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#55 – Perfect Shot

* Photo credit to The Closet *

Introducing Shelley Novak, basketball hottie. I can’t concentrate on Jim Roberts’s good-looking features because of that large, distracting ear protruding from his skull. Furthermore, the book claims that they are the same height, but he still looks shorter.

Perfect Shot! What a double entendre to encompass both basketball and photography! Sweet Valley High writers are geniuses, you guys.

The girls basketball team is all revved up and preparing for The Big Game, which they could totally win with the help of Shelley. But Shelley’s heart and mind are elsewhere—mainly with her next-door neighbor Greg Hilliard, who only dates cute little shawties. Shelley is super insecure about her height—”I’m all legs!”—and longs to be tiny and not six-foot-a-billion. Greg doesn’t help matters—when Shelley musters up the courage to ask Greg to the Varsity Club dance, he’s like, “We couldn’t go together, Shel. I’m not tall enough for you… And what if you wore high heels? We’d look ridiculous…” What a lewser.

But enter photographer Jim Roberts, who totally has the hots for Shelley (and he’s tall too!) and takes her picture all the time, which makes her spaz because she feels like a “freak of nature,” even though Jim tells her on the reg that she’s beautiful and graceful and blippity blop. She makes him promise not to show anyone any pictures he takes of her… but the Sweet Valley News is sponsoring a photography contest so how can Jim resist? Shelley finds out that Jim submits a picture of her and she shuns him until he withdraws it, and then they act all frosty toward each other until Shelley has the pic resubmitted, and then Jim wins the contest but still nothing good comes of it. When will it end?

Shelley sees the picture Jim took of her on the front page of the News and realizes that A) she’s in love with Jim, and B) she is a fox—all she needed was a boy to show her The New Way. A great message. During The Big Game, Shelley gets a note passed to Jim, apologizing for being crazy and asking him to the dance, and when he smiles with joy at the prospect, Shelley plays awesome and wins the game! Then Greg Hilliard comes up to her and asks her to the dance, and she’s all, “As if!” And at the dance, Shelley wins a five-thousand-dollar scholarship and the ballroom dance contest! When will it end? Seriously, this book felt a million pages long.

Meanwhile, Jess and Amy Sutton are fighting over the foxy ballroom dance teacher / UCLA senior Patrick McLean and show up at the dance in the same outfit from Lisette’s to impress him—only to see that he brings his sophisticated, 20-something-year-old girlfriend who wears diamonds to the dance. (This was totally disappointing because I’d hoped he’d turn out gay.) The girls then have a good laugh about it. Why is a UCLA senior at a high school dance? The mysteries never end.

Other Notes:

  • The first place prize for the photography contest is a video camera, and Jeffrey French says, “I wouldn’t mind winning a video camera. I can think of someone I wouldn’t mind taking movies of!” Then he winks at Liz at approximately the same time I threw up. Dream on, dude.

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