SVT#48: Mandy Miller Fights Back
Or, The One In Which Mandy Gets Cancer and Overcomes It in the Space of 40 Pages.
Standard cheesy cover. Jess holds flowers and looks at Mandy like she's on her deathbed. But Mandy's sitting up and smiling next to a touchy-feely Lila (with a bit of a fivehead/receding hairline, might I add) and holds a present, which, if it's from Lila, will be awesome in every way. Mandy still has her lovely long hair. Can't show a bald kid on the cover of an SV book.
Yes, really. 40 pages long fight with cancer. She starts missing school on page 56, and she comes through her surgery and "is going to be fine!" on page 96. She has radiation treatment after that, though, but just as a "precautionary measure."
Makes sense though. Mandy is far too cool to die! And I think someone dying of cancer in these books would be enough to give kids extreme phobias of cancer of any kind. But still, making it so easily overcome-able with just one surgery? It kind of gives the opposite impression- that cancer isn't very bad at all. But happy mediums don't really exist in the Sweet Valley world.
Book opens with Jess and Liz at Jess's locker. One major difference between the twins is that Liz is always early to class, whereas Jessica "always seemed to skid into the classroom at the very last second." That gives me an awesome mental picture of Jess sliding on the lino, but also, the last second? So, she's not even actually late? I'd go Jess's way. Being early to every class is so not cool, Lizzie.
Anyway, Mandy Miller shows up and offers to help Jessica in any way she can. Mandy is fishing to join the Unicorn Club, so everyone in it is letting her do errands for them, but have no intention of letting her join. Bitches. I think the Unicorn Club only exists because they're too young to have a sorority like Pi Beta Alpha. (Off topic, is it normal to have a sorority in US high schools?) She hangs around Jess the most, and Jessica likes her, but thinks she's a nuisance with really weird style. Thrift shop clothes? AAARGHH!! A point is made of mentioning Mandy's waist-length dark brown hair, the most beautiful hair Jessica has even seen. Even including your own, Jessica?! *falls off chair*
Well, you know WHY she gets to have gorgeous hair, right? Coz it's all going to fall out! Now Jessica's hair will be the fairest in the land! MWAHAHAHA.
Gasp. Today Mandy is wearing a purple sweatshirt and purple sneakers "that looked like they had been dipped in grape Kool-Aid". Sounds like she had a Claudia Kishi moment. The Unicorns are horrified that she had the gall to wear their sacred colour. Do they police it regularly? Fine the kids who wear purple to school? What about if a guy wears it? Or are most stores banned from selling purple clothes to any middle school student who doesn't know the secret password/handshake?
An emergency Unicorn meeting is held in the toilets, and Janet Howell makes Jessica be the bearer of bad news: Mandy's never going to be a Unicorn.
Because of the Unicorn meeting, Jessica's late for class and she arrives to find that she's been partnered with Mandy for a new project about America in the 1920s. At this point Jess should mention that her great-grandmother was a film star in the '20s, but she doesn't. Apparently a Hollywood museum is putting on a big 1920s festival, and all the middle schools and high schools around are submitting projects, so Mrs Arnette wants someone in their class to win.
Jess is at home later and moans to Liz about getting stuck with Mandy Miller. Elizabeth says Jess owes Mandy a lot. Apparently eariler in social studies no one wanted to be Jessica's partner. Lila and Ellen chose each other and no one else volunteered because Jessica's such a moron goof-off. No one wanted their grade to depend on Jessica (not even Elizabeth, it seems!), so Mandy volunteered to save Jess the humiliation. Way to sacrifice your grades for popularity, Mandy.
Mandy pitches a project idea to Jess, and invites her over after school. Mandy lives in an old Victorian house with green, blue, and purple woodwork. Way better than that Spanish-style split level that someone lives in. Anyway, the girls bond over some cookies, and Mandy shows Jessica her attic, which has loads of vaudeville costumes. Her grandparents came to Cali in the '20s to break it into movies and failed (haha, Jess's great-gran succeeded!). I don't know how old Mandy's grandparents are, if they were married in the '20s, but it doesn't seem to pan out...
Back to Mandy's idea. She wants Jess and her to do a vaudeville act, written by them and using the old costumes and wigs! Jessica loves the idea. They look through the costumes and props, but Mandy keeps mentioning the Unicorns. Jess feels guilty.
Mandy explains why she wears such wacky clothes. It's because she can't afford the kind of clothes that the Unicorns wear, and she doesn't want to look like some cheap imitation of them. Big props to her. She again mentions how much she loves her hair. She hasn't cut it since she was three! (which would make it kinda manky and split-endy, wouldn't it?)
Jessica breaks the news to Mandy that she's not going to be a Unicorn. Mandy is rather upset that the Unicorns were happy to use her for errands, but don't want her in their club. How snobbish. According to Ellen, Mandy is "not at all selective about who she socialises with." What a bitch.
Jessica and Mandy have a dress rehearsal at Mandy's place and fight about who gets to wear a boa. They are each pulling on an end when it rips in half. Jess falls on the floor and Mandy falls backwards over a trunk, hitting her ribs. She notices a lump under her arm, but doesn't worry too much.
Mandy and Jessica's act is a huge success. The next day, Mrs Arnette asks them to videotape it to submit to the Hollywood exhibition. Jess wants to tell Mandy, but she's absent. She rings Mandy that night, and Mandy says she thinks she has the flu. Jessica ditches a Unicorn meeting to go film the act with Mandy, but Mrs Miller won't allow Mandy to have visitors. She's had some tests done at the hospital. Since she can't film, they decide that Elizabeth can take Mandy's place for the filmed version.
On Monday, Mandy's still absent, and that night Mrs Miller rings Jessica just as she's about to go to Lila's and asks her to come over to visit Mandy. Jess is confused, but agrees. Mrs Miller then speaks to Alice, and the Wakefield women drive to Mandy's house. Jess goes in to visit, and talks to Mandy about the project. Then, when Jess asks her what's wrong, Mandy leans forward, grins, and says:
I tell you, Jessica, the Unicorns are going to turn absolutely green when they hear what I've got. I am going to get so much attention from everybody, they're going to wish they had let me into the club after all. [grin fades a bit.] What I've got is cancer.
Um, okay? I know I always get jealous of people with cancer and the attention they get. Yes. Really. Is Mandy high, or just in denial?
Jessica is horrified. Is Mandy going to die? Mandy says no, she's got no plans to die. Jessica's next thought is "Are you going to lose all your hair?" Mandy starts laughing. She tells Jess to let people at school know, and then Jess goes back to the van and cries. Mama Wakefield explains that Mandy has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Mandy's is under her arm, so she has to have surgery to remove it and check if it has spread.
Lila rips into Jess for not coming over, then Jess explains what happened. Caroline Pearce joins the conversation, and spreads the news across school. The Unicorns sign a get well card and flowers to Mandy, but don't tell Jessica about it.
Jess asks token questions to benefit the young reader, like "Is cancer contagious?" and "Did she get cancer when she fell off the trunk?" Come on Jessica, I knew more than that about cancer when I was nine. You're twelve. This whole part is like an instruction manual- "Don't treat her differently." "Her hair WILL grow back after radiation/chemo." "Be her friend and talk when she needs to."
Manmdy's sugery went great. She's going to be fine! But she needs radiation treatment. Boo.
The Unicorns go to visit Mandy, and Jess sees them when she arrives to visit Mandy to tell her that their project won first place at the Hollywood museum thingie. And Elizabeth and Amy came second! Never mind all the other middle schools and even high schools that submitted entries. They ain't got jack on the Sweet Valley girls. They win a computer for the school. Whoopee. Plus they get to perform their act in Hollywood.
The Unicorns explain that they didn't invite Jessica because they thought she didn't like Mandy, and Jessica remembers that she's been keeping her friendship with Mandy a secret! So all is well, and Mandy thanks Jessica for fighting with her over the boa that day in the attic. If she hadn't tripped, she might not have noticed the lump on her arm until it was too late. How does it feel to be Saint Jessica?
Mandy's hair falls out, and she's found a bunch of hats, including a Dodgers baseball cap, a captain's hat that says Coast Guard, and a blue velvet turban with a huge rhinestone pin. Mandy is all kinds of awesome. But then Mandy's mum buys her the only wig they can afford,and it's a curly red thing that makes her look like Little Orphan Annie. Ew. She thinks everyone will laugh at her, but only a complete asshole would laugh at a young cancer survivor, right?
Oh wait. This is Sweet Valley. She's screwed.
Janet calls a Unicorn meeting to reconsider Mandy for membership. Ellen's still being a bitch about her clothes (she's more bitchy than stupid in these earlier books). And ew! She'll be wearing a wig! (Proof of my statement at the end of the last paragraph.) They re-vote on her membership, and she gets in! Only 2 votes against her, and I'd bet one was Ellen's. So Jess tells them about Mandy's wig problem, and they decide to buy her a nicer one.
In this part they mention the word "wig" so often that it loses all meaning. You know when that happens? Wig. Wig. Wig. Wig. It's a stupid word, really. Anyway, they pick a brown wig with a cute pixie cut, and head to Mandy's house, finding her wearing a striped "railroad engineer's" cap. That would look cute, but just call it a 'train conductor', you bumfucks. She models her Annie wig and looks super terrible. When they present the new wig to Mandy, she's stoked. Then they tell her she can be a Unicorn. Jessica expects her to turn it down, but she accepts!
All is well in the Sweet Valley world. It's so worth getting cancer if it means you can be a Unicorn.
And so ends my second recap of the day. Man, I need to get out more.
Standard cheesy cover. Jess holds flowers and looks at Mandy like she's on her deathbed. But Mandy's sitting up and smiling next to a touchy-feely Lila (with a bit of a fivehead/receding hairline, might I add) and holds a present, which, if it's from Lila, will be awesome in every way. Mandy still has her lovely long hair. Can't show a bald kid on the cover of an SV book.
Yes, really. 40 pages long fight with cancer. She starts missing school on page 56, and she comes through her surgery and "is going to be fine!" on page 96. She has radiation treatment after that, though, but just as a "precautionary measure."
Makes sense though. Mandy is far too cool to die! And I think someone dying of cancer in these books would be enough to give kids extreme phobias of cancer of any kind. But still, making it so easily overcome-able with just one surgery? It kind of gives the opposite impression- that cancer isn't very bad at all. But happy mediums don't really exist in the Sweet Valley world.
Book opens with Jess and Liz at Jess's locker. One major difference between the twins is that Liz is always early to class, whereas Jessica "always seemed to skid into the classroom at the very last second." That gives me an awesome mental picture of Jess sliding on the lino, but also, the last second? So, she's not even actually late? I'd go Jess's way. Being early to every class is so not cool, Lizzie.
Anyway, Mandy Miller shows up and offers to help Jessica in any way she can. Mandy is fishing to join the Unicorn Club, so everyone in it is letting her do errands for them, but have no intention of letting her join. Bitches. I think the Unicorn Club only exists because they're too young to have a sorority like Pi Beta Alpha. (Off topic, is it normal to have a sorority in US high schools?) She hangs around Jess the most, and Jessica likes her, but thinks she's a nuisance with really weird style. Thrift shop clothes? AAARGHH!! A point is made of mentioning Mandy's waist-length dark brown hair, the most beautiful hair Jessica has even seen. Even including your own, Jessica?! *falls off chair*
Well, you know WHY she gets to have gorgeous hair, right? Coz it's all going to fall out! Now Jessica's hair will be the fairest in the land! MWAHAHAHA.
Gasp. Today Mandy is wearing a purple sweatshirt and purple sneakers "that looked like they had been dipped in grape Kool-Aid". Sounds like she had a Claudia Kishi moment. The Unicorns are horrified that she had the gall to wear their sacred colour. Do they police it regularly? Fine the kids who wear purple to school? What about if a guy wears it? Or are most stores banned from selling purple clothes to any middle school student who doesn't know the secret password/handshake?
An emergency Unicorn meeting is held in the toilets, and Janet Howell makes Jessica be the bearer of bad news: Mandy's never going to be a Unicorn.
Because of the Unicorn meeting, Jessica's late for class and she arrives to find that she's been partnered with Mandy for a new project about America in the 1920s. At this point Jess should mention that her great-grandmother was a film star in the '20s, but she doesn't. Apparently a Hollywood museum is putting on a big 1920s festival, and all the middle schools and high schools around are submitting projects, so Mrs Arnette wants someone in their class to win.
Jess is at home later and moans to Liz about getting stuck with Mandy Miller. Elizabeth says Jess owes Mandy a lot. Apparently eariler in social studies no one wanted to be Jessica's partner. Lila and Ellen chose each other and no one else volunteered because Jessica's such a moron goof-off. No one wanted their grade to depend on Jessica (not even Elizabeth, it seems!), so Mandy volunteered to save Jess the humiliation. Way to sacrifice your grades for popularity, Mandy.
Mandy pitches a project idea to Jess, and invites her over after school. Mandy lives in an old Victorian house with green, blue, and purple woodwork. Way better than that Spanish-style split level that someone lives in. Anyway, the girls bond over some cookies, and Mandy shows Jessica her attic, which has loads of vaudeville costumes. Her grandparents came to Cali in the '20s to break it into movies and failed (haha, Jess's great-gran succeeded!). I don't know how old Mandy's grandparents are, if they were married in the '20s, but it doesn't seem to pan out...
Back to Mandy's idea. She wants Jess and her to do a vaudeville act, written by them and using the old costumes and wigs! Jessica loves the idea. They look through the costumes and props, but Mandy keeps mentioning the Unicorns. Jess feels guilty.
Mandy explains why she wears such wacky clothes. It's because she can't afford the kind of clothes that the Unicorns wear, and she doesn't want to look like some cheap imitation of them. Big props to her. She again mentions how much she loves her hair. She hasn't cut it since she was three! (which would make it kinda manky and split-endy, wouldn't it?)
Jessica breaks the news to Mandy that she's not going to be a Unicorn. Mandy is rather upset that the Unicorns were happy to use her for errands, but don't want her in their club. How snobbish. According to Ellen, Mandy is "not at all selective about who she socialises with." What a bitch.
Jessica and Mandy have a dress rehearsal at Mandy's place and fight about who gets to wear a boa. They are each pulling on an end when it rips in half. Jess falls on the floor and Mandy falls backwards over a trunk, hitting her ribs. She notices a lump under her arm, but doesn't worry too much.
Mandy and Jessica's act is a huge success. The next day, Mrs Arnette asks them to videotape it to submit to the Hollywood exhibition. Jess wants to tell Mandy, but she's absent. She rings Mandy that night, and Mandy says she thinks she has the flu. Jessica ditches a Unicorn meeting to go film the act with Mandy, but Mrs Miller won't allow Mandy to have visitors. She's had some tests done at the hospital. Since she can't film, they decide that Elizabeth can take Mandy's place for the filmed version.
On Monday, Mandy's still absent, and that night Mrs Miller rings Jessica just as she's about to go to Lila's and asks her to come over to visit Mandy. Jess is confused, but agrees. Mrs Miller then speaks to Alice, and the Wakefield women drive to Mandy's house. Jess goes in to visit, and talks to Mandy about the project. Then, when Jess asks her what's wrong, Mandy leans forward, grins, and says:
I tell you, Jessica, the Unicorns are going to turn absolutely green when they hear what I've got. I am going to get so much attention from everybody, they're going to wish they had let me into the club after all. [grin fades a bit.] What I've got is cancer.
Um, okay? I know I always get jealous of people with cancer and the attention they get. Yes. Really. Is Mandy high, or just in denial?
Jessica is horrified. Is Mandy going to die? Mandy says no, she's got no plans to die. Jessica's next thought is "Are you going to lose all your hair?" Mandy starts laughing. She tells Jess to let people at school know, and then Jess goes back to the van and cries. Mama Wakefield explains that Mandy has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Mandy's is under her arm, so she has to have surgery to remove it and check if it has spread.
Lila rips into Jess for not coming over, then Jess explains what happened. Caroline Pearce joins the conversation, and spreads the news across school. The Unicorns sign a get well card and flowers to Mandy, but don't tell Jessica about it.
Jess asks token questions to benefit the young reader, like "Is cancer contagious?" and "Did she get cancer when she fell off the trunk?" Come on Jessica, I knew more than that about cancer when I was nine. You're twelve. This whole part is like an instruction manual- "Don't treat her differently." "Her hair WILL grow back after radiation/chemo." "Be her friend and talk when she needs to."
Manmdy's sugery went great. She's going to be fine! But she needs radiation treatment. Boo.
The Unicorns go to visit Mandy, and Jess sees them when she arrives to visit Mandy to tell her that their project won first place at the Hollywood museum thingie. And Elizabeth and Amy came second! Never mind all the other middle schools and even high schools that submitted entries. They ain't got jack on the Sweet Valley girls. They win a computer for the school. Whoopee. Plus they get to perform their act in Hollywood.
The Unicorns explain that they didn't invite Jessica because they thought she didn't like Mandy, and Jessica remembers that she's been keeping her friendship with Mandy a secret! So all is well, and Mandy thanks Jessica for fighting with her over the boa that day in the attic. If she hadn't tripped, she might not have noticed the lump on her arm until it was too late. How does it feel to be Saint Jessica?
Mandy's hair falls out, and she's found a bunch of hats, including a Dodgers baseball cap, a captain's hat that says Coast Guard, and a blue velvet turban with a huge rhinestone pin. Mandy is all kinds of awesome. But then Mandy's mum buys her the only wig they can afford,and it's a curly red thing that makes her look like Little Orphan Annie. Ew. She thinks everyone will laugh at her, but only a complete asshole would laugh at a young cancer survivor, right?
Oh wait. This is Sweet Valley. She's screwed.
Janet calls a Unicorn meeting to reconsider Mandy for membership. Ellen's still being a bitch about her clothes (she's more bitchy than stupid in these earlier books). And ew! She'll be wearing a wig! (Proof of my statement at the end of the last paragraph.) They re-vote on her membership, and she gets in! Only 2 votes against her, and I'd bet one was Ellen's. So Jess tells them about Mandy's wig problem, and they decide to buy her a nicer one.
In this part they mention the word "wig" so often that it loses all meaning. You know when that happens? Wig. Wig. Wig. Wig. It's a stupid word, really. Anyway, they pick a brown wig with a cute pixie cut, and head to Mandy's house, finding her wearing a striped "railroad engineer's" cap. That would look cute, but just call it a 'train conductor', you bumfucks. She models her Annie wig and looks super terrible. When they present the new wig to Mandy, she's stoked. Then they tell her she can be a Unicorn. Jessica expects her to turn it down, but she accepts!
All is well in the Sweet Valley world. It's so worth getting cancer if it means you can be a Unicorn.
And so ends my second recap of the day. Man, I need to get out more.