The Unicorn Club #23: Trapped in the Mall

Kimberly Haver is like way more mature, responsible, and sophisticated than any other member of the Unicorn Club. I know this because she says it roughly 387 times in this book. The girls are all at the mall hanging out before Lila's driver picks them up and takes them back to her house for the night. Kimberly is already annoyed that the girls hate her favorite movie star when they come across an ad for an older movie. Since she remembers seeing it in the theater when she was a whopping six years old and her friends don't, she just rolls her eyes and thinks about how she's so much older than them.

Lila then makes the mistake of seeing someone and trying to cover it up, but it turns out that she has a crush on Jerry McAllister. Even though he's always been a dick, she suddenly likes him. Kimberly suggests asking him if he likes Lila, but Lila flips out and runs off to do some more shopping, though she does pause to wonder if maybe he really does like her.

Kimberly then thinks about how Janet was the coolest leader ever and how they need to all be more like Janet. She gets the other girls to play a prank on Jerry. Ellen meets him at Scoops, the ice cream place, and tells him that Lila wants him to cut a CD with her at some random store where you can make your own discs. He shows up to see Kimberly and some others tell him that Lila went to the roller rink and has a free pass for him. They intercept him there and send him back to the manicure place.

Our terrible leader then calls and pretends like she's Lila to convince him to get her name painted on his nails with little hearts. Jerry is about to fall for it when he sees Lila walk by and rushes after her. When he realized what happened, he goes after Kimberly. All the others head to The Outback, which is a sporting goods store to wait for her. Lila is angry about what happened and doesn't understand why they didn't just ask him if he liked her. She convinces them to hide from Kimberly.

Jerry chases Kimberly through the mall multiple times before she finds an employee only storage room to hide. By the time she comes out, the whole mall is shut down. The Unicorns are hiding inside a tent when they hear the workers leaving for the night. Jessica then tells them that the mall is totally state of the art and uses some high tech electronic eye thing that locks the doors. Only someone with a key can open the lock, which means they're trapped for the night.

Meanwhile, Kimberly is freaking out about the sounds of a storm rolling in and how there is absolutely no one else in the mall. The power goes out temporarily, which is just long enough for the door sensors to start working. She gets inside the shoe store, puts on a pair of boots like Jerry wears, and stops over to the sporting goods store. After scaring everyone, she convinces them that they should spend the night doing everything they want. Only Ellen is a little hesitant. They tell her that they'll pay for anything they take or eat and that people can try on clothes and shoes all the time anyway.

Kimberly completely takes over and acts like the boss of everyone. She decides to try on shoes at the shoe store first and then makes them all leave so they can make a CD. Not only does she pick the song that they'll sing, but she acts like the lead singer too. When they play the music back, she tells everyone that instead of hearing Mandy like they said that they actually hear her because her voice is way better. She also tells Jessica she can't dance like one of the girls in the music video because Kimberly looks way more like her.

They then decide to dress up and film themselves acting out the music video. Mandy starts picking out clothing that matches the video, which causes Kimberly to flip out. She wants to wear some slutty red minidress and not the black pants and pastel shirts that everyone else wears. Since no one else has a back bone, they let her have her way and wear what she tells them to wear.

That changes when they go back to Scoops though. Kimberly calls Ellen fat, demands that they all eat frozen yogurt, and starts scooping out her favorite: mocha strawberry. Ellen puts her foot down, and so too do all the other girls. Kimberly decides to treat them like babies and give in but do something bigger next time. She tells Ellen she can have whatever she wants but that she then wants to go on a real adventure.

The real adventure winds up being a trip back to The Outback. Kimberly challenges Ellen to a race to the top of the climbing wall with the winner being the president of the club. Ellen doesn't want to do it but pretty much gives in when Kimberly calls her a chicken. Kimberly is so excited that she doesn't really pay attention when they strap Ellen into the harness. She naturally wins, gets pissed off when no one congratulates her, and tells Ellen to stop being such a sore loser when she freaks out.

As it turns out, they strapped Ellen in wrong, she falls out, crashes halfway down the wall, and winds up on the ground with her leg at a very wrong angle. This actually brings them all together again as they attempt to decide what to do next. Though they plan on calling for help, the phones go out. Kimberly then remembers that the storage room has a window she can use to get out. Rachel stays with Ellen while the others head off.

They drag a bunch of trash cans over to make a pyramid, which Kimberly climbs up on to get to the window. Lila makes her a jacket out of trash bags to keep the rain off her. As soon as she gets out the window, she slips and falls. The other girls run back to tell Ellen and Rachel that Kimberly fell off the roof. Ellen finally realizes that the fire alarm should still work, even without any power, and they pull it. This happens right as Kimberly actually scrambles off the roof and finds a police officer.

Cut to the end. The manager of the mall and the police are all at the hospital with the Unicorns and their parents. Kimberly takes the blame for what happened, but everyone else blames themselves too because no one forced them to listen to her. Ellen tells Kimberly she can be president, they all tell her no, and she then suggests to the manager that they come in and work for the next few weeks to pay off the damage they did. He agrees to three Saturdays of work, and then Kimberly thinks about how it's awesome she has such good friends.

*Ellen makes a point at one time that none of the girls have any money left after going for ice scream, seeing a movie, and doing shopping. Where were they planning on coming up with the cash to pay for the food they ate that night then?

*Lila gets all excited about shopping at Bibbi's or Lisette's because those “are where the older girls shop.” It's a nice throwback to the original series. Later on though, Ellen is all disappointed about them going to the Hot Spot because it's the hip teenage hang out and she wants to shop in better stores. How can there be some teen stores they never go to and some that they go to all the time?

*Mandy and Rachel both point out that the Unicorns don't pick a president based on who can climb the fastest but then totally give in to Kimberly.

*Kimberly keeps going on and on about how she has such a mature body and has muscles in her thighs and arms that none of the others have. Um yeah, you're an eighth grade girl who does no sporting whatsoever so I doubt it.

*Can we just talk for a moment about what an awful mall this is? The Outback workers are “too tired” to clean up for the night and just leave after closing, which means they left a huge mess for the day shift. There are absolutely no security guards inside the mall after dark. And to top it all off, Kimberly isn't even in the storage area for an hour before everyone leaves the mall. It's pretty clear that whoever wrote this book never worked in retail before!

*I've said this before, but why the hell does Kimberly even want to be friends with them? There's the book when she comes back where she bitches about how they all changed so much and she hates it. In this one, she wants things to go back to the Janet days and can't stop whining about how immature they all are.

*Kimberly is all shocked when Ellen calls her bossy because no one ever called Janet bossy, at least not to her face.

*Is it wrong that I wanted a book where Janet came back from high school and acted all like Big Red in Bring It On?

*Ned is kind of awesome at the end. When Kimberly claims she was the one responsible, he gives Jessica a look and says that he has a hard time believing his daughter wasn't in the middle.

*If I was the owner or manager of one of these malls stores, I would be pissed at the manager. They got into eight different tubs of ice cream and left dishes all over the store, broke climbing gear, used expensive stereo equipment on their own, and left a mess in the shoe store. Some of the girls are literally still wearing the clothing they tried on at the very end, which means they basically stole from the stores. The manager is perfectly fine with them working it off and doesn't even ask the store managers/owners what they think.

*This is officially the last book in The Unicorn Club. I'm a little sad now :(