Super Special #7: Snowbound
A quick question, guys: If you move to Wisconsin for your husband's job, then he goes on a business trip to Miami the day before this happens, and then you walk around to the back door and it looks like this, and you call him and say "I literally do not know how to get out of the house," and he responds, "Ugh, the air conditioner in my room was keeping me awake last night," and you beat him to death with a shovel upon his return, would a jury convict me? I mean, hypothetically.
But as I'm stuck indoors until he gets back, why not snark something appropriate in the meantime?
Good LORD, you guys. Kristy's balls are so huge she must lug them around in a wheelbarrow, because she thinks it is a fantastic idea to write to the editor of the Stoneybrook News proposing that they run a front page story all about her and her friends. I won't bore you with how stupid and badly written this letter is, but it's worth noting that, in addition to thinking that anyone cares about what some preteens did on their snow day, Kristy wants it to say " 'By Kristy Thomas' under the big headline that reads 'SNOWBOUND!'...P.S. If you want to pay me, I wouldn't mind. How much do reporters earn? (I won't be too picky.)"
Sometimes I hate Kristy so much I get this pain in my arm and I take an aspirin just in case I'm finally having a heart attack at the age of twenty-five.
Then again, they do live in a tiny suburban town, and it is really, really difficult to match the perfect yet inscrutable blend of banality, utter ineptitude, and desperation that is a tiny suburban town newspaper. I grew up in a town exactly like Stoneybrook and reading the paper after school was the highlight of my entire afternoon. "Cow Hit on I-95" and "Honor Roll Announced" were always the lead stories, the picture captions would always be reversed ("Rotting bovine snarls traffic" directly under a picture of the high school principal), and three-quarters of the student names would always be spelled wrong. I was on honor roll four times a year, all six years I lived there before I went away to college, and I do believe they spelled my last name twenty-eight different ways, none of them correct. The whole thing was even funnier to me because my dad is an editor for the newspaper in the nearby large city, so he'd come home every day, exhausted from covering major world events, and say, "What’s new?" And I'd hold up our local paper, point at the front page headline, and go, "Three days to Thanksgiving and HyVee's out of frozen turkeys!"
So yes, in other words, a front page article in a local newspaper written for and about middle schoolers may not be THAT far off the mark. I refuse to believe she might be paid for any piece of writing, though, when I'm racking up the rejections over here and ready to start snarking BSC books for a living.
Kristy thinks she and her friends' experiences in the great blizzard of...um...hang on, lemme check the copyright page here...the great blizzard of 1991 (JESUS) were "fascinating." They couldn’t even talk on the phone until after it was all over because the lines were down! Oh, yeah. 1991. There was still such a thing as "phone lines." They decide to go over all of their individual stories again while they wait for the Stoneybrook News to reply. I think WE will be the judge of how "fascinating" they are.
Chapter 1: Kristy! Nothing happens in this chapter, except she sounds unconvincingly moony about the Winter Wonderland Dance. I don't care if she IS excited about going to a dance with Bart, I will never believe that Kristy Thomas thinks it's "awesome" that "the decorating committee was going to transform the SMS gym into a snowy fairyland - sparkly flakes and white cotton-drifts, tinsel icicles." That is one poorly constructed clause, as well. Also, Karen is wearing her sweater like a pair of pants and her rat goes missing. I think the two might be related. I too would escape to greener pastures if the only person entrusted to feed me were wearing sweater-pants.
• Stupidity Alert: In the prologue Kristy says the blizzard "caught everyone by surprise," but twice in this chapter newscasters predict major snow and she rolls her eyes and blows them off. So they live in New England, which is not known for mild winters in general, plus the people who, you know, went to college and studied weather patterns tell them a blizzard is coming. Yet the whole town ignores them and continue to sit by the pool with mojitos. Then snow hits and they all flail around and claim it "caught them by surprise." Is there mercury in the water up there or something?
• Fascination Level: Extremely low. Kristy herself says so. "Here's how boring the snowstorm prediction was. My homework seemed fascinating in comparison."
Chapter 2: Claudia! Wah waaaah, it still hasn't snowed. All the BSC charges are whiny and petulant about it, but not as whiny and petulant as Claudia herself. Also, she refers to the kids as "zooey," which I swear I've seen used in these books a dozen times. Ann. Honey. THAT IS NOT A WORD. No it's not. I mean, it's just stupid to make up an adjective considering there are plenty of real words that describe unruly kids just as well. Anyway, the implication hasn't aged well. It sounds like the kids are becoming unbearably twee and starting up indie bands.
Oh, hale, it may be a Super Special and there may be a life-threatening national disaster looming on the horizon, but it's still Chapter 2. If a blizzard hits Wisconsin and takes out our heat, the kindling from all my torn-out Chapter 2's would last us until summer. Let's describe everyone: Kristy is Pol Pot, Claudia is Andy Warhol after a head injury, Stacey is a Jackie Collins character named Candy Calculus, Mary Anne is Ann M. Martin's alter ego, Dawn is the love child of a water nymph and Satan, Mallory is a BNF in the Misty of Chincoteague fandom, and Jessi, lacking any characteristics other than being black, beautiful, and a ballerina, must by process of elimination be Zoe Saldana. There, I just put as much thought into characterization as the ghostwriters ever do.
Kristy calls the meeting to order and promptly decides to cancel the next meeting, on Wednesday, because everyone will be busy that afternoon anyway. ...Wait, what? Why is this book called Snowbound and not Kristy Is Abducted by Aliens and Replaced by a Cyborg? Tastes like a plot device to me. Mal and Mary Anne will be baby-sitting at the Pikes' all day while Ma and Pa Pike are in New York, Jessi has a special ballet rehearsal for the Nutcracker, and Dawn and her mom are picking up Jeff at the airport. Claudia will be baby-sitting for the Perkins girls that night, but can stay home and man the phone alone in the afternoon. Kristy herself appears to be doing nothing at all on Wednesday, so the likelihood that she would cancel a meeting just for other people's convenience is nil. I grow more suspicious and will be monitoring Kristy’s behavior closely.
• Fascination Level: Low, as is typical for Chapter 2. Though I did bump it up from "extremely low" because Claudia's outfit for the Winter Wonderland Dance is a "black velvet knicker outfit" and I get several minutes of entertainment wondering what the hell a black velvet knicker outfit might be and whether they remembered to change it for the British edition to avoid unfortunate connotations.
Chapter 3: Dawn! Oh, good, Kristy hasn't COMPLETELY short-circuited, because when Mary Anne reminds her the dance is on Friday and wonders if they should cancel that meeting too, Kristy says no, they'll figure something out. But neither does she have a total conniption at the thought of canceling two meetings in a row. Hrrmmmm. Can you be HALF possessed by demons?
Everybody's in a good mood, Dawn says, because the dance is coming up and everybody in the club has a date. What is WITH this dance? We didn't even HAVE dances at my middle school and nobody would have gone to them if we did. Damn kids get off my lawn. Dawn is going with Price Irving, some kid who sounds like a credit union. Is that a normal name in Connecticut? In my town that kid would have been routinely beat up and then the newspaper would have called him Petrop Invrsky.
Dawn calls Jeff, excited about his upcoming Christmas trip, but he's developed a sudden fear of catastrophic instrument failure and doesn't want to fly. She pleads that he has to come, and he snaps that he doesn't HAVE to do anything. Actually, you brat, you're ten years old. Your custody agreement says you spend Christmas in Connecticut, you do, in fact, HAVE to get on that fucking plane, and I'm pretty sure your father could make you. DAMN KIDS. MAH LAWN.
• Stupidity Alert: " 'Snow is on the way, folks!' the weather forecaster was saying. 'Heavy accumulations expected on Wednesday.' 'Yeah, right,' I said, and shook my head." A total shock, this snowstorm. Who is the WORLD could have predicted it?
• Fascination Level: Low. Upped from "extremely low" only because Dawn calls herself a jerk and I'm always on board with that. Hell, I am the PILOT of that. I am the proud owner of Dawn Is a Jerk Airlines, and we're proud to crash with a whining Jeff on board.
Chapter 4: Mallory! I love Super Specials because we get her signature with the little happy mouse face under it that I didn't realize was a face until last year. I swear I thought it was a messed-up looking P with an umlaut over it. You know Mallory would totally try to fashion herself "Mallory P. with an umlaut" because she thought it was cool. Speaking of things that Mallory thinks are cool but are actually just messed up, she and Mary Anne are going to be in charge of the Pikes for almost an entire 24 hours. Mary Anne is even spending two nights over, before and after, so Ma and Pa Pike can leave at the crack of dawn on Wednesday and not get back until after midnight. I guess since they're not TECHNICALLY leaving them all alone overnight it's not that bad, but my parents didn't let me stay home alone overnight by myself until I was...uh...in college. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't allow me and a partner to watch seven children for an entire day even now, even if the partner were my husband and the seven children were ours.
Incoming BSC trope!
• New York Is the Center of the Universe: Mallory asks her mom what they plan to do in New York and she pretty much just lists everything, ever. In a single day, they intend to have breakfast at the Embassy ("That coffee shop?" Mal exclaims, for those of us who don't give a shit what the Embassy is), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Central Park, the Museum of Natural History, a nice lunch, shopping downtown, the Museum of Broadcasting, Lincoln Center, a nice dinner, and a Broadway show. I've only been to New York once, but it took the entire day to get from the hotel to the third floor of Saks and back again, so this pretty much reads like a full page of NEW YORK NEW YORK LOOK AT NEW YORK IT'S GOT MUSEUMS AND SHIT NEW YORK FUCK YEAH.
The kids are charming as always, giving each other the Bizzer Sign, which is just immature. I mean, I knew how to give the finger by the time I was ten. Grow up, triplets! Use your words! Mary Anne politely ignores them and just takes notes on everything Ma and Pa Pike say.
• Stupidity Alert: "Now about meals - I desperately need to go to the grocery, but you have enough food for tomorrow," Ma Pike says. One page later, the weather guy predicts a big snowstorm and everybody blows it off again. If you're going out of town and leaving your eight children alone with a paralyzing snowstorm predicted to blow in, I'm going to side-eye you pretty damn hard for poor judgment. If you go out of town and leave them alone with a paralyzing snowstorm predicted to blow in and NOT ENOUGH FOOD in the house, I'm going to CALL CPS ON YOUR ASS. My GOD the Pikes are stupid.
• Fascination Level: Medium-low. Nothing too great as of yet, but the foreshadowing in this chapter implies the possibility of cannibalism down the line.
Chapter 5: Stacey! Well, at least SOMEBODY'S happy the snow hasn’t hit yet, cause Stacey needs a perm. No, seriously. "My old one looked kind of limp. It also looked like a perm. You want to know a beauty secret? Okay. The secret to good makeup and a good hair treatment is to look as if you have no makeup and no treatment...I needed a perm so I could look like I didn’t have one." You want to know a beauty secret? A perm looks like a perm. Just always. I have impossibly straight, lank, heavy hair, like Morticia Addams hair, and whenever I start longing for big beautiful curls (daily, usually around lunchtime) I dig out a picture of me, aged nine, freshly permed. My head is a trapezoid of horror. Sometimes you learn to live with what you’ve got.
Anyway, Stacey’s mom will only drive her to Washington Mall for this desperate perm if it isn't snowing, so off they go. Stacey wants Claudia to come too, but Claudia reminds her she has to stay behind and answer the phone - Kristy will kill her if she doesn't. Since Kristy isn't even doing anything, and since she is so keen to remind everyone that she is the president and the public face of the club, maybe SHE should come over and do it. I'm just saying. Though perhaps Claudia just wants to avoid being stuck in the car with Stacey's rotten egg stench. It's been years and years since I’ve been around anyone having a perm, yet just typing the word “perm” makes my eyes water in memory. And Stacey’s poor mom is going to be huffing that funk for a while, because it starts snowing like crazy while they're at the mall.
DUNNNNNNN
• Fascination Level: Medium. Still no action, but Stacey says she’s so anxious to get to Washington Mall because the alternative is Gloriana’s House of Hair. And I’m pretty much tickled pink anytime anyone reminds me of this:
No, I'm not even joking, it doesn't matter where I am, this picture SLAYS me. It is the single funniest thing that has ever happened, period. I could be at a funeral, and if I started thinking about this specific picture, the whole thing would end with the minister throwing me out for urinating myself during a eulogy, because I see it, and I start picturing this:
You see what I mean.
Chapter 6: Kristy again! Oh, I see. Everyone's had a turn saying where they were right before the storm hit and now we're back to the beginning. Kristy, then Claudia, then Dawn, then Mallory and Mary Anne, then Stacey, and back to Kristy. Hmmmmyep! Sounds like everyone to me!
Kristy feels uncomfortable because it's a Wednesday and she isn't flogging anyone for insubordination - what to do with all her untempered aggression? Hey, how about invite Bart over for dinner and some movies! On a...Wednesday? He sounds as skeptical about this as I do, probably because he realizes this is a massive plot set-up, but he agrees to come over anyway. I forget the stilted writing in favor of some shock, though, when Kristy rents Uncle Buck and Back to the Future - two movies that were relatively new in 1991 and do not star Hayley Mills OR Shirley Temple! Show me where the aliens probed you, Kristy.
Of course, the Brewer-Thomas children massively embarrass Kristy when Bart shows up. She tries to be smooth, but they spy on her and Bart, jabber through the movies, sit between them, call Bart her "boooooyfriend," etc. I don’t get why she (realistically) finds her siblings annoying and bratty when her parents are around, but when she's in charge and they act exactly the same way she's Mother Friggin Teresa. Anyway, it finally starts snowing during dinner.
DUNNNNNNN
• Fascination Level: Low. I pretty much always hate any chapter involving the Pike kids or the Brewer-Thomas combo pack, because the ghosties are incapable of putting more than three kids in one room without turning them into screaming, incontinent ape-children. Bumped up from "extremely low" because we get a picture in this one:
What's really sad is that when I made some joke about Emily dragging around in just a diaper I didn't even remember this picture specifically. Cause it's not even a joke; it's just TRUE. When you've got three capable adults and three capable teenagers in the house, a guest is over, and it's freezing out, and STILL no one cares enough to put some clothes on the toddler, I start to question how these people got approved for adoption.
Chapter 7: Jessi, finally! She's at her Nutcracker rehearsal, doggedly concentrating on her role as the King of the Mice instead of thinking about Quint. Even though she really, really wants to think about Quint. He's so dreamy and goes to Julliard, because that’s totally a realistic thing eleven-year-olds do. (Julliard doesn't have an age limit, technically, but you have to be a high school graduate or equivalent. I guess they glossed over the part where Quint got his GED.) His train will be coming into Stamford right after rehearsal so he can be Jessi's date for the dance, but not if some of the littler kids in the show have anything to say about it. It’s supposed to snoooow! "Not a chance," Jessi tells them. Really? No chance? I know you don't believe the weatherman, but if you really believe there’s zero percent chance of snow in Connecticut in December, please meet me at 10:30 at the off-track betting parlor. Of course, as soon as she says that Mme Noelle is like "HOLY MERDE IT IS LE SNOWING" and all the parents call simultaneously to say they can't make it to pick their kids up. Jessi has a bad feeling all of the sudden.
DUNNNNNNN
• Stupidity Alert: Does ANYBODY listen to the weather? If I hear a forecast for a massive snowstorm right before I need to go somewhere, I evaluate the importance of my errand and, if I must go, make appropriate plans for how to handle it. Obviously not everyone does this, but I think most people who live in snowy areas do. So I'm supposed to buy that every single parent with a dancer in this show heard a nasty winter forecast, shrugged, drove their child to Stamford, left them there, and went home? Why are they so STUPID? (Anyway, if they were as dedicated and overbearing as most of the figure skating parents I knew this wouldn't be a problem, because they wouldn't have left in the first place. They'd still be at the studio, hovering around Mme Noelle, wanting to know why their child didn't have a solo.)
• Fascination Level: Medium-low. The action's finally picking up, but most of this chapter is dedicated to an eleven-year-old mooning over a guy she’s met all of one time, so...yeah.
Chapter 8: Mary Anne! She wakes up early at the Pikes', because Ma and Pa Pike are crashing around getting ready to leave at dawn, Vanessa snores, and Mallory "sleeps like an eggbeater." I wonder if it’s even possible to get an entire night’s sleep in a house with ten other people. Everyone's alarm goes off at the same time to the same oldies station, and we're treated to a full Pike family Von Trapp number about who put the hurp in the durp-da-durp-da-durp. Nicky actually sings into a hairbrush. I...see.
It still hasn't snowed, so they have to go to school (extended whine sequence), but by evening the flurries have finally started.
DUNNNNNNN
• Fascination Level: Extremely low. There is nothing more exciting than playing in fresh snow as a kid. There is nothing less exciting than reading about kids playing in fresh snow as an adult.
Chapter 9: Dawn! When she arrives home from school on Wednesday, Sharon is a nervous wreck, not her usual mellow self. Eh, she probably just ran out of pot. Dawn can tell something's up because Sharon's dusting and "Mom is not a cleaner. Or a washer or a cooker or a sewer (that's as in 'a person who sews, not as in 'smelly underground tunnel')." I don't cook or sew either, but if you go out of your way to specifically describe a person as "not a washer," you’ve pretty much lost the privilege of assuring us they're not a rancid hole.
Sharon's upset because the forecast is for a blizzard and Jeff's plane is on the way, but Dawn blows it off again. I've said before and I stand firm here: despite her flightiness, I still think Sharon is actually the only parent in Stoneybrook with any common sense at all. If you hear a forecast for armageddon while one of your children is 35,000 feet in the air and you don't even know if you can get to him, I think any person with a brain would WORRY A LITTLE. Dawn rolls her eyes and soothes her and asides that she feels like her mother's mother. No, that would mean that YOU were the one exhibiting good judgment. You may cover her sometimes when she tries to leave for work wearing sweater-pants, but you are very much the stupid child here.
"Guess what. By the time we left for the airport, it was snowing."
DUNNNNNNN
Sharon fishtails her way down the street at five miles an hour, as usual, but she isn't even drunk this time. "Is this it?" Dawn thinks. "Is this how I'm going to die? By sliding, on an inch of snow at five miles an hour, into the Bahadurians' mailbox? (Which, by the way, is shaped like a cow.)" Is this it? Is this how I'm going to die? Of sheer, unadulterated joy, because Dawn was speared through the neck by the Bahadurian's cow-shaped mailbox?
They do hit the cow, but so gently that nothing happens. That doesn't stop Sharon from setting the car on fire in a fuck-laced tirade, or so I imagine from the way Dawn reacts. She's all "OMG MOOOOOM!" and claims to have never heard this unnamed word Sharon said, "except in movies that Mom doesn't know I've seen." That seems pretty precious and virgin-eared considering four-year-old Andrew and seven-year-old Karen and David Michael sat through all of Back to the Future and Uncle Buck, which contain several "shits," "sons of bitches," and "assholes" apiece, a "dammit, George, swear," a "let's see if you bastards can do ninety," and an “I'm going to sue your balls off,” just off the top of my head.
Anyway, Dawn turns into the backseat driver from hell, which is pretty rich from someone who told her it wasn't going to snow on one hand and doesn't even know how to drive on the other. DRIVE SLOW! BUT NOT TOO SLOW CAUSE WE'RE LATE TO GET JEFF! BUT SLOW! NOT TOO SLOW! HE PROBABLY THINKS WE'RE DEAD! "On the other side of the highway, on the other side of the median strip, the headlights of a Mack truck wavered as its wheels skidded. Then the truck bumped off the highway, heading for the snow-covered divider - and for our car." I think this calls for another
DUNNNNNNN
In my head the Mack truck is shaped like a giant cow. Also, Sharon says "fuck" again.
It misses them, of course, and hits someone else ("A fender bender," Sharon says, even though the car probably exploded on impact). Dawn gets hysterical about how late they are and how hysterical Jeff is, by extension, likely to be, but I don't know what she expects anyone to do about it. I also don't know why a girl so smug about what an experienced flyer she is wouldn't realize that a plane flying into a blizzard is not going to land on time anyway. They make it to the airport alive and the chapter ends on the non-cliffhanger of them racing inside.
• Fascination Level: High! This chapter has it all - the promised blizzard, murderous cows, car accidents, missing family members, and enough f-bombs to merit an R-rating from the MPAA. It’s like a movie where you know the last two-thirds are all downhill.
Chapter 10: Stacey! Stace is excited about her perm and wants to hang around the mall admiring herself, but her mom is so nervous about the snow that she pretty much just drags her out the door by the freshly curled hair. The snow is coming down, but the highway isn’t too bad to drive on until the car in front of them brakes and they fishtail all over the place to avoid rear-ending someone.
• Stupidity Alert: "That does it!" Stacey's mom says. "We are getting off the highway. We are taking the back roads home." Yeah, I can see how taking a quickly plowed, well-lit, well-paved, straight road is much scarier than the deserted, pitch-black, twisting, unplowed roads through nowhere. Pop quiz! Which is deadlier: A minor fender bender in a well-traveled area or going into a ditch in a snowstorm fifteen miles from the nearest house? Bonus points: What if one passenger is a brittle diabetic who can't go two hours without food?
Stacey is rightfully concerned that her mom doesn't actually know how to get home on the back roads. Her mom tells her to shut up and let her drive. Fair enough. They don't get all that far before she just decides to stop and wait a while because the visibility is too low.
• Minor Stupidity Alert: Okay, visibility might be shit, but if you stop, you're probably just going to get - oh, great, they’re stuck.
• Major Stupidity Alert: Stacey's mom won’t let Stacey push the car while she hits the gas, but neither will she let Stacey hit the gas while she pushes. Considering there is no one around to help, considering that hypothermia is not something to screw around with, and considering Stacey is diabetic and HAS to eat before morning, she is quite literally willing to let her daughter die before she'll let her push a pedal with her foot. What the fuck.
• Fascination Level: Medium. I'd say high, because it's got all the blizzardy, car-accident-filled, screamed obscenity goodness of the previous chapter, but Maureen's judgment is so blatantly appalling that I can't recommend it. I mean, they would have just gotten home safely and Stacey would have had no blizzard story at all if her mother weren't so damned stupid.
Chapter 11: Oh, god, Kristy again. In the journal intro she calls her evening with Bart thus far "excruciating," which is the truest thing she's ever said. Anyway, David Michael doesn't believe Karen when she says it's started snowing. He thinks that's about as good a joke as telling someone their shoe's untied. Karen immediately turns around and tells him his fly is unzipped and he believes her, so...is Emily's condition contagious? Kristy just craps her pants with embarrassment that Karen said "fly" in front of Bart. Yeah, “excruciating” pretty well covers this.
WSTO's weatherman is predicting a foot or more and Watson's like, "Nah, that won’t happen," even though it's actively snowing a shit-ton as they speak. Answer to my earlier question: Yes, Emily's condition is very, VERY contagious. He won't even drive Bart home in the snow they aren’t getting (LA LA LA HE CAN'T HEAR YOU), nor will he let Bart walk home in it, even though Bart lives right down the street and I walked my dog in a blizzard last night and didn't die or anything. So instead they eat dessert and we're treated to an entire excruciating page of description of how they set the table, where everyone sat, and how Karen ate her pie in ten distinct steps. And then Kristy says Karen "was wearing her sweater-pants again," but somehow does not die of shame considering Karen must have removed her pants and shirt in front of Bart in order to swap them. I don’t embarrass easily, but that probably would have been my limit.
By the time dessert's over, the snow they totally aren't getting is so deep they can't even get the door open. I would have broken a window to get out of that house if I had to, but Bart just decides to spend the night. He calls his parents, but doesn't get to say much before - "The line went dead," he says, ominously.
DUNNNNNNN
The power blows too, sending the younger kids into a tizzy, so Watson just sends them all to bed. I take back that DUNNNNNN. This is a story about a family asleep, at night, in their mansion. Yeah, let's print that in the newspaper: FAMILY SLEEPS THROUGH BLIZZARD; "MILDLY INCONVENIENCED," SAYS HOUSEGUEST.
Kristy is mortified, though. How is she supposed to sleep knowing that Bart is in the same house, just waiting to sleepwalk into her room and catch her without her traditional makeup and curls? She sets her alarm for 5:30 so she can be sure to have on her best turtleneck by the time Bart wakes up. I don't know how she sets the alarm with no electricity, but neither do I care.
• Fascination Level: Excruciatingly low.
Chapter 12: Claudia! She’s baby-sitting across the street for Myriah, Gabbie, and Laura while Mr. and Mrs. Perkins are having dinner with friends. Out in the country. Way, WAAAAY out in the country. Welp, I sure don’t see where this is going! Claudia keeps busy with the kids, who are disgustingly precocious as always: "You are going to be very busy tomorrow," Claudia says to Myriah when she details the snow-family she intends to build the next day. "That's what happens when you're five," Myriah says. Someone fetch me my vomit bucket.
Of course, Mr. and Mrs. Perkins call to say they're stranded out in the countryside. Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED! WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS. IF ONLY WE HAD SOME PEOPLE ON THE TV OR RADIO WHO COULD TELL US ABOUT THESE THINGS AHEAD OF TIME. Claudia assures them she can stay with the girls, and her parents are right across the street anyway. The Perkinses seem less concerned about leaving their three very young children alone, overnight, with a preteen, during a natural disaster, than I would be. Myriah and Gabbie want to say goodnight to Chewy in lieu of their parents, but the enormous galumphing dog is nowhere to be found. Would it be cliché to say ruh-roh? Myriah would probably say, "Oh dear, this is a predicament we seem to be in." Claudia tries to call her parents to ask for help, but the phone is dead. "I hung up the useless phone...just as the power went out and the girls and I found ourselves in darkness."
DUNNNNNNN
• Fascination Level: Medium-low. I can see how babysitting alone overnight would be exciting to a thirteen-year-old, but "PEOPLE TOTALLY SAFE IN HOUSE DURING BLIZZARD" is not actually a story either.
Chapter 13: Jessi! "No one parent ever showed up that night. Not one...People kept calling and calling. 'We just can’t make it,' they'd say. 'The storm took us by surprise.' " Actually listening to the weather in December: ONLY FOR FOOLS! She's worried about Quint, who's probably stranded at the train station and confused. You think he's gonna look at two feet of snow on the ground and cars piled up and not realize what's going on? He's got his GED. He'll figure something out.
She waits in a long, loooong line for the phone behind fifty wailing little kids who want to talk to mommy. Exactly how professional is this amazing Nutcracker production at this prestigious ballet school when everyone in the show is young enough to be sobbing about how they can't sleep without their dolly? Jessi, the oldest person in the room at a worldly and wise eleven, calms everyone and convinces them to have a picnic with their crackers. Suddenly, a looming shadow appears in the doorway!
DUNNNNNNN
It's Quint!! He isn't from Stoneybrook and still has two brain cells to rub together, so he figured out no one was going to be able to pick him up, got directions to the dance school, and walked there from the train station. Ya got shown up there, Mr. Oh No, Can't Walk Down the Street, Better Spend the Night Here, Wink Wink. Though the food was probably better at the train station. Quint would call home, but the phones are down now. Luckily Stamford still has electricity or the building would collapse from all the terrified screaming from Connecticut's premier ballet troupe.
• Fascination Level: Low. Baby-sitting is boring. Taking it upon yourself to baby-sit when you don't have to is really, REALLY boring.
Chapter 14: Mary Anne! Ma and Pa Pike call to say they're trapped in New York, of course, because the trains stopped running. Unlike Myriah and Gabbie, and unlike all the children at the ballet school, the Pike kids aren't at ALL concerned about being separated from their parents for the night. Nicky actually runs around yelling, "Yippee, no parents!" HA. Even their own kids know the Pike parents suck. Especially considering the kids immediately start complaining about being hungry and Mal and Mary Anne realize there's basically no food in the house. Ma and Pa left some emergency money, but how that's supposed to help when they can't get out of the house and no one can get in, god only knows.
• Stupidity Alert: Mallory, who's been drinking the mercury-laden local water for eleven years, thinks they can use the emergency money to get Pizza Express to deliver. So every parent with a child at the ballet school can't drive, the Perkinses can't drive, the Brewers can't drive (even just down the street), the McGills can't drive (even though they were already ON the road), Jeff's plane can't land, and the trains are not running. People are sleeping at neighbor's houses, airports, dance studios, wherever they can find shelter. But some sixteen-year-old delivery driver in an '83 Le Baron will totally be able to make it to your house to deliver your damn pizza. Sure.
Luckily for the delivery driver's life, she doesn't even get to order because the phone has gone dead. A few seconds later the electricity goes too, plunging them into total darkness and causing the kids to start yelling that the TV stopped working. "I thought the house seemed awfully quiet," Mary Anne says. "Now I knew why." Apparently, the sequence of events goes: the power dies, then Mary Anne thinks, "Huh, everything is quiet, I wonder what happened," then she realizes that the room she’s standing in has gone pitch black, then she realizes that the kids are screaming. Does Ann M. even HAVE electricity? Like...does she know how it WORKS?
Everybody crowds around the living room with flashlights, including someone named Clair (nice editing, Sammie), and I guess they no longer care about the food problem? Okay, then neither do I.
• Fascination Level: Medium-low. Nothing happens in this chapter, but there's still hope they could all starve to death. Also, Mary Anne notices that Stacey's house is still dark and tries to call (before the phones go out), so at least there's a little foreshadowing there. I mean, it's better than Stacey and her mom being rescued at the end and everyone going, "...oh, you were missing?"
Chapter 15: Dawn! Jeff's plane hasn't landed, of course, or the resulting crash would have made the news. The airport is pandemonium, because everyone there is exactly like Dawn - hysterical toward all the wrong people about all the wrong things. (Really, folks? Do you really think the ticketing agent can TURN OFF THE SNOW?) Dawn thinks Jeff will think they're going to leave without him. What? Isn’t ten a little old for "mommy’s never coming back" fears? Anyway, the flight gets rerouted to D.C. and the airport is closed for the night, so Dawn and Sharon are officially stuck there. Dawn actually calls this worse than being stranded on that desert island. Um...because being safely indoors with your mom, plenty of food and drink, lots of books, and the knowledge that the snow WILL let up eventually is totally worse than being alone with a sick child and no food on an island not knowing if you’ll ever be rescued. Did a coconut fall on her head while she was there? Sleeping in a hard plastic chair isn’t the MOST fun you can have with your pants on, but I think everyone ends up stuck at an airport once in their life, so this isn’t exactly monumental ground we’re breaking here.
• Fascination Level: Low. I mean, look at it logically: Dawn and her mom are safe at the airport, they know Jeff is safe in D.C., they know Richard is safe at home, and they know Mary Anne is safe at the Pike house. They have nothing left to worry about, so they buy some books and sit there all night long. BREAKING NEWS: ASSES NUMB IN AIRPORT CHAIRS; FULL REPORT AT 11.
Chapter 16: Jesus hell, now I remember why I don't snark Super Specials. There are still like eighty pages left. Stacey again! She and her mom are so gobsmacked about their predicament they aren't even talking. Finally Stacey's mom says she's sorry about this, but Stacey assures her it isn't her fault. It IS, though. Don’t take back roads in a blizzard, folks! Stacey's like, "Uh, I need to eat soon, though," and her mom honks out “OH GOD HELP WE'RE GOING TO DIE” in Morse code on the horn.
Stacey takes this as an opportunity to ask what made her mom fall in love with her dad. Well, I know what made him fall in love with HER: her bitchin survival skills, not to mention her flawless driving. Her mom's answer is that they liked the same episode of I Love Lucy and they're both nonsmokers. Seriously. That's the reason. I guess that's how those mass weddings in Taiwan or wherever happen. "If you like the Walkabout episode of Lost and you don't smoke, raise your hand. Okay, do you, Sarah, take these three million men..." Oh, they both like swing music and Levi's jeans too. So THAT'S a reason to marry a person. While her mom explains this, Stacey "noticed that she no longer wore her wedding band. When had she taken it off?" When she got divorced, maybe? The reason for which is becoming clearer and clearer. ("Are those Wranglers? JUST HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN GOING ON?")
Unfortunately, Stacey has to interrupt this story to tell her the heat isn't working anymore. Because they are out of gas. They are screeeewed. Her mom honks out "BURY ME IN MY LEVI'S" just as a car finally comes along. Maureen continues honking and flashing her lights, in case the car is being driven by a deaf and blind person. Stacey freaks out that the car might be driven by an ax murderer and wants her to stop. I’m going to give Stacey the benefit of the doubt here and hope that the low blood sugar and negative 8 windchill has addled her brain. The man driving the car - who does not seem to be a blind, deaf ax murderer, although he may be a wizard, considering he seems to be driving along with no apparent trouble when no one else in the entire state of Connecticut can move three feet - offers to take them home for the night.
• Fascination Level: Medium-high. They're the only ones with a legitimately exciting situation still going on, but points off for stopping to talk about their favorite denim brands while death is on the line.
Chapter 17: Mallory! The kids are whining. It is snowing, in the book and in real life. I am drinking. World keeps on spinning.
Mallory and Mary Anne think they should conserve what's left of the food, but without power the stuff in the fridge and freezer is going to spoil, so they have to eat it immediately. Ummm...did they not notice the outdoor temperature? Put the fridge stuff in the garage, put the freezer stuff on the back porch, problem solved. It's like these people have never brainstormed before. I myself have two cases of beer on the deck, somewhere, under several feet of snow. I don’t know why people in Wisconsin even HAVE refrigerators.
The kids forgo the frozen veggies in favor of the ice cream, directly out of the container. "You'd think they’d been raised by wolves," Mallory says. DING DING DING! We have a winner! And here's Ed McMahon at the door with your giant prize check! Oh, no, sorry, it's just Mary Anne's dad. He came over to check on them and seems remarkably calm considering his wife went out and never came home. "But I suppose no news is good news," he concludes. It is? Why, would she have called if she were dead?
They go to bed amid worries that Dawn and Stacey might be frozen to death in a ditch somewhere, but everybody's happy when they wake up to find the storm has blown over and school is canceled. Yeah, it sounds great until you consider they would have at least gotten a hot meal at school.
• Fascination Level: Very high. Only because of this picture:
NO SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE HELL IS THIS PICTURE? What is that child on the right?! Where is his neck?! I remain fascinated with this far longer than I'm sure the illustrator intended, wondering how a two-dimensional character managed to fall right down into the uncanny valley and whether I want to laugh hysterically or kill it with fire.
Chapter My God Seriously This Snark Is 14 Pages Long Already: Claudia! Oh, sweet lord, there's nothing to recap. She puts the kids to bed in the dark, her mom comes over to check on them, they unsuccessfully call and search for Chewy for a while, and then she gives up and goes to sleep. Gabbie wakes her at five because she hears noises, which they follow to the basement. Poor Chewy has been shut in all this time. They checked the WHOLE house, repeatedly, even in silly places like drawers and Laura's crib, and never once so much as opened the basement door? What crap detectives. Anyway, I call bullshit on this whole situation. I have a dog exactly like Chewy - you know, the kind you apologetically call "spirited" after they've ripped all the siding off your neighbor’s house - and if she gets shut in anywhere, she howls like mad. If you call her name and she can't get to you, she howls like mad and then breaks down the door. I think Claudia sedated him and hid him behind the furnace to get him out of her hair for a while.
Anyway, morning's here and the storm's over, so Claudia feeds the kids maple syrup on snow (that sounds so vile) and sends them out to play. Speaking of the uncanny valley, Claudia says the snow is half as tall as Gabbie. The very first page of the book says 23 inches of snow fell. That would make Gabbie about four feet tall at two years old. And that's horrifying. Math is hard!
• Fascination Level: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Chapter Ughhhh, Nothing Happens in This One Either: Jessi! The little kids start whining uncontrollably, so Jessi and Quint help them wash their faces (with paper towels) and brush their teeth (with their fingers) and put them to bed (on the floor). Oh, and it turns out there are some older kids, but they're off in another room hanging out and gossiping and sexually experimenting like teenagers are SUPPOSED to do. Thank god Jessi was around, because I would have left those kids to Lord of the Flies each other if they'd been stranded with me.
By morning the diner across the street is open and the owner is offering free breakfast (hahahayeahright), so Jessi and Quint get to snuggle in a romantic booth for two. They hope the dance is still on, but if not, Quint reasons, he'll take her to some other dance, some other time. That Quint is a smooth BAMF.
• Fascination Level: Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep /monitor flatlining
Chapter I Can't Go On: Mary Anne! "We were scraping bottom." Indeed. Everybody eats something for breakfast, but the suitability thereof varies - an apple, a slice of baloney, a frozen chicken dinner, a can of frosting, whatever. That sounds like how I eat always. Is that not normal? The kids whine that they're still hungry, and Mary Anne realizes that with the phones working again, she can finally order takeout. Or she could, if any place was open and delivering, but they aren't. She calls Logan and complains about it, then thinks that she should probably be checking on those people who might be dead, like Dawn and Stacey. You know, the ones they were worried about up until the moment school got canceled. She finds out Dawn's safe at the airport, but no one has heard from Stacey. She would worry about that, but Logan's now at the door on skis with a backpack full of food. "Real food," Nicky sighs, even though carrot sticks and crackers don't sound any heartier than what they were eating. I can't take anything he says seriously now that I know he looks like an eight-year-old version of Leatherface wearing Clark Griswold's glasses.
Logan and Mary Anne muse about whether the dance will be put off until the next Friday, and for some reason Mal yells, "It can't be postponed! Ben and I can't wait until next week!" Uh, why not? Are you ovulating or something?
• Fascination Level: Low. Bumped up from "lethal" because of another inadvertently amusing line that hasn't aged as well as it might have: "This [snow] may be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. What with global warming and all." Yeah, twenty years after this is written, global warming has completely made major snowstorms a thing of the past. Oh, wait.
Chapter Sob: Kristy! She does not appreciate getting up at 5:30 a.m. on a snow day to get ready, but she doesn't want Bart to see her with bed hair and morning breath. How long could it possibly take her to brush her teeth and put her hair in a ponytail like she always does? Wait...she decides to shave her legs for the first time. What is this I don't even. WHERE IS THE REAL KRISTY. WHAT HAVE THEY DONE WITH HER. She also blow dries her hair and curls it - no, back up, actually, first she gets out a hair dryer, then decides to curl her hair, then decides she'll electrocute herself if she curls her hair wet. So she dries it. Did...did she originally get out the blow dryer just to look at it or something? This book is completely full of sloppily written, badly edited shit like this, yet Ann M. Martin is one of the best-selling writers of all time and I can't seem to give my work away. Not that I am in any way bitter. Although I do get some schadenfreude out of the fact that Kristy’s hair "wound up looking and feeling like limp macaroni."
Kristy finishes off her look with a little mascara and blush - she’d rather do the whole hog, but she thinks just those two will be challenging enough. If you’re applying them with your feet, maybe. An hour and a half later (WTF?) Kristy’s transformation is complete: "From the neck up I looked fantastic." With limp macaroni hair and basically nonexistent makeup? By then all her brothers are awake and clambering to use the bathroom (at 7 a.m. on a snow day, sure) but they're not in too much of a hurry to make fun of her makeup. Hurr hurr, Halloween’s not for months, etc., etc. That joke is so played I think it appeared in the original works of Plato.
Everybody embarrasses her at breakfast some more, but Bart tells her she looks beautiful, because underneath the spackle she could still punch his lights out and he knows it. "I had made it," she thinks. "Bart had spent the night at my house. He had survived meals with my family. He had endured teasing by my brothers and sisters. And he hadn't gone away. Emotionally, I mean. He was sitting next to me, telling me I looked beautiful. If Bart and I could weather that, we could weather anything." I think I figured out why this book sucks such ass. It was ghostwritten by Nicolas Sparks.
• Fascination Level: AREA PRETEEN SHAVES LEGS, THINKS THIS BELONGS ON THE NEWS
Chapter Jesus Take the Wheel: Dawn! Now that they have nothing to do at the airport for hours and hours but wait, Dawn is torturously bored. And misery loves company, so she's going to inflict it on all of us. She checks her watch a hundred times. She changes position in her chair twice a minute. She goes to the bathroom. I wonder how much Ann got for this book. I wonder if it was more or less than you would need to offer me to read this book again.
There's a short interlude where Dawn intercepts a runaway toddler, because every baby-sitter's incident must involve a child in some way, even if pointlessly, and FINALLY she falls asleep. When she wakes up, it's morning and Jeff's about to arrive! Thank god, we must be nearing the end of the book at last. Jeff's fine, of course, and perfectly proud about having stayed in a hotel alone and stolen a shoehorn from his room. I don’t even know what to do with this information.
• Fascination Level: Loooooow. The most interesting part about this chapter is that Sharon sleeps totally upright in her chair, "like she was at a fancy restaurant, waiting to be served dinner. But her eyes were closed. Also, she was snoring." Somehow I imagine this is how Sharon always sleeps. That or hanging upside down.
Chapter That Soothing Light at the End of the Tunnel Is Probably Just a Freight Train Coming My Way: Stacey! "The man was looming in the window of our car." I'm sure the stench of your hair will act as a repellant, Stace. Notice that the skunk has no natural enemies.
They get in the car with him despite the fact that Stacey still thinks he's a serial killer. She's only a little reassured when he mentions he and his wife have a baby at home (of course they do), but that may be because he refers to his child as "a monstrosity" for some reason. Like...like one of the Peacock children? And they're driving out into the country with this guy? Holy shit, Stacey might actually be right about this.
No, of course Mr. and Mrs. Schiavone, the couple, are so nice and accommodating it's disgusting, their house is beautiful, their kid is adorable, and Stacey and her mom don't even want to leave the next day because everything is so wonderfully great. If I were about to die in a blizzard and had to beg to stay at a complete stranger's house overnight, I would at least have the good manners to feel awkward about it. By the time they get home the next day, everybody's waiting on the street outside holding up "HURRAY YOU AREN’T DEAD" signs, to Stacey's confusion. She didn't think anyone even noticed they were gone. Isn't it kind of, you know, COMMON to try to find out where your loved ones are during a disaster and worry about them? Stacey may take the coveted "Golden Durp" award in this book over the perennial winner, Mallory.
Oh, hey, spread the word, everyone! Kristy talked to some nameless plot device "friend" whose mom is on the school board - the dance is still on for tomorrow! “Tomorrow night is going to be magic,” Stacey whispers. Mallory's poking holes in her condoms as we speak.
• Fascination Level: Seemed like it was going to be high there right at the beginning and nosedived into anesthetic territory when Freddy Krueger turned out to be Pa Walton.
Epilogue, or Eventually Comes the Sweet Sweet Release of Death: Kristy! Oh, god, the Stoneybrook News likes her idea. Now she says she has to trim it all down and make it fit together, even though that's what the NEWSPAPER editors are for, since Kristy would have no idea how to conform to house style or know the exact space to fill. Thanks for keeping it real, AMM. She also has to write about how the Winter Wonderland dance ended up, of course, because that's what the locals are dying to know about. Not that guy who was flattened by the semi, but whether Stacey McGill and Austin Bentley got to slow dance to More Than Words this Friday or whether they had to wait until next Friday. Everyone wraps up their final thoughts in handwritten entries, which I have never once read, because I can’t read cursive. How do third grade teachers not stroke out? Let’s just look at the picture:
Rotting bovine snarls traffic; “The horror,” says commuter
Be sure to check back next week for Stoneybrook News’ shocking expose: MERCURY IN THE DRINKING SUPPLY: IQs REACH RECORD LOWS.
But as I'm stuck indoors until he gets back, why not snark something appropriate in the meantime?
Good LORD, you guys. Kristy's balls are so huge she must lug them around in a wheelbarrow, because she thinks it is a fantastic idea to write to the editor of the Stoneybrook News proposing that they run a front page story all about her and her friends. I won't bore you with how stupid and badly written this letter is, but it's worth noting that, in addition to thinking that anyone cares about what some preteens did on their snow day, Kristy wants it to say " 'By Kristy Thomas' under the big headline that reads 'SNOWBOUND!'...P.S. If you want to pay me, I wouldn't mind. How much do reporters earn? (I won't be too picky.)"
Sometimes I hate Kristy so much I get this pain in my arm and I take an aspirin just in case I'm finally having a heart attack at the age of twenty-five.
Then again, they do live in a tiny suburban town, and it is really, really difficult to match the perfect yet inscrutable blend of banality, utter ineptitude, and desperation that is a tiny suburban town newspaper. I grew up in a town exactly like Stoneybrook and reading the paper after school was the highlight of my entire afternoon. "Cow Hit on I-95" and "Honor Roll Announced" were always the lead stories, the picture captions would always be reversed ("Rotting bovine snarls traffic" directly under a picture of the high school principal), and three-quarters of the student names would always be spelled wrong. I was on honor roll four times a year, all six years I lived there before I went away to college, and I do believe they spelled my last name twenty-eight different ways, none of them correct. The whole thing was even funnier to me because my dad is an editor for the newspaper in the nearby large city, so he'd come home every day, exhausted from covering major world events, and say, "What’s new?" And I'd hold up our local paper, point at the front page headline, and go, "Three days to Thanksgiving and HyVee's out of frozen turkeys!"
So yes, in other words, a front page article in a local newspaper written for and about middle schoolers may not be THAT far off the mark. I refuse to believe she might be paid for any piece of writing, though, when I'm racking up the rejections over here and ready to start snarking BSC books for a living.
Kristy thinks she and her friends' experiences in the great blizzard of...um...hang on, lemme check the copyright page here...the great blizzard of 1991 (JESUS) were "fascinating." They couldn’t even talk on the phone until after it was all over because the lines were down! Oh, yeah. 1991. There was still such a thing as "phone lines." They decide to go over all of their individual stories again while they wait for the Stoneybrook News to reply. I think WE will be the judge of how "fascinating" they are.
Chapter 1: Kristy! Nothing happens in this chapter, except she sounds unconvincingly moony about the Winter Wonderland Dance. I don't care if she IS excited about going to a dance with Bart, I will never believe that Kristy Thomas thinks it's "awesome" that "the decorating committee was going to transform the SMS gym into a snowy fairyland - sparkly flakes and white cotton-drifts, tinsel icicles." That is one poorly constructed clause, as well. Also, Karen is wearing her sweater like a pair of pants and her rat goes missing. I think the two might be related. I too would escape to greener pastures if the only person entrusted to feed me were wearing sweater-pants.
• Stupidity Alert: In the prologue Kristy says the blizzard "caught everyone by surprise," but twice in this chapter newscasters predict major snow and she rolls her eyes and blows them off. So they live in New England, which is not known for mild winters in general, plus the people who, you know, went to college and studied weather patterns tell them a blizzard is coming. Yet the whole town ignores them and continue to sit by the pool with mojitos. Then snow hits and they all flail around and claim it "caught them by surprise." Is there mercury in the water up there or something?
• Fascination Level: Extremely low. Kristy herself says so. "Here's how boring the snowstorm prediction was. My homework seemed fascinating in comparison."
Chapter 2: Claudia! Wah waaaah, it still hasn't snowed. All the BSC charges are whiny and petulant about it, but not as whiny and petulant as Claudia herself. Also, she refers to the kids as "zooey," which I swear I've seen used in these books a dozen times. Ann. Honey. THAT IS NOT A WORD. No it's not. I mean, it's just stupid to make up an adjective considering there are plenty of real words that describe unruly kids just as well. Anyway, the implication hasn't aged well. It sounds like the kids are becoming unbearably twee and starting up indie bands.
Oh, hale, it may be a Super Special and there may be a life-threatening national disaster looming on the horizon, but it's still Chapter 2. If a blizzard hits Wisconsin and takes out our heat, the kindling from all my torn-out Chapter 2's would last us until summer. Let's describe everyone: Kristy is Pol Pot, Claudia is Andy Warhol after a head injury, Stacey is a Jackie Collins character named Candy Calculus, Mary Anne is Ann M. Martin's alter ego, Dawn is the love child of a water nymph and Satan, Mallory is a BNF in the Misty of Chincoteague fandom, and Jessi, lacking any characteristics other than being black, beautiful, and a ballerina, must by process of elimination be Zoe Saldana. There, I just put as much thought into characterization as the ghostwriters ever do.
Kristy calls the meeting to order and promptly decides to cancel the next meeting, on Wednesday, because everyone will be busy that afternoon anyway. ...Wait, what? Why is this book called Snowbound and not Kristy Is Abducted by Aliens and Replaced by a Cyborg? Tastes like a plot device to me. Mal and Mary Anne will be baby-sitting at the Pikes' all day while Ma and Pa Pike are in New York, Jessi has a special ballet rehearsal for the Nutcracker, and Dawn and her mom are picking up Jeff at the airport. Claudia will be baby-sitting for the Perkins girls that night, but can stay home and man the phone alone in the afternoon. Kristy herself appears to be doing nothing at all on Wednesday, so the likelihood that she would cancel a meeting just for other people's convenience is nil. I grow more suspicious and will be monitoring Kristy’s behavior closely.
• Fascination Level: Low, as is typical for Chapter 2. Though I did bump it up from "extremely low" because Claudia's outfit for the Winter Wonderland Dance is a "black velvet knicker outfit" and I get several minutes of entertainment wondering what the hell a black velvet knicker outfit might be and whether they remembered to change it for the British edition to avoid unfortunate connotations.
Chapter 3: Dawn! Oh, good, Kristy hasn't COMPLETELY short-circuited, because when Mary Anne reminds her the dance is on Friday and wonders if they should cancel that meeting too, Kristy says no, they'll figure something out. But neither does she have a total conniption at the thought of canceling two meetings in a row. Hrrmmmm. Can you be HALF possessed by demons?
Everybody's in a good mood, Dawn says, because the dance is coming up and everybody in the club has a date. What is WITH this dance? We didn't even HAVE dances at my middle school and nobody would have gone to them if we did. Damn kids get off my lawn. Dawn is going with Price Irving, some kid who sounds like a credit union. Is that a normal name in Connecticut? In my town that kid would have been routinely beat up and then the newspaper would have called him Petrop Invrsky.
Dawn calls Jeff, excited about his upcoming Christmas trip, but he's developed a sudden fear of catastrophic instrument failure and doesn't want to fly. She pleads that he has to come, and he snaps that he doesn't HAVE to do anything. Actually, you brat, you're ten years old. Your custody agreement says you spend Christmas in Connecticut, you do, in fact, HAVE to get on that fucking plane, and I'm pretty sure your father could make you. DAMN KIDS. MAH LAWN.
• Stupidity Alert: " 'Snow is on the way, folks!' the weather forecaster was saying. 'Heavy accumulations expected on Wednesday.' 'Yeah, right,' I said, and shook my head." A total shock, this snowstorm. Who is the WORLD could have predicted it?
• Fascination Level: Low. Upped from "extremely low" only because Dawn calls herself a jerk and I'm always on board with that. Hell, I am the PILOT of that. I am the proud owner of Dawn Is a Jerk Airlines, and we're proud to crash with a whining Jeff on board.
Chapter 4: Mallory! I love Super Specials because we get her signature with the little happy mouse face under it that I didn't realize was a face until last year. I swear I thought it was a messed-up looking P with an umlaut over it. You know Mallory would totally try to fashion herself "Mallory P. with an umlaut" because she thought it was cool. Speaking of things that Mallory thinks are cool but are actually just messed up, she and Mary Anne are going to be in charge of the Pikes for almost an entire 24 hours. Mary Anne is even spending two nights over, before and after, so Ma and Pa Pike can leave at the crack of dawn on Wednesday and not get back until after midnight. I guess since they're not TECHNICALLY leaving them all alone overnight it's not that bad, but my parents didn't let me stay home alone overnight by myself until I was...uh...in college. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't allow me and a partner to watch seven children for an entire day even now, even if the partner were my husband and the seven children were ours.
Incoming BSC trope!
• New York Is the Center of the Universe: Mallory asks her mom what they plan to do in New York and she pretty much just lists everything, ever. In a single day, they intend to have breakfast at the Embassy ("That coffee shop?" Mal exclaims, for those of us who don't give a shit what the Embassy is), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Central Park, the Museum of Natural History, a nice lunch, shopping downtown, the Museum of Broadcasting, Lincoln Center, a nice dinner, and a Broadway show. I've only been to New York once, but it took the entire day to get from the hotel to the third floor of Saks and back again, so this pretty much reads like a full page of NEW YORK NEW YORK LOOK AT NEW YORK IT'S GOT MUSEUMS AND SHIT NEW YORK FUCK YEAH.
The kids are charming as always, giving each other the Bizzer Sign, which is just immature. I mean, I knew how to give the finger by the time I was ten. Grow up, triplets! Use your words! Mary Anne politely ignores them and just takes notes on everything Ma and Pa Pike say.
• Stupidity Alert: "Now about meals - I desperately need to go to the grocery, but you have enough food for tomorrow," Ma Pike says. One page later, the weather guy predicts a big snowstorm and everybody blows it off again. If you're going out of town and leaving your eight children alone with a paralyzing snowstorm predicted to blow in, I'm going to side-eye you pretty damn hard for poor judgment. If you go out of town and leave them alone with a paralyzing snowstorm predicted to blow in and NOT ENOUGH FOOD in the house, I'm going to CALL CPS ON YOUR ASS. My GOD the Pikes are stupid.
• Fascination Level: Medium-low. Nothing too great as of yet, but the foreshadowing in this chapter implies the possibility of cannibalism down the line.
Chapter 5: Stacey! Well, at least SOMEBODY'S happy the snow hasn’t hit yet, cause Stacey needs a perm. No, seriously. "My old one looked kind of limp. It also looked like a perm. You want to know a beauty secret? Okay. The secret to good makeup and a good hair treatment is to look as if you have no makeup and no treatment...I needed a perm so I could look like I didn’t have one." You want to know a beauty secret? A perm looks like a perm. Just always. I have impossibly straight, lank, heavy hair, like Morticia Addams hair, and whenever I start longing for big beautiful curls (daily, usually around lunchtime) I dig out a picture of me, aged nine, freshly permed. My head is a trapezoid of horror. Sometimes you learn to live with what you’ve got.
Anyway, Stacey’s mom will only drive her to Washington Mall for this desperate perm if it isn't snowing, so off they go. Stacey wants Claudia to come too, but Claudia reminds her she has to stay behind and answer the phone - Kristy will kill her if she doesn't. Since Kristy isn't even doing anything, and since she is so keen to remind everyone that she is the president and the public face of the club, maybe SHE should come over and do it. I'm just saying. Though perhaps Claudia just wants to avoid being stuck in the car with Stacey's rotten egg stench. It's been years and years since I’ve been around anyone having a perm, yet just typing the word “perm” makes my eyes water in memory. And Stacey’s poor mom is going to be huffing that funk for a while, because it starts snowing like crazy while they're at the mall.
DUNNNNNNN
• Fascination Level: Medium. Still no action, but Stacey says she’s so anxious to get to Washington Mall because the alternative is Gloriana’s House of Hair. And I’m pretty much tickled pink anytime anyone reminds me of this:
No, I'm not even joking, it doesn't matter where I am, this picture SLAYS me. It is the single funniest thing that has ever happened, period. I could be at a funeral, and if I started thinking about this specific picture, the whole thing would end with the minister throwing me out for urinating myself during a eulogy, because I see it, and I start picturing this:
You see what I mean.
Chapter 6: Kristy again! Oh, I see. Everyone's had a turn saying where they were right before the storm hit and now we're back to the beginning. Kristy, then Claudia, then Dawn, then Mallory and Mary Anne, then Stacey, and back to Kristy. Hmmmmyep! Sounds like everyone to me!
Kristy feels uncomfortable because it's a Wednesday and she isn't flogging anyone for insubordination - what to do with all her untempered aggression? Hey, how about invite Bart over for dinner and some movies! On a...Wednesday? He sounds as skeptical about this as I do, probably because he realizes this is a massive plot set-up, but he agrees to come over anyway. I forget the stilted writing in favor of some shock, though, when Kristy rents Uncle Buck and Back to the Future - two movies that were relatively new in 1991 and do not star Hayley Mills OR Shirley Temple! Show me where the aliens probed you, Kristy.
Of course, the Brewer-Thomas children massively embarrass Kristy when Bart shows up. She tries to be smooth, but they spy on her and Bart, jabber through the movies, sit between them, call Bart her "boooooyfriend," etc. I don’t get why she (realistically) finds her siblings annoying and bratty when her parents are around, but when she's in charge and they act exactly the same way she's Mother Friggin Teresa. Anyway, it finally starts snowing during dinner.
DUNNNNNNN
• Fascination Level: Low. I pretty much always hate any chapter involving the Pike kids or the Brewer-Thomas combo pack, because the ghosties are incapable of putting more than three kids in one room without turning them into screaming, incontinent ape-children. Bumped up from "extremely low" because we get a picture in this one:
What's really sad is that when I made some joke about Emily dragging around in just a diaper I didn't even remember this picture specifically. Cause it's not even a joke; it's just TRUE. When you've got three capable adults and three capable teenagers in the house, a guest is over, and it's freezing out, and STILL no one cares enough to put some clothes on the toddler, I start to question how these people got approved for adoption.
Chapter 7: Jessi, finally! She's at her Nutcracker rehearsal, doggedly concentrating on her role as the King of the Mice instead of thinking about Quint. Even though she really, really wants to think about Quint. He's so dreamy and goes to Julliard, because that’s totally a realistic thing eleven-year-olds do. (Julliard doesn't have an age limit, technically, but you have to be a high school graduate or equivalent. I guess they glossed over the part where Quint got his GED.) His train will be coming into Stamford right after rehearsal so he can be Jessi's date for the dance, but not if some of the littler kids in the show have anything to say about it. It’s supposed to snoooow! "Not a chance," Jessi tells them. Really? No chance? I know you don't believe the weatherman, but if you really believe there’s zero percent chance of snow in Connecticut in December, please meet me at 10:30 at the off-track betting parlor. Of course, as soon as she says that Mme Noelle is like "HOLY MERDE IT IS LE SNOWING" and all the parents call simultaneously to say they can't make it to pick their kids up. Jessi has a bad feeling all of the sudden.
DUNNNNNNN
• Stupidity Alert: Does ANYBODY listen to the weather? If I hear a forecast for a massive snowstorm right before I need to go somewhere, I evaluate the importance of my errand and, if I must go, make appropriate plans for how to handle it. Obviously not everyone does this, but I think most people who live in snowy areas do. So I'm supposed to buy that every single parent with a dancer in this show heard a nasty winter forecast, shrugged, drove their child to Stamford, left them there, and went home? Why are they so STUPID? (Anyway, if they were as dedicated and overbearing as most of the figure skating parents I knew this wouldn't be a problem, because they wouldn't have left in the first place. They'd still be at the studio, hovering around Mme Noelle, wanting to know why their child didn't have a solo.)
• Fascination Level: Medium-low. The action's finally picking up, but most of this chapter is dedicated to an eleven-year-old mooning over a guy she’s met all of one time, so...yeah.
Chapter 8: Mary Anne! She wakes up early at the Pikes', because Ma and Pa Pike are crashing around getting ready to leave at dawn, Vanessa snores, and Mallory "sleeps like an eggbeater." I wonder if it’s even possible to get an entire night’s sleep in a house with ten other people. Everyone's alarm goes off at the same time to the same oldies station, and we're treated to a full Pike family Von Trapp number about who put the hurp in the durp-da-durp-da-durp. Nicky actually sings into a hairbrush. I...see.
It still hasn't snowed, so they have to go to school (extended whine sequence), but by evening the flurries have finally started.
DUNNNNNNN
• Fascination Level: Extremely low. There is nothing more exciting than playing in fresh snow as a kid. There is nothing less exciting than reading about kids playing in fresh snow as an adult.
Chapter 9: Dawn! When she arrives home from school on Wednesday, Sharon is a nervous wreck, not her usual mellow self. Eh, she probably just ran out of pot. Dawn can tell something's up because Sharon's dusting and "Mom is not a cleaner. Or a washer or a cooker or a sewer (that's as in 'a person who sews, not as in 'smelly underground tunnel')." I don't cook or sew either, but if you go out of your way to specifically describe a person as "not a washer," you’ve pretty much lost the privilege of assuring us they're not a rancid hole.
Sharon's upset because the forecast is for a blizzard and Jeff's plane is on the way, but Dawn blows it off again. I've said before and I stand firm here: despite her flightiness, I still think Sharon is actually the only parent in Stoneybrook with any common sense at all. If you hear a forecast for armageddon while one of your children is 35,000 feet in the air and you don't even know if you can get to him, I think any person with a brain would WORRY A LITTLE. Dawn rolls her eyes and soothes her and asides that she feels like her mother's mother. No, that would mean that YOU were the one exhibiting good judgment. You may cover her sometimes when she tries to leave for work wearing sweater-pants, but you are very much the stupid child here.
"Guess what. By the time we left for the airport, it was snowing."
DUNNNNNNN
Sharon fishtails her way down the street at five miles an hour, as usual, but she isn't even drunk this time. "Is this it?" Dawn thinks. "Is this how I'm going to die? By sliding, on an inch of snow at five miles an hour, into the Bahadurians' mailbox? (Which, by the way, is shaped like a cow.)" Is this it? Is this how I'm going to die? Of sheer, unadulterated joy, because Dawn was speared through the neck by the Bahadurian's cow-shaped mailbox?
They do hit the cow, but so gently that nothing happens. That doesn't stop Sharon from setting the car on fire in a fuck-laced tirade, or so I imagine from the way Dawn reacts. She's all "OMG MOOOOOM!" and claims to have never heard this unnamed word Sharon said, "except in movies that Mom doesn't know I've seen." That seems pretty precious and virgin-eared considering four-year-old Andrew and seven-year-old Karen and David Michael sat through all of Back to the Future and Uncle Buck, which contain several "shits," "sons of bitches," and "assholes" apiece, a "dammit, George, swear," a "let's see if you bastards can do ninety," and an “I'm going to sue your balls off,” just off the top of my head.
Anyway, Dawn turns into the backseat driver from hell, which is pretty rich from someone who told her it wasn't going to snow on one hand and doesn't even know how to drive on the other. DRIVE SLOW! BUT NOT TOO SLOW CAUSE WE'RE LATE TO GET JEFF! BUT SLOW! NOT TOO SLOW! HE PROBABLY THINKS WE'RE DEAD! "On the other side of the highway, on the other side of the median strip, the headlights of a Mack truck wavered as its wheels skidded. Then the truck bumped off the highway, heading for the snow-covered divider - and for our car." I think this calls for another
DUNNNNNNN
In my head the Mack truck is shaped like a giant cow. Also, Sharon says "fuck" again.
It misses them, of course, and hits someone else ("A fender bender," Sharon says, even though the car probably exploded on impact). Dawn gets hysterical about how late they are and how hysterical Jeff is, by extension, likely to be, but I don't know what she expects anyone to do about it. I also don't know why a girl so smug about what an experienced flyer she is wouldn't realize that a plane flying into a blizzard is not going to land on time anyway. They make it to the airport alive and the chapter ends on the non-cliffhanger of them racing inside.
• Fascination Level: High! This chapter has it all - the promised blizzard, murderous cows, car accidents, missing family members, and enough f-bombs to merit an R-rating from the MPAA. It’s like a movie where you know the last two-thirds are all downhill.
Chapter 10: Stacey! Stace is excited about her perm and wants to hang around the mall admiring herself, but her mom is so nervous about the snow that she pretty much just drags her out the door by the freshly curled hair. The snow is coming down, but the highway isn’t too bad to drive on until the car in front of them brakes and they fishtail all over the place to avoid rear-ending someone.
• Stupidity Alert: "That does it!" Stacey's mom says. "We are getting off the highway. We are taking the back roads home." Yeah, I can see how taking a quickly plowed, well-lit, well-paved, straight road is much scarier than the deserted, pitch-black, twisting, unplowed roads through nowhere. Pop quiz! Which is deadlier: A minor fender bender in a well-traveled area or going into a ditch in a snowstorm fifteen miles from the nearest house? Bonus points: What if one passenger is a brittle diabetic who can't go two hours without food?
Stacey is rightfully concerned that her mom doesn't actually know how to get home on the back roads. Her mom tells her to shut up and let her drive. Fair enough. They don't get all that far before she just decides to stop and wait a while because the visibility is too low.
• Minor Stupidity Alert: Okay, visibility might be shit, but if you stop, you're probably just going to get - oh, great, they’re stuck.
• Major Stupidity Alert: Stacey's mom won’t let Stacey push the car while she hits the gas, but neither will she let Stacey hit the gas while she pushes. Considering there is no one around to help, considering that hypothermia is not something to screw around with, and considering Stacey is diabetic and HAS to eat before morning, she is quite literally willing to let her daughter die before she'll let her push a pedal with her foot. What the fuck.
• Fascination Level: Medium. I'd say high, because it's got all the blizzardy, car-accident-filled, screamed obscenity goodness of the previous chapter, but Maureen's judgment is so blatantly appalling that I can't recommend it. I mean, they would have just gotten home safely and Stacey would have had no blizzard story at all if her mother weren't so damned stupid.
Chapter 11: Oh, god, Kristy again. In the journal intro she calls her evening with Bart thus far "excruciating," which is the truest thing she's ever said. Anyway, David Michael doesn't believe Karen when she says it's started snowing. He thinks that's about as good a joke as telling someone their shoe's untied. Karen immediately turns around and tells him his fly is unzipped and he believes her, so...is Emily's condition contagious? Kristy just craps her pants with embarrassment that Karen said "fly" in front of Bart. Yeah, “excruciating” pretty well covers this.
WSTO's weatherman is predicting a foot or more and Watson's like, "Nah, that won’t happen," even though it's actively snowing a shit-ton as they speak. Answer to my earlier question: Yes, Emily's condition is very, VERY contagious. He won't even drive Bart home in the snow they aren’t getting (LA LA LA HE CAN'T HEAR YOU), nor will he let Bart walk home in it, even though Bart lives right down the street and I walked my dog in a blizzard last night and didn't die or anything. So instead they eat dessert and we're treated to an entire excruciating page of description of how they set the table, where everyone sat, and how Karen ate her pie in ten distinct steps. And then Kristy says Karen "was wearing her sweater-pants again," but somehow does not die of shame considering Karen must have removed her pants and shirt in front of Bart in order to swap them. I don’t embarrass easily, but that probably would have been my limit.
By the time dessert's over, the snow they totally aren't getting is so deep they can't even get the door open. I would have broken a window to get out of that house if I had to, but Bart just decides to spend the night. He calls his parents, but doesn't get to say much before - "The line went dead," he says, ominously.
DUNNNNNNN
The power blows too, sending the younger kids into a tizzy, so Watson just sends them all to bed. I take back that DUNNNNNN. This is a story about a family asleep, at night, in their mansion. Yeah, let's print that in the newspaper: FAMILY SLEEPS THROUGH BLIZZARD; "MILDLY INCONVENIENCED," SAYS HOUSEGUEST.
Kristy is mortified, though. How is she supposed to sleep knowing that Bart is in the same house, just waiting to sleepwalk into her room and catch her without her traditional makeup and curls? She sets her alarm for 5:30 so she can be sure to have on her best turtleneck by the time Bart wakes up. I don't know how she sets the alarm with no electricity, but neither do I care.
• Fascination Level: Excruciatingly low.
Chapter 12: Claudia! She’s baby-sitting across the street for Myriah, Gabbie, and Laura while Mr. and Mrs. Perkins are having dinner with friends. Out in the country. Way, WAAAAY out in the country. Welp, I sure don’t see where this is going! Claudia keeps busy with the kids, who are disgustingly precocious as always: "You are going to be very busy tomorrow," Claudia says to Myriah when she details the snow-family she intends to build the next day. "That's what happens when you're five," Myriah says. Someone fetch me my vomit bucket.
Of course, Mr. and Mrs. Perkins call to say they're stranded out in the countryside. Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED! WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS. IF ONLY WE HAD SOME PEOPLE ON THE TV OR RADIO WHO COULD TELL US ABOUT THESE THINGS AHEAD OF TIME. Claudia assures them she can stay with the girls, and her parents are right across the street anyway. The Perkinses seem less concerned about leaving their three very young children alone, overnight, with a preteen, during a natural disaster, than I would be. Myriah and Gabbie want to say goodnight to Chewy in lieu of their parents, but the enormous galumphing dog is nowhere to be found. Would it be cliché to say ruh-roh? Myriah would probably say, "Oh dear, this is a predicament we seem to be in." Claudia tries to call her parents to ask for help, but the phone is dead. "I hung up the useless phone...just as the power went out and the girls and I found ourselves in darkness."
DUNNNNNNN
• Fascination Level: Medium-low. I can see how babysitting alone overnight would be exciting to a thirteen-year-old, but "PEOPLE TOTALLY SAFE IN HOUSE DURING BLIZZARD" is not actually a story either.
Chapter 13: Jessi! "No one parent ever showed up that night. Not one...People kept calling and calling. 'We just can’t make it,' they'd say. 'The storm took us by surprise.' " Actually listening to the weather in December: ONLY FOR FOOLS! She's worried about Quint, who's probably stranded at the train station and confused. You think he's gonna look at two feet of snow on the ground and cars piled up and not realize what's going on? He's got his GED. He'll figure something out.
She waits in a long, loooong line for the phone behind fifty wailing little kids who want to talk to mommy. Exactly how professional is this amazing Nutcracker production at this prestigious ballet school when everyone in the show is young enough to be sobbing about how they can't sleep without their dolly? Jessi, the oldest person in the room at a worldly and wise eleven, calms everyone and convinces them to have a picnic with their crackers. Suddenly, a looming shadow appears in the doorway!
DUNNNNNNN
It's Quint!! He isn't from Stoneybrook and still has two brain cells to rub together, so he figured out no one was going to be able to pick him up, got directions to the dance school, and walked there from the train station. Ya got shown up there, Mr. Oh No, Can't Walk Down the Street, Better Spend the Night Here, Wink Wink. Though the food was probably better at the train station. Quint would call home, but the phones are down now. Luckily Stamford still has electricity or the building would collapse from all the terrified screaming from Connecticut's premier ballet troupe.
• Fascination Level: Low. Baby-sitting is boring. Taking it upon yourself to baby-sit when you don't have to is really, REALLY boring.
Chapter 14: Mary Anne! Ma and Pa Pike call to say they're trapped in New York, of course, because the trains stopped running. Unlike Myriah and Gabbie, and unlike all the children at the ballet school, the Pike kids aren't at ALL concerned about being separated from their parents for the night. Nicky actually runs around yelling, "Yippee, no parents!" HA. Even their own kids know the Pike parents suck. Especially considering the kids immediately start complaining about being hungry and Mal and Mary Anne realize there's basically no food in the house. Ma and Pa left some emergency money, but how that's supposed to help when they can't get out of the house and no one can get in, god only knows.
• Stupidity Alert: Mallory, who's been drinking the mercury-laden local water for eleven years, thinks they can use the emergency money to get Pizza Express to deliver. So every parent with a child at the ballet school can't drive, the Perkinses can't drive, the Brewers can't drive (even just down the street), the McGills can't drive (even though they were already ON the road), Jeff's plane can't land, and the trains are not running. People are sleeping at neighbor's houses, airports, dance studios, wherever they can find shelter. But some sixteen-year-old delivery driver in an '83 Le Baron will totally be able to make it to your house to deliver your damn pizza. Sure.
Luckily for the delivery driver's life, she doesn't even get to order because the phone has gone dead. A few seconds later the electricity goes too, plunging them into total darkness and causing the kids to start yelling that the TV stopped working. "I thought the house seemed awfully quiet," Mary Anne says. "Now I knew why." Apparently, the sequence of events goes: the power dies, then Mary Anne thinks, "Huh, everything is quiet, I wonder what happened," then she realizes that the room she’s standing in has gone pitch black, then she realizes that the kids are screaming. Does Ann M. even HAVE electricity? Like...does she know how it WORKS?
Everybody crowds around the living room with flashlights, including someone named Clair (nice editing, Sammie), and I guess they no longer care about the food problem? Okay, then neither do I.
• Fascination Level: Medium-low. Nothing happens in this chapter, but there's still hope they could all starve to death. Also, Mary Anne notices that Stacey's house is still dark and tries to call (before the phones go out), so at least there's a little foreshadowing there. I mean, it's better than Stacey and her mom being rescued at the end and everyone going, "...oh, you were missing?"
Chapter 15: Dawn! Jeff's plane hasn't landed, of course, or the resulting crash would have made the news. The airport is pandemonium, because everyone there is exactly like Dawn - hysterical toward all the wrong people about all the wrong things. (Really, folks? Do you really think the ticketing agent can TURN OFF THE SNOW?) Dawn thinks Jeff will think they're going to leave without him. What? Isn’t ten a little old for "mommy’s never coming back" fears? Anyway, the flight gets rerouted to D.C. and the airport is closed for the night, so Dawn and Sharon are officially stuck there. Dawn actually calls this worse than being stranded on that desert island. Um...because being safely indoors with your mom, plenty of food and drink, lots of books, and the knowledge that the snow WILL let up eventually is totally worse than being alone with a sick child and no food on an island not knowing if you’ll ever be rescued. Did a coconut fall on her head while she was there? Sleeping in a hard plastic chair isn’t the MOST fun you can have with your pants on, but I think everyone ends up stuck at an airport once in their life, so this isn’t exactly monumental ground we’re breaking here.
• Fascination Level: Low. I mean, look at it logically: Dawn and her mom are safe at the airport, they know Jeff is safe in D.C., they know Richard is safe at home, and they know Mary Anne is safe at the Pike house. They have nothing left to worry about, so they buy some books and sit there all night long. BREAKING NEWS: ASSES NUMB IN AIRPORT CHAIRS; FULL REPORT AT 11.
Chapter 16: Jesus hell, now I remember why I don't snark Super Specials. There are still like eighty pages left. Stacey again! She and her mom are so gobsmacked about their predicament they aren't even talking. Finally Stacey's mom says she's sorry about this, but Stacey assures her it isn't her fault. It IS, though. Don’t take back roads in a blizzard, folks! Stacey's like, "Uh, I need to eat soon, though," and her mom honks out “OH GOD HELP WE'RE GOING TO DIE” in Morse code on the horn.
Stacey takes this as an opportunity to ask what made her mom fall in love with her dad. Well, I know what made him fall in love with HER: her bitchin survival skills, not to mention her flawless driving. Her mom's answer is that they liked the same episode of I Love Lucy and they're both nonsmokers. Seriously. That's the reason. I guess that's how those mass weddings in Taiwan or wherever happen. "If you like the Walkabout episode of Lost and you don't smoke, raise your hand. Okay, do you, Sarah, take these three million men..." Oh, they both like swing music and Levi's jeans too. So THAT'S a reason to marry a person. While her mom explains this, Stacey "noticed that she no longer wore her wedding band. When had she taken it off?" When she got divorced, maybe? The reason for which is becoming clearer and clearer. ("Are those Wranglers? JUST HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN GOING ON?")
Unfortunately, Stacey has to interrupt this story to tell her the heat isn't working anymore. Because they are out of gas. They are screeeewed. Her mom honks out "BURY ME IN MY LEVI'S" just as a car finally comes along. Maureen continues honking and flashing her lights, in case the car is being driven by a deaf and blind person. Stacey freaks out that the car might be driven by an ax murderer and wants her to stop. I’m going to give Stacey the benefit of the doubt here and hope that the low blood sugar and negative 8 windchill has addled her brain. The man driving the car - who does not seem to be a blind, deaf ax murderer, although he may be a wizard, considering he seems to be driving along with no apparent trouble when no one else in the entire state of Connecticut can move three feet - offers to take them home for the night.
• Fascination Level: Medium-high. They're the only ones with a legitimately exciting situation still going on, but points off for stopping to talk about their favorite denim brands while death is on the line.
Chapter 17: Mallory! The kids are whining. It is snowing, in the book and in real life. I am drinking. World keeps on spinning.
Mallory and Mary Anne think they should conserve what's left of the food, but without power the stuff in the fridge and freezer is going to spoil, so they have to eat it immediately. Ummm...did they not notice the outdoor temperature? Put the fridge stuff in the garage, put the freezer stuff on the back porch, problem solved. It's like these people have never brainstormed before. I myself have two cases of beer on the deck, somewhere, under several feet of snow. I don’t know why people in Wisconsin even HAVE refrigerators.
The kids forgo the frozen veggies in favor of the ice cream, directly out of the container. "You'd think they’d been raised by wolves," Mallory says. DING DING DING! We have a winner! And here's Ed McMahon at the door with your giant prize check! Oh, no, sorry, it's just Mary Anne's dad. He came over to check on them and seems remarkably calm considering his wife went out and never came home. "But I suppose no news is good news," he concludes. It is? Why, would she have called if she were dead?
They go to bed amid worries that Dawn and Stacey might be frozen to death in a ditch somewhere, but everybody's happy when they wake up to find the storm has blown over and school is canceled. Yeah, it sounds great until you consider they would have at least gotten a hot meal at school.
• Fascination Level: Very high. Only because of this picture:
NO SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE HELL IS THIS PICTURE? What is that child on the right?! Where is his neck?! I remain fascinated with this far longer than I'm sure the illustrator intended, wondering how a two-dimensional character managed to fall right down into the uncanny valley and whether I want to laugh hysterically or kill it with fire.
Chapter My God Seriously This Snark Is 14 Pages Long Already: Claudia! Oh, sweet lord, there's nothing to recap. She puts the kids to bed in the dark, her mom comes over to check on them, they unsuccessfully call and search for Chewy for a while, and then she gives up and goes to sleep. Gabbie wakes her at five because she hears noises, which they follow to the basement. Poor Chewy has been shut in all this time. They checked the WHOLE house, repeatedly, even in silly places like drawers and Laura's crib, and never once so much as opened the basement door? What crap detectives. Anyway, I call bullshit on this whole situation. I have a dog exactly like Chewy - you know, the kind you apologetically call "spirited" after they've ripped all the siding off your neighbor’s house - and if she gets shut in anywhere, she howls like mad. If you call her name and she can't get to you, she howls like mad and then breaks down the door. I think Claudia sedated him and hid him behind the furnace to get him out of her hair for a while.
Anyway, morning's here and the storm's over, so Claudia feeds the kids maple syrup on snow (that sounds so vile) and sends them out to play. Speaking of the uncanny valley, Claudia says the snow is half as tall as Gabbie. The very first page of the book says 23 inches of snow fell. That would make Gabbie about four feet tall at two years old. And that's horrifying. Math is hard!
• Fascination Level: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Chapter Ughhhh, Nothing Happens in This One Either: Jessi! The little kids start whining uncontrollably, so Jessi and Quint help them wash their faces (with paper towels) and brush their teeth (with their fingers) and put them to bed (on the floor). Oh, and it turns out there are some older kids, but they're off in another room hanging out and gossiping and sexually experimenting like teenagers are SUPPOSED to do. Thank god Jessi was around, because I would have left those kids to Lord of the Flies each other if they'd been stranded with me.
By morning the diner across the street is open and the owner is offering free breakfast (hahahayeahright), so Jessi and Quint get to snuggle in a romantic booth for two. They hope the dance is still on, but if not, Quint reasons, he'll take her to some other dance, some other time. That Quint is a smooth BAMF.
• Fascination Level: Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep /monitor flatlining
Chapter I Can't Go On: Mary Anne! "We were scraping bottom." Indeed. Everybody eats something for breakfast, but the suitability thereof varies - an apple, a slice of baloney, a frozen chicken dinner, a can of frosting, whatever. That sounds like how I eat always. Is that not normal? The kids whine that they're still hungry, and Mary Anne realizes that with the phones working again, she can finally order takeout. Or she could, if any place was open and delivering, but they aren't. She calls Logan and complains about it, then thinks that she should probably be checking on those people who might be dead, like Dawn and Stacey. You know, the ones they were worried about up until the moment school got canceled. She finds out Dawn's safe at the airport, but no one has heard from Stacey. She would worry about that, but Logan's now at the door on skis with a backpack full of food. "Real food," Nicky sighs, even though carrot sticks and crackers don't sound any heartier than what they were eating. I can't take anything he says seriously now that I know he looks like an eight-year-old version of Leatherface wearing Clark Griswold's glasses.
Logan and Mary Anne muse about whether the dance will be put off until the next Friday, and for some reason Mal yells, "It can't be postponed! Ben and I can't wait until next week!" Uh, why not? Are you ovulating or something?
• Fascination Level: Low. Bumped up from "lethal" because of another inadvertently amusing line that hasn't aged as well as it might have: "This [snow] may be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. What with global warming and all." Yeah, twenty years after this is written, global warming has completely made major snowstorms a thing of the past. Oh, wait.
Chapter Sob: Kristy! She does not appreciate getting up at 5:30 a.m. on a snow day to get ready, but she doesn't want Bart to see her with bed hair and morning breath. How long could it possibly take her to brush her teeth and put her hair in a ponytail like she always does? Wait...she decides to shave her legs for the first time. What is this I don't even. WHERE IS THE REAL KRISTY. WHAT HAVE THEY DONE WITH HER. She also blow dries her hair and curls it - no, back up, actually, first she gets out a hair dryer, then decides to curl her hair, then decides she'll electrocute herself if she curls her hair wet. So she dries it. Did...did she originally get out the blow dryer just to look at it or something? This book is completely full of sloppily written, badly edited shit like this, yet Ann M. Martin is one of the best-selling writers of all time and I can't seem to give my work away. Not that I am in any way bitter. Although I do get some schadenfreude out of the fact that Kristy’s hair "wound up looking and feeling like limp macaroni."
Kristy finishes off her look with a little mascara and blush - she’d rather do the whole hog, but she thinks just those two will be challenging enough. If you’re applying them with your feet, maybe. An hour and a half later (WTF?) Kristy’s transformation is complete: "From the neck up I looked fantastic." With limp macaroni hair and basically nonexistent makeup? By then all her brothers are awake and clambering to use the bathroom (at 7 a.m. on a snow day, sure) but they're not in too much of a hurry to make fun of her makeup. Hurr hurr, Halloween’s not for months, etc., etc. That joke is so played I think it appeared in the original works of Plato.
Everybody embarrasses her at breakfast some more, but Bart tells her she looks beautiful, because underneath the spackle she could still punch his lights out and he knows it. "I had made it," she thinks. "Bart had spent the night at my house. He had survived meals with my family. He had endured teasing by my brothers and sisters. And he hadn't gone away. Emotionally, I mean. He was sitting next to me, telling me I looked beautiful. If Bart and I could weather that, we could weather anything." I think I figured out why this book sucks such ass. It was ghostwritten by Nicolas Sparks.
• Fascination Level: AREA PRETEEN SHAVES LEGS, THINKS THIS BELONGS ON THE NEWS
Chapter Jesus Take the Wheel: Dawn! Now that they have nothing to do at the airport for hours and hours but wait, Dawn is torturously bored. And misery loves company, so she's going to inflict it on all of us. She checks her watch a hundred times. She changes position in her chair twice a minute. She goes to the bathroom. I wonder how much Ann got for this book. I wonder if it was more or less than you would need to offer me to read this book again.
There's a short interlude where Dawn intercepts a runaway toddler, because every baby-sitter's incident must involve a child in some way, even if pointlessly, and FINALLY she falls asleep. When she wakes up, it's morning and Jeff's about to arrive! Thank god, we must be nearing the end of the book at last. Jeff's fine, of course, and perfectly proud about having stayed in a hotel alone and stolen a shoehorn from his room. I don’t even know what to do with this information.
• Fascination Level: Loooooow. The most interesting part about this chapter is that Sharon sleeps totally upright in her chair, "like she was at a fancy restaurant, waiting to be served dinner. But her eyes were closed. Also, she was snoring." Somehow I imagine this is how Sharon always sleeps. That or hanging upside down.
Chapter That Soothing Light at the End of the Tunnel Is Probably Just a Freight Train Coming My Way: Stacey! "The man was looming in the window of our car." I'm sure the stench of your hair will act as a repellant, Stace. Notice that the skunk has no natural enemies.
They get in the car with him despite the fact that Stacey still thinks he's a serial killer. She's only a little reassured when he mentions he and his wife have a baby at home (of course they do), but that may be because he refers to his child as "a monstrosity" for some reason. Like...like one of the Peacock children? And they're driving out into the country with this guy? Holy shit, Stacey might actually be right about this.
No, of course Mr. and Mrs. Schiavone, the couple, are so nice and accommodating it's disgusting, their house is beautiful, their kid is adorable, and Stacey and her mom don't even want to leave the next day because everything is so wonderfully great. If I were about to die in a blizzard and had to beg to stay at a complete stranger's house overnight, I would at least have the good manners to feel awkward about it. By the time they get home the next day, everybody's waiting on the street outside holding up "HURRAY YOU AREN’T DEAD" signs, to Stacey's confusion. She didn't think anyone even noticed they were gone. Isn't it kind of, you know, COMMON to try to find out where your loved ones are during a disaster and worry about them? Stacey may take the coveted "Golden Durp" award in this book over the perennial winner, Mallory.
Oh, hey, spread the word, everyone! Kristy talked to some nameless plot device "friend" whose mom is on the school board - the dance is still on for tomorrow! “Tomorrow night is going to be magic,” Stacey whispers. Mallory's poking holes in her condoms as we speak.
• Fascination Level: Seemed like it was going to be high there right at the beginning and nosedived into anesthetic territory when Freddy Krueger turned out to be Pa Walton.
Epilogue, or Eventually Comes the Sweet Sweet Release of Death: Kristy! Oh, god, the Stoneybrook News likes her idea. Now she says she has to trim it all down and make it fit together, even though that's what the NEWSPAPER editors are for, since Kristy would have no idea how to conform to house style or know the exact space to fill. Thanks for keeping it real, AMM. She also has to write about how the Winter Wonderland dance ended up, of course, because that's what the locals are dying to know about. Not that guy who was flattened by the semi, but whether Stacey McGill and Austin Bentley got to slow dance to More Than Words this Friday or whether they had to wait until next Friday. Everyone wraps up their final thoughts in handwritten entries, which I have never once read, because I can’t read cursive. How do third grade teachers not stroke out? Let’s just look at the picture:
Rotting bovine snarls traffic; “The horror,” says commuter
Be sure to check back next week for Stoneybrook News’ shocking expose: MERCURY IN THE DRINKING SUPPLY: IQs REACH RECORD LOWS.