The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet

by Bernie Su

  “Just . . . pretend it never happened,” she said. “Because, as it turns out, it didn’t.”

  I nodded. As I closed the door behind me, I could hear Jane’s voice soften with love as she answered her phone. “Hi, Bing . . . I miss you, too . . .”

  MONDAY, AUGUST 6TH

  Home for a few days now, and we have settled back into some kind of normalcy. Charlotte and I have spent all weekend together—I’d never really thought about it before, but our friendship is really reliant upon the fact that we live down the street from each other and can hang out at odd hours because of it. No more speed coffee dates. No more catching up on webcam. We just pop over to each other’s houses, second children in each of our families.

  I can’t imagine what would happen if either of us ever moved away from each other. Which is all the scarier because it could happen relatively soon. We are setting our schedules for our last year of grad school—course registration is next week. One more year, and then . . . the real world.

  But right now, I’m just glad to be back in my real world.

  Lydia, of course, is still Lydia—bubbling over from her adventures with Mary and prodding Jane for details of the month with Bing. Jane is handling it well, the forty-eight hours of worry quickly fading away while the previous twenty-eight days of wonderful remain strong in her mind. For me, however, the glowy feeling of missing my little sister and appreciating her energy wore off after the first couple of days, and now I’m back to being more or less perplexed by Lydia and shaking my head ruefully at her antics.

  Mom is back to her normal self—humming, cooking, asking passive-aggressive questions about her daughters’ love lives. Which can only mean one thing: that she is currently thinking up her next Convoluted Plan. And I’m pretty sure it involves me.

  And Ricky Collins.

  Yes, my second-grade betrothed and recent annoying run-in at VidCon turned up on our doorstep on Saturday. He’s in town to help pack up his mother’s house—she’s decided she likes Florida and it’s the perfect place to retire. Since she left my parents with the keys to her house, to help keep an eye on the place, it makes logical sense that he would stop by first thing.

  It makes less logical sense that my mother would pull him to her bosom and invite him to dinner. But when presented with a young man of marriageable age—fiancée or not—she is not about to let him out of her sight.

  And of course, she seated him right next to me.

  “Well, the two of you have sooooo much in common,” Mom said as she served up her famous shepherd’s pie. “You’re studying communications . . . something, and Ricky—oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Collins has a company that does communications . . .” She giggled like a schoolgirl. “Surely the two of you will find just oodles to talk about.”

  It is at times like this that I appreciate my father. Because my father has tact, and the discretion to know when to use it.

  And when not to.

  “So, I understand we are to congratulate you on your recent engagement, Mr.—er, Ricky,” Dad said, earning a look from my mother, and a noticeably small portion of shepherd’s pie.

  “Oh, yes! Thank you, Mr. Bennet! I am supremely gratified that my darling fiancée has agreed to become my permanent life partner,” Ricky said so gleefully that little flecks of mashed potato ended up in his George Lucas beard. (The definition of a George Lucas beard being a beard grown to indicate a maturity that one’s boyish features or a naïve aspect might otherwise belie. See also: lack of chin.)

  “That’s so sweet.” Jane smiled. “How did you meet?”

  “We met among the electrical synapses of the World Wide Web! It was an incredibly exciting and educational experience for me, and I like to think for us both. It allowed us the leisure of getting to know one another on an intimate level without the societal pressures of personal interactivity.”

  So, he met his fiancée online. Not too weird in this day and age, and given that Ricky Collins can be a lot to take in person, it actually made a lot of sense. Until . . .

  “I like to think that upon the august occasion when we finally stand before each other, we will have made such strides in our personal connection that there is little we need say to each other.”

  “Wait . . .” Lydia piped up. “You mean, you haven’t, like, met each other yet? For real?”

  Ricky bristled. “I like to think that the meeting of our harmonious minds via the Internet is, as you say, ‘for real,’ but if you are asking if we have met in person, the answer is no.”

  “OMG,” Lydia giggled under her breath, reaching for her phone. “I have to tell everyone I know.”

  I swatted her hand away and forced her to calm down. “I’m sure there is a perfectly logical reason for . . . not having met.” Although I couldn’t think of one at the moment. Seriously, how can you know if you want to spend the rest of your life with someone if you haven’t even been in the same room together?

  But Ricky brightened, and turned his cheerful smile on me. “Indeed there is, Miss Bennet! My betrothed and I unfortunately live some distance apart—I wading into the waters of the Silicon Valley–adjacent suburbs, and my fiancée in the wild and wooly northern plains of Winnipeg, Manitoba! Add to that the hard work and dedication I have been required to outlay in the growing of my titular company, Collins & Collins, and finding the time to travel to each other has been more of a challenge than previously expected.”

  See what I mean about him being a little overwhelming in person?

  “There, Lydia,” I said, trying to be kind. “Perfectly—”

  “And as my primary investor, the estimable Catherine De Bourgh, has always said, ‘the work must come first!’—especially as I am spending her money to do it.”

  “Catherine De Bourgh!” my mother exclaimed, passing. “Just her name makes her sound like someone important . . . How lucky for you she took an interest in your company.”

  “Lucky, indeed!” Ricky replied. “She is the most helpful of all venture capitalists! She has advised me invaluably on all aspects of my business—who to hire, what to produce, where to lease office space. I find her to be the most glorious of mentors.”

  “Er, yes,” my father said, clearing his throat. “And what is it that your company does? Collins & Collins, was it?”

  “Yes, the small stipend bequeathed to me by my father upon my matriculation is what I used to initially fund the company, thus I thought it a fitting tribute to name the venture after him.”

  “But what does it do?”

  “Oh! We make audiovisual content meant to be primarily consumed via streaming methods. Or at least, we will.”

  “Will?” I asked. “You haven’t begun yet?”

  “Sadly, I have not the staff nor infrastructure in place, but I hope to soon. We will begin by producing instructional videos of basic yet perplexing household tasks for corporate partners producing said household goods. Then, with time, we will venture into the lucrative world of reality television! While it may be lowbrow, as Catherine De Bourgh says, ‘catering to the lowest common denominator is an essential part of any money-making venture’!”

  So. He makes—or will make—lame corporate “how-to” videos with aspirations for reality TV. One can only assume, given his venture capitalist’s apparent love of the lowest common denominator, that their titles will be akin to Fat People on Skinny Island or Extreme Hoarding Bridezillas. But far from being put off by these revelations, my mother just leaned in and put her hand over Ricky’s, a consummate gesture of affection (or, a gesture of “I’m not letting you go”).

  “Such ambition! Starting your own company, making money . . . and making audiovisuals! Why, I cannot comprehend the creativity of young people these days. Can you, Lizzie?”

  “Well, of course Miss Lizzie Bennet can,” Ricky replied before I could. “After all, she is well versed in the field of online video.”

  “Is she?” my mom asked, visibly confused. I felt a tingle go up my spine. “Well, I know she’s gett
ing her degree and all that . . .”

  “Yes, of course her degree. But there is also the project she and Miss Lu are endeavoring to—”

  “Ricky!” I exclaimed. “I mean, um, Mr. Collins. That’s, um . . . that’s boring. So, tell me—”

  “I beg to disagree, Miss Bennet! Why, you are—”

  “God, Ricky,” Lydia jumped in. “No one wants to hear about that paper Lizzie’s been writing all summer. Trust me, if Lizzie says it’s boring, it’s WAY boring. But you know what’s not boring? Going to Carter’s! We haven’t been in ages!”

  “Carter’s? If I recall correctly, isn’t that an establishment that serves alcoholic beverages?” Ricky looked aghast. “And are you not underage?”

  “Oh, um, they don’t serve me,” Lydia said, with a sly look to our parents. “I just play the video games.”

  “Still, as my VC Catherine De Bourgh says, ‘today’s youth must be vigilant if they are not to become brain-dead sucking upon the teat of every stimulant and pleasure they can find.’ ”

  As Ricky droned on, mostly about Catherine De Bourgh, a little about his fiancée, and thankfully never touching on my videos again, I shot a look to my mother. She looked as if she was down, but not out of this particular fight.

  However, I could only shake my head and sigh. Sorry, Mom. But Ricky is engaged, and even if he weren’t, he’s a bit too enraptured by his shady online video company and imperious benefactor to take much notice of me.

  Better luck next time.

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 10TH

  Mom is not the type to give up that easily, it seems.

  So what if Ricky’s engaged? So what if he’s a polysyllabic idiot? He’s here, he’s technically single, and she has the one thing he can’t say no to.

  Food.

  When in doubt, Mom breaks out the recipe box.

  Thankfully, she’s skipped the salmon and lamb, sparing my father a finance-induced aneurysm. But she can do amazing things with plain old meat and potatoes. So far, we’ve had shepherd’s pie, apple and cheddar meat pastries, spaghetti with homemade meatballs, and a more successful reprisal of the bananas flambé (Lydia told me she’d been practicing at Aunt Martha’s). If Mom had any objection to having been limited to the cheaper end of the meal spectrum, she hasn’t said anything.

  And Ricky, poor soul that he is, has joyfully taken the bait. He’s been our guest at dinner every night this week. Mom’s rationale is that he’s just down the street, and he must be so tired after working on packing up his mother’s house all day that he requires sustenance. And that’s fine, and likely fair . . . if I had ever seen Ricky doing any hard labor. Mostly, when I drive by his mom’s house on the way to the library, I have spied him sitting in a lounge chair outside, talking on his phone, while young men in logoed moving company shirts and weight belts do all the heavy lifting. (Let’s be thankful Lydia hasn’t felt the need to wander down that way, else she’d disrupt their work entirely.) Forget hard work; I’ve never even seen Ricky out of his ill-fitting suit.

  And he’s always coming by the house, with the seeming specific intention of talking to me. Butting into my life—hell, barging into my bedroom! Which I do not get. Not the basic manners thing, although I don’t get that, either, but his constant hovering. Charlotte says that we should be nicer, and maybe try to learn a little bit from him—of all the people we met with at VidCon, Ricky is the only one who’s here. And I didn’t even contact him afterward, like I did everyone else I collected business cards from. He just . . . showed up.

  However, I don’t know what it is I would learn from Ricky . . . After all, he’s never made a web video as far as I can tell. He decided on working in online content because he considers the market largely untapped—not because he has any great love or understanding of it. Hence, his desire to create corporate videos and bad reality TV.

  Maybe, however, it’s the reverse. Maybe he wants to learn about web video from me—after all, he knows about my videos. Thankfully, with Lydia’s intervention and a discreet after-dinner conversation, we managed to clue Ricky in to not mentioning the videos in front of my parents anymore, but now . . . now he sort of thinks he’s in on this great secret.

  First Caroline, now Ricky Collins. The oddest people have discovered my videos. I don’t really know how to feel about it, except that Ricky never seemed to notice that I (and my mother) called him a dickhead on them. Which, is good, I suppose.

  I just wish I could figure out what he wanted from me. From us. Other than a bunch of fancy meals my mom labors over for hours and then forces us to sit through multiple courses of with painfully polite conversation. Mostly from Ricky, and mostly about Catherine De Bourgh.

  I would like to figure this out before Mom gets desperate, decides to up her game, and goes back to bankrupting the family with her elaborate meals. I did spy another mortgage meeting in my dad’s day planner (yes, I’ve taken to snooping through my dad’s desk, what’s your point?) and with that and the remodel, it makes me worried that such a time is coming sooner than I think.

  MONDAY, AUGUST 13TH

  My phone lit up like a Christmas tree this morning. Kitty was sleeping on my chest and stared at me angrily when I moved her. If Kitty was here, it must have meant that Lydia had gotten up very early that morning, to catch the bus to community college for class registration. Lydia had lost car privileges again and been forced onto public transit ever since she got bored and decided to teach herself papier-mâché and left her life-size replica of her old pony Mr. Wuffles in the backseat of her/Mom’s car, wherein it melted.

  Mom was not happy.

  Neither was Kitty when I pushed her off my chest to reach for my phone.

  My heart started going a little faster. It had been a while since I’d heard from George Wickham. His job rolled out of town and he got caught up in other things, as did I. Truth be told, I hadn’t thought that much about him . . . except for the occasional daydream about his surprisingly charming shoulders. But now . . . he was texting me again. Interesting.

  I couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across my face. I typed back:

  (I put the smiley face on just in case. But then I worried I should have gone with the winky face.)

  And now, I was picturing him in a Speedo. How did it get so hot in my room?

  Well, well, well. George Wickham was texting again, possibly coming back through town. This could make for a very welcome distraction from the perpetual annoyance of Ricky Collins.

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 19TH

  “Are you sure you want to put this online?”

  Charlotte leaned over my shoulder, watching the playback of the video I shot today. I’m currently rocking back and forth, such is my shock and anger. On tomorrow’s video, I was supposed to be talking about how my mother is crazy and trying to push me and Ricky together—heck, she even mentioned “partnering” with him, which ew—when, suddenly, Ricky himself was making the same proposal.

  While I was filming my video.

  Yes, I got proposed to by Mr. Ricky Collins. On camera.

  Except, what he asked me was not for my hand in marriage (his hands already being full with his as-yet-unmet Canadian fiancée), but instead, my hand in business.

  He asked me to be his business partner at Collins & Collins.

  Apparently, it was his objective in coming here all along. Packing up his mother’s house was the excuse. His primary investor, Catherine De Bourgh, had advised him to get a business partner, presumably someone who knew about this “Internet video craze and how to monetize it.” Ricky, having run into Charlotte and me at VidCon, and been impressed by my videos’ viewership (he even asked to see my analytics, which felt a little invasive. Like, if when you went to the doctor, he took down your address and then asked how much you pay in rent. But I digress.), decided that I would be the perfect person to . . . how did he put it? “Share this most important part of my [his] life.”

  Someone should point his fiancée to my videos. They would be educational.
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  Regardless, the lack of background and education that Ricky has in Internet video is surpassed only by the lack of respect he has for me, if the way he went about offering this proposition shows me anything.

  First, he said that my lack of connections in the industry were a hindrance.

  Secondly, he said he would have to compensate for my lack of business acumen.

  Then, he said that I would have to give up my pursuit of my degree, and while that was a huge sacrifice (for him—not having a business partner with an advanced degree would be shameful), it was one he was willing to make.

  All of this . . . for the chance to make corporate how-to videos with the hopeful future prospect of bad reality TV.

  My gut churned as I listened to him. And the only thing I could do was listen because he, as per usual, did not let me get a word in edgewise. Finally I had to interrupt—well, yell at him.

  I told him no. It took him a few times to get it; thinking I was negotiating, he offered me benefits, and a signing bonus, bigger and bigger manila envelopes of corporate compensation, and . . .

  I couldn’t do it. Maybe if I could have stomached Ricky or stomached his business model I would have considered it—but I can’t stand either. So I told him off, as forcefully and finally as I could.

  “I am well-connected, funded, and offering you a respectable position,” he’d bristled. “As charming as you are, you are unlikely to ever be offered anything comparable with your connections and degree.”

  Read: I was turning down the best if not only offer I’ll ever get and am ruining my life in doing so.

  There are times you have to be reserved. Circumspect. And then there are times you need to forcibly eject a guy from your bedroom—which he barged into without asking in the first place.