FREEZE TAG BY CAROLINE B. COONEY (1992)

Meghan loves playing with the family next door. There’s West, Tuesday and Brown and their parents who always buy kid friendly foods and don’t mind people spending the night. They’re all hanging out one day when Lannie from across the street comes over. None of the kids like Lannie because she’s weird, has dull looking hair and is really pale. They’re all kind of bitchy to her, like West won’t take her for a ride on the lawn mower and Tuesday won’t let her spend the night.

Lannie makes the kids play freeze tag and they discover that she can actually freeze people, which she does to all of them. When she lets West out, he demands that she unfreeze the others, including Meghan who Lannie really hates. She does, but makes him promise that he’ll always like her “best”.

Freeze Tag then cuts to the future when the kids are teenagers in high school. Meghan and West are now one of those couples that you despise because they’re so cute. They’re constantly giggling together, talking on the phone and making out in the hallways at school. Plus West is working on an old pickup truck and the two meet there at night, even though the doors handles don’t work so they can’t close them.

Lannie appears to break up their happy little moment, remind West of his problem so he ditches Meghan for the night. Dumbass West decides that one date is all Lannie really needs and that she’ll leave them alone after that. Instead she freezes a girl in school to show her power. West goes back to Lannie and when he ditches her yet again, she threatens to go after Tuesday.

Actually it’s kind of cool because she catches the couple alone in the truck and freezes them both. The only way they get her to unfreeze Meghan is because Tuesday promises that she can come to a slumber party for cheerleaders only. West completely ignores Meghan and she’s made the pariah of the school. Seriously girls with crushes on him and his best friend ask her what’s up and tell her that West is crazy and stuff, like teenagers don’t break up constantly.

Meghan goes a little crazy because she lost her best friend and boyfriend so she curls up in bed with her mom and starts thinking that Lannie passed on the freeze tag abilities to West. When she and Tuesday plot to find a way to bring Lannie down, Lannie freezes a group of elementary school kids. They also learn that she killed her mother and locked her step-dad in his car where she left him frozen. That doesn’t deter our little gals though. They come up with another plan.

Meghan goes over to their house one night and everyone’s in a really good mood. Turns out they locked Lannie in the truck out in the woods where no one will ever find her. Meghan watches the evil in her friends faces and realizes that she can’t sit by and let evil happen. She leaves their house, saves Lannie and takes her home, thinking that maybe Lannie will reform now that she’s known a real friend.

Oh my fucking god. I think Cooney should have done a follow up called Freeze Tag 2: Lannie Kills Meghan. Seriously, Meghan was a huge bitch to her from the time they were kids and then can’t figure out why the other girl hates her so much. Then she does one nice thing and suddenly everything is all hunky dory. Give me a break.

Plus everyone acts like Meghan and West are the best couple in the universe. Please, they’re 15 and 16, they’d break up by the end of the year. On the positive side, we get a roundabout reference to sex! West’s mom thinks that they’re getting too serious, but his dad is thinking about what he was doing as a 16 year old boy. That cracked me up.

Well my first review is done and it took me a lot longer than I thought. I ended up starting with a Point Thriller that I never read before, which is surprising because this was right when I started getting into the whole Point Thrillers/horror for young adults. Maybe my next review will take a little less time.