SVJH #25: Drama Queen
Once again, we're back at Sweet Valley Junior High, which is different from Sweet Valley Middle School in that...uh, there's Asians and Mexicans, I guess. Not just one-off, Manny- and Jade-style tertiary folk, either -- main characters who get to be featured in more than one book. It's called the early noughties, and you are most welcome to join us.
On the cover: Anna is sitting down in some kind of white box while everyone else is standing. Why is she doing that? Doesn't she think it somewhat inappropriate to just spontaneously sit down on the floor? Couldn't she have found a bench? Is she really that tired? Why won't those other students help her up? All questions we will never know the answers to.
We start off with Anna's journal, and she's swooning. Yes, swooning. You see, Anna has found herself a boyfriend by the name of Toby Martin, and he's so wonderful, you guys! He has cute freckles, laughs at her jokes, and he calls her every night. Except tonight, apparently. Anna's not worried, because he always calls.
Toby's journal now. He's worried that he's under-rehearsed for play the drama club's doing (which I believe is West Side Story), and it's all because of Anna. Turns out that laughing at her jokes and calling her and being befreckled takes up time, y'all. Time he should be spending learning his lines and practicing his best pseudo-homoerotic dance-rumbling. However will he keep up?
Finally, some actual story. We start with a Jessica chapter, which I wasn't expecting, because this is Anna's book. Wakefields can't help but cut everyone's lunch. It's SVJH Olympics day, which I suppose is a creative term for 'athletics carnival'. Jessica's pissed because Lacey Frells is on her team, and Lacey Frells is a full-on itch-bay. Which of course makes her completely awesome in my book. It seems that the SVJH Olympics idea (thought up by the perfect Kristin Seltzer) was so well-received by the school, they've decided to make it a full two-week after school event. Um, bullshit. Bullshit, I say! What school would think that ten days of athletics is necessary? Don't people have other extra-curricular things to do after school? Jessica helpfully informs us that the West Side Story kids are missing out on all the big sports fun, which really doesn't seem fair. At my school, we'd have the day off classes for the athletics carnival. Whoever wanted to participate participated, and the rest of us ate junk food and took advantage of our teachers' good moods to get out of detention. Is that not how teenagerdom works anymore? I feel old.
Jessica snarks Lacey some more. Apparently she's looking bored. So then why'd she come? I can't imagine that an after-school track and field thingy would be compulsory. Damon is worried that his girlfriend and his kinda-but-not-really-ex-girlfriend are gonna go head-to-head and have a "smack-down." Not my wording, I promise you.
Toby is at West Side Story rehearsals with the drama class and their advisor, the "slightly pudgy" Mr. Dowd. Well jeez, Toby, judgemental much? Some random girl named Bianca (who's playing Maria) comes by, and helps him with his lines. She coughs loudly, and Toby notices that she looks pale. Because God forbid that a tertiary character whose only role was to be a plot contrivance in an earlier book can actually overcome adversity and get to interact with the main characters for more than three pages. Catch your death, Bianca! I said catch it! Don't make me come down there!
Anna and Larissa are talking about how sweet Toby is -- the other night, he brought her flowers. On a pizza date? That's what we call overkill, Toby. Larissa's like, "In front of his mum and everything?" and Anna makes fun of her use of the word 'mum'. Because Larissa is British. Don't fret if you happen to forget this fact, because I guarantee she'll do something British every five pages or so. Anyway, Anna confesses that she and Toby haven't actually kissed yet. Dang, poor Tobes. He calls her, gives her flowers, laughs at her jokes and proudly displays those freckles she loves so much, and nada, Anna, really? Do the freckles mean nothing to you? No wonder the T-man's so frustrated. Embarrassed by her revelation, Anna suggests that they get to rehearsals, and Larissa randomly says, "I'm a dancer. I don't have any lines." You know, unless the girl playing Maria gets really sick, and she just might have to step up to the plate. On a scale of one to foreshadowing, this chapter ranks at least a twelve.
The girls find Toby in the auditorium, and he freaks out because his lust for Anna is distracting him from learning his lines. He keeps getting "pleasant chills" when she laughs or talks, and is crushed when the girls make fun of how much he loves the theatre. You guys, I'm not totally sure Toby bats for the team he insists he bats for. Just a vibe I'm getting. It's one thing to tell us you love Anna, Toby, but it's another to get "pleasant chills" every time you find a strand of hair you think might be Anna's. Something something, protesteth too much, something something. Anyhoo, the rest of the chapter is devoted to Bianca telling us how sick she feels. Aw, gee. Why don't they just put on a production of Foreshadowing, the Musical?
Back at the stupid Olympics, Lacey finds Bethel carrying a crate of eggs for the egg-toss. (Ah, the egg-toss. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about Australia's gold medal in the Atlanta '96 egg-toss. Oh, wait...) Lacey helps Bethel with the crate, and then complains about how lame this Olympics thing is. They banter for a bit, and Lacey concedes that Bethel may be a butch girl sporto and a friend of Jessica's, but at least has a sense of humour. That's kinda cute. I love when characters who rarely interact actually have some sort of chemistry. Damon comes up to Lacey and asks her to be nice to Jessica for the sake of the team. I guess he thinks the last thing this Olympics needs is for Lacey to go all Tonya Harding on Jessica Lamefield. (Technically that's a Winter Olympics reference, but I think my point remains valid.)
Toby catches up to Anna after rehearsal, and apologises for being weird. She accepts, and the two walk home together. Toby says, "Forget chills. Right then my heart practically melted all over my insides." You know, Toby, you should probably seek some sort of medical attention for that before it turns into something worse.
Back at the Olympic egg-tossing event, Jessica somehow gets partnered up with Lacey. Turns out the ol' Frellster is not happy that Damon told her not to start a war, so she throws her egg too lightly and makes Jessica skin her knee diving to catch it. Huh. It's not quite Tonya Harding, but I wasn't too far off. Jessica snarks Lacey's weak arm, so Lacey throws an egg at her. Why Jessica would aggravate her when she still has an egg in her hand is testament to the fact that Jessica is not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.
Anna and Toby are walking home, and Anna is thinking about how Toby wants to be a serious actor. Apparently, "he cares about acting the same way as Elizabeth cares about writing." Because we can't go three seconds without mentioning Elizabeth Wakefield. I mean, she writes for a webzine, for God's sakes! That's like saying Toby's dreams include acting on a reality TV show. Then Anna and Toby kiss for the first time, and Toby pretends he likes it while thinking of Neil Patrick Harris and man-purses.
The next day, Toby freaks out when Bianca doesn't show up at school. Larissa says that she's probably recuperating from that plot-advancing plague she's somehow caught, "and she'll be in tip-top shape by tomorrow." Cor blimey, Lariss, you're right as rain! The poor lass is most likely just knackered. All she needs is some tea and crumpets, and she'll be back on the frog and toad in no time! Toby then spends the rest of his chapter hoping that Bianca is okay, and largely ignoring Anna. He's lucky Anna's too blinded by his phone calls and freckles to notice his asinine personality.
At rehearsals, fat old Mr. Dowd tells the class that Bianca has strep throat, and will be dropping out of the play. Toby just about has a fucking conniption. Larissa puts her hand up immediately and is all, "Oi, missus, choose me! I'd be the dog's bollocks!" Instead, Mr. Dowd gives Anna the role of Maria and then lets Larissa take over Anna's former role as Anita. Which, why? The only reason Larissa didn't get the lead female role in the first place was because of her grades. Instead of just giving her freakin' Maria, he displaces two of his actors a week and a half before the play? Of course, Anna thinks that being the Kate to Toby's Leo is going to be great guns.
Oh, would you look at that, the Olympics are on again. Every four years my ass, IOC. Some guy called Robby Nathan (their team captain) is organising the three-legged race, and Lacey is thinking how stupid this whole thing is. You and me both, sister-friend. Robby asks for a couple of fast runners to compete, and naturally Jessica puts her hand up. Enjoy it while it lasts, Jessmeister. This character trait of yours does not follow you to high school, and you also spontaneously forget about all these people, so don't let Lacey get to you too much. Damon wants to be her partner, but concedes that he's too tall and he'll probably fall on top of her. Lacey awesomely says, "I bet Jessica wouldn't mind that." AHAHAHAHAHA! Lacey, if you don't do anything else for the rest of the book, you still win for that remark alone. Nobody puts their hand up for the race (why did they come if they didn't want to participate?), but when Robby remarks that they probably don't think they can keep up with Jessica, Lacey suddenly has a point to prove and offers to be her partner. Jessica's like, "Fuuuuck," and runs away.
The girls are getting ready for the three-legged race. Damon tells Jessica not to let Lacey get to her, and besides, she would never do anything to sabotage the team. Damon, where the fuck where you when she egged your girlfriend three minutes ago? Jess bends down to tie her ankle to Lacey's, and Lacey makes a weird remark about how Jessica should spit-shine her shoes. Really, Lacey? That's the best you could do? The race gets going, and Jessica can't believe that Lacey's trying to beat her. Neither can I. You're tied together, Lacey. Of course, she falls over, and Jessica's insatiable need to win sees her dragging her over the line like a fucking madwoman. They win, and Lacey storms off somewhere, hopefully to think of some better insults.
Anna is hanging out in her room, daydreaming about her one kiss with Toby, when Elizabeth calls. Anna excitedly tells her that she now has the role of Maria, and Liz is like, "Wow...that's a lot of work, isn't it?" Heh. Sometimes when I'm really hating one particular character, an Elizabeth judgement-gram that pulls them back to earth is just what the doctor ordered. She keeps going on and on about how difficult it's going to be spending every waking moment with Toby, and how much pressure she'll face being the new Maria. Now it's Anna's turn to go, "Fuuuuuck."
Jessica gets some advice from Ned on the Lacey situation. He goes on about how winning isn't everything, and to just kinda...I don't know, forget about Lacey, I s'pose. It's weird; he just kinda changes course on this one. She tells him Lacey's a skank bitch, and his response is, "It's not about whether you win or lose, it's about having fun." Which...which is not the problem at all, Ned. Not even in the slightest. Just...you know what? Just go home. Please, before you embarrass yourself even further.
Anna begins her next chapter with, "Until this moment I never realized exactly how much sweat my body could produce." Ew. She and Toby "Melting Heart" Martin belong together if they think this is what constitutes polite conversation these days. Of course, we're at rehearsal again, and Anna is fucking up all over the place. Toby is getting frustrated, which is nice of him considering that just a couple of chapters ago he was the one who couldn't put two sentences together. At least he'd had his part for more than three seconds.
Olympics time again. This time we have an actual, legitimate event -- a relay race. Jessica is bragging about how the weirdly-named Robby Nathan asked her to be the first runner, and Lacey gets pissy about the fact that he didn't even ask her to race. Damn you, Robby Nathan! I adore your name, but am not impressed with your Jessica-love. During the race, Jessica does what Lacey describes as the "best thing ever" -- she trips over the kid in front of her, smashes her knees and crosses the line at the back of the pack. Normally I'd be laughing at this too, but something similar happened to me when I was eight, and I kinda never got over it. Tripping over a hurdle onto that gravelly shit athletics tracks are made of fucking hurts, okay? My knee was skinned so badly, one kid swore he could see bone. Of course, Lacey laughs, and nerdy Ronald Rheece tells her off. Lacey's embarrassed to find her face turning red. I guess being told off by the school nerd in public is kinda humiliating, but won't someone please spare a thought for poor Jessica? This is officially knee-skin number two for her this book.
Toby and Anna are rehearsing their lines in the cafeteria, and Toby's all, "Why did Bianca have to get sick?" Yeah, Bianca. Never mind that the main characters in this book are completely inept and, well, just generally shit, but how dare you get sick! Let's all blame the tertiary character's shoddy immune system! Toby spontaneously becomes a dickface and tells Anna that she'll have to try harder, and Anna yells at him that she just got the part and she's doing her best. She decides to just cram by herself this weekend, and Toby becomes disheartened because he wants to spend time with her. Ooh, you don't like that role-reversal, do ya, pally? I hate Toby now, by the way. In case that's not obvious enough.
Back at Olympics HQ, Jessica is humiliated and hurting after her fall. Robby Nathan comes to cheer her up, and the nurse puts a Band-Aid on her knee. Firstly, is it really necessary for a nurse to have to do that for her? And secondly, her fall clearly wasn't as bad as my third-grade hurdles fail, so I take back all my sympathy. I had a bandage on my knee for fucking weeks, okay, and where was Robby Nathan to cheer me up then, huh? Nowhere! Anyway, the team comes fourth thanks to Damon and some athlete girl called Sheryl Goldstein. Way to shake off that Jew stereotype, Goldstein.
Just then, Lacey comes along to taunt Jessica for being such a klutz. Since Jessica's itty-bitty boo-boo is not enough to garner any more of my sympathy, I'm back on Team Frells. Jessica asks why she doesn't just go home if she hates it so much, and Lacey responds by telling Jess that she's not sure why the track team would even have her. Get this -- Jessica is so mad, she actually gets some sort of rage blackout and lunges at Lacey. Damon and Robby Nathan actually have to grab them and pry them apart. Holy shit, that's kinda awesome. An almost-girlfight in SVJH! Robby Nathan yells at them to act like a team, but Jessica's still thirsting for Lacey's blood. Sigh. If I was Robby Nathan, I'd just quit this shit and go to high school already. I'm not sure why he isn't there already, being a ninth-grader.
Thankfully we skip right to next Tuesday, which means we only have a couple more Olympics days to sit through. Today they're playing something called kamikaze basketball, and Lacey's pissed because Ronald Rheece was picked in the team and she wasn't. I guess that's what happens when you pelt your teammate with an egg on the first day of competition; you get chosen for teams less than Christopher Castile in Beethoven. She watches a battle between Robby Nathan and Richard Ghriggs intently, because "[Richard is] this guy I kind of had a thing with. Well, it's not even really a thing -- I just know he likes me, and he knows I kinda like him." Ah, thirteen-year-olds. Anyway, Ronald wins the basketball game for them, and Lacey finds herself cheering along. Whoah, Lace, that's an attitude adjustment if I've ever seen one. I suppose nearly having your ass kicked by a tiny blonde girl like Jessica Wakefield really makes you think about life.
More Anna and Toby West Side Story bullshit. He keeps getting angry that she doesn't know her lines in an attempt to cover up the fact that mere days ago, he was the one who was struggling. And since the only way he ever learned his lines was because of poor old sick Bianca, he's insecure about his own performance resting in the hands of incompetent Anna Wang instead of just taking responsibility for his own actions. Yeah. He's a raging asshat, but at least he's deep about it. Anna thinks about how their onstage chemistry is lacking now in what I like to call the Gigli effect. Let's hope that they can handle this crisis better than Bennifer did.
It's Thursday now. Salvador, Liz and Anna are having lunch, and Salvador says to her, "You look very not happy." Salvador appears to have only a rudimentary grasp of the King's English. Anna tells them that things with Toby are tres bad, and she wishes she'd never tried out for the stupid play...just as Toby comes up behind her. He pretends like he didn't hear her, and instead goes on some tangent about he fell asleep during algebra homework and woke up with a + b = c on his forehead. From what little math I know, I'm not sure that's much of an algebra equation. Unless he means a² + b² = c², but that's trigonometry. Ugh, whatever. I just don't care about any of these people. Or math.
It's the final day of the Olympics crap! Huzzuh, I thought it'd never come! Robby Nathan is concerned that Lacey is nowhere to be found. I think they'd make a good couple, primarily because I enjoy hooking up characters in my mind regardless of how much time they actually spend together. He did grab her around the waist before (when she was about to smack Jessica in the head), so that counts as junior high foreplay, right? Robby tells them that if Lacey doesn't show up, they'll be disqualified. Ronald and Jessica are like, "What?" and so am I, really. How can this possibly be compulsory? You're telling me you can't find a ringer? Elizabeth's covering this shit for her stupid webzine, why not just bring her in for the last event? She's done literally nothing this book.
Back in storyline number two, Larissa is having a meltdown. Stepping into the role of Anita is proving to be right difficult for her. Anna relishes a chance to be the big cheese again, and she tutors her for a while. But oh noesies -- she's forgotten that she's supposed to meet up with Toby for another session of him being cruel to her! She rushes to the auditorium to find him pacing, and when he sees her, he completely explodes at her, yelling about how she doesn't understand how much the theatre means to him. Then he stalks off dramatically, because dramatics are part of his character trait, I suppose. I don't know. This scene is stupid, and also, Toby's stupid.
Jessica's athletics group is still freaking out over the case of the missing Lacey, when at the eleventh hour, she shows up. Everyone cheers, but Jessica can see that she was late on purpose, just to freak them all out. That's pretty passive-aggressively awesome of her. Robby Nathan is practically jumping for joy. As soon as the chapter POV switches from Jess to Lacey, we find out that she had planned to blow off the Olympics and go to the mall, but then visions of Kristin danced in her head and she decided to haul ass over to the track and finish what she started. And also, she wanted to freak Jessica out. Hehe, that's my girl.
Toby and Anna talk about how they both suck. Toby reiterates his point about Anna not caring about the lame middle-school play like he does, and they kinda sorta break up. Anna "sank to the floor and started to cry." Oh my God, like on the cover! (Except with extra crying.) I can't believe the cover scene actually almost happened, considering the stupidity of it. I guess the people wearing the star-adorned jeans and the khakis in the background either just don't exist in the book, or they're all really mean.
The Olympics is winding down, and Team Robby Nathan is in the tug-of-war final. They try their darndest, but they fall over at the last minute and the other team wins. Jessica is happy to see that Lacey's wheezing on the ground and can't get up. Oh come on, how is that any better than what Lacey's been doing all fortnight? When the team gets their trophy, Lacey takes it out of Robby Nathan's hands so she'll be holding it in the official picture, and this pisses Jessica off. How dare Lacey get the glory when they were all just as bad at tug-of-war as she was? She goes to take the trophy just as the picture is taken, and Ronald Rheece jokes that Lacey and Jessica are forever immortalised as teammates in photo form. I'm assuming Jessica punched him after that, knowing her and her recent rage blackouts.
Back in Drama Club Land, Larissa finally tells Toby what a jerk he's being. Because it came from wise British chick's mouth, Toby takes it seriously and decides to change immediately. All of a sudden it's Friday, and it's the opening night of West Side Story, and guess what? Anna somehow senses that Toby's not a dick anymore, and their onstage chemistry is perfect! The crowd goes wild! At the cast party afterward, Toby and Anna congratulate each other, and Toby touches her cheek. No more crying by herself in the hallway for Anna, I guess.
And...that's the end? Really? One of the storylines wasn't resolved at all, and the other had a ridiculous, stupid tacked-on ending that Hannah Montana would've rejected for being too shiny-happy. I'm sorry, you guys. That just sucked. There's no excuse for the suckage we just read together. I think I'm going to go to bed.