Read Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet (9781476763248) for Free Online

you, too. Did Mom and Dad put you up to this?” She shook her head. “Lizzie?” Again. She opened her mouth but I barreled through. “Well, either way, seriously, I’m super fine and I will continue to be super fine. Everyone constantly asking me about whether I’m fine isn’t going to make me any more fine than I already am because I. Am. Fine.”
    Mary looked at me. I waited for her to shrug, but she didn’t.
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œOkay?” She nodded, still not looking away from me. “Okay.”
    â€œI’ve got some spreadsheets I want to set up for Lizzie, so I’m gonna get started on that.”
    â€œSeriously? Lizzie just left a couple of hours ago—she’s probably not even there yet.”
    â€œStill. She should have them before she meets with investors again.” Mary got up and made her way back to the door. “ ’Night, Lydia.”
    â€œâ€Šâ€™Night,” I called as the door shut behind her.
    Part of me knows it wasn’t easy for Mary to make that kind of offer. But I just can’t anymore.
    I looked at the clock on my phone and realized I still had some time to kill before I could justify attempting to sleep. So I dragged myself off my bed, over to the computer on my desk, and sat in the not-as-comfortable-as-I’d-have-liked chair I snagged from Lizzie’s room after she left. I tapped the mouse to wake up the screen so I could scroll through my email and found the latest one from Central Bay College.
    It came in last Friday. And when I saw the subject header, CENTRAL BAY COLLEGE FALL SEMESTER APPLICANT , I thought, Oh! Is this it? My formal acceptance? Will my student ID and cafeteria pass be attached?
    Nope.
    Dear Miss Bennet—
    We received your transcripts and financial aid information, so thank you. However, we discovered part of your application was missing.
    Please complete the attached forms and return to the admissions office by—
    Immediately, I’d checked the document, slightly freaked that I’d somehow missed part of the application. Slowly my heart ratereturned to normal. It wasn’t so bad. It was just a form asking for my name, social, a lot of the same stuff on my other forms. The only new things they wanted were two letters of recommendation (yeesh) and an essay.
    If Mary’s working tonight, so can I , I decided. Since Friday, she’d been pushing me to get this done before classes start, anyway. So I pulled out the essay questions and pasted them into a blank document.
    Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you? What lessons did you learn? What would you do differently now?
    My cursor blinked back at me.
    Now that I think about it, I have a couple of weeks to work on this. It’s way more important that I get plenty of rest for my first day of school tomorrow.
    Good night.

Lydia the Counselor’s Fantastically Awesome and Insightful Questions for Lydia the Traumatized Young Woman
    1. Barring the counselor/counseled relationship, would you do me? Would I do you?
    2. Is it still as lame to start a movie with therapy as it is to end it that way?
    3. How are you so awesome?
    4. What do you see yourself doing in five years?
    5. In ten years?
    6. In a hundred years?
    7. Why did you choose psychology as your focus?
    8. Where do you think studying psychology will lead you?
    9. Why is it important that you go to where that is?
    10. Who will you meet there, if anyone?
    11. Why can’t you just stay home? Or why don’t you want to?
    12. Where is everyone else going?
    13. If you’re so awesome, why do you still feel so alone?

Chapter Seven
I NTRO TO P SYCHOLOGY
    I don’t think I’ve ever been as simultaneously nervous and excited as I was the morning I started kindergarten. Mom didn’t work, so I never did preschool or day care or anything like that. Kindergarten was really and