The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet Read online

  THE SECRET

  DIARY OF

  LIZZIE BENNET

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Simon and Schuster UK Ltd

  A CBS COMPANY

  First published in the USA in 2014 by Touchstone, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  Copyright © 2014 Pemberley Digital, LLC

  Paper background, text bubbles and washi tape © Shutterstock

  “Just Dance” and “How to Curl Ribbon” images courtesy of the authors

  Interior desing by Akasha Archer

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Bernie Su and Kate Rorick to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor,

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London

  WC1X 8HB

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  PB ISBN: 978-1-4711-2322-1

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-2323-8

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  www.simonandschuster.com.au

  To the fans,

  and everyone who ever loved a Lizzie and a Darcy.

  CONTENTS

  SATURDAY, APRIL 7TH

  MONDAY, APRIL 9TH

  SATURDAY, APRIL 14TH

  TUESDAY, APRIL 17TH

  FRIDAY, APRIL 20TH

  SUNDAY, APRIL 22ND

  TUESDAY, APRIL 24TH

  SATURDAY, APRIL 28TH

  TUESDAY, MAY 1ST

  SATURDAY, MAY 5TH

  TUESDAY, MAY 8TH

  SATURDAY, MAY 12TH

  TUESDAY, MAY 15TH

  SATURDAY, MAY 19TH

  SUNDAY, MAY 20TH

  FRIDAY, MAY 25TH

  FRIDAY, JUNE 1ST

  TUESDAY, JUNE 5TH

  SUNDAY, JUNE 10TH

  THURSDAY, JUNE 14TH

  TUESDAY, JUNE 19TH

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27TH

  SATURDAY, JUNE 30TH

  MONDAY, JULY 9TH

  FRIDAY, JULY 13TH

  WEDNESDAY, JULY 18TH

  SATURDAY, JULY 21ST

  TUESDAY, JULY 24TH

  SATURDAY, JULY 28TH

  MONDAY, JULY 30TH

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1ST

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1ST—AGAIN

  MONDAY, AUGUST 6TH

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 10TH

  MONDAY, AUGUST 13TH

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 19TH

  TUESDAY, AUGUST 21ST

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 26TH

  TUESDAY, AUGUST 28TH

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 31ST

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4TH

  SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 9TH

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11TH

  SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16TH

  WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19TH

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22ND

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25TH

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28TH

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29TH

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3RD

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5TH

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9TH

  SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14TH

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19TH

  MONDAY, OCT 22ND

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25TH

  SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28TH

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30TH

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2ND

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8TH

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10TH

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11TH

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16TH

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20TH

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 22ND

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28TH

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30TH

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7TH

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 12TH

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14TH

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 17TH

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21ST

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22ND

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 25TH

  TUESDAY, JANUARY 1ST

  SUNDAY, JANUARY 6TH

  WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9TH

  TUESDAY, JANUARY 15TH

  FRIDAY, JANUARY 18TH

  TUESDAY, JANUARY 22ND

  WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23RD

  SATURDAY, JANUARY 26TH

  TUESDAY, JANUARY 29TH

  WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30TH

  SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2ND

  TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5TH

  FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8TH

  MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11TH

  TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12TH

  THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14TH

  FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15TH

  WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20TH

  SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23RD

  TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26TH

  WEDNESDAY, FEB 27TH

  SATURDAY, MARCH 2ND

  TUESDAY, MARCH 5TH

  SATURDAY, MARCH 9TH

  MONDAY, MARCH 11TH

  TUESDAY, MARCH 12TH

  SATURDAY, MARCH 16TH

  SUNDAY, MARCH 17TH

  MONDAY, MARCH 18TH

  TUESDAY, MARCH 19TH

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20TH

  THURSDAY, MARCH 21ST

  FRIDAY, MARCH 22ND

  TUESDAY, MARCH 26TH

  FRIDAY, MARCH 29TH

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  FOR DISCUSSION

  ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB

  AUTHOR Q&A

  SATURDAY, APRIL 7TH

  “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

  My mom gave me that quote on a T-shirt.

  That’s really where I got the idea. Well, that and the previous four years of undergrad and two years of grad school, studying Mass Communications with a focus on New Media. Now, almost in my last year of graduate school, in between trying to figure out how I am going to turn my forthcoming degree into a profession and manage to have a life while paying off my mountain of student loans, my mother gave me a T-shirt which, to her mind, will solve all of my (read: her) worries.

  Worse yet, she tried to make me wear it. To school.

  Curious how my mother would make a 24-year-old who has been dressing herself for technically decades wear a certain article of clothing? Then you don’t know my mother. Or her underhanded nature. I’d managed to keep the shirt buried in a drawer since Christmas, but then there was a hostile laundry takeover. That’s all I’ll say.

  Luckily, I managed to avoid this sartorial horror by keeping my gym bag in my study cubicle, letting me change from my offensive yet clean shirt into an inoffensive yet smelly oversized tee. It was really a rock/hard place situation.

  The only person who saw me in the offending T-shirt with this random quote (by the way, I have no idea who said this phrase, but whoever did, I hope they were being sarcastic) was my cubicle mate and fellow grad student Charlotte Lu.

  “Hostile laundry takeover?” she asked knowingly.

  Did I mention that we are also best friends?

  I didn’t think anything of the shirt until later in the day, when Charlotte and I were leading the Communications 101 discussion group. Somehow conversation turned from cross promotion on social media platform
s and their relative efficacy to how to reach different generations via mass communications.

  As discussion continued, Charlotte said the following:

  “Well, the difficulty with reaching different generations via any platform has always been within the message itself.”

  “Er . . . care to elaborate?” I said, hoping she had something up her sleeve to steer the discussion back to the curriculum.

  “Well, take that T-shirt your mom gave you, for example.” I was very glad at this point that I was not wearing the shirt, as it would have invited thirty 18-year-old freshmen to stare at my boobs. After paraphrasing its message for the class, she continued. “Your mother—and consequently, many of her generation—have an entirely different mindset about what your future should be. And therefore communication with them is hindered by more than just the platform—it’s the message itself.”

  In other words, my plan for my future happiness involves a lot of hard work and ingenuity; Mom’s plan for my future happiness includes my marrying a rich guy. And apparently, every rich single guy out there is just dying to take on the job.

  Later, I was talking to Dr. Gardiner, and I mentioned the T-shirt to her and what Charlotte had said in class. Dr. Gardiner laughed, and thought it was a deep well of conflict.

  Yes, a “deep well of conflict” is an excellent way to describe interactions with my mother.

  “Perhaps exploring whether disparate messages and platforms can coexist, in the same way disparate people exist in the same house, should be part of your end-of-term project,” Dr. Gardiner mused.

  Ah, yes. The dreaded end-of-term project for Dr. Gardiner’s Hyper-Mediation in New Media class. It was meant to be a large multimedia project, and I’d been having trouble coming up with an idea. On top of that, Dr. Gardiner was also my faculty advisor—meaning she’d been prodding me for weeks to also define what my thesis would be, and what I’d spend all of next year on.

  One overwhelmingly large project at a time, I’d begged her. And I went home to ponder the possibilities of the shorter but sooner end-of-term project.

  While at home, I listened to my mother harass my long-suffering father because someone bought the big house in Netherfield (a new McMansion community, with the biggest house on the hill taking the name of the whole development as its own) and that someone is supposedly male, rich, and single.

  And my mom has called dibs.

  Not for herself, of course, but for me or for my sisters, Lydia and Jane. Any one of us would do; she’s not particular. Really, depending on his net worth, she’d probably be willing to do a two-for-one type deal. Or three.

  That made my mind up. The fact that my mother had so little concept as to who her daughters were and what society we currently live in that she was ready to doll us up and trot us out like debutantes at our first ball for a stranger just because he was rich . . . The fact that she was so desperate to meet this stranger that she was nagging my father—on those occasions he’s home from the office earlier than dark—to go pay a call on the new neighbors like he’s the local welcoming committee . . . The fact that she has absolutely no clue what it is I do or what I’m studying, just telling people that I “like to talk . . . maybe she’ll end up on morning television!” . . .

  Well . . . perhaps there is a way to show the world the disparate “messages” I’ve been forced to listen to for far too long. And use a new media platform to do it.

  So, that’s what I decided to do for Dr. Gardiner’s class. I will attempt to explain my mother and my life to the world at large. Via New Media.

  After some discussions with Charlotte, I’ve come up with a few rules and stylistic choices that I think will work.

  It seems obvious, but I’ve decided to do a video blog. Me, talking to the camera. It’s straightforward. I don’t feel like I will be capable of capturing the moments of veracity necessary for a documentary, given that I have no money to pay a crew and I have to spend half my time in class, anyway. I’m a fan of the Vlogbrothers and other videos of this style, so it can’t be too hard to produce, right?

  Of course, consistency is key. We decided to post videos to YouTube twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, without exception. Even when I have nothing to talk about, these videos will go up. Part of the project is mining the “deep well” and becoming a consistent content creator.

  “But what will I talk about?” I asked Charlotte, as we broke down the idea.

  “You’ve never been short of things to say,” Char reminded me.

  “But just me on camera for five minutes?” I said. “Nothing happening? I could recount things that happened, but that’s boring, too.”

  “Well, make it not boring,” Charlotte said. “When you’re recounting events—reenact them. With costumes.”

  “Costumes?” I asked. Dr. Gardiner had been going over this theory in her class this past week. “You mean, dress up like my mom and dad talking about the rich single guy who moved into Netherfield?”

  “Why not?”

  Why not indeed? So—I’ve stolen Dad’s bathrobe and an old church hat of Mom’s, and I’m brushing off my Southern accent to impersonate my mother. Any pertinent interactions that have occurred previous to my filming will be reenacted in this way with what I’m calling Costume Theater.

  I’ll try to present interactions as fairly as possible, but I know I will also be presenting them from my point of view. However, I will not allow the coloring that comes from my perspective to affect the veracity of the content.

  In other words, I’m not making stuff up. Everything I put online will have actually happened. We’re here to tell the truth, after all.

  Obviously, I’ll also need to present documentation for the project. A record of my impressions of the act of making a long-form vlog and how the platform services the message. And a venting of my occasional frustration. I guess the fact that I’ve been keeping a diary my entire life will finally result in more than carpal tunnel syndrome!

  That’s really it. I’m sure I’ll have more rules as I go along, but for now, it’s time to see if I can make a video. The school has loaned me a camera, I have digital storage chips lined up on my desk, and Charlotte has been roped into—er, I mean, volunteered to assist me with filming and editing.

  So, here we go—let’s make a vlog!

  MONDAY, APRIL 9TH

  “What do you think?” I asked Charlotte, as I leaned over her shoulder watching the playback on her computer.

  Even though this is my project for Dr. Gardiner’s class, I am making use of my best friend. Specifically, her editing software and her talent with it. (There’s a reason that she’s the go-to aide for all the underclassmen in the edit bays at school. She knows her stuff.)

  “I think it’s good,” she answered. “For the thousandth time. So, let’s do this.”

  Her finger hovered over the “upload” button.

  “Wait!” I blurted out. “I still think I’m wearing too much makeup. And what about—”

  Charlotte gave me the side eye. “Do you want to reshoot the whole thing?”

  “God, no.” Filming the first video—which clocked in at three minutes, twenty seconds—was so much harder than I’d anticipated. Figuring out what to say, writing the intro, scrounging for costumes, writing the bit where I dressed up as my mom and strong-armed Charlotte into playing my dad . . . add that to the four hundred times I tripped over my own tongue and we had to reshoot something I said, and a three-minute video took about five hours to make.

  “So we’ll pull back on the makeup on the next one.” Char turned an impatient glare on me. “But right now, it’s Monday morning, the day you told Dr. Gardiner you were going to upload your first video, and we have class in thirty minutes. I’m pressing this button.”

  “But—”

  “Lizzie, part of having a vlog is actually putting it out there.”

  I know. I mean, I know communication is an exchange, and for it to actually occur there has to be a beginning. But Char was
about to put my entire life—my room, my parents, my sisters, my bad makeup—on display. With the click of a mouse. It was a little nerve-wracking.

  But Charlotte was, as usual, right. We couldn’t just hang out in my room all day, tweaking. Sometimes, you have to actually put it out there. So I took a deep breath and gave Charlotte a quick nod. And a few seconds later, my video was online.

  “So, you ready to go?” Char said, closing up her computer.

  And that was it.

  It’s very strange. I knew that there wouldn’t be comments yet, but all I wanted to do was stare at the screen, waiting for something to happen on the Internet. I don’t have really high expectations. I’d be shocked if anyone outside of my graduate studies program watched it. But when you put your life up for public consumption, you can’t help but worry over the response.

  However, the best thing I could do in that moment was go to class and be forced to be offline and not thinking about it for a couple of hours. So I started to pack up my bag.

  “OMG YOU ACTUALLY DID IT THIS IS GOING TO BE SO AWESOME!”

  Exactly three minutes and twenty seconds after posting, my little sister Lydia ran from her room across the hall and burst through my door, tackling me. (And yes, this dialogue is verbatim. I forget nothing.)

  “I love it so much—especially the part with me in it—it’s going to be so awesome!”

  “You said that already.” I groaned under her weight. “What’s going to be so awesome?”

  “Your video blog—duh! Seriously, it might actually make you a fraction less lame. Especially if you keep having me in them.”

  “Lydia—how did you know it had posted?”

  “Because, duh, I have an alert set on my phone for when you post something.” Lydia looked at us both as if we were stupid. Which, in this instance, I suppose we kind of were.

  Of course Lydia would be the first person to see the video. She was the first person to find out about them (other than Charlotte), by barging into my room while I was shooting to tell us that the elusive stranger who bought the house in Netherfield is young and single and named Bing Lee. Which I could care less about, but Lydia shoved herself into my project and onto camera.

  That’s really the perfect encapsulation of Lydia. She’s a photogenic, hyperactive steamroller. And as the baby of the family, she always gets her way.