Sweet Valley High #95: The Morning After

While it's not really the morning after the Jungle Prom, which I desperately want to read again but have yet to find anywhere, it is the week or so after everything went down. In case you can't remember that far back, Jessica and Liz spent a bunch of time fighting over who would be prom queen. Jess then spiked her sister's punch, Liz left with Sam, they got in a car accident, and Sam died. Now Jess refuses to speak with her sister because Liz killed her boyfriend. Yeah right.

Olivia actually gets a story here. She goes from worrying about Liz to feeling sad because her boyfriend left town, to feeling excited because her art teacher picked her as one of the top students in the class. Even though she's taking classes with real college students, her painting gets picked for an exhibit. Someone pays $1,000 for it on the condition that she speak about her work at this nonprofit organization.

After spending way too much time getting ready, she goes to the event and finds that it's just some fancy house. She then meets this guy from her class. Turns out that he bought her painting and set the whole thing up. She talks it over with Nicholas Morrow because they're somehow now best friends. He mopes around because he can't find a date, and she decides to fill out an application for him to go on the new show Hunks.

Bruce keeps moping around too. Some gorgeous (natch) woman saved his life at the prom, but she left before he could get her name. He heads to her school, sneaks around for awhile, and finds out that her name is Pamela Robertson and that she's on the tennis team. It's a match made in heaven. He then stalks her and asks her out on a date.

Their first date is so great that they go out a few more times. He tells Roger, who tells him to be careful and drops some hints about Pamela. When he tells his “friends” about her, Amy goes off about how everyone who knows Pamela knows that she's always up for a good time. The more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that other people kept trying to give him hints about her.

Since he's in love though, none of that matters. He shows up at her house one morning with roses and a picnic lunch, only to see her come home wearing grungy clothes from the night before. A guy drops her off, grabs her, and kisses her. She then sees Bruce and tells him that it was a guy she dated before and that she was ending things with him. He basically calls her a whore, throws the flowers at her, and storms out.

Then there's poor Lila. She accused her therapist of trying to take advantage of her during the prom. Chrome Dome makes her and her dad come in for a meeting with the therapist. Nothing really happens except for Nathan (therapist) promising her that he would never hurt her. She gets so upset that she fakes being sick to miss a week of school, stops showering, and wears old clothing.

Her dad really wants to know what's wrong with her but has no idea what to say or do. He finally makes the decision to call his ex-wife and tell her what's going on. When he tells Lila, she bursts into tears and throws herself into his arms. Lila just cries because all she wants is her mom.

Jessica spends half the book hating her twin and half the time realizing that she's to blame for Sam's death. She skips his memorial service at the race track because she can't handle the idea of seeing people who knew him. She thinks everyone will know that she's an evil person. As if they didn't already know...

This is also our first introduction to evil twin doppelganger Margo! She's a foster kid stuck living in New York with foster parents who don't care and a little foster sister named Nina who actually kind of loves her. After stealing from her foster parents, she sets up Nina to accidentally set the house on fire while making toast. She then lands in Cleveland and gets a job as a nanny. It doesn't take long before she learns that she hates the kid Georgie, wants to get naked with his older brother Josh, and steals from her employer. Margo also feels something pulling her and hears a voice telling her to go to California.

Elizabeth has no memory of what happened at the prom. She has flashes of hugging Sam and dancing with him, but she can't recall what happened when they left or even who drove the car. Steve comes home in the hopes of cheering up both twins but finds that everyone is depressed and that even their parents are kind of giving up. Jessica refuses to talk to her or even listen to her, and Todd has seemingly disappeared. Kids at school keep whispering about her and pointing at her all the time too.

This all leads up to the night when the cops show up at their door. They claim that because Ned is such a big deal that they didn't do anything sooner. Jessica silently freaks out because she assumes they found out about her spiking the drink and are there to arrest her. The cops ask Liz a bunch of questions that she can't answer and decide that she's just defiant and doesn't want to answer. After some back and forth, they finally announce that they came to arrest her. Jessica whines to herself about her parents showing Liz so much support while ignoring her, which makes her more resolved. She decides that Sam's death was clearly her twin's fault and that she will never tell anyone what she did.

*Bruce convinces himself that Amy was talking trash about Pamela because she and Barry had a fight and she clearly wants Bruce back. Yeah, keep telling yourself that.

*You have to love that Pamela claims she was ending things with the guy when she clearly came home in last night's clothes and Bruce actually saw her kiss the guy back.

*Amy finally realizes something is wrong with Lila when she doesn't want to go shopping. Nice to see that her time at Project Youth really helped her out.

*Steve actually remembers when his parents were separated and wonders if this will tear them apart again, which seems realistic.

*Lila's dad has no clue about what happened to John, which makes me wonder if he's curious why she's been seeing a therapist. That also seems like something the school should have called him about given the resolution of that plot.

*This book yet again makes me really hate Jessica. You spiked your sister's drink, let her get drunker all night long, and didn't stop her when she left mainly because you didn't know your boyfriend was with her. You're as much to blame as anyone.

*On the other hand, what the hell kind of alcohol was that?? If I remember right, Liz and Sam shared one drink, but she got so drunk that she blacked out most of the night?

*Liz has a nightmare where she sees Jessica on the beach but then isn't sure who it is because her sister could never look so coldly at her. Nice use of foreshadowing (insert sarcasm here), but she has apparently already forgotten how her twin treated her recently.