SVH Senior Year #29: Where We Belong
This book has no crazy stalkers in it, which I thought was definitely a let down. That aside, there was no shortage of things to snark, so let's go ahead and make with the mocking, shall we?
The A Plot:
Apparently, Tia told Ken about Maria's reaction when it looked like he'd been hurt in the last big football game. Ken is thrilled! He still has feelings for Maria, and her behaviour shows she does too, so of course it's only natural they get back together. It's Wednesday, so he drives over to the coffee house, where she's studying; on the way, a popular love song starts playing on the radio. It's fate! Clearly, they are meant to be! And I am reeling in shock, since it seems the title of this book actually has some relevance to the contents. Who woulda thunk? Ken waltzes over to Maria's table, annoyingly cheerful and full of swaggering confidence. He starts by telling Maria it's over between him and Melissa, who he never wanted to be with; he only felt sorry for her. And now he just wants things back the way they were. Shockingly, this very smooth and emotional spiel doesn't work. Maria totally shoots him down, saying "I can't believe you think you can just walk in here and try to take back everything that's happened. Did you expect me to fall into your arms and cry with gratitude or something?" Hee! Ken is devastated and can't understand what just happened. (Here's a clue, maybe stop acting like an arrogant jerk?) She takes off, upset and frustrated. She needs to vent to someone, so she heads over to talk to Elizabeth, whose current boy problems make her a perfect sympathetic ear.
The next day, Ken is still trying to figure out where he went wrong. He knows her well enough to realize she does have feelings for him, whatever she might have said. He thinks maybe she's afraid. So the best way to get around it? Totally to flirt with the cute cheerleader sitting next to him in class. Because making someone jealous on purpose is a scheme that always works, right? She, of course, coldly ignores him, and Ken is left trying to figure out how jealousy managed to push them further apart. I'm thinking Ken has taken a few too many footballs to the head recently. He's dropped to Todd mentality levels here.
After class, Ken chases after Maria, and awkwardly tries to explain away his flirting ("I had nothing else to do. I was killing time before class, and since you weren't talking to me...") Obviously, this doesn't fly with Maria, since now it looks like he just goes for what's available and drops it when he's tired of it. He tries to get across that she's really the only one he wants, but she assures him it's over between them. And then she runs off to the bathroom to have a good cry.
Some seemingly random guy named Steve starts talking to Maria after their student-government meeting. Student government? That sounds kind of pretentious, don't you think? I dunno, it was always student council in my schools. Apparently she's president and he's vp. At any rate, random Steve asks her out for coffee, and she figures a date is the perfect way to help her start getting over Ken. After all, she hasn't been out with anyone since they broke up. She accepts, much to Ken's chagrin, because he just so happens to be walking past at that very moment. Oh, Sweet Valley and your utter reliance on coincidence!
At football practice, Ken's head is anywhere but in the game. He plays terribly, earning a grumble from the coach and pretty much the whole team. He doesn't care, though. He figures since Maria accepted a date with someone else, it's time to step up the action, but he doesn't know how to prove to her that they really belong together. After practice, Ken decides to go to Todd for advice. Really, Ken? Todd? I don't think I'd rely on Todd's advice to choose what flavour waffle I have for breakfast, let alone help with my relationship. Although to be fair, Todd thinks Ken's earlier effort to make Maria jealous was a stupid idea. Ouch. Nothing says village idiot quite like getting called down by Todd. At any rate, Todd advises Ken to act like he can't get on without Maria, but not in the emo suicide way. Ask her to help him with something, make her believe he can't walk down the street without her help. Ken thinks this idea is great. I'm about ready to take back what I said about Ken's awesomeness in my last recap.
Maria's date with random Steve goes fine, but everything reminds her of Ken. Random Steve even orders Ken's favourite drink. She keeps trying to focus on the present, but it doesn't seem to be working. After a short while, random Steve offers to take her for a walk on the beach, and she initially agrees, figuring that since it's a date, they might as well go full throttle. When they get out to the beach, however, Maria is not only preoccupied with thoughts of Ken but feeling guilty. Crescent Beach was her and Ken's favourite spot, and she now feels like she's leading random Steve on. She ends the date, telling him about still not being over her last boyfriend, and finally starts thinking that maybe she should go back to dating Ken after all. It ended messily (it did? As I recall, it ended stupidly more than anything), but since it's what they both really want, she should just stop fighting against it. As she's thinking this, her mom tells her Ken called three times while she was out. Excited, Maria goes to call him back, but is confused when Ken sounds distant, not at all the way he'd been sounding recently. In fact, he comes out and tells her she's right about it not being a good idea for them to get back together, but would she please help him write his history paper? Maria doesn't understand why he can suddenly not write a word without her help, considering they've been broken up for awhile now, but agrees to help him. I don't understand why Ken puts in the bit about them not dating. That has to be the stupidest thing anyone in the history of Sweet Valley has ever said, and there have been some real doozies. Congratulations Ken. After Maria hangs up the phone, she sits and cries.
The next day, the two of them meet in the library. Maria has set aside working on her adapted scene for drama class to help Ken with his homework, and they start off by throwing around a couple of ideas on the topic he's chosen. Todd and what seems to be the rest of the football team show up, and Maria is amazed they even know where the library is. Hee. They drag Ken off for a minute, during which she starts to review Ken's notes... and finds his completed history paper! Now she's thoroughly peeved. He lied to her, and took up the time she could have been working on her own homework. I'm peeved, too. He asked her for help on something he'd already completed? Did he not have any other homework projects? I know the Sweet Valley school system is slack, but seriously!
Now Ken is all depressed, annoyed at all the happy people. How dare they be happy! Don't they know he's angsty? And finally, in the midst of his teenage angsting, it hits him: he needs to fix what went wrong last time. Brilliant deduction, Einstein. Maria felt that football took precedence over her, but he'd rather be cut from the team than cut from her life, and all he has to do is show her that! And now he has an idea! Considering the brilliance of the other ideas he's had so far, this doesn't sound as promising as it was probably intended to.
Maria shows up to drama class, surprised and annoyed to see Ken sitting there. Ken hates drama, and suffers from extreme stage fright. Which sounds odd, considering he's aspiring to be a star athlete, in the public eye as much as any actor, but whatever. The class starts, and the drama teacher announces that they have a special guest actor, who will be performing in the scene Maria's been adapting from --wait for it-- West Side Story. (For those who don't know, West Side Story is a modern-day adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, and the female lead is named Maria. Gag me.) Maria is irritated that Ken seems to be stalking her, but she gets up on stage to do her scene, since it's worth a considerable part of her grade. And Ken gets up, all pale-faced and shaking. She realizes he's doing it for her, to show her he's putting her ahead of everything else, and as they read the lines, it stops being a scene they're acting out and becomes real. I have a serious urge to vomit. At the end of the scene that's not a scene, they express their love for each other and start making out. The class applauds, apparently not sure if they should still be watching this rather personal moment. And so Ken and Maria are back together and hold hands through the rest of drama class. How... romantic?
The B Plot:
Conner has come back from rehab, and his buddies had a welcome back party for him, during which he and Liz wind up making out in the kitchen. Sounds like business as usual, except some chick Elizabeth has never seen before walks in, freaks, and takes off, Conner following after her. He's gone for a long time, and comes back to explain the girl is Alanna, someone he hooked up with in rehab and still cares about. Elizabeth is hurt, but is willing to wait for Conner to make up his mind who he wants, once and for all, since they had technically broken up before he left. Conner spends much time angsting about the decision he has to make. Poor guy has two girls who want him. So sad. However, he happens to be walking down the hallway when he overhears Jade freaking out about the history between Liz and Evan (see C plot). I don't know why Jade is so surprised he was in that hallway. I'm more surprised Elizabeth wasn't also walking by. Conner is furious and storms off, Evan following after. Evan manages to explain what happened, and tells him he hadn't mentioned this to Conner before because Elizabeth had said she wanted to be the one to do it. Now Conner's anger shifts from Evan to Elizabeth. I love his reaction here: "But I told her about Alanna. And she managed to pull one of those classic I'm-so-perfect-but-I-love-you-anyway acts, making me feel like the dirt under her shoes. Like I should be grateful she wants me." Hee! I love it when the characters call the twins on the crap they pull. So Conner shows up at Elizabeth's workplace, and she's thrilled, thinking he wouldn't bother to show up if he hadn't decided she was the one he wanted to date. He brings up the Evan thing, and she still tries to act all innocent, which he also calls her on. He tells her it's over, and he's choosing Alanna. And the book ends on Alanna's diary entry, which says: "Conner chose me. Me. He said we belong together, and he always knew it. I know it too. I just wonder if he'll still feel that way if he knew everything about me. Maybe I shouldn't have kept that stuff from him. But I think it's a little too late to let the truth out now..." I love how subtle the ghostwriters handle foreshadowing. I'm seriously hoping the truth is that Alanna used to be a dude. That would be the most awesome Sweet Valley book ever.
The C plot: Jade and Evan are blissfully happy together now that they're dating. She's once again uncharacteristically in love, which makes me wonder why they bothered to establish her as a party girl earlier in the series. Anyway, problems begin when Liz is stressing out over the whole Conner mess, and she comes to Evan to angst about it. Evan has a tendancy to drop everything for his friends, but in this case, Jade resents it, knowing he once had feelings for Liz. She suspects he still does, especially after the whole Jessica/Jeremy/Jade fiasco. Instead of just talking to him about it like a normal person would do, she gets more and more frustrated, and finally rants at him in the middle of the school hallway, where Conner gets to overhear about Evan and Liz. Too late, Jade realizes what she's done, and is upset over it, especially when Evan later sets the record straight and tells her he's over Liz and had been happier with Jade than he had ever been before... until now. Because it's over, since she obviously can't trust him or just come out and tell him the truth. He has no interest in playing games. In which case, Evan seriously needs to get himself out of Sweet Valley.
The D plot:
Will is feeling pressure to figure out what he wants to do, now that he can no longer play football. His parents and the guidance counselor seem to think every 17-year-old kid should have the rest of their life mapped out, which makes no sense to me, since a lot of people don't figure things out until after university, but whatever. Will is floundering for the first while, until the coach puts coaching into his head. He knows the game, and it would keep him involved in football, even if he can't play. The idea starts growing on Will, and it starts sounding better and better, until he mentions it to Melissa, who laughs and tells him it's stupid. And then he drops it. What? They're not even dating! Why does she have veto power over your career, Will? This makes no sense! Stand up to that wench and make up your own mind! So Will is back to floundering, until he decides out of the blue that being a sports writer is much more glamourous than being a coach. Surely Melissa would approve of the more glamourous aspiration. After all, he's at least a mediocre writer, so surely he could have his articles written up in Sports Illustrated. It's a good thing he has realistic expectations. Fortunately for him, this idea is Melissa approved, so I guess he's allowed to follow this career path. I can't even describe how unhealthily co-dependent this twisted relationship is...
The A Plot:
Apparently, Tia told Ken about Maria's reaction when it looked like he'd been hurt in the last big football game. Ken is thrilled! He still has feelings for Maria, and her behaviour shows she does too, so of course it's only natural they get back together. It's Wednesday, so he drives over to the coffee house, where she's studying; on the way, a popular love song starts playing on the radio. It's fate! Clearly, they are meant to be! And I am reeling in shock, since it seems the title of this book actually has some relevance to the contents. Who woulda thunk? Ken waltzes over to Maria's table, annoyingly cheerful and full of swaggering confidence. He starts by telling Maria it's over between him and Melissa, who he never wanted to be with; he only felt sorry for her. And now he just wants things back the way they were. Shockingly, this very smooth and emotional spiel doesn't work. Maria totally shoots him down, saying "I can't believe you think you can just walk in here and try to take back everything that's happened. Did you expect me to fall into your arms and cry with gratitude or something?" Hee! Ken is devastated and can't understand what just happened. (Here's a clue, maybe stop acting like an arrogant jerk?) She takes off, upset and frustrated. She needs to vent to someone, so she heads over to talk to Elizabeth, whose current boy problems make her a perfect sympathetic ear.
The next day, Ken is still trying to figure out where he went wrong. He knows her well enough to realize she does have feelings for him, whatever she might have said. He thinks maybe she's afraid. So the best way to get around it? Totally to flirt with the cute cheerleader sitting next to him in class. Because making someone jealous on purpose is a scheme that always works, right? She, of course, coldly ignores him, and Ken is left trying to figure out how jealousy managed to push them further apart. I'm thinking Ken has taken a few too many footballs to the head recently. He's dropped to Todd mentality levels here.
After class, Ken chases after Maria, and awkwardly tries to explain away his flirting ("I had nothing else to do. I was killing time before class, and since you weren't talking to me...") Obviously, this doesn't fly with Maria, since now it looks like he just goes for what's available and drops it when he's tired of it. He tries to get across that she's really the only one he wants, but she assures him it's over between them. And then she runs off to the bathroom to have a good cry.
Some seemingly random guy named Steve starts talking to Maria after their student-government meeting. Student government? That sounds kind of pretentious, don't you think? I dunno, it was always student council in my schools. Apparently she's president and he's vp. At any rate, random Steve asks her out for coffee, and she figures a date is the perfect way to help her start getting over Ken. After all, she hasn't been out with anyone since they broke up. She accepts, much to Ken's chagrin, because he just so happens to be walking past at that very moment. Oh, Sweet Valley and your utter reliance on coincidence!
At football practice, Ken's head is anywhere but in the game. He plays terribly, earning a grumble from the coach and pretty much the whole team. He doesn't care, though. He figures since Maria accepted a date with someone else, it's time to step up the action, but he doesn't know how to prove to her that they really belong together. After practice, Ken decides to go to Todd for advice. Really, Ken? Todd? I don't think I'd rely on Todd's advice to choose what flavour waffle I have for breakfast, let alone help with my relationship. Although to be fair, Todd thinks Ken's earlier effort to make Maria jealous was a stupid idea. Ouch. Nothing says village idiot quite like getting called down by Todd. At any rate, Todd advises Ken to act like he can't get on without Maria, but not in the emo suicide way. Ask her to help him with something, make her believe he can't walk down the street without her help. Ken thinks this idea is great. I'm about ready to take back what I said about Ken's awesomeness in my last recap.
Maria's date with random Steve goes fine, but everything reminds her of Ken. Random Steve even orders Ken's favourite drink. She keeps trying to focus on the present, but it doesn't seem to be working. After a short while, random Steve offers to take her for a walk on the beach, and she initially agrees, figuring that since it's a date, they might as well go full throttle. When they get out to the beach, however, Maria is not only preoccupied with thoughts of Ken but feeling guilty. Crescent Beach was her and Ken's favourite spot, and she now feels like she's leading random Steve on. She ends the date, telling him about still not being over her last boyfriend, and finally starts thinking that maybe she should go back to dating Ken after all. It ended messily (it did? As I recall, it ended stupidly more than anything), but since it's what they both really want, she should just stop fighting against it. As she's thinking this, her mom tells her Ken called three times while she was out. Excited, Maria goes to call him back, but is confused when Ken sounds distant, not at all the way he'd been sounding recently. In fact, he comes out and tells her she's right about it not being a good idea for them to get back together, but would she please help him write his history paper? Maria doesn't understand why he can suddenly not write a word without her help, considering they've been broken up for awhile now, but agrees to help him. I don't understand why Ken puts in the bit about them not dating. That has to be the stupidest thing anyone in the history of Sweet Valley has ever said, and there have been some real doozies. Congratulations Ken. After Maria hangs up the phone, she sits and cries.
The next day, the two of them meet in the library. Maria has set aside working on her adapted scene for drama class to help Ken with his homework, and they start off by throwing around a couple of ideas on the topic he's chosen. Todd and what seems to be the rest of the football team show up, and Maria is amazed they even know where the library is. Hee. They drag Ken off for a minute, during which she starts to review Ken's notes... and finds his completed history paper! Now she's thoroughly peeved. He lied to her, and took up the time she could have been working on her own homework. I'm peeved, too. He asked her for help on something he'd already completed? Did he not have any other homework projects? I know the Sweet Valley school system is slack, but seriously!
Now Ken is all depressed, annoyed at all the happy people. How dare they be happy! Don't they know he's angsty? And finally, in the midst of his teenage angsting, it hits him: he needs to fix what went wrong last time. Brilliant deduction, Einstein. Maria felt that football took precedence over her, but he'd rather be cut from the team than cut from her life, and all he has to do is show her that! And now he has an idea! Considering the brilliance of the other ideas he's had so far, this doesn't sound as promising as it was probably intended to.
Maria shows up to drama class, surprised and annoyed to see Ken sitting there. Ken hates drama, and suffers from extreme stage fright. Which sounds odd, considering he's aspiring to be a star athlete, in the public eye as much as any actor, but whatever. The class starts, and the drama teacher announces that they have a special guest actor, who will be performing in the scene Maria's been adapting from --wait for it-- West Side Story. (For those who don't know, West Side Story is a modern-day adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, and the female lead is named Maria. Gag me.) Maria is irritated that Ken seems to be stalking her, but she gets up on stage to do her scene, since it's worth a considerable part of her grade. And Ken gets up, all pale-faced and shaking. She realizes he's doing it for her, to show her he's putting her ahead of everything else, and as they read the lines, it stops being a scene they're acting out and becomes real. I have a serious urge to vomit. At the end of the scene that's not a scene, they express their love for each other and start making out. The class applauds, apparently not sure if they should still be watching this rather personal moment. And so Ken and Maria are back together and hold hands through the rest of drama class. How... romantic?
The B Plot:
Conner has come back from rehab, and his buddies had a welcome back party for him, during which he and Liz wind up making out in the kitchen. Sounds like business as usual, except some chick Elizabeth has never seen before walks in, freaks, and takes off, Conner following after her. He's gone for a long time, and comes back to explain the girl is Alanna, someone he hooked up with in rehab and still cares about. Elizabeth is hurt, but is willing to wait for Conner to make up his mind who he wants, once and for all, since they had technically broken up before he left. Conner spends much time angsting about the decision he has to make. Poor guy has two girls who want him. So sad. However, he happens to be walking down the hallway when he overhears Jade freaking out about the history between Liz and Evan (see C plot). I don't know why Jade is so surprised he was in that hallway. I'm more surprised Elizabeth wasn't also walking by. Conner is furious and storms off, Evan following after. Evan manages to explain what happened, and tells him he hadn't mentioned this to Conner before because Elizabeth had said she wanted to be the one to do it. Now Conner's anger shifts from Evan to Elizabeth. I love his reaction here: "But I told her about Alanna. And she managed to pull one of those classic I'm-so-perfect-but-I-love-you-anyway acts, making me feel like the dirt under her shoes. Like I should be grateful she wants me." Hee! I love it when the characters call the twins on the crap they pull. So Conner shows up at Elizabeth's workplace, and she's thrilled, thinking he wouldn't bother to show up if he hadn't decided she was the one he wanted to date. He brings up the Evan thing, and she still tries to act all innocent, which he also calls her on. He tells her it's over, and he's choosing Alanna. And the book ends on Alanna's diary entry, which says: "Conner chose me. Me. He said we belong together, and he always knew it. I know it too. I just wonder if he'll still feel that way if he knew everything about me. Maybe I shouldn't have kept that stuff from him. But I think it's a little too late to let the truth out now..." I love how subtle the ghostwriters handle foreshadowing. I'm seriously hoping the truth is that Alanna used to be a dude. That would be the most awesome Sweet Valley book ever.
The C plot: Jade and Evan are blissfully happy together now that they're dating. She's once again uncharacteristically in love, which makes me wonder why they bothered to establish her as a party girl earlier in the series. Anyway, problems begin when Liz is stressing out over the whole Conner mess, and she comes to Evan to angst about it. Evan has a tendancy to drop everything for his friends, but in this case, Jade resents it, knowing he once had feelings for Liz. She suspects he still does, especially after the whole Jessica/Jeremy/Jade fiasco. Instead of just talking to him about it like a normal person would do, she gets more and more frustrated, and finally rants at him in the middle of the school hallway, where Conner gets to overhear about Evan and Liz. Too late, Jade realizes what she's done, and is upset over it, especially when Evan later sets the record straight and tells her he's over Liz and had been happier with Jade than he had ever been before... until now. Because it's over, since she obviously can't trust him or just come out and tell him the truth. He has no interest in playing games. In which case, Evan seriously needs to get himself out of Sweet Valley.
The D plot:
Will is feeling pressure to figure out what he wants to do, now that he can no longer play football. His parents and the guidance counselor seem to think every 17-year-old kid should have the rest of their life mapped out, which makes no sense to me, since a lot of people don't figure things out until after university, but whatever. Will is floundering for the first while, until the coach puts coaching into his head. He knows the game, and it would keep him involved in football, even if he can't play. The idea starts growing on Will, and it starts sounding better and better, until he mentions it to Melissa, who laughs and tells him it's stupid. And then he drops it. What? They're not even dating! Why does she have veto power over your career, Will? This makes no sense! Stand up to that wench and make up your own mind! So Will is back to floundering, until he decides out of the blue that being a sports writer is much more glamourous than being a coach. Surely Melissa would approve of the more glamourous aspiration. After all, he's at least a mediocre writer, so surely he could have his articles written up in Sports Illustrated. It's a good thing he has realistic expectations. Fortunately for him, this idea is Melissa approved, so I guess he's allowed to follow this career path. I can't even describe how unhealthily co-dependent this twisted relationship is...