Sweet Valley High #13: Kidnapped!

Our story begins with a typically creepy
exchange between a Wakefield twin and someone they're related to, in this case
it's Jessica asking Steven to zip up her dress. Ok, well that's not too weird,
you might be thinking. He was however, just out of the shower and wearing
nothing but "a green towel wrapped snugly around his waist".
Ohkaaaaaay.
"He bent his six foot one body over
her zipper"
"Steven inspected his sister
carefully"
"She really thought her brother was
the most handsome guy in Sweet Valley"
WHOA THERE HORSEY. I'm telling you,
Wakefields = Lannisters of Westeros Valley.
Anyway, the reason Jessica is getting all
dressed up is because there's a big party being thrown by the Morrows, a fancy
new super-rich family in town with a sexy eighteen year old son and a daughter
the same age as the twins. Steven mentions that he's off to see Tricia that
evening and Jessica manages to "hold back the distaste she'd always felt
for her brother's girlfriend". What a martyr. Although we are told that
"she felt she owed her brother the courtesy of silence on the issue".
Christ on a bike Jess, YA THINK? I love how she makes it sound like she's doing
him a massive favour by not slagging off his DYING GIRLFRIEND, rather than it
being, you know, common human decency or anything.
Elizabeth is supposed to arrive home any
minute so she and Jess can go to the party together, but of course she's busy
being chloroformed in the back of a van. Jessica is eventually left alone in
the house and gets fed up of waiting so she calls Cara Walker who picks her up
on her way to the Morrows' super-mansion. While they're on the way, we learn
that Jessica and Cara have an unwritten rule, Thou Shalt Not Chase After The
Same Boy As Your Best Friend, which pretty much leaves Winston Egbert for Cara,
so yeah, good luck with that, Walker. Although Jessica does suggest that when Tricia
dies, Cara and Steven could have another go at dating. Which is pretty cold, even for
noted sociopath Jessica Wakefield.
They arrive at the mansion and a tiny old
butler brings them past "the dining room, the library, the billiards
room" (CLUEDO, ANYONE?) to the room where the party is on. They meet
Regina Morrow there, who's beautiful and statuesque and has dancing blue eyes.
She speaks to Cara first, directing all her attention to her and doesn't answer
Jessica when she butts in to introduce herself, or asks about her brother, Nicholas.
Regina then trips on a rug, so Jessica's train of thought goes thusly:
"The stumble, the lack of response to
Jessica - it was only natural to conclude that the Morrow girl was drunk."
WHICH IS HILARIOUS. Of course that's what
Jessica would think, seeing as people normally grovel before her luminous
blondeness and kiss her hand like she's a fucking bishop, so the only reason
someone wouldn't automatically give her their FULL AND UNDIVIDED ATTENTION is
if they're shitfaced. I just love her reasoning.
It turns out that Regina is actually deaf,
so Jessica can rest easy, she’s still as fascinating and amazing as ever.
Although she does then enquire whether Regina’s brother is also deaf, which is
a pretty weird thing to ask. To her relief, he isn’t, oh and he’s model-handsome to boot, because residents of Sweet Valley must, above all else, be
insanely fuckable. I bet there's a hotness checkpoint just outside the town.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth is still in the back
of the van and trying to remember what happened to her. She realises that her
hands are tied behind her back and that she’s gagged and blindfolded, so she
panics and passes out.
After her shift at the hospital, Elizabeth was supposed to call over to Max Dellon’s house to help him out for his upcoming English test. When she doesn’t show up after a few hours he starts to worry because Elizabeth is super reliable and pretty much The Best Human Ever, so it’s not at all like her to just blow off an appointment. It eventually gets so late that he decides that something must be wrong, so he takes off on his bike towards the hospital to look for her.
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This cover is stagey and terrible, and therefore awesome. The disembodied hand! The weird position of Liz's arm and fingers! The fact that the colours she's wearing are completely wrong because the book clearly states that her work uniform has pink and white stripes on it! |
After her shift at the hospital, Elizabeth was supposed to call over to Max Dellon’s house to help him out for his upcoming English test. When she doesn’t show up after a few hours he starts to worry because Elizabeth is super reliable and pretty much The Best Human Ever, so it’s not at all like her to just blow off an appointment. It eventually gets so late that he decides that something must be wrong, so he takes off on his bike towards the hospital to look for her.
Back at the party, Jessica is busy hogging
Nicholas’s attention all evening and is none too impressed when Todd interrupts
her charm offensive to ask whether she’s seen Elizabeth anywhere. She decides
to fob him off with a lie about Elizabeth babysitting for Mr. Collins, because
if she tells him that she doesn’t actually know where her sister is, she’ll
have to release Nicholas from her sex-grip. Todd walks off feeling uneasy and
thinking that Jessica’s story doesn’t add up.
Elizabeth wakes up again, still gagged and
blindfolded only this time she’s tied to a chair. A vehicle pulls up outside
and her kidnapper comes into the room, creepily undoes the plait in her hair
and takes off the blindfold, at which point she realises that it’s Carl, the
weird orderly from the hospital. He says he’s not going to hurt her and when he
removes the gag, Elizabeth screams for help.
Since talking to Jessica, Todd has been
miserably skulking around the party and eventually decides to call Mr.
Collins’s house. When Roger (who looks like Robert Redford, you know) answers
the phone and says that Elizabeth isn’t there, Todd tells him that there must
have been a misunderstanding and hangs up. We’re told that Mr. Collins is still
holding the phone after Todd hung up and hoping that Elizabeth is ok, because
this book can’t stick to one point of view and has to tell us how immediately
worried everyone is about Elizabeth, in case we'd forgotten how wonderful and
amazing she is.
Todd is furious when he realises that Jessica was lying, so when he finds her sitting by the pool in a tiny bikini and
flirting with Nicholas, he shoves her into the water, which is just brilliant.
People should be shoving Jessica into pools all the time. Nicholas is about to
throw him out, but when Todd makes Jessica realise that it’s half nine and
Elizabeth should have arrived ages ago, she cops on and jumps out of the pool
in a panic, to ring home.
Back at the house, Ned and Alice have just
arrived in the door after a dinner with Alice’s new business associate, who
“didn’t stop telling jokes all evening”. Which sounds tedious as fuck but
they seem to have enjoyed themselves. Ned answers when Jessica calls, and when
everyone realises that Elizabeth is missing, Jessica, still just in her bikini,
rushes out with Todd to drive home and check the roads on the way in case
Elizabeth’s car broke down. BUT WE KNOW IT DIDN’T.
Elizabeth is still tied to a chair
somewhere and screaming didn’t do any good, as they’re in Carl’s manky little
house in the middle of nowhere. It turns out that weird ol’ Carl is in love
with her and kidnapped her so they could be together. And he loves her because
she was nice to him at the hospital and helped him pick up some stuff he
dropped one time. She talks him into untying her and makes a break for the
door, but unfortunately for her there’s another door after that one, which is
all boarded up. So Carl catches her and flings her onto the couch “eyes now
bright with anger” and we’re left assuming that Elizabeth is now in big
trouble.
Ned Wakefield has been ringing around,
trying the hospital and Max Dellon’s house to see if anyone has seen Elizabeth.
When there’s still no sign, he decides to call the police.
Max Dellon arrives at the hospital and finds
Elizabeth’s car with the driver’s side door open, all her stuff inside and her
scarf on the ground. When he realises that something must have happened, he
gets into the car to rummage around for clues as to where she might be. But
next thing you know, the cops arrive and arrest him for trying to steal the car
or something.
But back to Elizabeth! Carl doesn’t hit her
or anything like we were led to believe might happen, he just starts crying and
reties her to the chair for the night. Also, there’s no threat of sexual
violence or anything of the sort, because it seems that the girls only get
almost-raped by hot guys they already know.
The next morning he makes pancakes for her,
because he overheard her one day in work saying how much she likes her mother’s pancakes. But he bought frozen ones that taste terrible and he forgot to
buy syrup, so they’re nothing like Mammy Wakefield’s light, fluffy pancakes,
sprinkled with Aryan goodness, but Elizabeth eats them anyway because she’s
starving. Afterwards, Carl heads off to work, which deflates
Elizabeth’s hope that he’d stay home for the day, which she figured would arouse suspicion
and lead to her eventual rescue.
The police let Max Dellon go free, but
people are all suspicious of him anyway because he scowls a lot and wears
spiked wristbands. Gasp! Well that kid MUST be bad news, then. The police suggest to
the Wakefields that Elizabeth probably ran away, despite the fact that her bag,
her car and ALL HER STUFF was left in the hospital car park. Worst. Cops. Ever.
Carl comes home from work that evening and tells
Elizabeth all about his plans to leave his job and bring her away to some place
in the mountains, where they’ll live together and she’ll bathe in a stream and
he’s planning to leave the following night. Ruh roh!
In school on Monday, Todd confronts Max,
convinced that there’s something he’s not telling them, and ends up punching
him. Jessica breaks the fight up and tells Todd to cop the fuck on, in so many
words, and the three of them decide to launch their own investigation and head
to the hospital to see if there’s anything they can find out.
The new gang split up and each cover a
different section of the hospital, to talk to anyone who was working when
Elizabeth was there last. After asking at a nurse’s desk about Elizabeth, Max
makes his way further down the corridor to talk to a dark, stocky orderly
(spoiler alert: it’s Carl) at the same time that Jessica emerges onto the
corridor.
Carl freaks out, thinking she’s Elizabeth,
and runs over to her in a panic, asking what she’s doing here. You see, he
never realised that Elizabeth had an identical twin, which is just really
shoddy stalking, if you ask me. Go big or go home, Carl.
Anyway, Max trips up Carl before he can get
to Jessica and pins him to the ground. Jessica, in fairness to her, does some
quick thinking and pretends to be Elizabeth so he’ll stay calm and reveal his dastardly plan until the cops
arrive. Once he gets handcuffed and taken away, he confesses everything to the
police, so they all head out to rescue Elizabeth and everything is fine and
she’s not even the tiniest bit traumatised, because there’s no such thing as
PTSD in Sweet Valley. Grand so.
Notable outfit:
This book was severely lacking in hilarious outfits, the only amusing clothing we hear about isn't even worn.
While Jessica is laying out clothes for Elizabeth before the big party at Regina Morrow’s house, she chooses “a long, red velour skirt”, “an off-white, high-necked blouse” and “her sister’s turquoise tank suit”.
While Jessica is laying out clothes for Elizabeth before the big party at Regina Morrow’s house, she chooses “a long, red velour skirt”, “an off-white, high-necked blouse” and “her sister’s turquoise tank suit”.
Whatever the hell a tank suit is.
Number of pages: 149
References to the twins' blue-green eyes: 5
References to the fact that the twins are blonde: 1
Magic twin-sense shivery feelings that something is wrong with the other sister: 2References to the twins' blue-green eyes: 5
References to the fact that the twins are blonde: 1