he had his text window up. But to everyone else, he looked like he was just taking notes.

I frowned. But maybe because I found the class so interesting, I felt the need to defend it.

I started typing.

Some of us are actually trying to learn.

“Now, in this class you will be expected to complete an essay every . . . Excuse me, miss? You, with the red hair and the sparkle phone.”

My head came up. Every eye in the room was on me.

“Yes?” I said, clutching my phone. I'd just hit send; I could see the message pop up in Cody's window three rows down, but he gave nothing away.

“What's your name?”

“Lydia.”

Professor Latham ran his finger down a list on his podium. “Lydia . . . Bennet?”

“Yes,” I replied, my throat suddenly dry. Like my body knew what this would mean before my mind did, because that's when I heard it. The whispers.
Lydia Bennet. The girl who . . . ?

“No phones in class, Miss Bennet,” Professor Latham barked.

“Sorry,” I whispered, as I put my phone away.

He turned back to the board, the first slide appearing on the projector. A picture of a dog.

“Today, we'll start with Ivan Pavlov . . .”

But it was too late. The damage was done. Not only did my professor think I was a flake who texted during his lectures, but to the rest of the class, I wasn't just another student, lost in the eighty-seat classroom.

I was the notorious Lydia Bennet once more.

“Hey, how'd it go?” Mary said as soon as I walked in to Books Beans and Buds. She was behind the register, and for once was dressed appropriately for the world. Her black wardrobe had found its calling.

“Nuh-uh,” I said. “That's not what you are supposed to say to me.”

Mary sighed. “Do I have to? I've said it forty times in the last two hours.”

“What did they tell you in your job orientation this morning?”

Mary's face didn't move as she recited her lines. “Welcome to Books Beans and Buds. Go, Pioneers. Can I interest you in a budding beverage?”

Books Beans and Buds is famous around here not just because of the name but because the owner, Mrs. B, is kind of super intense and makes her employees say the exact same thing to every single customer. Not in the “Welcome to McDonald's, can I take your order?” kind of way, either. When her employees don't say it, she knows. She always knows. Very few have glimpsed the infamous glare she's directed at (ex-)employees after creeping out from her back office—knowing, just
knowing
they'd failed in their duties—but it's practically become the stuff of legends.

Oh, and Mrs. B is a longtime alumni of our community college, and probably has more school spirit than . . . any human being who ever went to a community college.

Pretty soon, people from the school weren't coming in just for their caffeine or floral needs, but to hear the poor, pathetic baristas force-cheer for our very own Pioneers.

I didn't even know we had a mascot until I had a craving for a mochaccino.

“I'm afraid I'm going to need to see the hand gesture,” I said.

“Oh, I have a hand gesture for you.”

I cleared my throat.

Mary refused to look me in the eye as she clapped twice and raised her fist in the air, like the most depressed cheerleader of all time, and called out “Goooooo, Pioneers!” again.

I giggled. “Mochaccino, please.”

“So, how did it go?” Mary asked again as she went about creating the frothy caffeinated goodness that would get me through the rest of the day.

“It went . . . okay,” I said. And that was . . . an interesting interpretation of the truth.

Also interesting was the text Cody sent me afterward.

I packed up as quickly as I could once class was over. I saw Cody out of the corner of my eye trying to get my attention, but I avoided him. I got halfway down the hall when I felt my phone buzz from the back pocket of my jeans. Obviously, I assumed it was Cody. And on the chance that he was behind me in the hallway, watching to see if I'd grab my phone and what my reaction would be, I waited until I'd turned the corner and passed through the glass door to the front steps before even bothering to take my phone out.

I'm so sorry. That was completely my fault. Let me buy you a beverage of your choice to make up for it?

I hadn't responded.

What should my reaction have been? I'm still not sure.

On the one hand, yes, it absolutely was his fault. On the other, it's nice he recognized that and was willing to make up for it . . . albeit in a manner that basically confirms he wants to be more than just study buddies. And on the other hand, if he really is a good guy, shouldn't he have owned up to his texting to Prof Latham?

Once again, too many hands.

“Good,” Mary said. “Okay is good. Better than not okay, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, still kinda wishing it had been better than okay. That my dreams of . . . I dunno, shining in academia for once hadn't gotten off to such a crappy start.

“So, you have Gothic Literature next, right?”

“Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,” I said. For the next six weeks, I would be nose to the grindstone (no idea what a grindstone is or why you'd put your nose on it, but Lizzie used to say it all the time, so it must be good nerd vocab) three days a week, getting my course credits in order . . . and yes, kicking ass in academia, slow start or not. “I'll be here three times a week to bug you and listen to you clap and cheer for the Pioneers.”

“Great,” Mary intoned. “I'm sure Violet will appreciate that.”

“Who's Violet?” I asked.

Mary rolled her eyes as she pointed toward the back of the coffee shop, where the bathrooms were. Just outside of them was the bulletin board, where people could sell couches or advertise basket-weaving classes at the learning annex. There, another barista was hanging up a new flyer.

“She's the assistant manager, but she's moving up to San Francisco in a couple of weeks, too,” Mary said.

“Really?” I asked. Not a total surprise. No one our age stays in this town. It's either San Francisco or LA. North or south. They only migrate back when they want marriage and babies and weird stuff like that. “Why?”