Point Horror: Blind Date (R.L. Stine)

Whoa! This book is so old that it was before they started putting the little “heartbeat” line on the spine of the Point Horror books!

So Blind Date centers on Kerry. He’s just your ordinary kind of high school guy, except that he was in a car accident about a year ago. He doesn’t remember anything about that night, but he remembers the headlights of another car coming towards them. He lives with his annoying brother Sean and his cop dad, who does nothing except talk about his brother Donald.

Donald was some huge deal/popular football player and the only reason Kerry even gets a spot on the team is because of his brother’s legacy. During a practice, he accidentally rams the quarterback, who has to be carried off the field. His buddies and his girlfriend all vow revenge. Plus he gets tossed from the team.

Not long after, Kerry gets a mysterious phone call from a girl. She tells him that his friend Margo, who moved across town, wanted to set them up. Amanda and her were friends, but now Amanda has transferred to his school. She asks him to pick her up at home and gives him an address.

On the night of their big date, he goes to the house and has a flashback to the accident. Then he meets a man and woman, who cry when he asks for Amanda because that’s the name of their dead daughter. He runs home, all confused about what happened. Mysterio girl calls back and says he went to the wrong house: turns out she lives on a similar street and her name is Mandy, he just heard Amanda. They make plans to meet at school, so he can give her a tour.

The day before he meets her, he and his buddy Josh are playing basketball when football Sal’s buddies wander up. They apologize to him and say he woke up and told everyone it was an accident. Nah, just kidding, that only happens in his mind. They actually beat the shit out of him pretty hardcore.

With a broken face and a bleeding nose, he gets to meet Amanda and she’s just as hot as he imagined. The only weird thing is that she’s wearing kind of old fashioned looking clothes. Plus she has kind of a warped sense of humor, but they seem to mesh well together. She sees a picture of the upcoming dance and asks him to take her. Date #2! Woo-who!

Before date night can arrive, Kerry’s dad has a startling announcement: his brother Donald escaped. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably wondering where the fuck he escaped from. Yeah, turns out that Mr. Stine decided to throw us a little twist. Turns out that Kerry and Donald were out driving around with Donald’s girlfriend. They got into a wreck and even though she was sitting in the middle, she died and they both survived.

Donald flew into a rage and tried to kill Kerry. He never really got over her death and he’s been locked away in a mental institution ever since. Turns out that his girlfriend’s name was Amanda. Kerry is noticeably shocked and though his dad was (2 pages ago) freaking out, now he just tells him to watch out and let him know if his brother calls.

Kerry meets Mandy at the dance and they have a good time, except she keeps grabbing him and ramming her tongue down his throat. I wonder if Stine ever got laid in high school or if these books are just what he wished happened back then? She wanders off and the quarterback’s friends end up chasing him around the school. This time they really do want to apologize because Sal did wake up and told them what happened. Um okay, pointless.

Kerry goes back to the dance and finds Mandy, but she’s ready to go home. They head outside with Josh and his date, where they see that someone trashed Kerry’s car. I’m actually kind of sad because he was driving a Mustang. Mandy freaks out, jumps on the next bus and takes off. The next day she apologizes, saying that it was just too terrible to be around.

He starts getting all these weird phone calls and he blows them off. At first he thinks it’s Sal’s girlfriend and later he thinks it’s Donald. Donald finally does call and gives him a cryptic message, but also says that he’s on his way back. Yet Kerry opts not to tell his dad. Then Mandy says that Donald’s been following her around. Kerry asks how she knows his brother and she says she doesn’t know him, which he accepts. Um, if you don’t know him, then how do you know his name? Kerry never told you!

Mandy keeps getting more and more insistent that Donald is following her and asks Kerry to run away with her. She says that her family has a cabin in the woods, so Kerry logically packs a bag and runs off with her. He notices a huge ass hammer in the trunk, the same type of hammer the police tell him inflicted the damage on his car. Once again he ignores that. This guy really wants to get laid.

She gets “lost” and takes him past Amanda’s house several times, which freaks him out but he still ignores the feeling. He finally flashes back to the night of the accident and remembers that he was the one driving, that Donald let him drive even though he wasn’t old enough. They get to the cabin, she makes him some tea, he starts getting sleepy and he wakes up, tied to a chair.

This is where things get really weird. She literally starts taunting him with a stuffed moose head and rams it over his head. Is that even possible? I assumed a stuffed head means it’s, you know, stuffed. She tells him that she’s Amanda’s sister and she’s going to ruin his life like he did hers. He hears someone yelling and people running around. Suddenly the moose head is ripped off and Donald is standing there.

Donald apologizes for what he did before, but accurately points out that he saved his life this time. Then he tells her that Mandy is actually a girl he met in the mental institution. She has a condition where she thinks that she’s other people and takes over their life. She heard about Amanda and kept pumping him for details and information. She eventually believed that she was her sister and set about getting revenge. Does that make sense to anyone?

They share a brotherly bonding moment, while Mandy (whoever) lays on the floor. The book jumps forward a few weeks and Josh offers to set Kerry up on a blind date with his cousin. Kerry says he’s done with blind dates (hardy-har-har) and then chases after him, wanting to know what she looks like. Hilarious.