Sweet Valley High #19: Showdown

Lila has met the perfect guy. His name is Jack and he works in construction, but she knows he must be something much more important. She throws a huge party with him as the guest of honor. From the moment Jessica sees him though, she knows that he must be hers. She flirts with him constantly and then slips him her number when Lila is out of the room.

Jess is sure that Jack wants her and no one else, so she’s shocked the next day when Lila reveals that they have a date set up for the weekend. Then Jack calls and makes plans with Jess. He tells Lila that he can’t see her during the week because he has to get up so early. They have fun on their date and she decides that he’ll dump Lila soon enough.

Nicholas Morrow thinks that Jack looks vaguely familiar from back east, but he can’t place him. Lila keeps pumping him for details and he lets a few things slip, like going to boarding school. He keeps dating both girls, but only Jess knows he’s seeing them both. He promises her that Lila is just a friend and nothing more.

Unfortunately everyone at school keeps talking about Jack and Lila. Even Jess starts thinking that their names go together perfectly, but she refuses to give up on him. She thinks that he just needs to let her down easily. Liz tries to talk to her, pointing out that a guy who really likes you won’t date anyone else and that she can’t possibly be in love so quickly. Jess just points out that Liz and Todd fell in love pretty fast so it must be possible.

Lila makes plans with Jack, but gets the flu and has to cancel. Since he has the day free, he calls Jess. They go out to dinner and he starts talking about his old life and how he has a bunch of underwater pictures at home from when he scuba dived. As they’re leaving, they run into Nicholas again. Nicholas’s friend realizes that Jack is a guy from their old boarding school. He snapped after his little sister died, got messed up with drugs and robbed a female student they once dated. He held her at knifepoint and tried to kill her. They run to get Liz. Liz calls Lila and she tells them where he lives and expresses gratitude that Jess took the psycho from her.

Jessica notices that Jack is acting kind of weird, but she still goes back to his house. She makes a comment about knowing better than to go to a strange guy’s house, but that doesn’t stop her. They look at pictures and then she snoops through his things. She finds a box of drugs and calls him on it. He grabs her, but Liz and the gang burst in. They manage to save her life and it all works out in the end.

*Jack is apparently into a lot of drugs! He has uppers, downers, pot, cocaine and what seems like crack all in his little box.

*Jessica is truly a bitch in this book. I’m sorry, but Lila had already met him, had a thing for him and Jess went after him like a slut in heat, all because he’s cute.

*By the way, he totally wears a banana hammock at the pool party LOL.

*This is the book where Liz discovers that George is cheating on Enid with Robin Wilson. They keep finding random funny photos at the newspaper office. Penny is out sick and Liz is running the paper. She discovers that Penny’s sister Tina did all the photos, but finds one that shows George and Robin making out.

*Liz confronts them at the airfield where they took lessons and kind of does nothing. They tell her that they fell in love and George plans on ending it with Enid. Instead of telling Enid herself, she decides to just wait and see what happens. Nice friend.