Fear Street: Fear Hall: The Beginning (R.L. Stine)

Part One: Hope

Hope wants us to know all about Ivy State College and Fear Hall, where she lives with her roommates Angel, Jasmine, and Eden. Duncan Fear donated the money to the college for it to build a dormitory in his honor. People say it's haunted, but Hope doesn't really believe the stories.

While in bed one night, something wakes her up, and it turns out that it's her boyfriend Darryl. She mentions that he "saved" her back in high school from another guy but that it's a story for another time. Darryl starts talking about how he saw her out with this guy Brendan that night, but she tells him it was Angel. Angel then wakes up and says that she went out with him in one of Hope's outfits. Darryl moans about how he did something bad and thinks he killed him.

There's a knock at the door, which they think is the police. After hiding Darryl in the closet, Hope answers the door and finds the girls from across the hall there. They all have M-word names and thought they heard something strange. Someone comes running in and yelling about a dead body found outside. Everyone goes out and sees Brendan's dead and mutilated body. When they get back inside, the cops show up to ask them some questions.

Part Two: Jasmine

Jasmine works as a waitress to make extra money and during her shift, she sees the M-word girls come in and start staring at her. She finally goes over and demands to know what they want, but they claim they only wanted her to take their order. Eden and Angel then come in because they want to talk about Hope and how worried they are about Darryl.

When she goes home for the night, her boss Marty acts super creepy and wants to know what she's doing, where she's going, and pretty much asks her what she's wearing while panting. So when she hears someone following her, she thinks that it's Marty. Nope, it's Darryl. He tries to strangle her and choke her before taking a step back and warning her not to turn him into the police because if she does, he doesn't know if he can control his murderous urges. Um, ok?

Part Three: Eden

This is an Eden chapter but it tells us a lot about how Hope. Her mom called her Buttertubs as a kid and yelled at her for being fat when she just had a few extra pounds. One day, her mom came home and found her eating ice cream with her friends. She made her sit down and eat all four bowls, then pushed her head in the carton, and made her eat the rest like a dog. Wowza.

Eden and Hope head out for a night out together and meet these new guys named Dave and Gideon. She starts to introduce them to Hope, but when she turns around, she sees that Hope took off with Darryl. Her and Dave do some flirting and make plans to get together later. Then some weird stuff happens. Her history professor calls her Hope and has no record of Eden being in class. Darryl comes after her and threatens her to keep his secret. She does try to call the cops, but then Hope shows up and convinces her not to call the cops yet.

When she finally does go out with Dave, she runs into the M-gals. They call her Hope, she gets confused and says she's just wearing her roommate's clothes. She and Dave run into Gideon, but he really just pops up to scare them and then disappears. They finally go to a golf course to practice hitting some balls. She sees Darryl coming at them and tries to warn Dave, but Darryl gets there first and beats him to death with a club.

Part Four: Hope

Eden comes home covered in blood and freaking out. Apparently she ran away from the scene and now the cops are looking for her. Eden obviously wants to call the cops, but Hope won't let her. She explains that Darryl was the first person to ever care about her without caring about her weight and that she just can't let him go. Darryl shows up in their room and encourages her to kill her roommate, but she makes him go back to his room and change before the cops come.

After Eden decides to call the cops and actually reaches for the phone, Hope slams her over the head with a hairdryer. Not sure of what to do with her, she finally drags her body over and shoves it in a closet. Melanie, one of the chicks from across the hall, comes over to tell her about a Fear Hall safety meeting, but Hope worries that she saw her hiding her roommate in the closet.

She then goes to look out the window and sees the cops leading Darryl away in handcuffs. When she turns around to check the closet, she finds it empty and Eden laying in bed. Eden has no clue what she's talking about with the closet and goes back to sleep. When she looks out the window again, she sees Darryl standing downstairs by himself with no cops around and staring at her with hatred in his eyes.

Part Five: Jasmine

Jasmine shows up late to work, and Marty seems really concerned about it. After some back and forth, he finally tells her that she didn't come in the day before. He writes her a check and fires her. She later realizes that she can't remember anything from the day before. Darryl once again turns up. This time, he tells her that Hope wanted him to go into hiding, they had a fight, and he did something really bad.

Part Six: Hope

Jasmine rushes to see Hope and finds her crying. The "really bad thing" was that he hurt her feelings and called her a bunch of names like cow and fat. Though she spent the last few hours crying, she suddenly flips out and races away. She does pause to think that she would have done things differently had she known she would never spend another night in Fear Hall again.

Part Seven: Angel

Angel is making out with some random dude named BJ. Apparently she has a bad habit of picking up guys like this all the time. They met at a coffee shop and almost immediately started making out. Darryl shows up and acts all menacing. She starts yelling about Darryl, which sets off BJ. He keeps telling her that she's scaring him. Darryl knocks him out of the car and takes off in it with Angel next to him screaming.

Part Eight: Hope

Eden cannot handle it anymore and decides to call the cops. Darryl pops up, having been hiding out on the never before mentioned fire escape. He freaks out on Eden for turning him in and throws her out the window. They hear a knock on the door, which is the cops, and they all run to hide on the fire escape.

The cops come in with the three Ms from across the hall. When they say they got a call from a girl named Eden who lived there with her three roommates. One of the Ms points out that the girl who lives there is named Hope and that she lives alone in a single room. Duh, duh, duh.

Out on the fire escape, Hope hears them talking about how all the other girls were different facets of her personality and how she was the one who worked at the restaurant as a waitress. They remember seeing her talking to herself at bars and restaurants and admit they thought it was weird. She briefly considers running inside and killing them all, but then she decides to turn to her friends. Suddenly Eden, Jasmine, Angel, and Darryl are all in front of her. Hope thinks about how great it is that Darryl always shows up just when she needs them and how much she loves him before deciding that she needs to make everyone pay for...I have no idea what.