Sweet Valley High #55: Perfect Shot

Shelly Novak is incredibly tall, has incredibly legs and is really pretty, but she thinks that she’s a freak. She’s long had a crush on her best friend Greg, who taught her how to play basketball and helped make her a huge star on the team. He recently broke up with his girlfriend and she thinks she might have a shot. She keeps talking to her best friend Cathy, who encourages her to try it.

Randomly, a new ballroom dance class is being offered and a ton of SVH students are taking part. Both Jessica and Amy fall in love with Patrick McLean, who teaches the classes and plans on opening a real school when he graduates college in a few months. They naturally become obsessed with him and compete over him, even though he doesn’t really express an interest in either one.

Shelly attends the first lesson and sees Greg with his ex-girlfriend. She winds up dancing with Jim Roberts, a great photographer who is the same height as her and seems to like her. On the walk home with Greg, she gets the nerve up to ask him to the big dance, which honors high school athletes. Greg is uncomfortable and turns it into a joke, saying she’d tower over him and they’d just look silly.

The next day she tells Cathy about what happened and basically how he broke her heart. Luckily Jim is there to make her feel better. He never really noticed her before, but now he kind of digs her. They start spending some time together, but at first it’s just because she thinks it might make Greg jealous. Then she actually starts liking him. The one thing she doesn’t like is that he keeps trying to take her picture and she still thinks she’s ugly.

The local newspaper is hosting a contest for high school photographers, with the winner receiving a brand new video camera. Jeffery asks Liz to help him pick out his entry and they see Jim developing some pictures. One picture of Shelly is amazing and they basically pressure him into entering it in the contest. Olivia sees is and makes a comment to Shelly, who completes flips out.

Shelly goes off on Jim about how he broke his promise to her. He says that he wanted to win, to show her how beautiful she really is, but she won’t hear it. Liz calls her (of course) and tells her how great the picture is. She calls Jim to tell him she’s sorry, but all he says is that he withdrew the entry and hangs up. Mr. Collins conveniently knows the guy running the contest and when she talks to him, he agrees to get the photo back in.

Shelly wants to talk to Jim, but he ignores her and keeps running away from her in the halls. When the winners are announced, Jim wins the grand prize. Shelly apologizes for being a moron, but she still won’t look at the photo. At the urging of her friends, she sees it and she can’t believe how great she looks or that Jim named it “Poetry in Motion”. She sends him a note, signing it with that name and they make up. Greg sees how great Shelly looks and asks her to the dance, but she turns him down because she wants to go with Jim.

Amy and Jessica make a bet over who can get to dance with Patrick first at the dance, with the winner buying the other a new outfit. Jessica goes all out with a brand new dress, thinking Amy will lose. When she gets to the dance, she sees Amy in the exact same dress. To make things worse, Patrick shows up with a super hot woman and thinks the girls just look kind of cute together. Nice to see that someone remembers they are jailbait!