Sweet Valley High Magna Edition: Return of the Evil Twin
Sweet Valley High Magna Edition: Return of the Evil Twin
Oh, Crazy Margo. I just can’t quit you.
If you’re fuzzy on Margo’s backstory, check out the recaps of A Night to Remember and books 95-100. It’s really too much to summarize here.
The cover:
The angel's head is broken off! Spooooky!
The inside flap:
Okay, I’m sorry, but Jessica’s room does not look like a Hershey Bar. It looks like a Wild West bordello. I don’t know why she’s wearing black tights with her nightgown. That’ll have to stay a mystery. And also, not to spoil anything, but Jess's chest should be ripped to bloody shreads. There's not a stab wound in sight!
Let’s begin!
The book opens where The Evil Twin left off: they’re loading Margo’s body into an ambulance while Liz, Jess, and the rest of our heroes shiver in the rain and watch. I just realized: Margo had stolen Liz’s lavaliere, right? And she “died” from a shard of glass cutting her jugular, right? So when Liz gets the necklace back, it’s covered in Margo’s crusty, gross blood, but Liz washes it off and goes right back to wearing it everywhere? That’s disturbing. I hope Ned and Alice just bought her a new one. Anyway, everyone is so occupied with consoling the twins that they don’t notice when the ambulance abruptly stops at the end of the driveway and then takes off again, speeding and swerving away.
Fast forward a year: New Years Eve is three weeks away (even though the twins are still sixteen) and Jess is trying desperately to make some plans. Lila can’t have a party, since her dad has to have business people over. Ned and Alice are going to a party at the Santellis’, but Jess nixes that because it’s for old people. Liz and Todd are going to stay home and watch a movie; they invite Jess and Ken, but Jess would rather die than see the ball drop, so that’s out.
Apparently the twins are in charge of a fundraising committee for the children’s wing of the hospital. The wing is already way behind schedule, and Alice reminds them that something has to happen before mid-January if it’s going to open on time. Ned mentions that his firm was in charge of getting permits for a traveling carnival - What kind of lawyer is he? - and Jess has the idea to rent out the carnival for New Year’s Eve and use that for the fundraiser. Oh, God. Nothing good ever came from carnivals in this town.
Meanwhile, in Savannah, Nora Chapelle is at her father’s funeral. She can see the scent from the magnolia bouquets as puffs of smoke. We learn that her mom died when she was a baby (and gossip says Mama Nora was cray-zee), and her dad’s second marriage was to a Georgia society girl named, of course, Blanche. No Southern debutante can be called anything else. Nora is outwardly composed, but inside she’s enraged. Her dad just didn’t try hard enough to save her mom! And Blanche hates her! She overhears some women sipping bourbon and talking about how her mom’s family was trash. Crazy trash. Why, she wasn’t even a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy! And the peach doesn’t fall far from the tree, you know.
After the funeral, Blanche gives Nora a check for $50,000 in exchange for disappearing forever. Nora takes it, because she has no desire to stick around, since she hates Blanche and all. Blanche tells her that she had a twin sister, Margo. Aw, yeah. Here we go. When Nora wants to know what happened to Margo, Blanche says that she wanted to give both girls up for adoption when she married their dad, since the twins look just like their mom and would forever remind society of Mr. Chapelle’s first wife. He wouldn’t agree, though, so they compromised and got rid of just one girl. Who does that? Blanche told Mr. Chapelle that she’d found a good home for the girl, but really she’d just had her sister (whose name is Junebug) stick Margo in New York foster care. Nora vows to find her sister, and Blanche says, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
You think I’m making that up? I’m not making that up. Amazing.
Enid has a caroling party, and on the way to it, Todd has a car accident and blacks out. Jess, running late to meet everyone, comes across his wrecked car teetering precariously off the mountain. (What mountain? I don’t know. There’s a mountain in the middle of Sweet Valley today.) Todd’s unconscious and the door is jammed shut, so Jess breaks the window and hauls him out with her superhuman strength. Just as she gets him clear of the car, it falls off the mountain and blows up. (It was his dad’s old Thunderbird, not his BMW. I know you were concerned about that.) She’s in the middle of a full-on Jungle Prom Sam flashback and sobs, “Todd, are you alive?”
Meanwhile, the rest of the kids see the orange fireball. Liz grabs Lila’s car keys and takes off. Lila’s like, “What just happened? Is she stealing my car?” Liz speeds off in the Triumph and uses Lila’s car phone to call 911.
Nora calls Aunt Junebug to get info on Margo. Junebug placed Margo in foster care with the help of an old beau of hers, Tucker Nathaniel Bedford the Third, of the Atlanta Bedfords, who went to University of Virginia law school and begged Junebug to move north with him, but Junebug refused because she could never live among Yankees. I think the ghostwriter was having way too much fun with the Southern stereotypes. Junebug agrees to make an appointment for Nora to meet Tucker, and Nora promises she’ll leave on the first plane. Then she scrubs her hands raw to get the smell of Junebug off of them (the smell had been leaking through the phone, you see). Nora thinks she sees Margo in the mirror, begging her to come. Nora cries and promises she’s on her way. Oh, and also, Nora also has a tattoo on the inside of her elbow: the Gemini symbol. She’d gotten it just to tick Blanche off, but now she thinks it’s fortuitous.
Liz gets to the crash scene in time to see them loading Jess and Todd into an ambulance. She jumps back into Lila’s car and speeds after them to the hospital. Meanwhile, in the ambulance, Todd wakes up and sees Jess all hazy. He thanks her, and Jess feels pleased that she saved his life. She feels her guilt about killing Sam with Magical Vodka ease up a little, since now she’s saved a boy from a crash. Todd holds her hand and looks at her lovingly, and Jess figures he thinks she’s Liz. When she tells him she’s Jess, though, he says, “I know.” And when the doctor calls Jess his girlfriend, neither one corrects him. CHEATER ALERT!
Todd’s got a broken wrist, two broken ribs, and a concussion. Whatever. When Liz finally gets to his room, he’s all woozy. Jess comes in with hot chocolate, and Todd asks Liz if he can have a moment alone with Jess. Liz leaves, but feels jealous when she looks back and sees Jess sitting on Todd’s bed, holding his hand. She doesn’t really need to feel jealous; Todd just rambles in a medicated way about how he’ll be grateful to Jess forever for saving his life. He even cries! Jess insists he would’ve done the same thing for anyone, and he doesn’t owe her anything, but he corrects her, “I owe you everything.” Jess, thinking of Liz for once, says, “Maybe all this gratitude isn’t such a great idea.” Todd corrects her: “After tonight, I’ll never look at you the same way again.” Gag. A photographer comes in and takes their picture for the Sweet Valley News.
On the way home, Liz tells Jess she wishes she’d been the one to save Todd, and Jess tries to help her feel better, but secretly thinks that Liz is being pretty ungrateful. After all, Jess saved her boyfriend’s life, and all Liz wants to do is whine about it. Jess thinks Liz is a little lacking perspective, as do I. After all, Liz wasn’t there and Jess was. What was she supposed to do?
That night, Liz has that dream about Margo at Secca Lake that she had all throughout the Evil Twin miniseries. She wakes up all freaked out and writes in her journal about it, finally deciding that Todd’s accident made her think of Sam’s accident, which is all wrapped up in her mind with Margo.
Tucker tells Nora that he’d placed Margo in a home on Long Island, “though I have to warn you-it’s not the most fashionable neighborhood.” When Nora gets excited, Tucker is like, “Hold your thoroughbreds, young missy.” I want to marry this ghostwriter. He says that, if Margo’s old foster parents don’t know where she is, he has a “former paramour” who knows all about how to use “this information superhighway thing I keep hearing about,” and he’ll ask her to help Nora too. Nora is thrilled. It doesn’t last long, though: she finds the burned foundation of Margo’s foster home and flips out.
Jess gets the paper and notices how good she looks in her front-page photo. She also admires Todd: “he was sexier than anyone with a concussion and broken bones had a right to be.” Then she sees the headline - “Local Girl Saves Her Boyfriend’s Life” - and gulps, knowing Liz is going to have a fit.
Over breakfast, Ned and Alice praise Jess for saving Todd’s life, and Liz steams that they’re ignoring her when it was her boyfriend who almost died! Liz sees the paper and is furious, even after Jess explains that it was just a simple mistake, they’d never told the photographer that. Ned and Alice are like, “Yeah, what’s the big deal? Newspapers misidentify people all the time!” Just then, though, Olivia calls and is like, “Liz, you saved Todd’s life? Let’s do an article in The Oracle!” Liz is pissed again, some more. She heads to the hospital, and Todd mistakes her for Jess. He’s embarrassed about it, though. She shows him the paper, and he’s like, “Don’t be mad because the photographer got confused.” He insists that gratitude is all he feels for Jess, and then Liz has to leave when a burly nurse comes in and says it’s time for Todd’s sponge bath. HA! As she leaves, Todd marvels at how much she looks like Jessica. They’re identical, stupid!
Nora’s kind of OCD. She gets the judge’s file on Margo, but can’t read it until she’s arranged everything in chronological order. As she reads, she cries over how sad Margo’s life is. Then she cries even harder when she gets to the part about how Margo was presumed dead in that fire. However! The next clip is about dead Georgie in Ohio. Nora, to her credit, is appalled. She can’t believe her sister would hurt a child on purpose. She decides it must be part of a plot by Blanche. Sure. The next clip is that article about Liz’s trial that Margo got from the old lady in the train station: Nora is astonished that she has another lookalike! I’m astonished that the judge had this newspaper clipping in his Margo file! Nora looks in the mirror and sees Margo, who urges her to keep reading. (Mirror Margo shows up a lot in the Nora scenes.)
Anyway, Nora gets frowny: a girl like Liz would never understand what an unloved life is like, not like Nora and Margo! She hates Liz! Nora finds articles about the dead waitress with the gratuitous baby, the dirtbike rally for SADD Jess organized, and the final confrontation at Fowler Crest. Apparently the ambulance carrying Margo had gone off the Palisades bridge, where police found the dead paramedics but not Margo. Nora throws up. Her sister is dead!
All the kids come over to the Wakefields’ to plan the carnival for the hospital, but all they want to do is pump Jess for inside information on the night before. Amy starts with what Lila calls, “her Project Youth psychobabble,” saying that Todd probably feels like he owes Jessica more than he can ever repay, and will want to do anything he can to make her happy. Liz storms away, and all the kids are like, “What’s her problem?”
Nora flies to LA, thinking to herself that Margo should be alive, and the Wakefields should be dead. Dun dun dunnnnnn! Nora decides that, if Margo couldn’t be part of the Wakefields’ world, then one of the Wakefields won’t be part of it either. It’s the perfect revenge: avenging Margo’s death and paying tribute to her life by carrying out her last plan.
At the Dairi Burger that night, Bruce asks if he can sign Todd’s cast but Liz glares at him and won’t let him get close enough. What a bitch. Except he did try to rape her that one time, but somehow I don’t think that’s why she blocked him. Jess waves them over to her table. Liz doesn’t want to go, but figures that, at least, she and Todd have tickets to The Shining in twenty minutes, so they won’t have to stay long. Of course, all the kids want to hear the rescue story from Todd’s point of view (“I crashed my car, and then woke up in love with my girlfriend’s sociopathic sister?”) so he launches in, even though Ken tries to discourage him. Liz realizes that Ken is probably just as jealous as she is. I think they’re both being lame. Anyway, Todd gets so wrapped up in the story that they’re going to be late for the movie, and he doesn’t really care. So, Liz and Ken go instead. Nobody even really notices they’ve left.
Of course, The Shining is a pretty long movie, so it’s late when Ken finally drops Liz off. Jess is furious: she saved Todd’s life, and Liz repays her by going on a date with Ken? Liz is like, “We just went to the movies as friends,” but Jess is still enraged.
That night, Jess has a nightmare. Remember when she went hiking with James the Dirtbike Guy and he almost pushed her off a cliff but then pulled her back and made out with her, so she dismissed the whole pushing thing because he was rilly rilly hot? She dreams about that, but she winds up actually going over the side (and falling off her bed), then wakes up and cries.
Todd and Ken come over to the Wakefields’ for Christmas Eve. Todd feels so happy to be alive, and promises himself that he’ll never take life for granted again. He admires how pretty the twins are, and thinks about how glad he is to be there. When dinner starts, as Nora spies through the window, Ken toasts Ned and Alice for having them over for such a nice dinner, and Todd toasts Jessica for saving his life. Liz runs away, selfishly ruining everyone’s holiday because she’s a stroppy cow. Upstairs, she whines in her journal about how she’s losing Todd: “The newspaper called Jessica his girlfriend. Soon it will be the truth.” Well, sure it will, if you keep acting like such a freaking psycho.
Nora dreams that she digs up Margo’s grave and finds it empty. Spooky!
Christmas morning, Jess wakes up and decides she’s been kind of insensitive to Liz. After all, her boyfriend almost died. Of all people, Jess should be sympathetic to that. Meanwhile, Liz acknowledges to herself how crazy she’s been acting. Jess hasn’t done anything wrong. The twins apologize and hug, determined to have a better Christmas than last year. They talk about Margo a lot, but it’s all review for the people who haven’t read the other books in this storyline.
Nora cries: she’s scared that she’s not strong or brave enough to carry out Margo’s plan. Mirror Margo leaves, and Nora finds herself staring at her own reflection. Distraught, she breaks the mirror. Nora goes to the cemetery, thinking that she should spend Christmas with her sister, since she’s the only family Nora has left. As she sits near Margo’s grave, talking to her about the Wakefield Plot, someone jumps her and starts to strangle her. Just as Nora’s about to pass out, the person lets go. Nora turns in time to see (a) her attacker is about to stab her in the throat, and (b) she’s staring at her own face. Seeing Nora, the attacker freezes. Nora says, “Hello Margo. I’m your twin sister.” Woo!
The twins and their boyfriends go to the carnival to do some recon work before New Years Eve. They eat cotton candy and ride the rides and stuff, whatever. It’s a really long part, but nothing happens until the very end, when Liz goes into the fortune teller’s tent. I feel like I’ve read this before. Anyway, Madame Renata reads Liz’s palm, and then gets all melodramatically afraid. She’s like, “There’s more than one of you!” Liz says she has a twin (Don’t give them extra information, Liz! It’s how fake psychics trick you into believing in them!) and Madame Renata tells her to be careful if she wants to reach the new year alive. Liz runs away without paying. Classy.
I’m kind of liking Nora in spite of myself, you guys. She’s a lot more mild-mannered than Margo, and nowhere near as psychotic. She seems pretty regular so far, even, except for thinking she can see smells. Margo’s all, “The Sweet Valley Inn? La-di-da!” Nora is quite unhappy at the dark gray smell of cigarettes that follows Margo everywhere, but rationalizes that “Margo had been subjected to some terrible, filthy influences during her tortured existence.” HA! Yeah, that’s Margo’s problem. Filthy influences. There’s dirt on Margo’s shoes that she tracks onto the carpet, and Nora gets all tense. Obviously Margo is too tired to notice, right? Or she’d clean it up herself, right? Right? Nora is in for a rude awakening. She’s also kind of grossed out that Margo doesn’t seem to shower regularly.
Margo explains why she’s still alive. (Besides that they wanted to publish a sequel. What’s better than one Evil Twin, after all? Two Evil Twins!) Margo plays with a piece of glass from the mirror Nora broke earlier (Margo: How did the mirror get cracked? Nora: I broke it. I didn’t like the way it was looking at me. Margo: They do that, sometimes.) and says that it’s about the size of the one that got her in the throat at the Fowlers’. None of our heroes ever got close enough to see if she was still alive, they just assumed she was dead. The paramedics knew she was alive, though. Margo hid some pieces of glass from the window under the sheet they put over her, broke their radio when they weren’t looking, and then slashed them up as soon as they were clear of the Fowlers’ driveway. Then she sent the ambulance over the bridge and got away.
But…but…the paramedics were found drowned, I thought the newspaper said? Weren’t people suspicious when they were found all stabbed and stuff? Why am I looking for logic here?
The next day, Margo eats three hot dogs in a row, which Nora finds revolting (as do I). But, she tells herself, probably this is the first real meal Margo’s had in quite a while, so she shouldn’t judge. Margo tells Nora about the Wakefields’ psychic connection; they think they might have one too. Margo says she’s been watching the twins very closely for the last year; every now and then she even borrows Liz’s diary for a few hours. It’s reassuring to know that some things never change: Margo can still waltz in and out of the Wakefields’ house anytime she wants without anyone noticing or caring. She has most of the diary photocopied, apparently. Nora asks if Liz ever writes anything about her hot boyfriend, and Margo’s like, “She’s such a prude, it makes me want to throw up.” Nora’s like, “Oh, God, please don’t throw up those hot dogs on the white carpet.” Hee. Nora fills Margo in on the New Years carnival, and Margo’s like, “A House of Mirrors? That has possibilities! We can make them suffer!”
Nora’s confused: she wanted to avenge Margo’s death, it’s true, but Margo’s not dead. There’s no need to hurt the Wakefields; they can just move on with their lives.
Oh, Nora. I know you just met Margo yesterday, but you have a lot to learn.
Margo corrects her right quick: she and Nora were cheated out of a happy childhood and perfect family. They deserve everything Jess and Liz have. And, working together, there’s no reason they can’t get what they deserve.
Can I get a hell yeah?
The Evil Twins don’t waste any time. The next day, they wait for Jess and Liz to leave, then stroll right into the Wakefields’ house and fool Ned and Alice, no problem. Heh. As I recall, it took months for Margo to perfect her Elizabeth impression last time, but Nora has it down in one day. As the parents leave, they mention that Enid’s invited Liz to see Invasion of the Body Snatchers (subtle) that night. Margo immediately picks up the phone and, pretending to be Liz, asks Todd to the movies. They talk about their plan to divide the twins, because the more trouble there is between Jess and Liz, the less likely they are to compare notes and discover that something weird is going on. Nora reflects on how, just a few months ago, talking about murder and bodies would’ve terrified her, but now she feels powerful and capable with Margo beside her.
That night, NoraLiz meets Todd at the door. He’s like, “What’s different about you?” and she says it’s probably her new shirt. He’s all, “Whatever, I like the new you!” Moron. They suck face in the car right up until the movie’s about to start. Then, when they walk in, Nora sees the real Liz sitting in the fourth row with Enid, so she steers Todd to the front row and they make out the whole time. Of course, as soon as the lights come up, the real Liz sees them and is like, “Holy shit, that’s Todd and Jessica.” Instead of confronting them about it, she runs away. When Jess gets home that night from her date with Ken (she’s humming Amazing Grace as she walks in the door - what a weird throwaway detail), Liz rips a strip off her for making out with Todd but, of course, Jess has no idea what Liz is talking about and thinks she’s being crazy. Liz will never forgive her for this, blah blah blah. Liz storms out of the house.
The Evil Twins watch, pleased. Nora figures that, now that she’s mastered Liz, she’s ready to try being Jess. Margo’s like, “Nuh uh. I’m Jess.” Nora reminds her that she wanted to be Liz last year, and Margo’s like, “I’m not convincing as Liz. You’re Liz, that’s all there is to it. You like to clean.” They bicker, and their fight contains the immortal exchange:
Margo: Did you know that in all this time Todd has never even managed to get Elizabeth out of her clothes? It’s positively sick!
Nora: I’m sure you could convince him to.
But finally Margo puts her foot down. Nora gives in, but secretly vows not to give up her dream. Hee. Even the psychos think Elizabeth is lame.
Meanwhile, Liz runs to Todd’s house and throws a bunch of rocks at his window. He comes out, thinking she’s insane, and hoping his parents don’t bust them or they’ll be in serious trouble. He just doesn’t know what to do with her anymore, and I can’t blame him. Since the accident, she’s been alternately all over him and a heinous bitch, sucking his face off during the movies and storming out of Christmas dinner for no reason. He tries to steer Liz away from the house so she won’t wake anyone up, but Liz won’t move. She plants herself on his front lawn and shrieks at him about HOW COULD YOU and DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH ME! Todd suggests they talk in the morning to straighten out whatever misunderstanding is going on right now, and she’s like NO MISUNDERSTANDING, I UNDERSTAND PERFECTLY. He says he had a good time at the movies that night, and she slaps him across the mouth and runs away. He briefly considers making her let him drive her home, but nixes that idea: “If Elizabeth met any psychos while she was in her current mood, the psychos were the ones who would need protection.” Poor dumb Todd.
The next night is New Years Eve. Jess gets ready for the carnival, steaming about Liz. After all, she and Todd might have felt a little attracted to each other for about ten minutes after the accident, but they never acted on it. She tries to talk to Liz, reminding her about last New Years and saying that she’d hate to spend this one not talking, but Liz screeches and chases her out of the room. Sighing, Jess goes back to getting ready. Her blouse is wrinkled and, hilariously, instead of ironing it, she sighs and figures, “If you can’t beat ’em, distract ’em,” and unbuttons it three buttons. Hee! As she leaves for the carnival, she has a bad premonition, but ignores it, figuring it’s just a flashback from last year.
At the carnival, Todd tries to talk to Liz but she runs away. He tries to ask Jess why Liz is so mad, but Jess doesn’t want to tell him, “Liz thinks we were making out,” in front of Ken so she just says Liz is possessed. He tries to ask Enid, and Enid is like, “You’re SCUM!” He’s finally like, “Fuck it, everyone I know is crazy,” and goes home.
Meanwhile, Jess wants to go in the House of Mirrors. Lila won’t go with her, though, since she’s been in line for Madame Renata for a while, so Jess goes alone. She’s the only one in there, though, and she gets really disoriented and freaked out. She tries to find her way out, but only gets more turned around. After groping around for a while, getting increasingly frightened, Jess stops to get her bearings. She panics when one of her reflections keeps moving.
Nora paces in the hotel room. Margo’s been gone for hours. She obviously went to terrorize the Wakefields on her own. Nora’s enraged: they’re a team! Margo has no right to operate solo. Nora’s had quite enough, and is going to prove to everyone that she has what it takes. She goes to the mirror, TAKES OUT HER LIZ BARRETTES (oh, how I love those Liz barrettes), and tousles up her hair like Jess. She’ll show Margo! She’ll do it tonight!
Nearly midnight at the carnival’s dance tent, Lila asks Liz if she knows where Jess is, since she went to the House of Mirrors two hours ago and nobody’s seen her since. Liz is like, “I don’t know where she is and I don’t care.” Lila snarks back, “I’ve always admired the close relationship you two sisters share.” HA! Just then, though, Jess walks up, and she and Lila go off to dance. Liz grinds her teeth and wishes Jess had never saved Todd’s life.
Wow. She’d rather he was dead than dating someone else. Margo and Nora aren’t the only crazy twins.
Anyway, Liz can’t take it anymore so she goes home, sticking Enid with an entire carnival’s worth of cleanup. Nice.
Nora breaks into the Wakefields’ house. She knows Liz was planning to be on carnival cleanup duty until 2am, the parents are still out, and Steve is at a party at school, so Jess is all alone and vulnerable. Nora wonders for a second if she should just let Margo run the show, but if she did that, then Nora would be suck being Elizabeth! Quelle horreur! I swear, I’ve hardly written any snark into this recap because the ghostwriter is doing it all for me.
Anyway, Nora goes into Jess’s room, takes a moment to sigh about how untidy it is, and then hovers over sleeping Jessica. She’s wearing a nightshirt that says Sweet Valley on it, and Nora’s like, “You’re sweet, all right.” She’s about to take revenge for a lifetime of unhappiness visited on the wrong twins. She picks up a pillow, puts it over Jess’s face, and stabs her right through the Sweet on her shirt over and over and over again. As she does, she smells magnolia flowers. Because, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, she’s crazy. Never mind what I said earlier about her seeming normal, even just compared to Margo.
Liz dreams that Jess is crying out for her help. She wakes up and goes to Jess’s room, and that’s when Nora realizes that Liz is home. Liz opens the door, and sees Nora jumping out the window. Of course, she assumes Nora is Margo. She runs to Jess (gross description here: “Even in the faint glimmer of moonlight, she could see the blank expression that was frozen on Jessica’s white face. Blood was soaking into the bedsheets.”) and, when she sees that Jess is dead, she screams and faints.
Ned and Alice come home from their party right then, and see Nora jumping from the drainpipe and hear the dog barking. They run inside and call 911, and find both girls on the bed covered in blood, Jess dead and Liz passed out. Alice drops to her knees, screaming. This is actually a pretty intense scene.
Nora kicks herself for fucking it up. She should’ve waited and done it by Margo’s plan. She’s pretty scared of Margo now, and what Margo’s going to do to her. She realizes that there’s only one way out: she wipes off her makeup and puts her hair back up in barrettes. If she can’t be Jess, she’ll have to be Liz: “Jessica’s place in the family was permanently filled. The only spot left was Elizabeth’s, boring or not.” HEE! Anyway, nothing, not even Margo, will stand in the way of Nora becoming a Wakefield. Of course, once Margo finds out Jess is publicly dead she’s going to have the same Elizabeth plan. Nora thinks about all the people Margo killed, and realizes why Margo must not have come back to the hotel room yet: she knows everything, and is going to kill Nora next. Margo must have been spying on Nora through the eyes in the eyelet bedspread. (No, for real, that’s what she figures.) So, Nora will just have to find Margo and kill her first.
Liz wakes up lying in the back of a police car parked in front of her house. I don’t know why they moved her outside to a car instead of downstairs to the sofa or something, but I’m not a paramedic so what do I know? They’re just rushing Jess to the ER in an ambulance, so the rest of the fam goes too. They couldn’t revive her at the scene, but apparently they’re still working on it at the hospital. Liz tells her parents it was Margo, and Ned and Alice share a “she’s crazy” look. Liz hates herself for not making up with Jess earlier that night when Jess offered. The doctor comes out and tells them Jess is dead. Liz has a screaming meltdown.
Enid, Todd, Olivia, and Ken all sit on the Wakefields’ front porch. I don’t know why. Todd sobs at what Liz must be feeling. Lila and Amy screech up in the Triumph, and jump out, also crying so hard they can barely see. Lila actually crumples to the sidewalk, sobbing: “seeing Lila lose her composure rattled Todd more than anything else had that night.” Including Jess getting murdered? You might want to keep that thought to yourself, Toddster. Todd says that Liz won’t want him there when she gets home; she’s furious at him. Ken says that Liz loves Todd; whatever had pissed her off, she won’t care anymore tonight. Lila’s crying, but tries to smile and says to everyone, “Jess had a good time tonight, didn’t she Amy? She went on every ride.” Aw. I love Lila. They all hold each other and cry.
Meanwhile, Liz and Ned are at the police station so the cops can get a description of the intruder. Unfortunately, when Liz says it was Margo, they go totally bad cop on the teenager who just saw her twin sister brutally stabbed. It’s weird and horrible, and they wind up screaming at her until she has another sobbing breakdown. Ned, of course, doesn’t do anything to stop them. He makes a halfhearted suggestion that Alice could come in, since Liz might feel better with her mom there, but the cops are like, “NO MOTHERS!” and he’s all, “Oh, sorry. Browbeat away.”
The next morning, Steve tries to convince Liz that she hallucinated Margo, and he won’t believe her, even when she begs him. Ned and Alice come in crying, and ask Steve and Liz for help choosing readings for the funeral. Liz flips out: no funeral homes! It should be at the auditorium at SVH. Jess loved SVH more than anywhere else in the world: it’s where Liz wants to say goodbye to her, and where Jess would want to say goodbye to everyone. You know, I have to say, she’s right about that. Ned says Mr. Cooper would never let them bring a coffin to school (does anyone call them coffins anymore, except in vampire movies? Casket is a must nicer word), but he’ll ask if they can do a memorial service there. I don’t see why not; Regina got one, after all. Though she was heroically deaf. Jess was just a perfect size six sociopath.
Two thousand people come to Jessica’s memorial service.
TWO THOUSAND. Like she’s a fallen President or something.
Lila speaks, and when she’s done, she and Liz hold each other and cry. Ken talks too, and then kisses Liz on the forehead and says, “You look so much like her.” Fucking duh. Then it’s Elizabeth the Bard’s turn. She reads a poem she wrote for the occasion:
“The Girl in the Mirror”
Reflection, soul mate, sister, friend,
Half of what I am is you-
A vibrant smile, a helping hand
A love that always pulled us through.
You, who so loved life, are gone
The life I loved is torn apart,
And I am left to carry on
My mirror empty as my heart-
Nora, standing in the back, rolls her eyes and dismisses the poem as “sentimental nonsense.” HA!
Backstage, Todd hugs Liz. He’s like, “I love you, and whatever you think I did, I didn’t do it.” She’s like, “I know, it was Margo.” Todd’s a little freaked out by that - Steve told him Liz was delusional - but he puts it aside for now and they go to the cemetery. On the way out of the school, Liz freezes: she feels Jessica nearby, and hears Jess in her mind yelling, “I’m alive! I need you, Lizzie!” Lila comes up confused, because she just saw Liz backstage and now Liz is here. Liz takes off running and searches all over, thinking Margo’s lurking somewhere (What’s she planning to do if she does find Margo? Yell, “Gotcha!” and have Todd punch her, probably) but there’s nobody there.
After the burial, Liz asks Steve for help finding Jess. She just knows Jess is still alive, at the school, and is in trouble. Steve thinks she’s having a psychotic break, and promises that he and their parents will get her the help she needs. That’s a lot more than they did for Jess when she went insane after Sam died.
Nora walks through the empty school. She hears a banging coming from the furnace room, and sees evil smells leaking out. She realizes that must be where Margo’s been hiding. She tries to open the door, but it’s locked, so she decides to come back that night to have her final showdown with Margo.
Liz has a dream with two Margos.
Those harassing cops come back to ask Liz some more questions, but she doesn’t change her story. She does remember the events of the evening, though, like Jess disappearing in the House of Mirrors for two hours and, because she’s smarter than Todd, she starts to piece things together. She stares at the gun one of the cops is wearing, thinking that Margo would use a weapon like that. The cop, thinking the gun is making Liz nervous, takes the gun off and puts it on a table. Liz figures out what was going on when she insists, yet again, that she saw Margo: “And if it wasn’t Margo, then it must have been her twin sister.” Ah ha! The light goes off in her head, and she knows what must have happened. If Jess is still alive, then one Margo is dead, which means that there’s still another Margo out there. As the cops turn their attention to Ned and Alice, Liz quietly grabs the gun from the table and slips out of the house.
Saint Elizabeth just stole a gun from a police officer, you guys.
At the school, Nora uses a chisel to break open the furnace room door. She can smell Margo’s evil: only one of them will come out alive and earn the right to be a Wakefield! She pulls out a knife and starts down the stairs.
Liz screeches into the school parking lot in the Jeep and runs inside, wearing the gun holster. A door is open: Liz knows Jess wouldn’t have left it open, or she’d have come home, so Margo must be inside. There’s no other reason a school door would ever be open than that a psycho is lurking within. She heads for the hallway where she’d felt Jess’s presence so strongly before.
In the furnace room, Nora sees a dark shape that she just knows is Margo. She lashes out, but someone grabs her arm, twists it cruelly, and knocks her down, grabbing the knife.
Liz hears the struggle from upstairs, sees the open furnace room door, and runs to help her sister.
Sure enough, Jess has been tied up in that furnace room since New Years Eve. Margo kidnapped her from the House of Mirrors and, instead of just killing her, stashed her in the SVH basement tied to a four foot leash (!) just long enough to stretch to a toilet (?) and she’s survived off of rusty water dripping from the leaky water heater into a metal pail (?!). Why is there a random toilet in the furnace room? Why didn’t Margo just stab her and get it over with? Anyway, Nora (whom Jess thinks is Margo) quickly gets the upper hand, and is just about to stab Jess when Liz comes in. Nora gets distracted just long enough for Jess to knock her down and kick the knife away. Liz holds them both at gunpoint, wavering for about ten years, and then finally trains the gun on Nora and tells Jess to pick up the knife. They all hear sirens in the background.
Jess ties Nora up and asks Liz how she knew Margo was alive again. Nora’s like, “Wait, you’re not Margo?” Jess is like, “We know you’re Margo.” Liz explains how there were two of them, but now just one, and Nora confesses that she’s Nora. She starts to cry when she realizes it was Margo in Jess’s bed that night, and Nora’s murdered her own twin sister. Jess asks Liz how she knew which girl was her, and Liz laughs and says, “Well, besides my twin’s intuition, I did have one teeny little hint. You don’t have a tattoo!” How wacky! She sure recovered quickly from all the trauma!
When the cops come up, they’re like, “This is the damndest thing I’ve ever heard of.” They apologize to Liz for not believing her about Margo, and she apologizes to them for stealing the gun. All is forgiven! Who knew you could just steal loaded guns from police officers and nobody will mind, as long as you have a super duper good reason? (Though the cop does warn Liz that her parents were terrified she was going to use the gun to kill herself, considering everything she’d been through the last few days. Dark.) Nora’s arrested for murdering Margo and assaulting Jess.
Lila throws Jess a Welcome Back from the Dead Party. Hee. Todd and Jess smile at each other, and we’re told that neither one feels more than “friendly affection.” Just in case you were worried about that. And apparently Jess could hear every bit of her funeral in the auditorium. That would be really surreal. Also apparently, Jess had been alone in the dark for three days and was starting to lose it a little, but Liz’s poem helped her get through it. She kept repeating it to herself, and it kept her sane. Ick. The twins hug and cry, and promise to never go to bed angry again.
Until the next time one steals the other’s boyfriend or something.
The End