* Photo credit to The Closet *
The Palisades Pumas are tired of getting their ass handed to them by the Sweet Valley Gladiators, so they’re fighting back and they’re fighting dirty—they kick the shit out of star quarterback Ken Matthews on and off the football field. Poor Ken! Just when he was starting to get foxy, he’s getting into fights. Actually, he’s foxier because he’s getting into fights. That goes the same for all the SVH boys, who are so pissed off about the school rivalry that they’re clamoring for revenge (“Pain for Palisades! Pain for Palisades!”). The testosterone is ricocheting off the walls, y’all!
The SVH guys don’t want to wait until the next game to give PH a taste of pain and humiliation, so they write “Palisades Pumas Purr like Kittens” in white paint on the PH football field. (“Kittens”? I know a more alliterative word the ghostie was probably dying to use.) Then Ken, Todd Wilkins, Bruce Patman, and the rest of those clowns get their houses TP’d. Revenge is not environmentally friendly.
Meanwhile, good, kind Liz is off making friends with some Palisades High chicks who are also sick of the rivalry, so they invent the idea to create goodwill between the schools by doing a special edition of the other school in their respective newspapers and then having a charity dance with both PH and SVH. But no one at PH wants to talk with Liz and Olivia Davidson when they come to interview them. (Liz actually has the audacity to show up wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with “SWEET VALLEY HIGH” on it.) Howevs, Liz and Olivia get stopped by a leather-wearing PH gang who warns them that they’re “not purring anymore… Tell [SVH] we’re out for the kill.” Oh noes!
And where’s Jessica in this frenzy? Learning how to surf to win a competition and a trip to Hawaii…and falling in love. For REAL this time, you guys! “Christian’s soul had touched her” and that’s nothing to scoff at, you know. Some mysterious, sexy surfer named Christian Gorman gives her some private lessons in the wee hours of the morn and that’s not all. Jess likes that they know nothing about each other and she keeps him her dirty little secret. Please recall that in just last book, she was swearing to her boyfriend—the aforementioned Ken Matthews—that she loves him and him alone and would never cheat on him again or whatever. Just last book! Someone tell this girl to keep her wetsuit on.
Then Tom McKay gets purposely beaned in the face with a tennis ball during an SVH/PH match and Liz doesn’t want to report on it because it would ruin the touchy-feely good vibes of the special edition. But John Pfeifer rears his date-rapey head to tell Liz that she’s jeopardizing her journalistic integrity (and we all know how proud she is of that) by deliberately leaving out the newsworthy rivalry. Hah! So the special edition comes out and it only makes SVH want to kill PH even more. The guys plaster the walls with photocopies of the angry headlines and Liz is all, “I knew we shouldn’t let John do sport coverage” of the Tom McKay tennis incident. She starts tearing down the photocopies and Bruce Patman and the boyz (with a z) tell her to shut her whiny trap for once, amen. Then Liz has the audacity to say “You’re using The Oracle to brainwash everybody in the school.” Didn’t she hope to do the same with her positive stories? Hmmm?
BTW: WHERE IS THE FACULTY? I have no idea why they aren’t stepping in with this rivalry, why no cops are patrolling, why NO ADULT AT ALL—not even Mr. “Show Me Your Bra Strap for an ‘A’” Collins—is involved with anything. Actually, the young Robert Redford look-alike is all, “We can’t do anything, it’s freedom of speech.” Um, no, you’d think a teacher would know that that doesn’t always fly in a school environment. Morons! Okay, I’m calm.
The night of the masked charity dance rolls around and Liz is experiencing a sense of foreboding like she always magically does before something horrific happens. She’s so intuitive! The dance is held at an abandoned warehouse on Phantom Lane, which is just asking for trouble. The PH and SVH boys go outside the warehouse in the pouring rain and start beating the ever livin’ daylights out of each other while snapping their fingers and singing, “When you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way” and such. Liz finally calls the cops, and Jess goes outside to see Ken getting all bloodied up by none other than her latest love, Christian Gorman! Dun dun dun! Then Jess literally passes out.
Other Notes:
- Why is it so ridiculously hot that Bruce Patman likes to gamble away his inheritance in poker games? I picture him at a card table in a dim room, a cocky grin on his face, his expensive white button-down shirt pushed up to his elbows, his tie loose around his neck, his ordinarily perfect hair unkempt as he ups the ante and wins with a royal flush—ee! I’m seducing myself.
- The Droids play at the dance dressed like the Flintstones. Jesus, doesn’t PH have a band? Are The Droids the only band in the world? What happened to Baja Beat? Does anyone even care?
- JW+BP=4eva: “Bruce looked at Jessica and snorted. ‘What are you, a bruise?… Your costume… It’s black and blue.’ ‘Bruce sometimes you are so stupid, it defies comprehension,’ Jessica shot back.” Oh, those two. They need to get hitched and have an aggravating marriage together.
- Liz tries to write an Oracle article on PH but realizes that it’s boring. “I have nothing to say here. Palisades High sounds like every other high school in the country.” That’s because it doesn’t have any beautiful blond twins, natch!
- I had to guffaw at Christian shouting, “Take it all the way in, Jess!” He was talking about her riding a wave. Of course.
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