SVH #126: Tall, Dark and Deadly
Yeah, you guys. It's the one where Jessica dates a vampire. Ready the hard liquor.
I'm usually pretty lenient with Sweet Valley, but damn, this book is awful. Like, one-of-the-worst-things-I've-ever-read-in-my-life levels of terrible. And I used to read a lot of Harry Potter fanfiction. Francine Pascal (who has been churning out one literary gem after another for the past twenty-five years) should feel ashamed of herself for green-lighting it. I only hope that when the ghost-writer realised what she had done, she cut off her hands in penance so that she was unable to write another word. It's not even that the writing is tedious, the story dull and predictable, and the characterisation all over the place. This is, after all, Sweet Valley we're talking about. No, my issue is that it's just so...unstimulating. It's taken me a long time to actually write this up since reading it, in part because I couldn't face revisiting it.
Let's backtrack a bit. It's not as though teenagers and vampires are a unique combination. Of course there's Buffy and Anne Rice (I was a devotee of both when I was fourteen). I remember reading a bunch of individual YA books years ago, which also dealt with vampires. Most of them were pretty crappy and usually involved vampires falling in love with humans and angsting about it. I remember one of them had a surprise twist, where the narrator turned out to be the vampire! It was the Murder of Roger Ackroyd of the vampire YA genre, clearly. Then there's the Twilight series.
Twilight, for those of you who are unfamiliar with it, is everything that this book aspires to be. And that's pretty sad. It's about a young girl called Bella who moves to a new town and is immediately drawn to a guy called Edward Cullen. Edward, it turns out, is a sparkling vampire. When I say "sparkling", I don't mean that he's a dazzling conversationalist or he's got a gleaming smile. No, Edward, quite literally,sparkles in the sunlight.Anyway, it's the same old story: the girl's a moron, the guy's a moron, she wants to become a vampire just like him and he doesn't want to kill her but can't face living without her. At one point - I kid you not - he cuts the brakes on her car because he doesn't want her being friends with some other guy.
Just think: in ten years, the teenage girls of today are going to have retro nostalgia about this series. Horrors.
Anyway. On with the book.
It was a dark and stormy night. Kidding! Not even spooky vampires can alter Sweet Valley's year-round sunshine! Actually we begin in the Dairi Burger early one evening. The cheerleaders and Lila are all hanging out and bemoaning the lack of dateable guys in Sweet Valley. As Annie Whitman puts it: "The good-looking guys are conceited; the charming guys are boring; the rich ones are complete jerks." Fair enough. Lila is in fact the only girl dating anyone right now: her boyfriend Bo, who lives in Washington DC. She rhapsodizes about him to the others, and while his supposed good points actually make him sound kind of douchey to me, she's clearly doing it to wind up Jessica. It works. Ha! Apparently - for the three of you who care - Annie has broken up with Tony Esteban and Amy has broken up with Barry Rork at this point in canon.
Jessica shows off the diamond earrings her grandmother sent her. Lila examines them and apparently they're very good quality. Just then, Spanky the monkey escapes from my last recap and runs through the Dairi Burger, snatching the earrings from Jessica's sticky paws! Not really. This scene is boring.
Time passes. The girls are the last to go and Jessica and Lila head over to Lila's car, giggling together as Lila teases Jess about how awesome Bo is and Jessica pretends to strangle her. Aw, I love them. Suddenly, Lila stops laughing. One of Jessica's diamond earrings is missing! They return to the Dairi Burger and, after establishing that it's not on the floor in there, Jessica convinces a reluctant Lila to help root through the dumpster to see if the earring has been thrown out with the rest of the trash. Lila is a good friend.
The girls dig through the garbage and are appropriately grossed-out by all the half-eaten food they're touching. Jessica is distracted by the sound of a cat mewling. She climbs up a tree to rescue it and announces to Lila that the cat will be living with the Wakefields. Isn't Jessica meant to be allergic to cats, or is that just something I made up? I personally look forward to the book where she goes into cardiac arrest after the cat leaves hairs all over the Hershey Bar. That'll teach her to keep her room tidy.
There's a switch to the perspective of someone watching them. He doesn't get a name at this stage but I'm going to spoil you all by saying that it's the vampire, Jonathan Cain. I wonder what made the ghost-writer think that naming her ~*~edgy~*~ vampire after a member of Journey would be a good idea. Anyway, Jonathan thinks that Jessica is hot. In fact, "she was so perfect, she made his heart beat painfully", the ghost-writer tells us. What the hell kind of vampire has a beating heart?
Back to Jess and Lila. They carry on digging through the trash...and come across a dead body, with a mark on its neck "like he's been bitten! By a wild animal!" Or a VAMPIRE. Just throwin' that out there. The girls sensibly run back to the car and call the police from Lila's car phone (hee).
There's a chapter break here and we return to the two girls hugging each other in terror. In the background a police officer gives a description of the body into his radio: a young Caucasian male of average weight and height. Moments later, they've identified him: Dean Maddingly, a dude from Big Mesa. "He was last seen alive one hour ago," the police officer says. That's some speedy work from the SVPD. I guess, though, there aren't too many young white males in Sweet Valley who might be confused wi- oh, wait.
Jessica, Lila, and the cat pose for photos while a reporter asks them questions. The police officer wanders over and suggests that the cat is the only witness to the murder. I'd laugh at him but considering how the police department has handled murder cases in the past, I'm not really surprised that they consider a cat to be a stellar lead. Anyway. Scene end. Lila pretty much drops out of the story after this point - except for a few scenes with Jess later on - and damn do I wish I could join her.
While all this is going on, Liz is freaking the fuck out because she cheated on Todd with some guy called Joey at Camp Echo (where she worked over the summer), and now Joey is writing to her. She's also worried that she's not interesting enough. I hope you're not going to perm your hair again, Liz. That way madness lies. She goes on a date with Todd but gets pissy when he suggests taking a moonlit canoe ride because it reminds her of Joey.
On the ride home, Todd wonders if he did something wrong on the date, because Liz has been acting strange and distant all evening. "Did I talk too much about basketball?" he asks himself, worried. Aw. Liz bitches about Todd's driving a bit and then gives him the silent treatment for the rest of the drive. Todd wonders if Liz wants to break up with him but doesn't want to ask her in case she does. Then: "He hated it when Elizabeth put distance between them." Ooooooooooh.
Once they arrive back at Casa Wakefield, they see that there's a police car outside. Liz immediately dives through the window of Todd's car and takes off down Calico Drive, shouting, "The pigs can't pin nothin' on me!" Not really. They run inside and Jessica explains the night's events. She also introduces the cat, whom she has named Jasmine. Aw, I bet Jessica went to see Aladdin three times when it came out.
On Monday morning, Liz has a run-in with new student Jonathan Cain (the vampire, remember? I hope you're keeping up) who tramples over some girl's papier-mache sculpture and then pretends not to hear Liz when she shouts after him angrily. He ignores Elizabeth Wakefield! Surely this, if nothing else, is proof of his demonic nature. Why is a vampire attending school anyway? Being initiated into the undead community has to be one of the best reasons to skip class I can think of.
Liz hangs out with Enid and Maria Slater, who's recently moved back to Sweet Valley. Enid is jealous of her friendship with Liz - Maria was also about Camp Echo over the summer and the two keep swapping in-jokes and gossip. While they're not excluding Enid out of maliciousness, I have to admit that they're being pretty obnoxious - they must realise that Enid can't join in. Enid seethes. It is revealed that Joey transferred to UCLA from Yale just to be near Liz.
Principal Cooper calls an assembly to introduce Jonathan to the school. He Miss Minchins about how awesome Jonathan is for a while and I genuinely don't know if we're meant to think that old Chrome Dome has been mesmerised by Jonathan or if introducing new students to the entire school is suddenly SVH policy. It doesn't really matter, though, because almost everyone else is certainly mesmerised - especially Jessica. "He was the most gorgeous guy she'd ever seen," the ghost-writer tells us. Oh, Jessica, you meet "the most gorgeous guy you've ever seen" in every book! Does your life consist of just meeting one guy after another on an escalating scale of cuteness?
Also suddenly crushing on Jonathan is Enid. "I've just met my soul mate," she thinks. I hate you, Enid. Jonathan makes Liz feel nauseous. Right now, you're my favourite, Liz. Whoever would have thought it? Anyway, Jonathan is immediately the most popular guy in school, even though to me he seems like a big dull dud. He scowls and broods and dresses strictly in black leather and drinks blood at lunchtime, and generally is everything you'd expect a vampire to be.
At lunch, Todd is uncharacteristically confrontational and demands that Liz tell him why she's been acting distant lately, but Liz just runs off to the Oracle office like the cowardly custard she is. Todd crushes his milk carton with his fists of fury and milk sprays all over him. "It can't get any worse than this," he thinks glumly. Aw. Todd is the saddest basketball player.
Jessica rushes out after school to hang out by Jonathan's motorcycle, wishing that she'd brought Liz's perfume Rendezvous to school with her. I refuse to believe that Liz owns perfume called Rendezvous. Scrabble seems more like her sort of scent, or maybe Eau de Stationery Cupboard. Anyway, Jessica drapes herself over her Jeep (conveniently parked right next to the motorcycle) and waits for Jonathan to arrive - but he ignores her and drives off. That's cold.
The next day, Liz cries about her Todd/Joey dilemma and begs Maria to help her. Maria tells her that she has to make her mind up on her own but she should stop dicking Todd around, although not quite in those words. That's pretty good advice but Liz doesn't like it much. "Needs moar dating two guys at the same time," is what she doesn't say. Enid shows up and rudely makes Maria leave before she confesses to Liz that she's in love with Jonathan. Liz tells her that Jonathan is lame and he has stupid hair, and Enid takes offence.
Jessica leaves the Jeep's lights on so that the battery runs down, with the plan to make Jonathan help her jump-start it. She's wearing a purple outfit because she "considered purple to be a power color". Over at SVU, Janet Howell has a spontaneous orgasm in her dorm room but she doesn't know why. Anyway, the plan fails and the jump-starting is left to Maria who is all kinds of tough because she's lived in New York, or something. Kidding aside, Maria is a ray of awesome in this book, which is otherwise a gloomy fog of fail.
Jessica finally gets Jonathan's attention the following day, in French class. She sends him a flirtatious note and he replies with,"You don't want to mess with me. I eat little girls like you for breakfast."(Edward Cullenesque sparkles only implied.) That note, incidentally, is the first thing he says in the book, clocking in at page eighty-eight. It's kind of a let-down. Jessica studies the fancy ring that Jonathan is wearing and vows to make him give it to her some day. O...kay.
Liz interviews Maria for the Personal Profiles column in the Oracle, but after two hours she's only got a list comparing Todd and Joey with each other. She worries about them over the next few days. "I guess I'm just not made for deception," she tells Maria. Except for how you cheat on Todd ALL THE DAMN TIME, Liz. Geez. Eventually she decides to stick with Todd and burn Joey's letter in the Wakefields' barbecue. Afterwards, she calls Todd up and invites him over for some smooches. Apparently she "kissed him as he'd never been kissed before". Aw, yeah! You know what that means, guys? KISSING WITH TONGUES!
Now that Liz and Todd are back together, Todd confesses his secret crush on Jonathan which, like that of almost every student in the school, has been building up over the course of the book. He starts copying Jonathan's style of dressing (uniform black) and hanging out with Bruce, who's using the goth revolution as an excuse to act too cool for school. Hey, Bruce.
Enid gets her hair dyed black at the mall. Oh, wow. Enid, as one redhead to another, I get you, man. I get you. I went through the phase of wanting to dye my hair black as well when I was sixteen. It did not go over well with my mother. She has a fancy goth makeover as well - and almost immediately runs into Maria, who is nice to her. Enid sneers. When Liz sees her new look at school on Monday, she freaks out, so Enid huffs off to eat lunch with a bunch of minor characters, who've also "gone goth" after falling in love with Jonathan. This entire subplot is probably the most stupid thing about the book. It reminds me of that fundy article which made the rounds on the internet a few years ago, which asked the hard-hitting question, "IS YOUR CHILD A GOTH?" One of the signs was - and I quote directly here - "Eat[ing] goth-related foods. Count Chocula cereal is an example of this."
Anyway, Enid and her new Count Chocula-eating pals talk about how judgmental everyone else is and then spend the rest of the meal swapping makeup tips. These are the perkiest goths I've ever seen. I feel the ghost-writer really missed the boat here for including some hilariously tragic teen poetry, for example:
Torment. The word haunts
My waking hours and clings to
The furnace of my soul.
I wrote that haiku (without any sense of irony whatsoever) when I was about fourteen. Notice how the final line has six syllables? I WAS BEING NON-CONFORMIST. You think Liz would've published me in the Oracle?
Joey sneaks into school and leaves a canoe paddle in Liz's locker. Brilliant.
Continuing the stalker theme, Enid follows Jonathan home and stares into his house. Dang, Enid. You should just call Jeffrey already. Jonathan's house is a total ruin: all the furniture is old and dusty and rats live in his kitchen. That says less "vampire" and more "teenage boy allowed to live on his own" to me, I'm afraid, ghost-writer. Enid realises that she is, in fact, going off into the deep-end and she runs away.
Jonathan gives Jessica a ride home from the mall on the back of his motorbike. The ghost-writer makes it clear that this isn't because he doesn't know better, mind, but rather because Jessica is such a temptation that he simply can't help himself. The way this book portrays teenage boys as being helpless victims of their own desires is so very gross. He warns her away from him when they reach her house but Jessica doesn't pay him much heed and wanders inside. Liz gives her a good telling-off for riding on a motorcycle - and while I can sympathise with her, you've gotta love Liz's selective memory: she seems to have no recollection of all the books where she cheated on Todd at all.
Later that night, Jonathan wanders up to popular make-out zone Miller's Point. He's tempted to eat a couple in a car who are in the throes of conversation, but then he decides against it. He wanders away, and then "a small animal crossed his path. The hunter's keen skill was sharpened by his fierce need. He caught the helpless squirrel with his bare hands and sank to the ground with the squirming animal". I can't stop laughing. This is the ghost-writer's idea of creepy? Having a vampire who's the terror of squirrels everywhere? I bet all the woodland creatures who read this book are shaking in their shoes. Anyway, Jonathan happily noms on the squirrel, pleased that he hasn't killed a human this time.
Then, presumably, he goes to Casa Wakefield and leaves Jessica's lost diamond earring on her windowsill, as the very next scene has her discover it lying there. Jonathan is pretty strange. I wonder when he stole the earring anyway. And why. I can guess why he gives it back at least: clearly he felt that a piece of dazzly jewellery was a worthy substitute for his ownsparkle.
The next day, he storms into the Oracle office to speak to Liz, who actually "recoil[s] in horror"! Ha!"I know how much power you have over your sister, Elizabeth,"Jonathan begins. When has Liz ever had any power over Jessica? Seriously, now. He continues:"If you want to protect Jessica, keep her away from me." Because Jessica put a gun to your head and forced you to steal her stuff and give her a ride home and hang outside her bedroom window, Creepy McStalksalot.
Jessica, feeling pretty glum, eats fries at the Dairi Burger after school and thinks about how much she loves Jonathan. I'd understand this attitude if she'd actually been dating Jonathan, but all she knows about him is that he's really hot and speaks French well, and their conversations all end with him rejecting her about five seconds after they begin. I honestly can't tell at this point if we're meant to think that Jonathan has brought her (and everyone else in the school except Liz) under his vampiric thrall, or if she's just really pathetic.
Anyway, Jessica notices Enid's new look and mournful expression and wanders over for a chat. Enid confesses that she followed Jonathan home. "Why didn't I think of that?" thinks Jessica. You're such a sociopath, Jess. I love you. She pumps Enid for some more information about where he lives, then leaves her sobbing at the table.
When Jessica gets home, Jasmine the kitten is missing. She's soon recovered, however, in the arms of Jonathan outside her house. He was gonna eat your cat, Jess. She rightly calls him out on the hypocrisy of him hanging around her house at night after he's told her that he doesn't want to see her, but Jonathan just tells her to be careful again before lumbering off into the darkness without saying goodbye. How rude. I think that Jonathan's mysterious stoicism is a cover for the fact that he's actually just a big dumb post.
Liz tells Jessica about her encounter with Jonathan in the Oracle office. Jessica is pleased because I don't know why and I don't want to unravel her thought process. She refuses to promise to stay away from Jonathan, so Liz decides to keep close tabs on her over the next few days instead. This is what I mean. Liz has no influence over Jessica at all.
That Saturday, Jessica goes upstairs to take a shower after a swim in the pool, promising Liz she'll be down soon to watch The African Queen and The Maltese Falcon. I kind of miss the Jessica of Steven's Bride, who was into drippy Seventies romance movies. And was dating Sam. However, after showering, she gets ready to sneak out to Jonathan's house. She drives off while Liz is in the shower.
An unsuspecting Liz braids her hair in front of the TV, watching a news report about a blonde girl in her teens who has been found drained of blood near Secca Lake. COULD IT BE JESSICA?? (I've read ahead and it totally isn't.) Liz freaks out when she sees that the Jeep is gone and Jessica is nowhere to be found in the house. She calls up Todd, who promises to be right over, but immediately after she hangs up, a car pulls into the driveway at Casa Wakefield. It's Joey! After a fleeting moment of doubt, Liz gives into base impulse and starts making out with the boy she's not dating. To hell with her possibly-dead sister!
Todd shows up and is surprised to see the door slightly ajar. Pushing it open reveals Liz and Joey making out. Time to punch some dudes, Todd!
Over at Jonathan's house, Jessica knocks on the door. Jonathan opens it and they make out. Then he pushes her away."Sorry, I have blood-breath,"he says. Not really. Actually, he says:"You shouldn't have come here, Jessica Wakefield. It may have been the biggest mistake of your life."What a charming guy.
To be continued in SVH #127: Dance of Death!
I'm usually pretty lenient with Sweet Valley, but damn, this book is awful. Like, one-of-the-worst-things-I've-ever-read-in-my-life levels of terrible. And I used to read a lot of Harry Potter fanfiction. Francine Pascal (who has been churning out one literary gem after another for the past twenty-five years) should feel ashamed of herself for green-lighting it. I only hope that when the ghost-writer realised what she had done, she cut off her hands in penance so that she was unable to write another word. It's not even that the writing is tedious, the story dull and predictable, and the characterisation all over the place. This is, after all, Sweet Valley we're talking about. No, my issue is that it's just so...unstimulating. It's taken me a long time to actually write this up since reading it, in part because I couldn't face revisiting it.
Let's backtrack a bit. It's not as though teenagers and vampires are a unique combination. Of course there's Buffy and Anne Rice (I was a devotee of both when I was fourteen). I remember reading a bunch of individual YA books years ago, which also dealt with vampires. Most of them were pretty crappy and usually involved vampires falling in love with humans and angsting about it. I remember one of them had a surprise twist, where the narrator turned out to be the vampire! It was the Murder of Roger Ackroyd of the vampire YA genre, clearly. Then there's the Twilight series.
Twilight, for those of you who are unfamiliar with it, is everything that this book aspires to be. And that's pretty sad. It's about a young girl called Bella who moves to a new town and is immediately drawn to a guy called Edward Cullen. Edward, it turns out, is a sparkling vampire. When I say "sparkling", I don't mean that he's a dazzling conversationalist or he's got a gleaming smile. No, Edward, quite literally,sparkles in the sunlight.Anyway, it's the same old story: the girl's a moron, the guy's a moron, she wants to become a vampire just like him and he doesn't want to kill her but can't face living without her. At one point - I kid you not - he cuts the brakes on her car because he doesn't want her being friends with some other guy.
Just think: in ten years, the teenage girls of today are going to have retro nostalgia about this series. Horrors.
Anyway. On with the book.
It was a dark and stormy night. Kidding! Not even spooky vampires can alter Sweet Valley's year-round sunshine! Actually we begin in the Dairi Burger early one evening. The cheerleaders and Lila are all hanging out and bemoaning the lack of dateable guys in Sweet Valley. As Annie Whitman puts it: "The good-looking guys are conceited; the charming guys are boring; the rich ones are complete jerks." Fair enough. Lila is in fact the only girl dating anyone right now: her boyfriend Bo, who lives in Washington DC. She rhapsodizes about him to the others, and while his supposed good points actually make him sound kind of douchey to me, she's clearly doing it to wind up Jessica. It works. Ha! Apparently - for the three of you who care - Annie has broken up with Tony Esteban and Amy has broken up with Barry Rork at this point in canon.
Jessica shows off the diamond earrings her grandmother sent her. Lila examines them and apparently they're very good quality. Just then, Spanky the monkey escapes from my last recap and runs through the Dairi Burger, snatching the earrings from Jessica's sticky paws! Not really. This scene is boring.
Time passes. The girls are the last to go and Jessica and Lila head over to Lila's car, giggling together as Lila teases Jess about how awesome Bo is and Jessica pretends to strangle her. Aw, I love them. Suddenly, Lila stops laughing. One of Jessica's diamond earrings is missing! They return to the Dairi Burger and, after establishing that it's not on the floor in there, Jessica convinces a reluctant Lila to help root through the dumpster to see if the earring has been thrown out with the rest of the trash. Lila is a good friend.
The girls dig through the garbage and are appropriately grossed-out by all the half-eaten food they're touching. Jessica is distracted by the sound of a cat mewling. She climbs up a tree to rescue it and announces to Lila that the cat will be living with the Wakefields. Isn't Jessica meant to be allergic to cats, or is that just something I made up? I personally look forward to the book where she goes into cardiac arrest after the cat leaves hairs all over the Hershey Bar. That'll teach her to keep her room tidy.
There's a switch to the perspective of someone watching them. He doesn't get a name at this stage but I'm going to spoil you all by saying that it's the vampire, Jonathan Cain. I wonder what made the ghost-writer think that naming her ~*~edgy~*~ vampire after a member of Journey would be a good idea. Anyway, Jonathan thinks that Jessica is hot. In fact, "she was so perfect, she made his heart beat painfully", the ghost-writer tells us. What the hell kind of vampire has a beating heart?
Back to Jess and Lila. They carry on digging through the trash...and come across a dead body, with a mark on its neck "like he's been bitten! By a wild animal!" Or a VAMPIRE. Just throwin' that out there. The girls sensibly run back to the car and call the police from Lila's car phone (hee).
There's a chapter break here and we return to the two girls hugging each other in terror. In the background a police officer gives a description of the body into his radio: a young Caucasian male of average weight and height. Moments later, they've identified him: Dean Maddingly, a dude from Big Mesa. "He was last seen alive one hour ago," the police officer says. That's some speedy work from the SVPD. I guess, though, there aren't too many young white males in Sweet Valley who might be confused wi- oh, wait.
Jessica, Lila, and the cat pose for photos while a reporter asks them questions. The police officer wanders over and suggests that the cat is the only witness to the murder. I'd laugh at him but considering how the police department has handled murder cases in the past, I'm not really surprised that they consider a cat to be a stellar lead. Anyway. Scene end. Lila pretty much drops out of the story after this point - except for a few scenes with Jess later on - and damn do I wish I could join her.
While all this is going on, Liz is freaking the fuck out because she cheated on Todd with some guy called Joey at Camp Echo (where she worked over the summer), and now Joey is writing to her. She's also worried that she's not interesting enough. I hope you're not going to perm your hair again, Liz. That way madness lies. She goes on a date with Todd but gets pissy when he suggests taking a moonlit canoe ride because it reminds her of Joey.
On the ride home, Todd wonders if he did something wrong on the date, because Liz has been acting strange and distant all evening. "Did I talk too much about basketball?" he asks himself, worried. Aw. Liz bitches about Todd's driving a bit and then gives him the silent treatment for the rest of the drive. Todd wonders if Liz wants to break up with him but doesn't want to ask her in case she does. Then: "He hated it when Elizabeth put distance between them." Ooooooooooh.
Once they arrive back at Casa Wakefield, they see that there's a police car outside. Liz immediately dives through the window of Todd's car and takes off down Calico Drive, shouting, "The pigs can't pin nothin' on me!" Not really. They run inside and Jessica explains the night's events. She also introduces the cat, whom she has named Jasmine. Aw, I bet Jessica went to see Aladdin three times when it came out.
On Monday morning, Liz has a run-in with new student Jonathan Cain (the vampire, remember? I hope you're keeping up) who tramples over some girl's papier-mache sculpture and then pretends not to hear Liz when she shouts after him angrily. He ignores Elizabeth Wakefield! Surely this, if nothing else, is proof of his demonic nature. Why is a vampire attending school anyway? Being initiated into the undead community has to be one of the best reasons to skip class I can think of.
Liz hangs out with Enid and Maria Slater, who's recently moved back to Sweet Valley. Enid is jealous of her friendship with Liz - Maria was also about Camp Echo over the summer and the two keep swapping in-jokes and gossip. While they're not excluding Enid out of maliciousness, I have to admit that they're being pretty obnoxious - they must realise that Enid can't join in. Enid seethes. It is revealed that Joey transferred to UCLA from Yale just to be near Liz.
Principal Cooper calls an assembly to introduce Jonathan to the school. He Miss Minchins about how awesome Jonathan is for a while and I genuinely don't know if we're meant to think that old Chrome Dome has been mesmerised by Jonathan or if introducing new students to the entire school is suddenly SVH policy. It doesn't really matter, though, because almost everyone else is certainly mesmerised - especially Jessica. "He was the most gorgeous guy she'd ever seen," the ghost-writer tells us. Oh, Jessica, you meet "the most gorgeous guy you've ever seen" in every book! Does your life consist of just meeting one guy after another on an escalating scale of cuteness?
Also suddenly crushing on Jonathan is Enid. "I've just met my soul mate," she thinks. I hate you, Enid. Jonathan makes Liz feel nauseous. Right now, you're my favourite, Liz. Whoever would have thought it? Anyway, Jonathan is immediately the most popular guy in school, even though to me he seems like a big dull dud. He scowls and broods and dresses strictly in black leather and drinks blood at lunchtime, and generally is everything you'd expect a vampire to be.
At lunch, Todd is uncharacteristically confrontational and demands that Liz tell him why she's been acting distant lately, but Liz just runs off to the Oracle office like the cowardly custard she is. Todd crushes his milk carton with his fists of fury and milk sprays all over him. "It can't get any worse than this," he thinks glumly. Aw. Todd is the saddest basketball player.
Jessica rushes out after school to hang out by Jonathan's motorcycle, wishing that she'd brought Liz's perfume Rendezvous to school with her. I refuse to believe that Liz owns perfume called Rendezvous. Scrabble seems more like her sort of scent, or maybe Eau de Stationery Cupboard. Anyway, Jessica drapes herself over her Jeep (conveniently parked right next to the motorcycle) and waits for Jonathan to arrive - but he ignores her and drives off. That's cold.
The next day, Liz cries about her Todd/Joey dilemma and begs Maria to help her. Maria tells her that she has to make her mind up on her own but she should stop dicking Todd around, although not quite in those words. That's pretty good advice but Liz doesn't like it much. "Needs moar dating two guys at the same time," is what she doesn't say. Enid shows up and rudely makes Maria leave before she confesses to Liz that she's in love with Jonathan. Liz tells her that Jonathan is lame and he has stupid hair, and Enid takes offence.
Jessica leaves the Jeep's lights on so that the battery runs down, with the plan to make Jonathan help her jump-start it. She's wearing a purple outfit because she "considered purple to be a power color". Over at SVU, Janet Howell has a spontaneous orgasm in her dorm room but she doesn't know why. Anyway, the plan fails and the jump-starting is left to Maria who is all kinds of tough because she's lived in New York, or something. Kidding aside, Maria is a ray of awesome in this book, which is otherwise a gloomy fog of fail.
Jessica finally gets Jonathan's attention the following day, in French class. She sends him a flirtatious note and he replies with,"You don't want to mess with me. I eat little girls like you for breakfast."(Edward Cullenesque sparkles only implied.) That note, incidentally, is the first thing he says in the book, clocking in at page eighty-eight. It's kind of a let-down. Jessica studies the fancy ring that Jonathan is wearing and vows to make him give it to her some day. O...kay.
Liz interviews Maria for the Personal Profiles column in the Oracle, but after two hours she's only got a list comparing Todd and Joey with each other. She worries about them over the next few days. "I guess I'm just not made for deception," she tells Maria. Except for how you cheat on Todd ALL THE DAMN TIME, Liz. Geez. Eventually she decides to stick with Todd and burn Joey's letter in the Wakefields' barbecue. Afterwards, she calls Todd up and invites him over for some smooches. Apparently she "kissed him as he'd never been kissed before". Aw, yeah! You know what that means, guys? KISSING WITH TONGUES!
Now that Liz and Todd are back together, Todd confesses his secret crush on Jonathan which, like that of almost every student in the school, has been building up over the course of the book. He starts copying Jonathan's style of dressing (uniform black) and hanging out with Bruce, who's using the goth revolution as an excuse to act too cool for school. Hey, Bruce.
Enid gets her hair dyed black at the mall. Oh, wow. Enid, as one redhead to another, I get you, man. I get you. I went through the phase of wanting to dye my hair black as well when I was sixteen. It did not go over well with my mother. She has a fancy goth makeover as well - and almost immediately runs into Maria, who is nice to her. Enid sneers. When Liz sees her new look at school on Monday, she freaks out, so Enid huffs off to eat lunch with a bunch of minor characters, who've also "gone goth" after falling in love with Jonathan. This entire subplot is probably the most stupid thing about the book. It reminds me of that fundy article which made the rounds on the internet a few years ago, which asked the hard-hitting question, "IS YOUR CHILD A GOTH?" One of the signs was - and I quote directly here - "Eat[ing] goth-related foods. Count Chocula cereal is an example of this."
Anyway, Enid and her new Count Chocula-eating pals talk about how judgmental everyone else is and then spend the rest of the meal swapping makeup tips. These are the perkiest goths I've ever seen. I feel the ghost-writer really missed the boat here for including some hilariously tragic teen poetry, for example:
Torment. The word haunts
My waking hours and clings to
The furnace of my soul.
I wrote that haiku (without any sense of irony whatsoever) when I was about fourteen. Notice how the final line has six syllables? I WAS BEING NON-CONFORMIST. You think Liz would've published me in the Oracle?
Joey sneaks into school and leaves a canoe paddle in Liz's locker. Brilliant.
Continuing the stalker theme, Enid follows Jonathan home and stares into his house. Dang, Enid. You should just call Jeffrey already. Jonathan's house is a total ruin: all the furniture is old and dusty and rats live in his kitchen. That says less "vampire" and more "teenage boy allowed to live on his own" to me, I'm afraid, ghost-writer. Enid realises that she is, in fact, going off into the deep-end and she runs away.
Jonathan gives Jessica a ride home from the mall on the back of his motorbike. The ghost-writer makes it clear that this isn't because he doesn't know better, mind, but rather because Jessica is such a temptation that he simply can't help himself. The way this book portrays teenage boys as being helpless victims of their own desires is so very gross. He warns her away from him when they reach her house but Jessica doesn't pay him much heed and wanders inside. Liz gives her a good telling-off for riding on a motorcycle - and while I can sympathise with her, you've gotta love Liz's selective memory: she seems to have no recollection of all the books where she cheated on Todd at all.
Later that night, Jonathan wanders up to popular make-out zone Miller's Point. He's tempted to eat a couple in a car who are in the throes of conversation, but then he decides against it. He wanders away, and then "a small animal crossed his path. The hunter's keen skill was sharpened by his fierce need. He caught the helpless squirrel with his bare hands and sank to the ground with the squirming animal". I can't stop laughing. This is the ghost-writer's idea of creepy? Having a vampire who's the terror of squirrels everywhere? I bet all the woodland creatures who read this book are shaking in their shoes. Anyway, Jonathan happily noms on the squirrel, pleased that he hasn't killed a human this time.
Then, presumably, he goes to Casa Wakefield and leaves Jessica's lost diamond earring on her windowsill, as the very next scene has her discover it lying there. Jonathan is pretty strange. I wonder when he stole the earring anyway. And why. I can guess why he gives it back at least: clearly he felt that a piece of dazzly jewellery was a worthy substitute for his ownsparkle.
The next day, he storms into the Oracle office to speak to Liz, who actually "recoil[s] in horror"! Ha!"I know how much power you have over your sister, Elizabeth,"Jonathan begins. When has Liz ever had any power over Jessica? Seriously, now. He continues:"If you want to protect Jessica, keep her away from me." Because Jessica put a gun to your head and forced you to steal her stuff and give her a ride home and hang outside her bedroom window, Creepy McStalksalot.
Jessica, feeling pretty glum, eats fries at the Dairi Burger after school and thinks about how much she loves Jonathan. I'd understand this attitude if she'd actually been dating Jonathan, but all she knows about him is that he's really hot and speaks French well, and their conversations all end with him rejecting her about five seconds after they begin. I honestly can't tell at this point if we're meant to think that Jonathan has brought her (and everyone else in the school except Liz) under his vampiric thrall, or if she's just really pathetic.
Anyway, Jessica notices Enid's new look and mournful expression and wanders over for a chat. Enid confesses that she followed Jonathan home. "Why didn't I think of that?" thinks Jessica. You're such a sociopath, Jess. I love you. She pumps Enid for some more information about where he lives, then leaves her sobbing at the table.
When Jessica gets home, Jasmine the kitten is missing. She's soon recovered, however, in the arms of Jonathan outside her house. He was gonna eat your cat, Jess. She rightly calls him out on the hypocrisy of him hanging around her house at night after he's told her that he doesn't want to see her, but Jonathan just tells her to be careful again before lumbering off into the darkness without saying goodbye. How rude. I think that Jonathan's mysterious stoicism is a cover for the fact that he's actually just a big dumb post.
Liz tells Jessica about her encounter with Jonathan in the Oracle office. Jessica is pleased because I don't know why and I don't want to unravel her thought process. She refuses to promise to stay away from Jonathan, so Liz decides to keep close tabs on her over the next few days instead. This is what I mean. Liz has no influence over Jessica at all.
That Saturday, Jessica goes upstairs to take a shower after a swim in the pool, promising Liz she'll be down soon to watch The African Queen and The Maltese Falcon. I kind of miss the Jessica of Steven's Bride, who was into drippy Seventies romance movies. And was dating Sam. However, after showering, she gets ready to sneak out to Jonathan's house. She drives off while Liz is in the shower.
An unsuspecting Liz braids her hair in front of the TV, watching a news report about a blonde girl in her teens who has been found drained of blood near Secca Lake. COULD IT BE JESSICA?? (I've read ahead and it totally isn't.) Liz freaks out when she sees that the Jeep is gone and Jessica is nowhere to be found in the house. She calls up Todd, who promises to be right over, but immediately after she hangs up, a car pulls into the driveway at Casa Wakefield. It's Joey! After a fleeting moment of doubt, Liz gives into base impulse and starts making out with the boy she's not dating. To hell with her possibly-dead sister!
Todd shows up and is surprised to see the door slightly ajar. Pushing it open reveals Liz and Joey making out. Time to punch some dudes, Todd!
Over at Jonathan's house, Jessica knocks on the door. Jonathan opens it and they make out. Then he pushes her away."Sorry, I have blood-breath,"he says. Not really. Actually, he says:"You shouldn't have come here, Jessica Wakefield. It may have been the biggest mistake of your life."What a charming guy.
To be continued in SVH #127: Dance of Death!