Please note: this fic has a couple brief references to George Wickham.
When she thinks about the whole George—thing, she always thinks about microscopes.
Lydia might have liked biology back in high school if it weren't for the lab part. She doesn't have the patience or skill or whatever you need to do that stuff. Her lab partner just kind of laughs about it the first few weeks. But Lydia's late one morning—the day after they get their third failing lab report grade, and he's joined another group, determinedly avoiding her eyes.
Like it's all her fault. It's not like he could identify the stages of cell division either.
Doucheus maximus.
Lydia works by herself that day, and if Mr. Clemmons notices, between grading pop quizzes and picking his fingernails, he doesn't say anything. Not that day, or after. She works alone.
She's excited when they finally get to use the microscopes, though. In those nerdy college catalogs Lizzie and Jane had, there were always pictures of important-looking people gazing through microscopes. It's kind of cool—not cool, but—they're doing something that matters.
Lydia follows the steps in her lab manual really carefully this time. 'Plant cell lab: preparing an onion cell slide', it reads. She peels the bit of onion, snickers at the term 'wet mount', makes one anyway, and fiddles with the knob on the microscope.
For a long time it seems pointless. She's looking at a bunch of white nothing. Then all at once she turns the knob and the little shapes come into focus. They're a strange kind of beautiful, actually.
Lydia draws them and grins. It's totally weird to be thrilled about something like this—something she didn't realize she could care about until now, but she's thrilled.
When Mr. Clemmons comes by, he looks at her drawing and frowns and glances through the lens and back at the drawing. Then he tells her those aren't cells; they're air bubbles. She messed up the mount, and she's drawn the wrong thing without even realizing it. Her face gets red, like really red, because apparently everyone else knew what plant cells were supposed to look like, and when she gets home she shuts herself inside her room with Kitty until her eyes don't look all bloodshot and freaky anymore.
She thinks about that a lot, after George.