Sweet Valley Twins #7 - Three’s a Crowd
Oh, but it is Sweet Valley.
In order to get on Janet’s good side, Jessica volunteers to type up the cookbooks, despite the fact she can’t type. Also, we learn that Mary is a foster child, living with a family called the Altmans.
Meanwhile, Career Day is approaching, and of course Elizabeth is writing a huge article about it for the Sixers. Mr. Bowman calls her at home to tell her the names of the people who are coming, but she is busy typing Jessica’s celebrity letter for her. Jessica takes the call and gets all the information wrong when reporting back to Elizabeth.
The next day, when Mary and Jessica are headed to the Wakefields’ so Mary can finish her celebrity letter, they have to stop at the Altmans’ for some unspecified reason. Mary makes Jessica wait outside, which is sketchy. Mrs. Altman comes down and when Jessica tells her about the celebrity cookbook, she’s never heard of it before. Somehow this minor bit of neglect is supposed to be significant.
Anyway, they go over to the Wakefields’, and Mary is more interested in helping Mrs. Wakefield cook dinner than with hanging out with Jessica. She even helps with the dishes, while Jessica stomps off to watch TV.
At school the next day, Mr. Bowman tells Elizabeth that the Los Angeles Newspaper Guild is holding a contest for the best middle-school newspaper. They decide to enter the current Career day issue.
When Liz gets home, Jessica asks if the Unicorns can use her typewriter after school the next day so they can all type up their celebrity letters. Actually she more like tells her this is the situation. Liz says no dice; she’s bringing it to school to work on the paper. But Jess, always helpful when it means she’ll get her way, offers to lug the thing home herself.
Mary helps Jessica carry the typewriter home. She’s also a really fast typist, and manages to fix the thing when Janet Howell jams it up. I’m not sure why this is important. Hell, it’s probably not. Moving on.
The next day, Mary attempts to invite herself over to the Wakefields’ again after school, but Jessica already has plans to go to Ellen’s house. Just as Jessica suspected, Mary isn’t interested in joining them.
However, when Jess gets home, she’s shocked to find that Mary sitting in her kitchen! It seems she went home with Elizabeth instead, because any way she can get close to sweet sweet Alice Wakefield will do.
I feel dirty for having written that sentence.
Anyway, before she leaves, Mary manages to finagle an invitation to dinner at the Wakefields’ the following day. And from Alice herself, no less. The lucky, lucky girl.
When school ends the next day, Jessica decides to fake sick so Mary won’t come home with her. She’s incredibly creeped out by the fact that Mary only wants to spend time with her mother, and doing chores no less. Unfortunately for her, Mary just goes with Elizabeth again, and the two of them bake cookies without Jessica.
Mary keeps coming over with Elizabeth. Jessica keeps being pissy, and spending time at Ellen’s and Lila’s houses so she can avoid her. Eventually she snaps when she finds out Mary was over yet again, and everyone thinks she’s jealous that Mary is hanging out with Elizabeth instead of her. After dinner, Jessica tells Elizabeth the truth, pointing out that Mrs. Altman is perfectly nice, and it’s obnoxious when your friend has a lezzie crush on your mom. Finally Liz agrees not to invite Mary over anymore - or let her invite herself over. This kills Liz’s spirit a little.
Jessica receives a response to her celebrity letter. The cute soap star she has written has included his favorite recipe for sweet ‘n’ sour barbecued ribs, which sounds gross.
Jessica runs off to Lila’s to show her the letter, and Elizabeth walks in with Amy and Mary. I guess Liz didn’t really listen to Jess the night before. Soon, Mrs. Wakefield gets home, and once again, Mary is all up in the kitchen offering to cook and clean and give Alice backrubs. She even helps with the weeding, and as Saint Elizabeth herself points out, Nobody ever helped with the weeding! She begins to agree with her twin that perhaps Mary’s interest in their mother borders on the weird.
Elizabeth finds out that the Sixers is a finalist in the newspaper competition. They have to submit another current issue, so they decide to enter the one on Career Day. Which I thought was the one they already entered, but I guess they mean the one talking about it after the fact. At some point Liz found out about Jessica’s mistakes and was mad for ten minutes. She fixed them.
Mary tries to invite herself over, and Liz makes up excuses to brush her off. She feels guilty.
At the Unicorn meeting, Janet tells everyone that they’ve heard from enough celebrities, and they should start selling the cookbook soon. Which means Jessica has to type it. Oh noes! Unfortunately, she and Mary haven’t really been speaking ever since Jessica figured out she was only interested in her mother. Luckily, Mary apologizes to Jessica and gives her the silver bracelet she always wears. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Jessica figures that since they’re friends again, Mary can definitely do the work for her.
Career day is the next day. All the Unicorns go see Gretchen Tyler, who is some sort of fashion designer. When she gives her talk, she is wearing “strange looking webbed tights, bright orange shoes, several layers of colorful socks, and a large baggy type of over-blouse.”
When the talk is over, Jessica and Mary head back to the Wakefields’ to type up the recipes. Elizabeth’s ditto master for the Sixers, complete with all the Career Day write-ups, is sitting on the table. They decide to read it in Jessica’s room while drinking grape juice. You can guess what happens.
“Luckily,” the only part that got ruined was the Gretchen Tyler article, so Jessica decides to just rewrite it herself. She includes the sentence “Gretchen was wearing these incredible-looking Spandex tights with layers ‘n’ layers of Day-Glo socks.” And she spells ‘incredible’ ‘increddable.’ And she titles the article “Fabulous Gretchen Tyler Speaks to the Unicorns.” Also, she includes the barbecue ribs recipe at the end of the article because there’s extra room.
That night, Jessica overhears her parents talking. The Altmans are thinking of adopting Mary, and have contacted Mr. Wakefield for some legal help. Jessica is happy for her friend, and tells Elizabeth the news. She also pencils it in on Liz’s ditto master at the bottom of Caroline Pearce’s gossip column, so the whole school will find out Mary’s good news. How swell!
Mr. Bowman wants to know who covered Gretchen Tyler. Despite the spelling mistakes, he likes its lively tone and thinks it’s a nice change from Liz’s usual style (ha!) He is however totally perplexed about the recipe at the bottom.
Mary is confused when everyone starts congratulating her. Then someone shows her the paper, and she gets all upset. Elizabeth the Good talks to her, and Mary says that as much as she loves living with the Altmans, she doesn’t want to be adopted because she’s convinced her real mother is looking for her. She goes on to tell her story:
Mary’s parents got divorced when she was four years old. They were living in Baltimore at the time, but after the divorce Mary’s mom packed up the car with Mary and all their stuff and decided to drive to California. They ran out of money in Kansas, because this is a stupid plan. Mary’s mother started working as a waitress with a woman named Annie. At some point, Mary’s grandmother in Florida became sick so her mom went to visit, leaving Mary with Annie. Which she shouldn’t have done, because everyone in Sweet Valley named Annie is bad.
Although, to be fair, I guess they were in Kansas at the time.
Still.
Annie brought Mary to California, saying her mother had died, which Mary never believed. One day, Annie “went to work and never came back.” Since then, Mary’s been in the welfare system.
Liz yells at Jessica for writing the thing about Mary. She’s honestly sorry, as she thought Mary would be happy about the news. She also yells at her about the Sixers thing.
Mary tells the Altmans she doesn’t want to be adopted. She and Jessica make up. Liz is still mad at Jessica, though. This isn’t helped when she turns in a revised copy of the Gretchen Tyler article to Mr. Bowman and he says he preferred the first one (i.e. Jessica’s.) Ha!
Elizabeth decides to forgive Jessica after talking to Mary, when Mary points out that she forgave Jessica, and that was over something probably more upsetting than a stupid newspaper article.
After school, Elizabeth is sitting around waiting for Amy so they can walk home together. Jessica runs up with Mary and shows her the celebrity cookbook, which they just finished printing. Jessica suggests the four of them walk home together, but it turns out Amy’s in detention. So, like the doormat she is, Liz sits and waits while Jessica and Mary go ahead to the Wakefields’.
Suddenly, Elizabeth sees her mother walking around in front of the school. How odd! She calls to her, but she doesn’t answer. Odder still! Elizabeth realizes the woman is not her mom, just another Sweet Valley doppelganger.
The woman walks up to Elizabeth and asks if she knows Mary Giaccio. Elizabeth confirms she does, and says that in fact, Mary’s at her house right now with her twin sister. Amy walks up at that moment, and the two of them walk this woman who they met two seconds ago to the Wakefields’, so she can meet a 12-year-old girl. As they walk, the woman asks a bunch of questions about Mary.
Let’s pretend for 2 seconds it’s not completely obvious who this woman is. On the surface she sounds like a crazy stalker.
It takes Amy and Elizabeth the whole walk to figure things out (Elizabeth actually asks: “Is your name Annie?” before deducing it is, in fact, Mary’s mother.) At the door, she gets cold feet until Elizabeth tells her how Mary has always known her mother was coming, and she even turned down being adopted. Aww.
And that's why Mary was so obsessed with Mrs. Wakefield.
Anyway, she rings the doorbell, and because Steven and Jessica are both lazy people and terrible hosts, Mary opens the door. The two recognize each other instantly, and Mrs. Wakefield invites Mary’s mom (whose name is Andrea Robinson) inside.
For some reason (the reason being the Wakefields must be at the center of everything,) Mrs. Robinson decides to tell Mary and everyone else the saga of her search in the middle of the Wakefields’ living room. It seems Annie was a career criminal, and had recently been arrested for shoplifting. She was using the name Annie Giaccio, which was her mother’s maiden name. The police found out her real name and that there were kidnapping charges against her, and a “quick thinking detective” had the idea to search for a Mary Giaccio in the welfare system. And bingo.
The bracelet Mary gave Jessica was from her mother. Jess gives it back when Elizabeth pokes her.
The Unicorns sell their cookbook. Everyone likes it. The Sixers wins the newspaper competition, and the Gretchen Tyler article features a combination of both the twins’ writing and is credited “By Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield.”
It seems all is perfect, but OH NOES, Mrs. Robinson doesn’t live in Sweet Valley. Will Mary have to leave??
No. No one can leave Sweet Valley. When Mary tells her mom how much she likes it there, she decides to abandon her life and move there.
The end, with foreshadowing to the next book about how Lila wants a horse but doesn’t want to do any work.
In order to get on Janet’s good side, Jessica volunteers to type up the cookbooks, despite the fact she can’t type. Also, we learn that Mary is a foster child, living with a family called the Altmans.
Meanwhile, Career Day is approaching, and of course Elizabeth is writing a huge article about it for the Sixers. Mr. Bowman calls her at home to tell her the names of the people who are coming, but she is busy typing Jessica’s celebrity letter for her. Jessica takes the call and gets all the information wrong when reporting back to Elizabeth.
The next day, when Mary and Jessica are headed to the Wakefields’ so Mary can finish her celebrity letter, they have to stop at the Altmans’ for some unspecified reason. Mary makes Jessica wait outside, which is sketchy. Mrs. Altman comes down and when Jessica tells her about the celebrity cookbook, she’s never heard of it before. Somehow this minor bit of neglect is supposed to be significant.
Anyway, they go over to the Wakefields’, and Mary is more interested in helping Mrs. Wakefield cook dinner than with hanging out with Jessica. She even helps with the dishes, while Jessica stomps off to watch TV.
At school the next day, Mr. Bowman tells Elizabeth that the Los Angeles Newspaper Guild is holding a contest for the best middle-school newspaper. They decide to enter the current Career day issue.
When Liz gets home, Jessica asks if the Unicorns can use her typewriter after school the next day so they can all type up their celebrity letters. Actually she more like tells her this is the situation. Liz says no dice; she’s bringing it to school to work on the paper. But Jess, always helpful when it means she’ll get her way, offers to lug the thing home herself.
Mary helps Jessica carry the typewriter home. She’s also a really fast typist, and manages to fix the thing when Janet Howell jams it up. I’m not sure why this is important. Hell, it’s probably not. Moving on.
The next day, Mary attempts to invite herself over to the Wakefields’ again after school, but Jessica already has plans to go to Ellen’s house. Just as Jessica suspected, Mary isn’t interested in joining them.
However, when Jess gets home, she’s shocked to find that Mary sitting in her kitchen! It seems she went home with Elizabeth instead, because any way she can get close to sweet sweet Alice Wakefield will do.
I feel dirty for having written that sentence.
Anyway, before she leaves, Mary manages to finagle an invitation to dinner at the Wakefields’ the following day. And from Alice herself, no less. The lucky, lucky girl.
When school ends the next day, Jessica decides to fake sick so Mary won’t come home with her. She’s incredibly creeped out by the fact that Mary only wants to spend time with her mother, and doing chores no less. Unfortunately for her, Mary just goes with Elizabeth again, and the two of them bake cookies without Jessica.
Mary keeps coming over with Elizabeth. Jessica keeps being pissy, and spending time at Ellen’s and Lila’s houses so she can avoid her. Eventually she snaps when she finds out Mary was over yet again, and everyone thinks she’s jealous that Mary is hanging out with Elizabeth instead of her. After dinner, Jessica tells Elizabeth the truth, pointing out that Mrs. Altman is perfectly nice, and it’s obnoxious when your friend has a lezzie crush on your mom. Finally Liz agrees not to invite Mary over anymore - or let her invite herself over. This kills Liz’s spirit a little.
Jessica receives a response to her celebrity letter. The cute soap star she has written has included his favorite recipe for sweet ‘n’ sour barbecued ribs, which sounds gross.
Jessica runs off to Lila’s to show her the letter, and Elizabeth walks in with Amy and Mary. I guess Liz didn’t really listen to Jess the night before. Soon, Mrs. Wakefield gets home, and once again, Mary is all up in the kitchen offering to cook and clean and give Alice backrubs. She even helps with the weeding, and as Saint Elizabeth herself points out, Nobody ever helped with the weeding! She begins to agree with her twin that perhaps Mary’s interest in their mother borders on the weird.
Elizabeth finds out that the Sixers is a finalist in the newspaper competition. They have to submit another current issue, so they decide to enter the one on Career Day. Which I thought was the one they already entered, but I guess they mean the one talking about it after the fact. At some point Liz found out about Jessica’s mistakes and was mad for ten minutes. She fixed them.
Mary tries to invite herself over, and Liz makes up excuses to brush her off. She feels guilty.
At the Unicorn meeting, Janet tells everyone that they’ve heard from enough celebrities, and they should start selling the cookbook soon. Which means Jessica has to type it. Oh noes! Unfortunately, she and Mary haven’t really been speaking ever since Jessica figured out she was only interested in her mother. Luckily, Mary apologizes to Jessica and gives her the silver bracelet she always wears. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Jessica figures that since they’re friends again, Mary can definitely do the work for her.
Career day is the next day. All the Unicorns go see Gretchen Tyler, who is some sort of fashion designer. When she gives her talk, she is wearing “strange looking webbed tights, bright orange shoes, several layers of colorful socks, and a large baggy type of over-blouse.”
When the talk is over, Jessica and Mary head back to the Wakefields’ to type up the recipes. Elizabeth’s ditto master for the Sixers, complete with all the Career Day write-ups, is sitting on the table. They decide to read it in Jessica’s room while drinking grape juice. You can guess what happens.
“Luckily,” the only part that got ruined was the Gretchen Tyler article, so Jessica decides to just rewrite it herself. She includes the sentence “Gretchen was wearing these incredible-looking Spandex tights with layers ‘n’ layers of Day-Glo socks.” And she spells ‘incredible’ ‘increddable.’ And she titles the article “Fabulous Gretchen Tyler Speaks to the Unicorns.” Also, she includes the barbecue ribs recipe at the end of the article because there’s extra room.
That night, Jessica overhears her parents talking. The Altmans are thinking of adopting Mary, and have contacted Mr. Wakefield for some legal help. Jessica is happy for her friend, and tells Elizabeth the news. She also pencils it in on Liz’s ditto master at the bottom of Caroline Pearce’s gossip column, so the whole school will find out Mary’s good news. How swell!
Mr. Bowman wants to know who covered Gretchen Tyler. Despite the spelling mistakes, he likes its lively tone and thinks it’s a nice change from Liz’s usual style (ha!) He is however totally perplexed about the recipe at the bottom.
Mary is confused when everyone starts congratulating her. Then someone shows her the paper, and she gets all upset. Elizabeth the Good talks to her, and Mary says that as much as she loves living with the Altmans, she doesn’t want to be adopted because she’s convinced her real mother is looking for her. She goes on to tell her story:
Mary’s parents got divorced when she was four years old. They were living in Baltimore at the time, but after the divorce Mary’s mom packed up the car with Mary and all their stuff and decided to drive to California. They ran out of money in Kansas, because this is a stupid plan. Mary’s mother started working as a waitress with a woman named Annie. At some point, Mary’s grandmother in Florida became sick so her mom went to visit, leaving Mary with Annie. Which she shouldn’t have done, because everyone in Sweet Valley named Annie is bad.
Although, to be fair, I guess they were in Kansas at the time.
Still.
Annie brought Mary to California, saying her mother had died, which Mary never believed. One day, Annie “went to work and never came back.” Since then, Mary’s been in the welfare system.
Liz yells at Jessica for writing the thing about Mary. She’s honestly sorry, as she thought Mary would be happy about the news. She also yells at her about the Sixers thing.
Mary tells the Altmans she doesn’t want to be adopted. She and Jessica make up. Liz is still mad at Jessica, though. This isn’t helped when she turns in a revised copy of the Gretchen Tyler article to Mr. Bowman and he says he preferred the first one (i.e. Jessica’s.) Ha!
Elizabeth decides to forgive Jessica after talking to Mary, when Mary points out that she forgave Jessica, and that was over something probably more upsetting than a stupid newspaper article.
After school, Elizabeth is sitting around waiting for Amy so they can walk home together. Jessica runs up with Mary and shows her the celebrity cookbook, which they just finished printing. Jessica suggests the four of them walk home together, but it turns out Amy’s in detention. So, like the doormat she is, Liz sits and waits while Jessica and Mary go ahead to the Wakefields’.
Suddenly, Elizabeth sees her mother walking around in front of the school. How odd! She calls to her, but she doesn’t answer. Odder still! Elizabeth realizes the woman is not her mom, just another Sweet Valley doppelganger.
The woman walks up to Elizabeth and asks if she knows Mary Giaccio. Elizabeth confirms she does, and says that in fact, Mary’s at her house right now with her twin sister. Amy walks up at that moment, and the two of them walk this woman who they met two seconds ago to the Wakefields’, so she can meet a 12-year-old girl. As they walk, the woman asks a bunch of questions about Mary.
Let’s pretend for 2 seconds it’s not completely obvious who this woman is. On the surface she sounds like a crazy stalker.
It takes Amy and Elizabeth the whole walk to figure things out (Elizabeth actually asks: “Is your name Annie?” before deducing it is, in fact, Mary’s mother.) At the door, she gets cold feet until Elizabeth tells her how Mary has always known her mother was coming, and she even turned down being adopted. Aww.
And that's why Mary was so obsessed with Mrs. Wakefield.
Anyway, she rings the doorbell, and because Steven and Jessica are both lazy people and terrible hosts, Mary opens the door. The two recognize each other instantly, and Mrs. Wakefield invites Mary’s mom (whose name is Andrea Robinson) inside.
For some reason (the reason being the Wakefields must be at the center of everything,) Mrs. Robinson decides to tell Mary and everyone else the saga of her search in the middle of the Wakefields’ living room. It seems Annie was a career criminal, and had recently been arrested for shoplifting. She was using the name Annie Giaccio, which was her mother’s maiden name. The police found out her real name and that there were kidnapping charges against her, and a “quick thinking detective” had the idea to search for a Mary Giaccio in the welfare system. And bingo.
The bracelet Mary gave Jessica was from her mother. Jess gives it back when Elizabeth pokes her.
The Unicorns sell their cookbook. Everyone likes it. The Sixers wins the newspaper competition, and the Gretchen Tyler article features a combination of both the twins’ writing and is credited “By Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield.”
It seems all is perfect, but OH NOES, Mrs. Robinson doesn’t live in Sweet Valley. Will Mary have to leave??
No. No one can leave Sweet Valley. When Mary tells her mom how much she likes it there, she decides to abandon her life and move there.
The end, with foreshadowing to the next book about how Lila wants a horse but doesn’t want to do any work.