Sweet Valley University #5: A Married Woman

Jess still refuses to leave Mike, even though Liz spent the night with her just in case he came back, which he never did. She basically blows off the whole night before, saying that they just need to work on their marriage and invest more time if they want to make it work. She also quits her job because her boss won’t let her call in sick again (apparently she’s been doing that a lot so she can spend time with Mike). He shows up after Liz leaves, ask for forgiveness and they make up yet again.

Denise poses as Winston’s girlfriend for his dad and she does such a good job of it that Winston starts to believe that it’s true. Danny and Isabella are now dating and Tom feels like a third wheel every time he’s around them. Alex and Mark are having problems because he’s looking forward to seeing how his life will turn out away from SVU and he has no intention of bringing her with him when he goes to the pros.

Liz comes up with a “brilliant” idea and discovers that Mike is actually the leader of the secret society. Everyone seems to believe her except for Tom and Billie. Billie thinks it’s too big of a stretch, but Tom actually likes Mike. He remembers a night when he was still a top football player and saw a bunch of frat guys (including Peter the ass and William White) beating up on a restaurant worker. Mike broke it up, took the guy inside and never said a word.

Jess asks Liz to come over for dinner at their apartment and tells her to bring a date. Since Tom likes Mike so much, she invites him along. Jess goes all crazy trying to plan a big dinner party and escapes to Isabella’s for a few hours under the pretense of studying and instead gossips the whole time.

She starts cooking on the day and screws everything up. She can’t find half the ingredients she needs, the house hasn’t been cleaned in awhile and she burns dinner. Mike finds her crying on the floor and decides to order in Mexican food, which they fake as homemade. Apparently Tom and Liz aren’t that smart. Mike and Tom hit it off, spending the whole night talking about jazz music. Liz starts to feel bad because Mike is such a good person after all.

Steven follows Mike around town one day, convinced that he’ll find him cheating, but instead runs into Mike. Mike acts nice and invites him to dinner, but Steve freaks out on him. Steve basically does nothing except talk about Mike and what a loser he is. Then he runs into Mike and Jess and they have another confrontation.

Basically they both act like dicks. Steven pulls out the whole, “stay away from my little sister” routine and Mike turns her into his property. He actually says, “she’s not your sister, she’s my wife”. Yeah, because you can only be one or the other. He demands that Jess back him up, but she runs off crying instead. Steve spends the rest of the night talking about how it can’t possibly be true. Of course they make up yet again when Mike comes home drunk from the bar.

There’s a big dance at school, which is odd because they had one the week before and this isn’t Sweet Valley High. Liz and William, Danny and Isabella, Tom and Celine and Winston and Denise all head out to the dance. Jess was supposed to go, but Mike didn’t want to so she decides to stay home with him instead. She cooks him a special dinner and then sits at home, waiting for him. She cleans up the apartment and finds a hidden gun, but basically just ignores it.

Liz lets William convince her that Tom is caught up in the secret society. He kind of is because it turns out that he was a member during his freshman year when he was a BMOC, but then dropped out when he learned that everyone was racist. There’s also a whole thing about how this is an underground society with connections all across the country. Look, SVU isn’t Harvard or even a Big 10 school so I highly doubt it has that much influence.

Anyway, she decides that Tom and Mike are the leaders and she can’t be around him anymore. She leaves the dance with William and goes back to his apartment. The two are making out on the couch when she realizes that he’s going to want sex and asks to use the bathroom. She looks at his bookshelf, spots an odd book and when she pulls it off the shelf, a bookmark with the society’s emblem falls out.

Jess decides to leave Mike because she’s tired of her life. Just as she’s walking out the door, he shows up and picks a fight with her. He actually says some pretty truthful stuff, about her being a spoiled brat who doesn’t understand real love and how she’s just like the snobby sorority girls. He also tells her that she treated him like a toy, something to play with until she got bored, which is pretty much all she ever does.

He starts tossing stuff around the room, they fight some more and she ends up cracking a lamp over his head before running up to Steven and Billie’s apartment. She confesses their marriage to them and Steve freaks out yet again. They’re all talking about the situation when Mike starts banging on the door.

Billie calls 911, but she begs them not to let him inside. She promises not to, but then Steve runs to the door so Mike can fight with “someone your own size”. Jess tries to tell them that Mike has a gun, but he runs in waving it around first. He and Steven start fighting and the gun goes off…

I am so freaking sick of the whole Jess/Mike thing. Thankfully we’ve only got another book or two until it ends. Plus these storylines go on forever! How long does it take for anything to happen with these people?