* Photo credit to The Closet *
This is one of the worst SVH covers I’ve ever seen, including the ones where Liz looks like a condescending bitch. That blond girl is our focus point yet we get the back of her head—why? Me thinks the artist screwed up the face and didn’t have time to do anything but paint more hair and call it the back of her. Shun. The title in the weird, needless block of yellow is beyond unattractive… What was the art department thinking? Maybe they were all like, “We went to the U-of-Arts, and all we’re doing is making SVH covers. All hope is lost.”
The SVH cheerleaders won first place at the State Cheerleading Championships so now they get to go on to nationals to compete for best squad in the country. However, Jess’s joy is tempered by a) co-captain Heather Mallone, who’s still usurping her power and glory, and b) her twin having made out with her now ex-boyfriend Ken Matthews. But Liz feels just terrible about the whole thing, dontcha know, because Todd Wilkins is the boy she truly loves and she was only kissing Ken to get over him. (Insert derisive snort here.) Liz tries to apologize to Jess, but Jess says, “I don’t care what your intentions were. What if you had found out that you still had feelings for Ken, Liz?” So true! Liz doesn’t have an answer for that, but now she’s pissed at Jess for not accepting her weepy-eyed apology. Oh, shut up, Liz. She also tries to apologize to Todd (“I’m so sorry about what I’ve done. I’ll never cheat on you again”—how she said that with a straight face, I’ll never know), but he ain’t havin’ it either (“You’re not the person I thought you were, and I’m better off without you”). Oh, snap!
So off to nationals the cheerleaders go, where they room with some Alabama cheerleaders who’ve names like Wilhemina and Peggy May and say “y’all” because everyone not from Sweet Valley must fit into a tidy stereotype or the world as we know it will come crashing down around us. SVH is competing against champ shoo-in Thomas Jefferson High from Reno, which just happens to be Heather’s old squad. Strangely, Heather gets all tense and huffy whenever her ex-team is mentioned, but she’s not too preoccupied to stop bossing the team around and make decisions sans Jessica. However, everyone’s ready to do an about-face and kick her off the team when she screws up—not once but twice—in the competition, bumping them down to 48th place. Oh noes!
Then Heather comes clean about why she’s being such a nutter: Marissa James, the captain of the Reno team, is blackmailing Heather into sucking or else she’ll tell everyone how Heather was booted off her old squad for cheating on a final. All the cheerleaders—except Jess and her cronies, of course—tell her they don’t care, which makes sense: Why should any of them concern themselves with such a boring secret? Heather, high on Sweet Valley approval, tells Marissa James to shove it and the SVH squad kicks some major behind.
Meanwhile, Todd and Ken get into a fistfight at school about who bumped into who (with heavy twin-related undertones, naturally), exorcise all their testosterone-fueled, wounded male pride, and become best buds again. (LOL @ Bruce Patman, taunting from the crowd, “The Wakefield girls aren’t worth all this trouble.”) Ken and Todd decide to kidnap Winston Egbert and road trip to Yosemite to cheer the girls on at nationals, but it turns out no dudes are allowed in the competition—“they just make trouble and mess everything up.” This presents Todd and Ken with the opportunity to live out their long-suppressed dream of dressing in drag and acting like RPDR rejects:
“Ken!” Todd said. “Can I borrow your blue eye shadow?”
“Coming!” Ken called in a falsetto voice. A moment later he sashayed into the bathroom like a runway model, adorned in a classic cheerleading costume. “How do I look, dah-lings?” Ken drawled, his hands on his hips. He pirouetted slowly, pausing to exhibit the cheerleading outfit from a variety of angles…
Todd put his fingers to his lips and let out an approving whistle… “I always knew you’d make a great girl,” said Todd with a grin.
“Here’s your eye shadow, honey,” said Ken, batting his eyelashes at Todd. “But make sure to return it.”
Then Ken comments on how Todd’s cosmetic application makes him look like something out of Pink Flamingos and says, verbatim, “OK, Todd, baby, don’t despair. We’re going to do you over.” To think that I haven’t even gotten to the part where Ken reaches under Todd’s flared skirt as his hot breath brushes the side of his neck—a scene that wound up on the editing floor and may not be in your copy of the book.
Anyway, yes, the boys scrounge up some cheerleading costumes, wigs, and makeup; shave their legs; and speak in high-pitched voices when registering as the squad from Saskatchewan, Canada, to gain entrance to the competition. No one but the sixteen-year-old cheerleaders can tell that they’re dudes, because everyone older than the age of eighteen instantly becomes breathtakingly stupid.
But back to the girls: Marissa James locks the SVH team in a room and fortunately the dudes come along to let them out just in time for them to compete. Then Liz kicks a rock sadly and thinks Todd “obviously hadn’t come to see her.” What the hell else would he be doing there, dressed like a chick? Trying to score with Ken Matthews? Oh, wait. Hmm. I had to laugh at Jess: “I have no idea why Ken bothered to come all the way to Yosemite dressed like a transvestite…because I’m never going to have anything to do with him.”
But the twins make up while laughing at the guys and way they’re dressed, and deduce that the dudes are there to woo them after all, so—despite all the sheer misery the girls have caused the boys and that this mess has strictly Wakefieldian roots—decide to humiliate the hell out of the guys by announcing during the competition that the Saskatchewan cheerleaders need to perform, which they do, badly, while chanting “Can-a-da! Can-a-da!” Then they get tossed out on their padded arses.
Let’s wrap this bad boy up. It’s revealed that Marissa James booby-trapped the stage for the SVH team with baby oil and TJ High is disqualified after winning first place. And who should come in second place but Sweet Valley High! I know, you never saw it coming. Then Liz and Todd make up, Ken and Jess make up, Heather does all but go to bed with the team’s cheerleading trophy, Todd and Ken start SVH’s first LGBT association (I wish), and everyone lives happily ever after until the next book.
Other Notes:
- Mr. Collins wants to Liz to whip up a front-page story about the cheerleaders winning state. WTF? She’s on the cheerleading team now! What about journalistic ethics, which Liz cries so often? The young Robert Redford even declares, “In fact, now that you’ve joined the squad, you’re the perfect person to cover it.” Mr. Collins, for someone so wise, you don’t know shit about fuck.
- I love Maria Santelli and Winston Egbert. “Maria couldn’t help laughing as she took in Winston’s attire. Her heart went out to him with love… In his cheerleading outfit he looked ridiculous, like a bony stork dressed in a skirt.” This prompts her to accost and grope him in his cheerleading outfit in front of everyone. Oh dear. I hope they live HEA.
- Winston has a muscular calf! Ee!
- Some of these cheers… Well, I’ll just show you the “Funky Monkey”:
C’mon everybody, do the “Fun-ky Monkey”!
S-V-H’s a-rockin’, we’re groovin’ and we’re hunky!
We’re SVH, we’re SVH, and we’re funkin’.
Fun-ky, fun-ky, the Funky Monkey!
Funky, funky!
This series continues to tax the last of my brain cells.
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