Sweet Valley High #89: Elizabeth Betrayed
Sweet Valley High #89: Elizabeth Betrayed
I love books like this, where bad things happen to Elizabeth and Jessica gets to be awesome.
That’s Penny, Liz, and Olivia. Penny is only in the book for about two pages, but whatever. I think I had Olivia’s skirt when I was eleven. I wore it for Christmas. She looks super-bohemian in her pearls and mock-turtleneck, don’t you think?
A Plot
Olivia drives home with her boyfriend, Rod Sullivan, while he blah blah blahs at her about how awesome Elizabeth is. He’s all, “I bet she wins a Pulitzer Prize,” and “Can you believe she was published in the LA times,” and “Don’t you think she’s the best writer at The Oracle?” When Olivia brings up her literary magazine, Rod’s like, “Yeah, whatever, your little stories are cute. But Liz’s stories are real.” When she gets annoyed, he accuses her of being jealous and makes her feel petty and embarrassed. What a winner.
Penny Ayala, editor of The Oracle, wins a contest to be a junior journalist in Washington, D.C., for a week (which turns into two by the end of the book. Let’s hear it for continuity!). She’ll need to name someone to be her replacement, and Liz hopes it will be her. Olivia also kind of hopes to be chosen, but her lame boyfriend is all, “You’re busy with your cute literary magazine. Liz is so talented!”
Sure enough, Penny does appoint Liz. Liv is so disappointed that she has to run into the bathroom before she cries in the hallway. That’s weird. Did she really think she could edit the newspaper and her magazine at the same time and do a good job at both? Penny tells Liz that she would’ve co-appointed Liz and Olivia, but Olivia is just so busy already.
Liv decides to make a point to her boyfriend about how important her literary magazine can be, and decides the next issue will be about the environment. Liz submits a few poems, and Olivia lets Liz read her own poetry. They bond. Liz convinces Olivia to send one of her poems in to the newspaper. Rod is pissed that Olivia didn’t invite him over when Liz was at her house, and then suggests double dating with Liz and Todd. I’d have dumped him by now.
Mr. Collins assigns a huge essay on “Imagery in Literature and Painting.” How specific. Liz frets; she has no idea what to write about. I’d write about dogs. What? I would. It wouldn’t be at all what he’s expecting, which is good because it’s a weird assignment so a weird topic would kind of make that point, but there would still be plenty of themes to discuss: faithfulness, realism, domesticity, luxury, allegory, etc. I’d be a way better high school English student than Liz. I bet my dog paper would get an A.
The whole school is coming down with the flu. Enid and Mr. Collins both had to go home sick. Liz is frantic, because most of The Oracle’s staff is out and she has no idea how she’s going to get enough columns written to fill the paper. Olivia is a little sulky that Liz hasn’t asked her for help. Rod says maybe he’ll help, and Olivia is like, “But your writing sucks.” Rod pouts. Olivia really does think Rod’s a terrible writer, but also she doesn’t want him spending time with Liz, since he’s lately turned into her one-man fan club.
As soon as Liv goes away, though, Rod offers to help Liz and Liz jumps at it, since she’s still three articles short. Liz also asks Jess for help, and Jess happily agrees, turning in an article on telling the truth that Liz thinks is hilarious. Aw! Jess can be such a good sister sometimes, and it seems like she’s pretty good at turning in funny little pieces for The Oracle whenever Liz needs help. I think this has happened in past books too. Todd takes care of Liz’s last article by writing a Name-That-Flu contest. Lame. He’s so dumb.
Rod gives Liz his article, and it’s amazing. She’s reminded of something she’s read before, but figures he’s just imitating another author’s style. He helps her do the layout too, and she’s so grateful she kisses him on the cheek. He gives her the look and the lean and she thinks, “Crap, he’s about to kiss me,” and steps back, but then he’s like, “So, do you and Todd want to double date?” Liz thinks she imagined the kissing moment.
She didn’t.
Jess’s English teacher reads her anonymous lying article out loud to the class and calls it funny and thought provoking, which makes her happy because usually all he does is bitch at her. Aw!
I find Olivia really endearing: she was anxious about the double date at first because she was afraid Rod would compare her to Liz and find her lacking, but then she decides, “Just because Liz is terrific doesn’t mean I’m not terrific too!” And so she dances all around her room, listening to music and getting ready. It’s adorable. She tells her reflection, “You look like a million dollars. Two million dollars and a Caribbean cruise.” I wish I could’ve been half that confident and secure when I was sixteen. Wow. Rod deflates her immediately, though, since when he sees her he says, “You look amazing. Doesn’t Elizabeth have a dress like that? But hers is blue.” Olivia! Dump him! Now! Sadly, Olivia does not take my advice.
Liz and Todd come straight from the beach, so Liz is wearing shorts and a sweatshirt. Rod tells her she looks like “Aphrodite risen from the sea.” Olivia bristles, but Todd doesn’t, because I don’t think he knows who Aphrodite is. Liz is like, “Uh, I don’t think Aphrodite wore sneakers,” and Rod simpers, “She would’ve if she’d seen you!” Todd! Punch him! Now! Sadly, Todd does not take my advice.
At the Dairi Burger after the movie, Olivia feels ignored by the other three. Rod keeps hanging all over Liz, and Olivia is like, “He never used to be like this. It’s her fault.” When Olivia gets mad at Rod after the date, though, he doesn’t understand what her problem is. He’s like, “You and Todd spent time talking about whales and Liz and I weren’t included in that conversation.” Olivia finally tells him that she’s probably just upset because she’s tired. Nooooo! Don’t doubt yourself, Olivia! Dump him!
Todd’s out with the flu, but Mr. Collins is back and says their essays have to be turned in the next day, whether they’re in school or not. I had a teacher in high school who did that too: either you turned it in on the due date, or if you were out sick, you had to mail it to him at the school and the essay had to be postmarked on the due date. He was insane. I’d forgotten all about that until just now.
We learn more about the essay: they have to “compare something written with something visual to show how each uses imagery and symbols, and if they differ and why.” If they differ? And why? Worst assignment ever. Liz picked a panting and poem, and has the poem part done, but confesses to Enid that, when she looks at the painting, all she sees is a picture. She doubts art even has symbols and imagery. I’m so astonished that I don’t even know the words. Isn’t she supposed to be the smartest kid in school or something?
Rod offers to meet Liz at the Dairi Burger after school to help her with her essay, but when they get there, he won’t talk about the work. He just keeps joking around and bragging and stuff, like they’re on a date and he’s trying to impress her. Liz is not amused. He grabs her hand and is all, “You don’t bite your nails! It’s Olivia’s only fault.” Just then, Olivia and DeeDee Gordon walk in, and Liv sees them together and thinks they’re holding hands. She leaves, furious and hurt. Across the room, Liz pulls her hand out of Rod’s, and he finally settles down to helping her with her assignment.
DeeDee tries to talk Liv down: they were just having a soda, not sneaking around behind Liv’s back. Liv protests that they were holding hands, and DeeDee reasonably says, “Elizabeth Wakefield was sitting in the Dairi Burger holding hands with someone else’s boyfriend? Have you lost your mind?” Liv has to concede that DeeDee has a point. Why doesn’t anyone in Sweet Valley realize what a cheating cheater Liz is? I mean, she’s innocent here, but seriously. She cheats more than everyone else in town put together.
Olivia goes straight to the source: she calls Liz and asks why she was holding hands with Rod. Liz explains that he was just checking to see if she bites her nails, and Olivia is instantly put at ease. Liz doesn’t say anything, but she thinks it’s weird that Rod didn’t tell Olivia that he’d be helping Liz. I think it’s weird that Rod is so invested in the state of other people’s cuticles. Anyway, Rod gave Liz plenty of good ideas, so she practically pulls an all-nighter to finish her essay. She doesn’t have as much time as she’d like to “digest the ideas,” but figures Mr. Collins will understand, considering what a hard time she had pulling the paper together with no staff.
The next day, Mr. Collins calls Liz to his classroom after school and makes her shut the door. They make out on the desk. No, not really, but still! So inappropriate! She got an F on her essay. Liz is shocked. Shocked! She says that she knows it wasn’t the best she could do, but she didn’t think it was that bad. Mr. Collins says, “Don’t make this harder than it already is.” That’s what she said. “I spent a sleepless night trying to come up with reasons why you would do this.” I bet that’s what he was doing. Ooooh, and I just grossed myself out.
Mr. Collins just fills her in that her essay is plagiarized from Archie Fox, “the country’s best-known art critic.” Liz clutches her pearls, and Mr. Collins bitches her out for not crediting her sources. She took “whole chunks from Art and Film” and passed them off as her own. “Did you think I’d give you an assignment like this and not have read the most recent theories myself?” Mr. Collins asks. I can’t imagine any of my high school teachers pouring over art theory to prep for reading their students’ essays but, then, they never would’ve given us such a broad, unfocused assignment either. And, I might add, not one of them looked like a young Robert Redford.
The incriminating paragraphs are the ones Rod gave Liz in the Dairi Burger. He never mentioned that he got the ideas from Archie Fox. Then! Mr. Collins is like, “If you could just give me some idea why you did this…are you having trouble with Todd?” He is way too involved. Liz doesn’t rat Rod out: she figures she’s just as guilty of stealing his ideas as he is of stealing Fox’s. She’s pissed off, though. The F for plagiarism stands. He kicks her off the paper.
Liz goes home and sobs the whole story to Jess, who is furious on her twin’s behalf. She says, “I think you should’ve told Mr. Collins the truth. Maybe you did repeat everything Rod told you, and maybe that’s wrong, but it’s still not the same as deliberately stealing ideas from a published work.” Jess thinks the whole situation is mostly Rod’s fault, because he didn’t tell Liz he was giving her someone else’s ideas. Liz moans that she doesn’t know why Rod would’ve done this to her, and Jess is like, “Duh. Because he has a crush on you and wanted to impress you. If anyone looked at me like he looks at you, Sam would run him over with his dirt bike.” Hee! Jess orders Liz to tell Olivia what happened: “I guarantee she’ll thank you for telling her the truth.” Mmmm, probably not.
Liz decides to talk to Rod first, and Jess asks, “Do you want me to go with you?” Liz says no, and Jess orders her, “Tell him that if he gives you any more trouble, he’ll have to deal with me.” I have to say, I love the books where Jess gets all protective of Liz. They’re probably my favorites, right after the ones that are about Lila.
Liz explains what happened to Rod, and it doesn’t go well.
Rod: I don’t understand. Why are you telling me all this?
Liz: Why? Because I’m trying to understand why you did this to me.
Rod: Did what to you, Elizabeth? All I did was try to help out a friend. I never told you to use Archie Fox’s ideas as though they were yours.
Liz: But you didn’t tell me they were his ideas either. You let me believe that they were yours.
Rod: To tell you the truth, Elizabeth, his ideas and my ideas are all mixed together in my head. And anyway, I was just trying to give you something to get started with. You can’t blame me for this.
Liz: But you misled me. You went out of your way to make me trust you. You-
Rod: I tried to help you, Elizabeth, that’s all. Since when is friendship against the law?
What a sleaze.
Mr. Collins announces to the Oracle staff that Liz is off the paper, and Rod slimes, “Olivia, without Liz we’ll definitely need all the help we can get from you. You’re so beautiful and talented!” Olivia feels good about herself and cheerfully says he can count on her. When she wonders why Liz is gone, Rod’s like, “I’m sure it’s just temporary.”
Liz waits until the paper meeting ends, and then goes in to clean up her stuff. Mr. Collins is obviously embarrassed; he won’t look at her, and starts noisily shuffling stuff around on his desk. Olivia feels awful for Liz and wonders why nobody talked to her. Rod is like, “Maybe it’s better to not get involved. Just wait until things blow over.” Liv thinks it’s weird that Rod seems anxious, and also that he wants to avoid Liz, since until recently he was the President of her fan club.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Sweet Valley High really had an Elizabeth Wakefield Fan Club. The members would be all the tertiary characters whose lives have been improved by her meddling.
Anyway, Liv is like, “I thought Elizabeth was your friend!” and follows Liz out to the parking lot, sans Rod. Liz tells her the whole story, and Olivia reaches the same conclusion Jess did. Rod wouldn’t have done something like that unless he wanted to impress Liz, and he wouldn’t have wanted to impress her unless he had a big fat crush. Confronted with the knowledge that her boyfriend likes someone else, Olivia opts to stab Liz in the back: “I don’t understand why you’re telling me this.” Liz asks her to talk to Rod, and Olivia is like, “Talk to him yourself.” Liz says she did that already, and Olivia is like, “I don’t even know if he did anything wrong. Sorry, gotta go,” and runs away.
Liz calls Trusty Boyfriend Todd in despair. TBT acknowledges that she made an error in judgment, but Mr. Collins would realize that sooner or later. Liz doesn’t know how, though, if Rod won’t confess. Olivia doesn’t want to be her friend anymore, she’s going to fail English, she’s off the paper forever, and she’ll never be a writer. Never! Todd calls her a drama queen. But nicer than that.
Olivia calls Rod and asks for his side of the story. He’s like, “It’s exactly what I told you before: I just gave her some ideas for her essay. I didn’t know she’d take everything I told her and pass it off as her own.” What was she going to do, footnote Rod? I mean, seriously. Olivia asks him to tell her honestly if he ever had feelings for Liz, and he swears he only likes Liz as a friend.
Rod takes Olivia out for an extravagant date: flowers and jewelry and a nice restaurant. Someone’s overcompensating. And Mr. Collins asks her if she’ll take over editing the paper until Penny gets back. She’s on top of the world, and only feels a little twinge when she thinks of Liz. But Liv puts those thoughts out of her mind: Rod is as innocent in the situation as Liz is. And, anyway, what could Olivia do?
We have a record: Perfect size six is not mentioned until page 127. Liz is depressed about the Oracle and losing Olivia’s friendship. Jess firmly replies that that’s Olivia’s problem: Olivia knows she should support Liz but can’t deal with it. Jess is so cool in this plot. She thinks Liz should talk to Olivia again, but meanwhile, makes her get out of bed and come to Sam’s race with her. Where are Ned and Alice in all this? Surely they’d know and get involved if their kid got an F and was falsely accused of plagiarism. Or am I just thinking of what good parents would do?
Todd’s bored of being home sick because, and I have to tell you this, all he’s been watching for days are Bugs Bunny cartoons. HA!
The Sweet Valley newspaper prints Olivia’s poem, and Liv feels terrible because Liz is the one who convinced her to send it in. Liz has always been supportive of Olivia, but Olivia can’t do the same.
Jess makes up her mind that she’d be a crap twin if she didn’t do something to help Liz out of the mess she’s in. She asks Sam to drive her to Olivia’s, and Sam is like, “Are you going to interfere in your sister’s life again?” Hee!
Jess barges in and tells Olivia off. It’s awesome. She makes Olivia feel even more horrible than she already did for turning her back on Liz, and then orders her to make Rod admit he made a mistake. She storms out, and Olivia feels about two inches tall. She knows Rod had a crush on Liz, and that she should’ve done something to help.
Olivia reads back over the article Rod wrote for The Oracle, the one Liz thought sounded stylistically familiar, and guess what? She discovers that he lifted whole paragraphs in it from-
Oh, I can’t tell you. You’ll have to guess.
Never mind, I won’t keep you in suspense like that: He lifted whole paragraphs from Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Benjamin Franklin. And NOBODY NOTICED UNTIL NOW. Because the writing styles and subjects of eighteenth-century statesmen-philosophers are so similar to those of a twentieth-century high school student! I love how stupid everyone is in this town!
Olivia calls Penny, who’s home now, and fills her in. Penny is like, “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings by not asking you to help! I just thought you were too busy with your magazine.” They show the article to Mr. Collins, figuring it’ll incriminate Rod sufficiently enough to get Liz off the hook. He recognizes the bits by Thomas Jefferson right away, and demands an explanation, which Olivia gives.
Mr. Collins summons Liz to his room, and when she gets there, Rod is waiting too. Mr. Collins reads the copied bits from Rod’s article out loud and then blows up at Rod right in front of Liz. Super professional! With her standing right there, Mr. Collins calls Rod a mediocre English student at best, and then bitches him out for being a damn dirty plagiarist: “Not only are you a plagiarist, but you’re not even a very clever one.” Burn! “You could at least have moved Thomas Jefferson’s words around a little more, Rod. Make them a little more difficult to recognize.” Liz gasps and clutches her pearls. Mr. Collins throws Rod out and tells him to never come back. So…he’ll have to get a new English teacher, then?
Whatever, Mr. Collins forgives Liz. He encourages students to talk to each other about their assignments and ideas, after all, and can’t penalize her for doing that, even though it was wrong of her to use Rod’s ideas the way she did. She can rewrite the paper. He wishes she’d told him the truth sooner, but she didn’t want to tattle when she knew she was guilty too. Mr. Collins lets her back on The Oracle and tells her to write about plagiarism for her first feature.
Rod knows Olivia told, and apologizes to her for making such a mess of things. “I guess you were right when you said I wanted to impress Elizabeth. But I couldn’t see it clearly myself. I just kept telling myself I wanted to be friends.” Bullcrap. Dump him, Olivia! She doesn’t, though; she says some tripe about how lying to yourself is the worst lie of all. Ugh. Olivia tells Liz that it was all thanks to Jessica that she said anything at all. She calls Jess a “champion of truth and justice.” Hee.
B Plot
Annie, the girl Jessica drove to suicide when she blackballed her from the cheer team for dating too many guys (Pot? Kettle? Of course.) bitches Jess out in the hallway after school. Her boyfriend, Tony Estaban, has been seeing some girl on the side, and since Jess had seen him out with the chippy, Tony claimed he thought Jess had told Annie and Annie didn’t mind. Jess is like, “What? No, I just thought he and that girl were friends.” Annie’s enraged, all, “I bet you’ve told the whole school!” Jess is like, “No, just Lila.” HEE! When Jess vents to Liz after, Liz says that friends should tell each other things like that, and honesty is always the best policy. This sets Jess’s mind working.
And, incidentally, friends should not always tell each other things like that. It depends on the people involved, but I don’t think I’d have said anything to Annie either. After all, if it turned out that girl was Tony’s cousin or childhood friend or something, he and Annie would both have been pretty pissed off at Jess for thinking he was a cheater. It’s far better to mind your own business, most of the time. If, on the other hand, I had conclusive proof a friend's boyfriend was cheating, I'd tell him I know and also that he'd better confess soon because I won't lie for him. But I still probably wouldn't go to my friend and volunteer the information. For all I know, after all, my friend already knows and they have an open relationship or something. But, like I said, it would depend on the situation.
Jess lies to Sam to get out of going to his dirt bike race: she says she has to help her mom shop for a present for her grandparents. Really, she’s going shopping with Lila, who has straightened her hair and dyed purple streaks in it. I think I had that hairstyle for about six months in college. “I just wanted something that expresses the true me,” Lila explains, and Liz, Ned, and Alice pay her some fake compliments, and then make fun of her behind her back. When Lila asks Jess what she really thinks, Jess nicely says that she wishes she had the courage to do something drastic like that. Aw! I like it when they get along.
It doesn’t last, though, because at the mall, everyone stares at Lila and laughs. At first, she thinks that they’re overwhelmed by her beauty (seriously), but it eventually dawns on her that their attention is not flattering. She’s furious at Jess for pretending to like the purple hair, instead of being honest and saying it looks crazy. She yells, “If I wanted people to lie to me, I’d talk to my enemies! You’re supposed to be my best friend!” and drives off, stranding Jess in the mall parking lot. Are you sensing the B Plot theme yet? (Sam’s input? That, while Lila is not someone who really appreciates the truth all the time, if Jess thought people were going to make fun of the purple hair, she really should’ve said something. Jess disagrees: if the situation were reversed, she’d want Lila to lie.)
Mr. Wakefield buys Mrs. Wakefield glass meerkats and puts them on the mantle. He loves them. Loooooves them. Alice hates them, because they’re ugly and weird. But she pretends to like them too, because did I mention that Ned apparently wants to be a meerkat when he grows up? Or was perhaps raised by them in the wild? Because there’s no other explanation for his adoration of these stupid little statues. Whatever. Liz pretends to like them when her dad is in the room, and then laughs at them behind his back. She’s so two-faced. Ned thinks Liz should write a poem about meerkats for Liv’s environmental magazine. I have never heard of anyone loving meerkats as much as Ned Wakefield does.
Lila gives Jess a magazine article called, “How to Unlock the Totally Honest You!” Jess reads it with fascination. It makes a big impression: Jess decides that, from now on, she wants to be a person of “exceptional character and integrity.” HA! Good luck with that! She vows to never lie again.
She gets started right away, and it’s awesome. When Jess gets downstairs, Liz is reading Alice a poem Todd helped her write called “The Last Days of the Amazon.” It sucks. Jess knows it. Alice knows it. When Alice says it was good, though, Jess says, “The title sounds like a documentary, and the poem sounds like a nursery rhyme. About bugs. And it’s about a hundred and fifty words too long.” Liz is pissed off. Alice chides Jess for not being nicer, and Jess is all, “Whatever. I have character and integrity now.”
Jess spends the whole day being obnoxious about her newfound honesty: she tells Amy she’s wearing too much makeup, and tattles to a teacher that Kirk Anderson is at the beach, not really out with the flu. When she gets home, she tells her mom her dress is ugly and her dad that his meerkat sculptures are wretched.
The next day at school, Bruce, Winston, and some other people give a presentation on the French Revolution, and then Jess raises her hand and tells the teacher how much she thought it sucked, and that the group should get a D. They’re all really angry with her for embarrassing them like that, but she’s blithely unconcerned. They just can’t handle her truth, y’all!
Lila feels like she created a monster in giving Jess that article. Jess keeps on being bluntly honest to everyone, hurting their feelings and making them upset. Apparently Jess’s honesty has broken up tons of couples and made everyone she knows hate her. So, Lila organizes a Total Honesty for Jessica Day! Awesome. She figures that a taste of her own medicine will get Jess off her honesty kick.
The honesty day is amazing. It kicks off to a great start when Jess tells a girl she’d have to be out of her mind to go out with Bruce, since he sucks so much, and Lila pops up right behind her to say, “Then you must have been out of your mind, because not only were you crazy about him, but you went out with him yourself!” Hee! As the day goes on, Jess is a very unhappy girl.
It doesn’t take her long to figure out the whole thing was Lila’s idea, and is nearly in tears at how mean everyone is being. Just then, Liz comes up and thanks Jess in front of everyone for talking to Olivia: “I wanted to thank you for being so honest and direct. You practically saved my life.” Jess pointedly says she’s glad that someone appreciates the value of honesty.
Lila loses interest in that touching scene right away, though, because John Pfeifer (boo!) has just walked into the cafeteria. The girls tease Lila about having a crush, and Lila firmly promises that they’re just friends.
Not for long.
The End