Sweet Valley High #71: Starring Jessica!

Eric Parker is some dude who graduated from Sweet Valley High and now hosts a national talk show. He announced plans to have a real high school student on to talk about what life is like for the typical American teenager. The teenager he picks will be someone from Sweet Valley. Everyone goes overboard to fill out their applications and get picked.

Jessica assumes that her only real competition is Lila. She asks for Liz's help with her application, especially the section on her hobbies and interests. It's lots of boys, shopping, and hanging out with not much else. Liz reminds her that she was a babysitter before and that she worked as a hospital volunteer, which is not something I would personally want to remember. Jessica gets annoyed when she sees that Lila left out all the information about her rich dad though.

Liz also suggests that Jessica write an article for the paper. She comes up with an idea about bad dates, which Penny loves. Liz convinces her to change some of the names though to protect the innocent. When the article comes out, people go nuts. They can't stop talking about it, and Penny even says that the first draft was perfect. The only person not happy is Bruce but mainly because Jess claims he kisses like a dead jellyfish.

Since Penny never ever said anything like that about Liz's work before, she starts thinking that maybe she isn't cut out to be a writer. Luckily, Enid heard that Secca Lake just started a new junior ranger program and needs volunteers. They both go to the first meeting and learn that they need to take a test and get a 100% to join the program. Both pass and become junior rangers, but then Don, the head of the program, asks Liz to be his senior junior ranger. It's way more work, but she agrees.

Eric can't settle on who to pick for his show, so he picks six candidates and asks them to come in for an interview. Lila finds out that they changed rooms, goes to her interview, sneaks back, and takes down the sign so Jessica will miss it. Jessica does nearly miss it but finds out the truth and gets there right in time. Eric takes time out to announce that he picked Jessica and that Lila is the alternate.

Jessica and Lila almost immediately start fighting about who really deserves to be on his show. Lila thinks that Jessica lied on her application, and Jessica thinks that Lila wasn't completely honest. They stop talking. Bruce is so upset about the article that he storms into the girls' locker room and goes off on her. Lila decides to work with him on a plan to show up Jessica.

Lila calls Jess on the day of the show to make up and ask her to go shopping. She takes her to a town about an hour away and promises that they'll be back in plenty of time. The workers keep eyeing Jessica, and when she goes into the dressing room, Lila takes off with her purse. She runs outside, and the woman grab her and call the cops to have her arrested for shoplifting.

When the cops show up, the women say that a Detective Tapman called in with a tip that a shoplifter matching her description hit a bunch of stores in town. Jess points out that she was in school all day, and the cops say there is no detective with that name on the force. Since it's a prank, they let her go. It's too late for her to make it back in time for the show, so she calls Liz.

Lila heads home all excited that she'll get to be on the show. She meets up with Bruce and can't help noticing how good he looks coming out of the pool. After they congratulate each other on a good job, they actually kiss. It must be good because he almost falls back in the water.

Liz has been working like crazy at the lake. She's the one always called in to help when someone calls off or they need an extra person. It's taking time away from her writing and making her worry if she can do both. Don calls that night for help, and though she worries about turning him down, he just laughs it off because it's not a big deal. Liz then dresses like Jess, goes to the show, and locks Lila in the dressing room.

One of the cops offers to take Jessica to the interview, but she gets there just in time to see her twin playing as her. After the show, Liz switches clothes with her so she can go out and get all the attention. Lila demands to know how she pulled it off before storming off. She also stops to scream at Bruce and tell him that Jessica was right and that he does kiss like a jellyfish.

Liz decides that she just can't do both things anymore and decides to quit the junior rangers. It's not really that big of a deal since it's just one more thing the twins only do in one book. Cara and Amy then make Lila and Jessica make up. They kind of agree that they were both in the wrong. Lila then wants to talk about Andrea Slade, the new girl in town who is oh so cool.

*Jess's article had her shipwrecked trip with Winston on it. How was that a bad date? She basically sat around, moped, and acted like a huge bitch while he took care of everything!

*Amy agrees that Bruce kisses like a dead jellyfish. It's ironic then that she went after him so hard core while he was dating someone else...

*Some guy dated Jess before and was going to ask her out again but changed his mind after reading the article because he didn't want to wind up in the next one. People say that Jess is too pretty and popular for guys to care, but really? I can imagine some guys not being too thrilled at the idea of dating her.

*Amy is one of the only people who doesn't care about getting on the show and says something about how her mom doesn't really like Eric. Jessica thinks she's just jealous because her mom is only on the local news.

*How is Lila or Jessica the typical American teenager? Lila has everything handed to her on a silver platter, and Jessica has the perfect California life. I wouldn't want to see either one of them on television.

*I know I say this a lot, but Jessica is such a bitch in this book! She just automatically assumes that she should get the interview and keeps going off on people about how Lila isn't honest with her application. She then puts shit on hers that isn't real either. During her interview, she even makes a big deal out of the hospital having the Fowler name and outright lies about how Lila travels all the time and spends more time traveling than she does in school.