Sweet Valley High #86: Jessica Against Bruce

Bruce Patman is totally fed up with how lame Sweet Valley is and wants something that will rock all their socks off. That's what convinces him to come up with an idea for Club X. He shows up at school one day with a black leather motorcycle jacket on that has a big X in white across the back. Then Ronnie Edwards starts wearing the same jacket. Before long, Tad Johnson joins their crew.

Though everyone wants to know the deal, Bruce just tells them that it's his new secret club. Only members can know what they do. Jessica decides that she wants to join, but Bruce refuses because it's a club just for dudes. Lila, Amy, and Jessica all agree to do whatever it takes to get an invite and find out the big secret. This leads to a huge fight in the middle of the cafeteria with the girls pointing out all the things women did in the past and the guys claiming that they're just better. Bruce finally breaks down and says the girls can join, but to no one's surprise, Amy and Lila no longer care or want to join.

Her first meeting takes place at Bruce's house. Club X, as it turns out, is a dare club. All the members get their names on a triangle on a spinner. They come up with a dare, spin the board, and whoever has their name come up is the person chosen to do that dare. If you wuss out or cannot complete your dare, you get your name on the board one more time.

Bruce comes up with the dare for the night, spins the wheels, and it lands on Jessica. She has to drive the Jeep down a narrow and curvy road that's a mile long without any headlights on. Not only does she finish her dare, but she gets a major high from it. Bruce welcomes her to the club, though not as actively or happily as the other guys do. They remind her that she cannot tell anyone, so she naturally tells Liz everything. Liz is shocked because what she did was so dangerous and warns her to be careful.

When Jessica shows up to school in her new fancy jacket, people swarm her. Everyone wants to know what happened and what the club does, but she just smiles and tells them to join if they want to find out. Most of the crap they do is pretty innocent though. Someone shuts down the power to the school a few times, they pull a fire alarm, and stuff like that.

At their next meeting, Bruce seems a little surprised when the spinner lands on Ronnie, but he still dares him to swim in the community pool, which is – ooooh – closed for the night. Ronnie hopes the fence, dives in the water, and then climbs out. Bruce makes a rude comment about Jessica would never do anything so daring, so she hopes the fence, drops her pants and shirts, hops on the diving board, and after briefly wondering how to judge the dive and getting picked on by Bruce, jumps in the water. Robbie is all enamored with her when she gets out because she's so crazy.

Michael Harris – that jackass from the motorbike book and I believe the jackass from the only Maria book – wants to join the club. Jessica starts worrying about what Sam will think when he hears about the club. She never bothered telling him because he was out of town, but now she worries that he might hear she was hanging out with a bunch of random guys and get the wrong idea. Gee, you think? She tells him a little about the club but glosses over it like it's not a big deal.

Jessica's name gets picked yet again and for a more serious dare. She has to sneak into Principal Cooper's office and smoke a cigarette. Tad and Ronnie lure him outside, and Bruce goes with her, even bringing along matches. Even though smoking is totally gross – I say with one in my hand, Jessica smokes the whole thing. Cooper gives a special lecture over the loud speaker where he warns kids to stop acting out and that he will find the smoking culprit.

Though she thinks it's a little weird that her name keeps coming up all the time, Jessica goes to yet another meeting and has her name picked yet again. Ronnie shows them how to hot wire a car, and Bruce dares her to do it in real life. She worries because this is less of a prank and more of a crime. Bruce taunts her for being too scared, so she storms off. She takes the time to hot wire the Porsche though and takes off, shouting at the guys to meet her at the Dairi Burger.

Her next dare, and yes she gets picked again, is that she has to talk across a train trestle. Bruce says he checked the train schedule and that she's totes fine, but Jess is still a little nervous. When she finally decides to go through with it, she gets halfway across the trestle and hears a train coming. All the guys flip out, but she makes a run for it and jumps off the track at the last possible second.

Almost getting killed would make anyone drop out of a club, but Jessica is not just anyone. She heads to the next meeting, where Jim and Charlie have now joined, and makes a comment about Bruce's windshield being broken. When all the guys rush outside, she runs over to the spinner and finds that “someone” put a magnet under her name and one on the arrow. She moves the magnet to Bruce's name and gives him his big dare.

The other big story going on is the International Teachers' Project is coming to town. Chrome Dome picks kids to show teachers from countries around the world like India and Russia around their school and naturally chooses both Todd and Elizabeth. Liz, as she usually does, acts like this is the biggest and most important thing in the whole wide world. She's naturally embarrassed when the teachers walk in during the cafeteria girls vs. boys fight and even more so when Club X puts up a list of the hottest babes in SVH in the teachers' lounge. These teachers are pretty awful and are all from like 1952 because they find everything absolutely shocking and out of control.

Chrome Dome plans a big assembly on the last day the teachers are in town. Jessica dares Bruce to hook up the PA system to blare hard rock during the assembly. At the last minute, the principal asks Liz to introduce the guests and give a special speech. Jessica freaks out a little when she hears, and Liz begs her not to do anything that would ruin the event.

Jessica does attempt to stop Bruce, but Mr. Collins catches her in the act and brings her back. He tells her that they can't do anything about Club X because they have no proof the club did bad things but he won't risk her ruining the assembly. Bruce goes forward with his dare and gets caught and dragged out of school. Liz gives Jess the hound dog eyes and the how dare you stare before running away.

The next day, 1BRUCE1 is not in the parking lot, but Jessica gets a note to go to the principal's office. He brings in all members of Club X and tells them that Bruce told him everything. Bruce gets two weeks of detention and everyone else gets one week. Jess hears through the grapevine that Bruce's parents took away his car for a bit too.

To make things up to her twin, Jess decides that instead of apologizing, she'll just point out that life would be really lame and boring without her around. Liz kind of rolls her eyes and forgives her. And then Jessica gets grounded yet again. Liz folds yet again and agrees to do the twin switch yet again so that Jessica can sneak out and see Sam on the night he gets back to town. So, Jessica gets everything she wants and learns zero lessons. Yeah, that sounds about right.

*When Ken brings up football, he says that he'd like to see a girl catch a pass during a big game. Terri, his girlfriend at the time, laughs at him and points out that Claire is as good of a quarterback as he is. Ken then gets all embarrassed and says that's different. Hm, how so?

*Winston says men and women are not equal because women clearly have better hair and then points out how his own hair is so cray-cray. Love him!

*Tad and Ronnie get Cooper out of his office because they tell him they think they hit his car. They actually show him Tad's old rusted VW with a huge dent in the back, which Cooper takes as an insult that they think he would drive such a bad car. Well, you are a high school principal.

*According to the Club X hottest babes list, Mrs. Dalton is the hottest babe in school and Jessica is second. That makes me giggle for some reason.

*I love that ALL the ladies in SVH were so upset about Bruce treating them like crap and saying they weren't as good as guys. As soon as they had a chance to join his club and prove him wrong though, they all walked away.

*I knew this book would lead up to one about Project Youth because both twins called at different points to ask for help.

*Bruce makes a comment about how girls should just wear short skirts and root for him when he plays tennis. That is almost exactly what he said in the SVT book when the Boosters stopped cheering for the guys!

*Bruce tells all club members that they should look for ways to live wild lives when not doing dares. This results in the whole turning off the power and pulling the fire alarm thing. Someone also hangs a rock and roll flag from the flagpole.

*Someone also glues all the locks in one hallway shut. This sounds really shitty to me because the poor janitor has to spend the whole day cleaning the locks.

*Jessica mentions multiple times that she and Bruce dated and that they broke up because they were both too headstrong. Um, yeah, that's totally not what happened at all. He used you until you finally grew some balls. She also mentions that they still have sparks between them, which must have made it awkward when he lived with her best friend in college and then dated her twin sister...

*Todd refuses to join the club because of him and Bruce fighting during the last fraternity pledge thing. Liz asks him not to make a decision yet and to keep his mind open because she thinks she may want to do a story on the club and will need someone on the inside. It's like a chapter later when she starts harping on Jess about how dangerous the club is and how she should drop out.

*Why would anyone want to join this club anyway? Once Bruce rigs the spinner, they all just meet up, watch Jess's name get picked, and then go somewhere else to see her do her dare. How is that fun?