Fear Street Super Chiller: High Tide

Adam and his girlfriend Mitzi (what a name) are out on the water, tooting around on a water scooter. Anyone know what that is? Anyway, they’re goofing around and she accidentally falls overboard. When he turns around to save her, he accidentally hits her in the head with the scooter and she starts bleeding. He falls off and tries to save her again, but the scooter goes crazy and starts chasing them both.

Suddenly he wakes up in his own bed, with his roommate Ian staring at him. It turns out that his girlfriend Mitzi died the previous summer when they snuck out on a scooter. Ever since then, he’s been having bad dreams. He looks down at his legs and starts screaming because his legs are missing.

Cut to Adam sitting with his psychiatrist Dr. Thall and telling him about his hallucination. The doctor’s worried because Adam had hallucinations before, but he got passed them. Adam then goes off to his job as a lifeguard…seriously? Would anyone want a guy who’s girlfriend drowned and has hallucinations, to work as a lifeguard?

Anyway, his buddy Sean is flirting with this girl Alyce, who he’s supposedly dating. I say supposedly because she doesn’t seem all that interested in him and I can kind of see why. He keeps chasing her around and asking her out, even when she’s not interested in him. Sean then tells Adam that she’d better not be sneaking around on him.

He proceeds to tell a story about his old girlfriend. Apparently she started sneaking around with another guy, so Sean started stalking him. He left him threatening notes and threatened him in the hallways at school. Then he jumped him in the woods and beat the shit out of him. Adam starts talking about a date he has that night, which isn’t with his kind of girlfriend Leslie.

Sean shows up at Alyce’s house that night, despite the fact that she told him they weren’t going out because he thinks she was joking. Her roommate answers and says that she went to the movies, so he starts stalking her. He sees her out with a guy and freaks out about her date. He runs into Leslie, who’s about to cry and they talk about Alyce’s date.

I love how Sean gets like two chapters from his viewpoint and then it’s all about Adam. Adam runs into Joy and Raina, two girls he graduated with from Shadyside. Ooh and they mention that Joy went out with Gary Brandt! So either she was dating someone younger than her or apparently our old school kids all graduated. Apparently Adam dated them both and now they just happen to be in town on a break from college and waiting for their summer jobs to start.

Adam and Ian are also having problems because Ian keeps borrowing everything he owns, including his clothes and food. Plus Ian is girl crazy and keeps going out with different girls every night of the week. He’s also having problems with Leslie because she thinks they’re a couple and he’s not feeling that.

One night he meets Raina and Joy for dinner after blowing Leslie off and she shows up at the restaurant. They have a minor altercation and she pushes him into a table before storming off. The next day he runs into the girls again at the beach and they want to know what’s up with his girlfriend, but he kind of blows it off.

Sean keeps ignoring him and then runs off, leaving Adam alone at the beach. Jeez, they didn’t even do that at Sweet Valley Shore. He warns the girls about the water being rough and then notices them trapped in the water. Adam runs off to save them, but only manages to save Raina. She’s passed out in the water and Joy keeps screaming and dragging him under, so he pulls Raina to the shore. He thinks that Joy will be fine until he gets back, but she goes under and never comes back up.

He wakes up in his room, thinking that it was all a nightmare, but Ian confirms that it happened. The next day he sees Leslie, who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The drowning wasn’t on the news and she shows him that it wasn’t in the paper. Then he thinks he sees Joy, but the girl disappears. He does notice that the “ghost” left behind footprints in the sand.

On top of all that, he starts having visions of Mitzi again and he’s getting threatening phone calls from someone. He even has a hallucination, where an apple turns into a skull and starts talking to him. Leslie offers to help, but he blows her off. Then he runs into Raina, who thanks him for saving his life and he thinks that somehow Leslie is screwing him. Raina comes back and arranges to meet him later.

He comes home and finds a dead sea gull, wrapped in his sweatshirt and laying on his bed. Then he comes home and finds Sean attacking his bed with a knife. Sean reveals that Alyce was dating Ian and because Ian wore Adam’s sweatshirt, he thought it was his. He also thought Adam’s bed belonged to Ian. Adam suggests he talk things over with Alyce and then leaves to meet Raina.

Raina apologizes to Adam and then out walks Joy. It turns out that Dr. Thall thought Adam was repressing something about last summer and wanted to do something drastic to make him remember. He somehow tracked down the girls…and Ian…and got them to agree to fake a drowning. I smell a lawsuit.

Adam rushes off to grab a water scooter and hits the water, where he sees Ian coming at him. Somehow that makes him remember what actually happened the last summer. Ian and Mitzi were screwing around, they went out on the water, she fell overboard and he hit her with the scooter. Ian rushed back to shore, told Adam what happened and he raced off. Somehow it got all muddled in his mind and he thought that he did it.

Ian starts chasing him because he wants him to die or something. Ian ends up falling off the scooter and Adam saves his life. The book ends with Leslie coming to see him and him making a joke about whether or not she’s real. She kisses him, asking if it feels real and he tells her he doesn’t care and kisses her back.

High Tide is only around 170 pages long. Does that seem short to anyone else for a Super Chiller?