Her life has shifted.  There was a rite of passage, clear as day.  She is no longer a child.  Not in habits, not in routine, or responsibilities.

She is still pinning for Benny:

On the way home thought I saw Benny.  I wonder?  Oh, will I ever get over him.  When I’m alone I think I’ll go crazy.

Have thought about Benny abstractly although he has been on my mind all day.

Benny left school.  Ernie spoke to him yesterday.  He said he wanted to know all about me.  He’s going to the University of Alabama.  Wonderful.

In these moments and others we see her as still an adolescent.  That sounds about right.  We all never grow up at all once.  We get thrown into it in similar ways to how she was.  #1:  Graduate.  #2:  Begin to loose grip on the kinds of friendships you create when you are with someone every day.  (Ernie finishes school and goes back home to Vermont.  They still see each other several times over the month, but not in the way they did at school.)  #3:  Join the workforce.

Yup.  That is right,  Babu gets hired at Hitchcock and Company.  It seems to be only her second interview through BPI and she is off on her new career.    As she is settling in, a gloom begins to color all of her entries.  She discusses the weight she feels she is putting on:

People are beginning to notice my extra weight.

Maybe she is eating more because she is bored and lonely.  Usually, I dismiss her complaints about weight gain, but here I could see it as a symptom of something bigger:

Ernie wrote and she is having a ripping time.  Same routine every day (for me.)  Work, eat, sleep, practice.  And the merry go round goes round.  Only not enough sleep.