Sweet Valley Twins #8: First Place

Since Lila Fowler always gets what she wants and she has a passing interest in horses this week, her dad gets her a horse. Conveniently, Elizabeth's passion for horses just started. The girls in school go crazy about Lila having a horse. They want to ride it all the time and spend time with her to get to her horse. Jessica suggests that Liz talk to her too, but Liz is more concerned with the newspaper and with her horseback riding lessons.

Lila asks Liz to write an article about Thunder for the paper, but Liz turns her down. As she keeps seeing people talking about the horse, she decides that she wants to see it too. She offers to write the article, and Lila schedules a time for them to go to the stable. Elizabeth ends up falling in love with Thunder. She goes to ride him all the time and does a lot of the upkeep that Lila hates.

Eventually, Liz and Lila starts spending way too much time together, and it really starts to annoy Jessica. Lila even arranges for the stable to bring Thunder to her house so Liz can see him again. They meet Ted, who works for the stables and goes to school with Steve. Jessica thinks he's incredibly cute, but he seems to only have eyes for Liz.

Jessica feels like her sister is stealing her best friend, but then Lila invites her over for a special slumber party. Ted comes over to the house to play basketball with Steve, and Jessica makes herself look all pretty. When Liz announces that Lila invited her to the same party, Jess throws a hissy fit, storms out of dinner, and runs to her room. Alice talks to her about how it's okay for her two best friends to have a shared interest in something she doesn't like.

The slumber party goes about as well as you might expect. Everyone except for Liz is a Unicorn, and all they do is watch music videos, eat, talk about boys, and play with makeup. They start gossiping and talking smack about other people in school, and they especially seem to hate Amy. Liz speaks up for her and lets it slip that Ken Matthews kissed her at Julie Porter's party the weekend before. She then begs everyone to keep it a secret.

Ted convinces Elizabeth to enter Thunder in a horse owners competition coming up. Since she's the only one he ever sees at the stable, he assumes that she owns the horse. She lets him believe it, but then he comes over for dinner again and Ned tells him Lila is the owner. Liz runs off and thinks he'll never talk to her again. Turns out that Ted was scared of Lila because she was so mean and that he really didn't like her. Since she never comes around on Fridays, which is the day of the competition, he tells her to enter it anyway.

She tries to keep it a secret from everyone but ends up telling Amy. She says that if she wins, she'll give the $75 prize to Lila. On the day of the competition, the Unicorns pick that day to bring up the whole kissing incident. Amy is so upset that she tells Lila about the competition and they all race to the stables. Amy gets there first and warns Liz, but it's too late because the other girls get there.

Lila refuses to let her enter with Thunder until she hears about the prize. Realizing that she doesn't care about the horse, Liz decides not to enter. The girls storm off in opposite directions, and she runs into Ted. She suggests that he enter Thunder, but he has too much experience for the beginners round. He then admits that he's been practicing jumps with the horse after hours and feels ready for the advanced round.

They go back to Lila and she agrees to let him use Thunder. He almost loses but makes it to the last round. The other horse refuses to go over the last jump, and Ted and Thunder soar over it. In the end, he asks Lila if she wants to cool down the horse, but Lila hates all gross stuff. He offers her $700 as a down payment to Thunder, and since she can buy lots of stuff with the cash, she sells him her horse.

*Lila refers to Ted as the "Sexy Stableboy" when he picks up Thunder from her house, which makes me think Grace must have left behind some naughty books.

*It's funny that Jessica thinks Ted is oh so cute and dreamy but Lila and her friends find him dorky and beneath them.

*Why is it that Amy gets kissed first but they all treat her like crap or like she will never get a boyfriend? It's also weird that Liz and Todd become an official couple dozens of books later and Ken and Amy are never really official.

*I also seem to remember that when Todd kisses Liz, she becomes the first in the group to get a kiss. Guess they forgot about that later.

*Ned and Alice apparently looked into buying a horse for Elizabeth but decided it was too expensive. It cracks me up because she mentions that she just started lessons. Seriously, you were going to buy your kid a horse before she took a single lesson? Plus given how much money they spend on clothes and accessories for Jessica, a horse would probably cost less.

*It's nice that Lila agrees to the sale without talking to her dad. When someone brings it up, she just shrugs and says she was thinking about selling him anyway because owning a horse was too much work.

*Elizabeth is shocked when she goes over to Lila's house and Ellen shows up later to get the answers to their homework that she gave Lila. Nah, I'm sure it was just a coincidence and that she really wanted to hang out with you.

*Would anyone really want to read an article about Lila's new horse? It must have been a slow news week.