Sweet Valley Senior Year #1: Can't Stay Away

The twins and all their friends have finally made it to their senior year! Because of the whole earthquake ruining the west coast though, they now have to share their school with kids from El Carro. Both twins write in their journals about their goals for the coming year. Liz promises to stop giving Jessica advice, continue being one pound lighter than her twin, no longer get perfect grades, get past the earthquake, and always remember Olivia. Jessica promises to also weigh one pound less than her twin, focus more on school, and clean her room more often. That should be easy since they now live in Fowler Crest surrounded by servants.

We also hear from newcomer Melissa Fox. She can't wait to move to SVH and take over the school to rule things like she once did at EC. Conner McDermott, the resident heartthrob, thinks SVH will look like something out of the movies and that he'll hate everyone. He vows to shake things up by wearing a ratty tee shirt with old boots and pants that are falling apart. Yeah, that will teach them.

Liz and Conner almost instantly get off on the wrong foot. He scowls at her for wearing a yellow sundress and starts calling her and Jess Barbie number 2 and 1. When she speaks up in creative writing class, he rips apart everything she says and makes her feel like a loser. Their teacher gives them an assignment to write about loss. Liz writes about Olivia, Conner gets picked to read it in class, and he actually says it was moving.

She's also having some problems living at Fowler Crest because her and Lila shockingly do not get along. After Lila shows up and requests that they start a fashion column and name her editor, Liz mopes around for way too long about what she should do. She finally decides to make it a contest and award the editor position to whoever writes the best column. Lila loses and takes it out on her at home, even bringing it up in the middle of dinner.

It's lucky that she makes friends with a new girl named Megan who looks and acts just like she did as a sophomore. Megan shyly asks if she might want to move into the guest room at her house. Liz initially turns her down, but Mrs. Sandborn then calls and talks to Alice. Alice doesn't like the idea of her kids spread out across town and thinks the Fowlers would take it badly if Liz up and left. After Lila flips out at dinner, Alice agrees to let Liz move anyway. It turns out that Megan is the little sister of Conner, which Liz learns when she wanders into the bathroom one morning and catches him coming out of the shower.

Jessica absolutely cannot wait for school to start because she knows that she will rule once again. The coach, who they never had before, lets her lead practice and coach the other cheerleaders while still claiming that all girls will need to try out and that she'll name a captain later. On the first day of school, she seems a particularly drool worthy guy in class who will barely look at her. She then learns that his name is Will Simmons and that he's up for quarterback against Ken. Jessica uses her wiles to give him her number.

Will keeps acting pretty cool around her but does seem interested. He asks for notes from their class and makes plans to stop by the house and pick them up. Jessica goes all out for the night, including making a display of her books and wearing a fancy black dress and heels. He acts like he might take off again but then tells her that she's beautiful, starts kissing her, and pulls her onto the couch. They start to get carried away, but when he starts to unzip her dress, she stops him. He tells her that she's gorgeous and that he had fun before quickly making a getaway.

See, it turns out that Will might be gorgeous and a great football player but he also has a long time girlfriend. He and Melissa Fox have been together since eighth grade. His mom and friends keep telling him that he's too young to settle down, and he keeps thinking about something cryptic that happened back in junior high that means he can never leave her. Every time he goes to bed though, he can't keep his mind off Jess. That's why he calls and asks her out on a date.

Melissa finds Jessica's phone number in his car, calls, and thinks that since Lila answered the phone, she's the one he's going after. She then makes an effort to talk to Lila and suck up to her about how she's clearly not the type of person to go after another chick's guy. Lila later says that she won't tell Melissa Jess is the one who went out with Will but she also won't warn Jess about Melissa. Nice friend.

Their first real date goes great, except that Jessica does wonder why Will took her out 45 minutes away from town. She's so happy that she tells her friends during drama class. Tia, Conner's best friend and one of the new kids, hears her and gets weird. She sends Jess a note that Will has a girlfriend named Melissa who was a major power player at EC and will probably be the same at SVH and warns her to back off.

Jessica refuses to believe her until she asks around and learns that not only does he have a girlfriend but that he never cheated on her before and never had any problems with her either. She confronts him before practice in front of all his friends about how he's a loser and she can't stand him. To make things even better, she tells him that she would rather kiss the toilet in the locker room than ever kiss him again. A bunch of the guys laugh, which makes her feel a lot better. She then tells a group of cheer hopefuls about what happened and notices one girl get pissed and storm off.

That one girl is naturally Melissa. She goes to Will, tells him she heard about Jessica, and demands to know the truth. The lying assface tells her that Jessica already worked her way through the football team and came after him next. He swears that nothing happened except for Jessica constantly throwing herself at him and that they never even kissed. Melissa seems willing to believe him, probably because he just got named the quarterback. It seems as though Ken still can't get over Olivia's death and decided to quit the team.

Melissa decides that she will do whatever it takes to bring down Jessica, which really just means alienating all her friends. She convinces Annie, Amy, and Lila to join her friends for some EC exclusive bonfire on the beach with the promise of cute guys who supposedly asked about them. Melissa and her friends go out of their way to talk with them. They then all head to the big school dance together.

Elizabeth, of all people, spends way too much time getting ready before picking out a black miniskirt, black lace camisole, wine colored over shirt, and open toe black shoes. She keeps worrying that she might see Conner there and how she wants to look special for him. Jess picks out a short red tank dress from Lila's closet that has a near top to bottom zipper on it. Other girls barely look at her or just shoot her dirty looks, and some guy makes a rude comment about how it gives guys easy access.

It turns out that Melissa and her little gang already started spreading rumors about Jessica. Given that it seems like most guys think Will had sex with her, I'm not sure how it doesn't hurt Melissa's reputation though. After more rude comments and no sign of her friends, she winds up heading home and basically crying. She wakes up the next morning and wishes that it was all just a dream. In the end, Will feels a little bad about lying and still can't stop thinking about Jess but is too much of a wimp to do anything.

*Did you know that Brooke Dennis still goes to school in Sweet Valley? Even though she's never been mentioned since SVT, she's hanging out with Maria and Enid and the gang. Liz calls her one of her closest friends.

*Enid is in Liz's creative writing class, but since I've read a handful of the later books, I can almost certainly say that she isn't in that class later.

*Liz's essay is all about how she found a shell on the beach once, thought it was magical, and kept it in a box until it fell apart. She then compares the shell to her good friend Olivia, even though she seems like she's already over it.

*Todd and Liz apparently broke up after the earthquake, and he spent the summer at basketball camp in North Carolina. He comes back looking even hotter than before and clearly wants them to get back together. Liz thinks about how easy it would be to just go for it and how they could go back to being happy within a week. She then changes her mind because she wants her senior year to be different. It's kind of sad because the ghostwriter says the light in his eyes literally went out when she turned him down. Given what happens later with this Conner asshat, I wish she chose Todd!

*There were approximately 500 EC students sent to SVH, which is weird since I figured it out in an earlier book that the school had less than 400 students total. Even odder is that they take three offices, turn those spaces into classrooms, and suddenly have room for all the new students.

*How the hell can Melissa and her crew just take over? Supposedly SVH kids are all in awe of her for throwing parties and only inviting a few people, but why wouldn't they just have their own parties? It doesn't seem like a few new kids could just completely take over in a few days.

*Conner skips the dance because he really wanted to go to the dance, get that? See, he decides not to go because the only reason he would want to go is to see Liz, which isn't cool.

*I didn't really explain the whole Conner and Liz thing but it's super annoying. He snarks on her in creative writing class, she gets pissed off when he calls her Barbie in the library, and then suddenly they're both infatuated with each other. She even says that it's the first time she's ever had a real crush, which is ridiculous given that she falls in love with dudes after five seconds.

*One of Liz's goals for the new year is that she won't give out constructive criticism, no matter how badly Enid needs it. I think I get why Enid went her own way later in the series!

*Melissa is pretty pathetic. She was the captain of the cheer squad back in EC and decides to wear her several year old cheer sweater to every practice and tryout. Seriously, why do people flock to her?

*Even though Tia met the twins and some of their friends in SVH, there's no mention of that here and I'm pretty sure no mention later that they knew each other before.

*One reason Liz hates living at Fowler Crest is because her dad and Mr. Fowler argue after every dinner. She gets so upset that she can't eat, which causes her pants to fall off her. Aw, poor baby. When she attempts to get snacks, the maids and housekeepers freak her out so much that she just runs away. Her life is so hard.

*The fashion articles submitted are just bad. Lila basically calls out all these different groups on campus and mocks people for not dressing like her. The girl who wins writes a column about how fall clothing lines are meant for people in cold weather states and then encourages everyone to wear swimsuits under their shorts and tank tops. I'd just drop the whole idea of a column.

*This is only the first book in the series and I'm already hating everyone.