* Photo credit to The Closet *
Phoebe Cates! What are you doing on the cover of a Sweet Valley High book? Jay kay, that’s just Jean West, back from the gay boyfriend with her headband still intact. And the other gal is Ms. Quarterback herself, Claire Middleton, who’s doing her best Jessica impression. That dude with all the shoulder pads is Scott Trost, (boy) quarterback extraordinaire. He’s like, Kirk “The Jerk” Anderson but with a hint of a soul.
So there’s supposed to be this “Love in Bloom” dance, and Jean West’s got no date. Neither does Claire Middleton, although she hints that she has a crush on someone. And neither does Scott Trost, who’s super arrogant about declaring how he can get any chick to go with him (which infuriates Liz). No sooner does he say this then does Jean get a love letter in her locker from Scott, and even though she’s never considered him romantically, he’s all she can think about now. But now he’s blowing her off in the halls and she’s chalking it up to shyness. You know she never would’ve cared nor stood for that if she wasn’t so in looooove!
Scott asks Jean out on a date just as Claire gets asked out for the first time since she’s been at Sweet Valley, and the girls excitedly decide to get together to help each other pick out outfits. It’s during a trip to the mall when Claire and Jean “discover something horrible”: They’re both going out with Scott—and he sent them exactly identical letters. No wayz! What a Turd Ferguson. I’m mostly irritated that he couldn’t even be bothered to pen a different letter to each girl. Lazy scrub!
Claire wants to go over and punch his lights out, but Jean suggests exacting revenge. (And you know how “good” Jean is at revenge—remember how her last bout of vengeance worked out?) Nevertheless, they proclaim that they’ll “make Scott Trost wish he’d never learned to write.” Did they put the same hex on the ghostwriter?
Claire and Jean still go on their dates and refuse to be impressed by anything Scott does or says. Claire is hesitant to go through with the revenge since she has a crush on Danny Porter and is all set to write this off, but Jean insists that they have to do it, even though on her date with Scott, she has to keep reminding herself not to have fun and that he’s “not a person,” but “an ego with feet.” Jean tells Jess about Scott, knowing that Jess has a big mouf, and Claire tells Elizabeth about it (and Liz is uber pissed about it because Scott is just no darn good!), and soon everyone in Sweet Valley knows and it’s this big thing.
The girls confront Scott in front of the whole school, and Scott doesn’t even bat an eye and instead suggests that they fight for his honor. This is humiliating. Claire waits for Jean to take the lead, and Jean’s all, “You’re on!” Shun! Even though this is all an elaborate ruse to embarrass Scott in the end, they really ought to tell this LOSER to get ta steppin’. But what’s especially annoying is that LIZ is all up in arms about it, like it’s her problem. She should get ta steppin’ too.
But while Claire is soooo over Scott and is out-and-out pining for Danny Porter, Scott’s really sweeping Jean off her feet by not throwing a tantrum during mini-golf, rescuing hurt dogs, and discussing shrubbery with her mother. He also looks guilty and ashamed whenever Jean brings up the contest and/or Claire. Plus he keeps taking her on way better dates than he took Claire. (How can he afford to date two girls?) He even tells Jean that he wishes he only wrote the one letter to her, and she’s basically like, “Well, you wrote two, so tough crap.” That’s right, girl, don’t crumble! But then he takes her to a moonlit beach! Where the stars are glittering like jewels! How can she resist making out with him? Well, she can’t.
Then comes the day where Jean and Claire are gonna lay the smack down on Scott, but by this time Jean’s IN LOVE with Scott and she goes sobbing on the shoulder of fucking Elizabeth, who insists that she tell Claire how she feels. But before Jean can do so, everyone’s eyes are on her and Ms. Quarterback, and Scott’s all smirking over his big decision as he grandly announces that Jean will be his date for the dance.
Howevs, Jean has a nervous breakdown regarding all the stress that the competition—the dating game, if you will—has put on her and flips out on Scott, saying she’d never date his ass and runs off in tears while Claire dittos her and skips off arm-in-arm with her beloved Danny Porter. Whatevs—I’m proud Jean finally went through with it! She’s always gettin’ soft on me.
When Liz and Claire go over to visit Jean, she’s very Gloria Gaynor about the whole thing and isn’t a sobbing wreck, and I’m pretty proud of her. Then I find out she’s only faking. Shun. Scott shows up on her doorstep and explains that all this only happened because his buddies were always giving him a hard time about being hard up for love, and that Jean’s the first girl he’s ever felt comfortable with. So Jean puts him on douchebag probation—if he acts like a d-bag, she’s dumping him. This ought to go without saying, really, but what is Sweet Valley High if not one big overstatement? About five pages, basically.
Meanwhile, Rotten Liz is writing an Oracle article about “what attracts boys and girls to each other.” WHAT? How are Principal Cooper and Mr. Collins allowing this? And, to make matters more annoying (if possible!), Claire wants to photograph Liz and Todd Wilkins (“Sweet Valley’s Couple of the Year”) to accompany the article. That doesn’t sound like journalistic integrity to me. GROSS. Liz even creates a questionnaire to serve as her “research” and gets stubborn when Todd points out how unscientific it is. Oh, eat it, Liz. She gets evasive and doesn’t admit that she’s wrong when someone writes into The Oracle a response to her letter, telling her that she ain’t right. But it turns out the letter was written by Todd, which she determines by scrutinizing a typewritten “a.” Good God, Elizabeth, get a life. She’s huffy about it, but then they make up and go to the dance together. I don’t even understand this fight. Bleh.
And as for the secondary plot concerning a Wakefield (not that anything concerning a Wakefield is secondary in this world): Jessica has become obsessed with her subconscious and keeps having the same recurring dream involving all these dudes after her, until it starts to rain and she’s all alone and some beyond-gorgeous surfer guy (“Jackson”) comes up behind her. She thinks it’s prophetic and is all set to buy a ticket to Hawaii because she’s sure that that’s where her dream will take place. She actually sits at the dinner table and goes into detail about all this stuff in front of her parents. Good thing Ned and Alice don’t listen to their kids or else this would be awkward.
Furthermore, Jess creates “Dreams Unlimited” and becomes a bit of an entrepreneur: She offers to interpret people’s dreams for cash, calling herself an “expert.” (Liz: “You’ve really only been interested in dreams for a couple of days.” Jess: “I’ve been interested in dreams for almost a whole week.”) As a side note: I really want to do this now. She thinks this’ll help her raise the cash to get to Maui and be all From Here to Eternity with Jackson. (Jean sneaks love advice out of Jess by pretending that her real-life situation is a dream. Very clever, West!) She’s so devoted that she even spends Saturday night interpreting people’s dreams for them—for free (to help her build up clientele, natch)—but her interpretations are way off so she starts losin’ her street cred. Jess then realizes that she’s been screwing around too much with dreams and not enough on schoolwork or a date for the dance, not to mention she realizes that this dream she’s been having has been inspired by an ad for Mexico. Oh snap!
Other Notes:
- The relationships at SVH depress me; the guys are usually too testy about something and the girls are too nurturing in regards to whatever it is the dudes are too testy about.
- Jean admires Scott from afar as he participates in a spitball/food fight. How dreamy! (Then again, when I was in high school, I was hot for the guitar player who crawled up on a high ledge in the cafeteria and held up the plastic “Got Milk?” cow in triumph, and said things like, “Of course retarded people can reproduce—how do you think there are more retarded people?” But he was a guitar player , you guys!)
- Jean and Claire also work at Project Youth. Where did this place come from? It’s become, like, this SVH phenomenon out of nowhere!
- We actually get a sentence like this: “Instead of [Elizabeth] minding her own business, as she knew she should, she decided to push things along.” Why, of course she did! And I love how later on, Jess tells her, “It doesn’t pay to meddle in other people’s lives. You should have learned that by now.” HAH!
- What amuses me is that every time Jean’s around Scott, she can’t get over how human he is. This amuses me. Has she been hanging around Steven Wakefield too much? Or else she’s wondering why he’s “always doing things to show her that he wasn’t a monster.” Scott Trost is Young Frankenstein(’s monster)!
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