Sweet Valley High #52: White Lies
Sweet Valley High #52: White Lies
In which John Pfeifer is a selfish, cowardly asshole. Shocking, no? bttf4444 suggested I recap this one. It's really messed up.
So, that’s John standing with sophomore Jennifer Mitchell. Looks like she’s been drinking the Wakefield lookalike kool-aid. Props to the art people for using the same guy as on the Don’t Go Home With John cover.
Liz writes her column and frets about John Pfeifer (boo!). He’s been moody and irritable lately. John himself comes by her desk and Liz asks if he’s okay. John’s like, “Wah! I have a crush on Jennifer Mitchell, whose parents are friends with my parents, but she doesn’t feel the same way about me and she’s just started dating Rick Andover!” Liz hates Rick because “he almost ruined her reputation,” and then she remembers the events from Double Love in a way that makes the whole mistaken identity fiasco Rick’s fault instead of Jessica’s. Liz is delusional. Apparently Jennifer plays the piano, and she met Rick at the music store where Rick works. Liz and John both shake their heads sanctimoniously about how Rick’s bad news because he’s been arrested for brawling and vandalism.
Hey, John, you know what’s worse than brawling and vandalism? RAPE.
Apparently Rick gave Jennifer a sob story about how he only gets in trouble because he had a bad childhood. I dunno. Liz thinks Jennifer sounds pretty dumb to fall for that, and John is frustrated that he can’t “straighten her out.” Creepy.
Rick comes into the Dairi Burger and all the kids gossip about him. Apparently he wanted to join the Droids, but he was a bad guitar player and got high all the time, so Dana bounced him. I wish that had happened in a book; it would’ve been a cool scene. Dana calls him “a total farce.” Burn! Jess starts to trash Jennifer for liking Rick, but backs off when Lila reminds Jess that she went out with him once too.
Jennifer tells her parents she was at the Dairi Burger, but not that she was with Rick. She shuts herself up in her room and talks to herself about how much she loves Rick, and how great some big plan is going to be. She can’t keep the awesome plan a secret, she just has to tell someone! But not her parents, because they’d have a fit! They’re so unsupportive, and don’t understand that she’s in TRU LUV! So she picks up her phone and dials…someone. The scene ends.
John’s the one she called: the next day at school he tells St. Liz that Rick and Jennifer are planning to run away to New York and start a band. HA! Liz is like, “This girl is really dumb, huh?” but she doesn’t say that out loud. Instead, she says, “Well, you can’t tell her parents. She’ll hate you for it. You have to let her make her own mistakes, John.” What? No, seriously, what? John’s like, “You mean let her run away from home without telling her parents or trying to stop her?” and Liz is like, “Pretty much, yeah.” Liz is so stupid. So’s John, because he’s like, “You’re right, as always.”
John? NO SHE ISN’T. If he knows she’s planning to run away, he has a responsibility to tell her parents, even if it does make her hate him forever. Better that then letting her become a high school dropout stuck in New York with a petty criminal. He’s such a dick, more concerned with Jennifer liking him than with Jennifer’s safety. John vows to watch Rick like a hawk: “If he does anything that isn’t a hundred percent legit, I’m going to pin that guy to the wall.” Better Rick than Jennifer, I guess.
That weekend, Liz runs into John at the Dairi Burger. He scowls at Rick and tells Liz that Rick and Jennifer are leaving that night. He can just tell. He’s like, “Will you follow them with me?” Liz would really rather drink cocoa and read the short stories of Earnest Hemingway book she just bought (HA! The thought of Elizabeth Wakefield spending a cozy evening with “Hills Like White Elephants” made me laugh for a long, long time.) Anyway, she agrees to go with him. As they drive along in the very car where he will try to rape Lila in 38 books, I get kind of nervous for Liz. John looks enraged, and he’s freaking her out a little.
They follow Rick to the music store where he works, and as they watch from the car, Rick goes inside and steals a guitar. Then he uses a payphone on the corner. John knows he must be calling Jennifer, because he won’t stick around town now that he’s robbed the store. John wants to call the police, but Liz convinces him to call the store’s owner instead, just in case there was a good reason for Rick sneaking into the store in the middle of the night and taking an expensive guitar. John uses the payphone to call the owner.
In the next chapter, we learn that Jess’s philosophy on men is that “you have to make them do what you want. Otherwise, they’ll never think of it themselves.” She gives Liz a hard time for not being able to run Jeffrey the way she ran Todd. You know, that’s one of the reasons I think Jeffrey is awesome, so maybe Jess should step off. When Jess goes to bed, Liz writes fretfully in her diary that she feels like she and John betrayed Jennifer by calling the cops on Rick. Huh? Everyone in this book is crazy.
Jen and Rick were supposed to meet up at 11:30 to leave. She waits until 2am, not realizing that he didn’t show because he’s in the pokey. She finally goes home, but regrets not waiting all night. She is really lame. (Though it is epically horrible for her that the two love interests the ghostwriters have chosen to give this minor character are a thief/brawler and a rapist/arsonist.) The next morning, Jen’s mom offers her juice and Jen fumes at how her parents “still treat her like a child, especially when she had almost run away from home the night before.” Because dropping out of tenth grade and running away to start a band with a boy you hardly know is so mature, right?
Mr. Mitchell gets a phone call from a DA friend of his, and then gently tells Jen that Rick was arrested the night before for stealing the guitar and some money from the store. He obviously feels bad having to give her the news. Her mom forbids her from seeing Rick again. They are responsible parents. Jen is relieved that Rick hadn’t stood her up, but also furious that the police could’ve made such an impossible mistake: Rick would never rob anyone! He must be innocent! She yells that he must have been set up, and decides right then and there that her dad must have known that she was planning to run away with Rick, so he framed Rick for robbing the store. Jennifer is quite stunningly dumb. She screams at her dad that he ruined her life and she HATES HIM! The poor man is like, “Wha?” and she storms away.
At the beach the next day the kids all gleefully gossip about how Rick is in jail thanks to an anonymous tip. Bruce says, “I always said that guy would end up on a chain gang.” Geez. Bruce really is 70. Liz tries to remind herself that she and John did the right thing, but she feels guilty for some reason. John tries to call Jennifer, but she won’t come to the phone.
Jennifer spends the week at school emo-ing about how her father, whom she’d always trusted, stabbed her in the back and put her innocent boyfriend in jail. I kind of hate her. I have no idea how she concocted this scenario, but she’s positive that’s what happened. She hasn’t said a single word to her dad all week. That night at dinner, her dad has heartburn. Jennifer thinks, “Good. Now you know how I feel. My heart feels like it’s been burned to a crisp.” Gag. She vows some more to never forgive her father as long as she lives. What a nasty girl.
At school the next day, Jennifer tells John how much she hates her father, and John is really weirded out. He tries to remind her that Rick was caught with the guitar, but she thinks her dad somehow planted it on him? Or something? I don’t know. But, even though John knows how close Jen is to her dad and can imagine how much it must be hurting them both to have this wedge between them, he doesn’t confess to being the one who called the police because he’d rather Jennifer hate her own father than him. What an asshole.
Jen is called to the school office, and John goes with her. The school just got a call that her dad’s in the hospital. Heartburn is never just heartburn: he’s had a heart attack. John offers to take Jen to the hospital, but Jen refuses to go. She has nothing to say to her dad: she hates him and hopes he dies for what he did to Rick and her. John still doesn’t confess or tell her off or anything. She is the stupidest, most childish, least likeable female character this series has ever had. (Though, come to think of it, John is the least likeable male character, so they probably deserve each other. Okay, now I’m rooting for these crazy kids to work it out. They’ll do the world a favor, taking each other out of the dating pool.) John hopes that Jennifer will lean on him in her time of trauma and then they’ll get together. After all, you can’t date rape a girl you’re not dating.
John spills the story to Liz, and she is like, “Oh my God, you are a terrible person. If you don’t tell her the truth, I will. You can’t let her hate her father for something we did, especially when he might die.” John gets kind of scary and harsh with Liz, since Jennifer will never speak to him again if he tells, but Liz isn’t intimidated. Because they’re not on a date, John can’t try to rape her, so all he does is yell. He makes a bunch of excuses to not tell Jennifer the truth. Liz tries to convince herself that John is a caring person deep down, but honestly, I do not think so. This book is proof that, even before he was a rapist, he was kind of sociopathic.
Liz drives John to Jen’s house. John tells her what really happened, and Jen gets “a look of loathing” in her eyes as she shrieks, “You were spying on Rick?” Priorities, Jennifer. John screams at her for being blind to what kind of person Rick is. Jen is like, “OMG. You knew my dad might die, and you let me go on hating him?” Liz drives these two charming people to the hospital. They don’t speak the whole way. When they arrive, they learn that Mr. Mitchell is in emergency heart surgery and might die on the table. Jennifer might never have the chance to apologize, for which she blames John. Oh, good lord. This whole situation is just as much Jen’s fault for being an entitled little bitch as it is John’s for being an obsessive sociopath.
Jen bursts into tears and, right there in the hospital hallway, she punches John! Watch out, honey. Someday you’ll be on a date with him, and he will pay you back for that tenfold. Liz leads John out of the hospital as Jen collapses on the floor in histrionic sobs.
Jennifer is out of school the next day. John panics, thinking that means her dad died. If he died before Jen could apologize, she’ll never forgive John for enabling her tantrum and he’ll never get to be her boyfriend! Liz calls Ned from the school payphone, and for some reason Ned knows all of Mr. Mitchell’s medical business. It turns out he came through surgery okay. He’s still in intensive care, but he’ll recover. John is relieved for selfish reasons. I’m disturbed that the book honestly seems to be trying to depict him as a good guy when he manifestly is not.
John begs Liz to go to the hospital to talk to Jen for him, and she reluctantly agrees, but only if he comes too. When they get there, though, John chickens out and stays in the car. Meddling Liz buys some flowers for Mr. Mitchell and writes out a card from John. Jen tries to throw them away, but Liz won’t let her. Jen cries to Liz that she hated John yesterday, but now she’s too tired to hate anyone. And, also, that after being separated from Rick for a whole week, she’s realized that she wasn’t really in love with him after all: it was just an infatuation. She expresses no gratitude to John and Liz for keeping her from running away, or relief that she was able to have this realization that she doesn't like Rick all that much after all in Sweet Valley, with her family, instead of in New York with Rick, or happiness that she was with her dad when he got sick instead of on the other side of the country. She owes John and Liz an awful lot, but never acknowledges it or thanks them. What a self-absorbed pig this girl is. Jennifer knows now that Rick was caught with the guitar because he really is a thief; she acknowledges that she always knew it, deep down, but does not admit that she’s a stupid, selfish child for reacting the way she did.
Liz goes outside and demands John pay her back for the flowers. How weird. She tells him to go up, because Jen is coming around. Jen thanks John for the flowers, and he buys her a coke. She thinks that he’s the best friend she’s ever had.
The End. That was rather abrupt. The moral of the story, as far as I'm concerned, is that John Pfeifer has always been evil. It's kind of a relief. I don't know if I could've handled a book where he was nice.
In which John Pfeifer is a selfish, cowardly asshole. Shocking, no? bttf4444 suggested I recap this one. It's really messed up.
So, that’s John standing with sophomore Jennifer Mitchell. Looks like she’s been drinking the Wakefield lookalike kool-aid. Props to the art people for using the same guy as on the Don’t Go Home With John cover.
Liz writes her column and frets about John Pfeifer (boo!). He’s been moody and irritable lately. John himself comes by her desk and Liz asks if he’s okay. John’s like, “Wah! I have a crush on Jennifer Mitchell, whose parents are friends with my parents, but she doesn’t feel the same way about me and she’s just started dating Rick Andover!” Liz hates Rick because “he almost ruined her reputation,” and then she remembers the events from Double Love in a way that makes the whole mistaken identity fiasco Rick’s fault instead of Jessica’s. Liz is delusional. Apparently Jennifer plays the piano, and she met Rick at the music store where Rick works. Liz and John both shake their heads sanctimoniously about how Rick’s bad news because he’s been arrested for brawling and vandalism.
Hey, John, you know what’s worse than brawling and vandalism? RAPE.
Apparently Rick gave Jennifer a sob story about how he only gets in trouble because he had a bad childhood. I dunno. Liz thinks Jennifer sounds pretty dumb to fall for that, and John is frustrated that he can’t “straighten her out.” Creepy.
Rick comes into the Dairi Burger and all the kids gossip about him. Apparently he wanted to join the Droids, but he was a bad guitar player and got high all the time, so Dana bounced him. I wish that had happened in a book; it would’ve been a cool scene. Dana calls him “a total farce.” Burn! Jess starts to trash Jennifer for liking Rick, but backs off when Lila reminds Jess that she went out with him once too.
Jennifer tells her parents she was at the Dairi Burger, but not that she was with Rick. She shuts herself up in her room and talks to herself about how much she loves Rick, and how great some big plan is going to be. She can’t keep the awesome plan a secret, she just has to tell someone! But not her parents, because they’d have a fit! They’re so unsupportive, and don’t understand that she’s in TRU LUV! So she picks up her phone and dials…someone. The scene ends.
John’s the one she called: the next day at school he tells St. Liz that Rick and Jennifer are planning to run away to New York and start a band. HA! Liz is like, “This girl is really dumb, huh?” but she doesn’t say that out loud. Instead, she says, “Well, you can’t tell her parents. She’ll hate you for it. You have to let her make her own mistakes, John.” What? No, seriously, what? John’s like, “You mean let her run away from home without telling her parents or trying to stop her?” and Liz is like, “Pretty much, yeah.” Liz is so stupid. So’s John, because he’s like, “You’re right, as always.”
John? NO SHE ISN’T. If he knows she’s planning to run away, he has a responsibility to tell her parents, even if it does make her hate him forever. Better that then letting her become a high school dropout stuck in New York with a petty criminal. He’s such a dick, more concerned with Jennifer liking him than with Jennifer’s safety. John vows to watch Rick like a hawk: “If he does anything that isn’t a hundred percent legit, I’m going to pin that guy to the wall.” Better Rick than Jennifer, I guess.
That weekend, Liz runs into John at the Dairi Burger. He scowls at Rick and tells Liz that Rick and Jennifer are leaving that night. He can just tell. He’s like, “Will you follow them with me?” Liz would really rather drink cocoa and read the short stories of Earnest Hemingway book she just bought (HA! The thought of Elizabeth Wakefield spending a cozy evening with “Hills Like White Elephants” made me laugh for a long, long time.) Anyway, she agrees to go with him. As they drive along in the very car where he will try to rape Lila in 38 books, I get kind of nervous for Liz. John looks enraged, and he’s freaking her out a little.
They follow Rick to the music store where he works, and as they watch from the car, Rick goes inside and steals a guitar. Then he uses a payphone on the corner. John knows he must be calling Jennifer, because he won’t stick around town now that he’s robbed the store. John wants to call the police, but Liz convinces him to call the store’s owner instead, just in case there was a good reason for Rick sneaking into the store in the middle of the night and taking an expensive guitar. John uses the payphone to call the owner.
In the next chapter, we learn that Jess’s philosophy on men is that “you have to make them do what you want. Otherwise, they’ll never think of it themselves.” She gives Liz a hard time for not being able to run Jeffrey the way she ran Todd. You know, that’s one of the reasons I think Jeffrey is awesome, so maybe Jess should step off. When Jess goes to bed, Liz writes fretfully in her diary that she feels like she and John betrayed Jennifer by calling the cops on Rick. Huh? Everyone in this book is crazy.
Jen and Rick were supposed to meet up at 11:30 to leave. She waits until 2am, not realizing that he didn’t show because he’s in the pokey. She finally goes home, but regrets not waiting all night. She is really lame. (Though it is epically horrible for her that the two love interests the ghostwriters have chosen to give this minor character are a thief/brawler and a rapist/arsonist.) The next morning, Jen’s mom offers her juice and Jen fumes at how her parents “still treat her like a child, especially when she had almost run away from home the night before.” Because dropping out of tenth grade and running away to start a band with a boy you hardly know is so mature, right?
Mr. Mitchell gets a phone call from a DA friend of his, and then gently tells Jen that Rick was arrested the night before for stealing the guitar and some money from the store. He obviously feels bad having to give her the news. Her mom forbids her from seeing Rick again. They are responsible parents. Jen is relieved that Rick hadn’t stood her up, but also furious that the police could’ve made such an impossible mistake: Rick would never rob anyone! He must be innocent! She yells that he must have been set up, and decides right then and there that her dad must have known that she was planning to run away with Rick, so he framed Rick for robbing the store. Jennifer is quite stunningly dumb. She screams at her dad that he ruined her life and she HATES HIM! The poor man is like, “Wha?” and she storms away.
At the beach the next day the kids all gleefully gossip about how Rick is in jail thanks to an anonymous tip. Bruce says, “I always said that guy would end up on a chain gang.” Geez. Bruce really is 70. Liz tries to remind herself that she and John did the right thing, but she feels guilty for some reason. John tries to call Jennifer, but she won’t come to the phone.
Jennifer spends the week at school emo-ing about how her father, whom she’d always trusted, stabbed her in the back and put her innocent boyfriend in jail. I kind of hate her. I have no idea how she concocted this scenario, but she’s positive that’s what happened. She hasn’t said a single word to her dad all week. That night at dinner, her dad has heartburn. Jennifer thinks, “Good. Now you know how I feel. My heart feels like it’s been burned to a crisp.” Gag. She vows some more to never forgive her father as long as she lives. What a nasty girl.
At school the next day, Jennifer tells John how much she hates her father, and John is really weirded out. He tries to remind her that Rick was caught with the guitar, but she thinks her dad somehow planted it on him? Or something? I don’t know. But, even though John knows how close Jen is to her dad and can imagine how much it must be hurting them both to have this wedge between them, he doesn’t confess to being the one who called the police because he’d rather Jennifer hate her own father than him. What an asshole.
Jen is called to the school office, and John goes with her. The school just got a call that her dad’s in the hospital. Heartburn is never just heartburn: he’s had a heart attack. John offers to take Jen to the hospital, but Jen refuses to go. She has nothing to say to her dad: she hates him and hopes he dies for what he did to Rick and her. John still doesn’t confess or tell her off or anything. She is the stupidest, most childish, least likeable female character this series has ever had. (Though, come to think of it, John is the least likeable male character, so they probably deserve each other. Okay, now I’m rooting for these crazy kids to work it out. They’ll do the world a favor, taking each other out of the dating pool.) John hopes that Jennifer will lean on him in her time of trauma and then they’ll get together. After all, you can’t date rape a girl you’re not dating.
John spills the story to Liz, and she is like, “Oh my God, you are a terrible person. If you don’t tell her the truth, I will. You can’t let her hate her father for something we did, especially when he might die.” John gets kind of scary and harsh with Liz, since Jennifer will never speak to him again if he tells, but Liz isn’t intimidated. Because they’re not on a date, John can’t try to rape her, so all he does is yell. He makes a bunch of excuses to not tell Jennifer the truth. Liz tries to convince herself that John is a caring person deep down, but honestly, I do not think so. This book is proof that, even before he was a rapist, he was kind of sociopathic.
Liz drives John to Jen’s house. John tells her what really happened, and Jen gets “a look of loathing” in her eyes as she shrieks, “You were spying on Rick?” Priorities, Jennifer. John screams at her for being blind to what kind of person Rick is. Jen is like, “OMG. You knew my dad might die, and you let me go on hating him?” Liz drives these two charming people to the hospital. They don’t speak the whole way. When they arrive, they learn that Mr. Mitchell is in emergency heart surgery and might die on the table. Jennifer might never have the chance to apologize, for which she blames John. Oh, good lord. This whole situation is just as much Jen’s fault for being an entitled little bitch as it is John’s for being an obsessive sociopath.
Jen bursts into tears and, right there in the hospital hallway, she punches John! Watch out, honey. Someday you’ll be on a date with him, and he will pay you back for that tenfold. Liz leads John out of the hospital as Jen collapses on the floor in histrionic sobs.
Jennifer is out of school the next day. John panics, thinking that means her dad died. If he died before Jen could apologize, she’ll never forgive John for enabling her tantrum and he’ll never get to be her boyfriend! Liz calls Ned from the school payphone, and for some reason Ned knows all of Mr. Mitchell’s medical business. It turns out he came through surgery okay. He’s still in intensive care, but he’ll recover. John is relieved for selfish reasons. I’m disturbed that the book honestly seems to be trying to depict him as a good guy when he manifestly is not.
John begs Liz to go to the hospital to talk to Jen for him, and she reluctantly agrees, but only if he comes too. When they get there, though, John chickens out and stays in the car. Meddling Liz buys some flowers for Mr. Mitchell and writes out a card from John. Jen tries to throw them away, but Liz won’t let her. Jen cries to Liz that she hated John yesterday, but now she’s too tired to hate anyone. And, also, that after being separated from Rick for a whole week, she’s realized that she wasn’t really in love with him after all: it was just an infatuation. She expresses no gratitude to John and Liz for keeping her from running away, or relief that she was able to have this realization that she doesn't like Rick all that much after all in Sweet Valley, with her family, instead of in New York with Rick, or happiness that she was with her dad when he got sick instead of on the other side of the country. She owes John and Liz an awful lot, but never acknowledges it or thanks them. What a self-absorbed pig this girl is. Jennifer knows now that Rick was caught with the guitar because he really is a thief; she acknowledges that she always knew it, deep down, but does not admit that she’s a stupid, selfish child for reacting the way she did.
Liz goes outside and demands John pay her back for the flowers. How weird. She tells him to go up, because Jen is coming around. Jen thanks John for the flowers, and he buys her a coke. She thinks that he’s the best friend she’s ever had.
The End. That was rather abrupt. The moral of the story, as far as I'm concerned, is that John Pfeifer has always been evil. It's kind of a relief. I don't know if I could've handled a book where he was nice.