Young Adult Revisited

Abby and Anna are about to turn 13 and are in the midst of planning their Bat Mitzvah. Abby is also freaking out because she failed a math quiz and her teacher sent home a note. She destroyed the note and kept it a secret from her mom. During her next class, she learns that they have another test coming up and this one counts for 25% of their grade. This really freaks her out because she’s so busy with studying for her rite of passage that she doesn’t have time to do anything else. It doesn’t help that her mom finds out about the quiz anyway. Abby points out that she was sick and couldn’t study for the test and the teacher wouldn’t offer her any extra time. Her mom goes down and basically chews out the teacher. Abby feels bad because she missed two days of school, but she wasn’t actually that sick on the second day and spent it watching television. Luckily a random guy shows up and offers her a great study guide for the test and for only $3. She buys it, reads through it and thin...

Mary is a teenage girl sitting in the police department, when the book opens. Cops Sharp and Riles are grilling her on a boy named Richard “Rich”. Mary reveals that they went out once and hung out a few times, but he wasn’t her boyfriend, she was actually dating a guy named Charlie. The cops announce that Rich is lying dead on a slab in the morgue and Charlie is missing. They make it clear that they don’t believe she knows nothing about the night because she can’t remember simple details and all she say is that she loves Charlie and doesn’t know where he went. Mary then flashes back on how she fell for Charlie. She had a shitty car and heard he was a good mechanic, so she took her car to him. He brought it back that night and wouldn’t take any money for it. She gave him a ride home, the car broke down again and she exploded on him, blaming him for wrecking her car. He called her a bitch, but brought her car back the next day in perfect condition, so she asked him out. Later she di...

Quinn Hadley is a freshman at Salem University and a chronic night walker, aka sleepwalker. She’s had a few episodes in her life and the doctors always told her that it was just stress. She was also warned to watch herself at college because school was so stressful. When her boyfriend Simon dumps her right before the Spring Fling, she starts sleepwalking again. Her roommate Tobie keeps an eye on her and keeps her from doing dangerous things when she sleepwalks. Tobie and some other girls from her dorm go to the dance together and everyone has a great time until the last dance. Suddenly an awful smell takes over the room and everyone panics, running outside. Several people are hurt and her friend Jessie gets her wrist broke. Someone apparently did a little chemistry experiment and set off sulfuric acid in the room. When she wakes up the next day and hears about it, she notices a sulfur smell in the room. At first she thinks it’s Tobie’s clothes, but then finds that it’s her own cl...

Emily and Nancy’s mom just married a new guy Hugh and now his kids Jessie and Rich are moving in with them. Jessie is cool at first, but then she discovers that they have to share a room. I’m not sure why they would stick her in a room with her new stepsister, instead of putting the two actual sisters in the same room. She ends up kicking Emily’s dog Tiger and then yanking the head off her favorite teddy bear. Ok then. Emily is currently dating Josh, who once dated Nancy. There are a few jokes about how he ditched one sister for the other and it’s pretty clear that Nancy still has feelings for him, but Emily blows it off. During their first dinner together, the girls realize that Hugh is kind of an ass. He makes rude comments about Rich spending all his time locked in his room reading and brags that he never reads. Emily also flashes back to her own dad’s tragic boat accident the previous year. To top it all off, Hugh is happy that he lives with so many girls because now he doesn...