Sweet Valley Twins #74: Elizabeth the Hero

Elizabeth, Amy, and Maria are chilling on the beach and searching for seashells for some random school project when they notice Denny Jacobson and his brother Sam surfing. They mainly notice because there's a storm rolling in, the sky gets darker, and the waves get bigger. Denny and Sam apparently don't notice because they stay out in the water. A wave hit Denny and knocks him out. They try to get Sam's attention, but Liz winds up jumping in, dragging him out of the water, and giving him CPR. Yeah, because she just conveniently took a life saving and rescue class.

Meanwhile, the Unicorns are having a meeting at the Wakefield house. There's some random Teen Health Fair coming up, and the school picked Janet as their representative and to give a speech on dental/oral health. She's in charge of picking her helpers, and while this would usually be something the Unicorns made fun of, they all want her to pick them. Jessica waits on her hand and foot, and Mary and Mandy made some big ass paper mache tooth for the fair.

Denny's parents show up with Elizabeth in tow and gush about how she saved their son's life. Ned and Alice then take the twins, all their friends, plus Steven and Cathy to the hospital. Denny goes on and on about how Liz saved his life, which pisses Janet off. She gets even more pissed off when a reporter shows up and takes a picture of Elizabeth and Denny and Denny then pushes her off his bed.

Cut to the next day and Denny showing up outside the Wakefield door. He becomes obsessed with Liz and how she saved his life. Denny tells everyone what happened in an exaggerated way, petitions the school to designate an Elizabeth Wakefield Day, and starts showing up every morning with something for Liz and demanding that she let him carry her books. This doesn't sit well with anyone except Alice. Todd gets jealous and stops talking to her, Janet takes out all her frustrations on Jessica, and Jessica gets snippy with her twin. Steven also gets annoyed because everyone starts comparing him to his little sister. Alice just keeps telling her that Denny will eventually get over it and to let him be, even when he shows up outside and spends hours playing a bad song he wrote about her.

Steven is a dumbass and breaks up with Cathy, who is pretty much the only girl who can stand him. He decides to go after this new girl Pam. Conveniently, Joe Howell also has the hots for her. This leads to the two of them constantly trying to one up each other. Steven, Jessica, Joe, and Elizabeth also come up with a new plan to get rid of Denny. Joe will show up and pretend to be a mugger, Denny will save the day, and everything will go back to normal.

Unfortunately, Joe does a horrible job. He and Denny actually start fighting, and Liz tries to break it up, almost breaking his arm in the process. Denny is all in awe because she saved him again. Steven set it up so that Joe would attempt to mug him and Pam, but Joe is so ticked off that he runs right by them. Steven chases him and says he was a mugger, but Pam just rolls her eyes and tells him she doesn't have time for his immature tricks.

The twins then come up with another idea. They head to the pool and meet Denny there. Liz convinces him to eat a huge sandwich, even though he's all worried about eating and then swimming. She pretends to drown in the pool, but instead of saving her, Denny falls asleep and Amy rescues her. Liz is just about to give up when they decide that they need a new plan to turn Janet into a hero. Maria calls and tells her that she needs to get a certain kind of makeup to wear at the fair and that she needs to get it that very moment.

Steven, Joe, and Sam then show up with the giant fake tooth. They let it go, and it comes crashing towards Denny just as Janet comes out of the store. She freezes, but the girls start tripping over each other, which leads to her accidentally saving him. He gets all starry eyed over her, and they walk off holding hands. Pam and Cathy see the whole thing, but while Pam thinks it was ridiculous, Cathy just laughs and guesses it had something to do with the twins, which leads to them getting back together.

Janet is so happy that she lets Jessica be one of her helpers. Everyone shows up at the fair, she does a great job, and it's clear she and Denny are back together again. Liz is just excited that Todd likes her again and she no longer has to worry about Denny.

*Nice lesson here. Steven dumps Cathy because he thinks their relationship is stale but really to go after another girl. He spends the whole book trying to get with another girl and she stills takes him back. She must be Cara's cousin or something.

*The paper mache tooth thing is ridiculous. It's supposedly so big that Mr. Howell can't park in his garage and it takes three people to move it, plus three people to get inside it. How the hell did two teenage girls make it? On the plus side, Lila is one of the girls tasked with getting inside it at the end.

*Alice annoys me too. She lectures Jessica and Steven for every comment they make about Denny and Elizabeth. Maybe if you would stop gushing over your brilliant, amazing, beautiful Liz, you would realize that you have other kids. She's also irritating at how she handles the Denny situation. She basically tells Liz to just go along with it and that he'll get over her soon enough. Alice has to be one of those parents who tries to marry their kids off to the first person who comes along.

*Pam sounds and comes across as exactly like Jill Hale. I can totally see why Joe and Steven would fight over her.

*Janet brings Denny his favorite chocolate doughnut, which he takes from her and immediately gives to Liz. She retaliates by putting a disfigured Barbie doll in Liz's locker. I kind of love it.

*The principal also holds a big assembly and gives Liz a medal of honor in front of the whole school. Denny thinks it should be bigger and shinier.

*Janet gets annoyed at the hospital because the reporter doesn't care about her because (a) she didn't save Denny and (b) she wasn't even there. She then tries to turn the article into a piece about the Unicorns. Yep, I bet the woman writing an article on a kid saved from drowning would much rather write about a group of gossipy and bitchy middle school girls LOL.

*So, Half Price Books does a big clearance sale every year in my city, and this year, I found like 15 books I didn't have, including this one and some over SVT. When I went to pay, they tried to charge me $2 per book, I refused, and they dropped the price to $1 each. The weird thing is that they rang up some Nancy Drew books for 50 cents because paperbacks were only 50 cents. When I pointed that out, they claimed it was only on adult books. In what would is Nancy Drew Case Files books from the 90s adult books? LOL