SVU #47, "You're Not My Sister"
This is the last book in this horrible miniseries, so you know in this majestic tome there is going to be a reconciliation between the twins, and the revealing of Jessica’s Mystery Stalker! I don’t want to spoil you, but there are also CONDOMS in this book. Not literally condoms; that would be weird. But somebody buys some! Or thinks about buying some!
Jessica Wakefield, depressed, suicidal, possessed of at least her fifth dead boyfriend, abandoned by her sister, kicked out of school, kicked out of the Thetas, wakes up in her room back on Calico Drive. She was having a dream about angels, and now she sees her mother’s face. She thinks she is still dreaming, and I don’t blame her. She’s been circling the crazy drain for a while and her mom didn’t seem to give a shit. I would think I was dreaming, too, if I were Alice Wakefield’s daughter and woke up to find her sitting by my beside, all lovingly. Jess asks what happens and Alice recaps: They came and got Jess because she was kicked out of school. Jess doesn’t realize she was kicked out and thinks she’s on vacation, and Alice lets her think it. Ned and Elizabeth are there, too, but they just kind of hang in the background. Elizabeth is unpacking Jessica’s clothes. There is a moment of TRUTH! When Elizabeth wonders how she could have let this let her sister slip so far into a depression without doing anything to help her? But then she realizes who she is, and thinks, “How could I have seen this coming?” I don’t know, Liz. Maybe when Nick died right in front of you both, or when Jessica stopped wearing nice clothes or makeup, or when she bought those sleeping pills, or when she started having blackouts, or when she got the letter that she was being kicked out of school for plagiarizing? I know, I know! Those were little things, there’s no way you could have known.
Jessica thinks she has a guardian angel, because she saw her Mystery Stalker outside the window the night before she left school. Everyone else just takes this as a sign of how crazy she is now. Jessica goes to sleep and the Wakefields go downstairs to talk about her. And this is just-the most fucked up family dynamic I’ve ever seen. Jessica’s brother and sister and parents talk about how sudden and tragic Jessica’s breakdown was and then they all convince each other that they did everything right and could not have prevented this in any way. But then, awesomely, the Wakefield parents start asking Liz how long ago she first noticed anything was wrong? And why didn’t she call them? Pertinent, reasonable questions. And Elizabeth flips out. “How was I supposed to know this would happen?” she shouts. “I had a lot of other things going on in my life, OK?” Yeah-your ex-boyfriend had sex with his new girlfriend and you had to be all up in that shizzle. Then you went to a frat party. Then you made out with Jess’s ex-husband. And learned to apply makeup! And wrote an article for the school newspaper! All very pressing. Definitely more urgent than your twin sister’s mental health. The Wakefields realize who they are talking to and reassure Liz that she didn’t do anything wrong. But it’s too late! Elizabeth won’t stay at home if they’re all going to blame her! She storms out of the house, back to school. Jessica wakes up and thinks she sees her guardian angel outside of her bedroom window. She calls for her mother to come see, but the only person who feels like being around her is Prince Albert the dog. And the Mystery Stalker Guardian Angel, who is indeed out in the yard. He wants to get close to Jessica; he wants to keep his eye on her to make sure she’s OK. I’m glad somebody is.
Elizabeth runs right to Mike McAllery’s apartment. She wants to make out with him to take her mind off of her crazy sister. She thinks about what a good kisser Mike is. I always thought he was probably hot. I always thought he was cool, too, but this storyline is making me doubt that. Mike and Elizabeth get hot and heavy and he starts unbuttoning her shirt! But then Elizabeth remembers that Mike devirginized her sister and freaks out. I wonder what Mike McAllery is thinking? “Twins twins twins!” He tells Elizabeth her body is amazing. I didn’t know Mike was a chubby-chaser. Elizabeth’s sex radar goes off and she runs out of his apartment.
Tom Watts can’t stand to see Danny Wyatt so upset about losing Isabella to the medical treatment center in Switzerland, where she has gone to recover her memories after a coma that left her with amnesia. Tom decides he’s going to get in touch with Isabella somehow and convince her to come home. I don’t think he knows about the amnesia? This section really reminded me of how much I liked Tom Watts in the beginning of this series. I only like him when Danny is around, because Danny makes him a good person. Tom might be Elizabeth Wakefield in male form, but he loves Danny, and is a good friend to him. Tom runs into some problems tracking Izzy down because he doesn’t speak French or German. He decides that there is only one person who can help him here: Lila Fowler, expert on all things Swiss, including neurological hospitals. He’s going to ask for her help.
Jess wakes up and wants to know where Liz is. She tells her mother she is so sad and misses her sister. Mrs. Wakefield suggests she go sit by the pool.
Dana decides that she’s not ready to have sex with Todd. She tells Todd that and he’s like D: but he pretends he’s understanding about it. At any rate, he doesn’t try to date rape her like he did when Elizabeth told him the same thing.
Back on Calico Drive, Jessica watches a talk show about guardian angels. She calls Elizabeth but Elizabeth isn’t there. She leaves a message for Liz on the machine at the dorm, about how she needs to talk to Liz about her angel, and she misses Liz. It’s sad. Elizabeth gets the message and erases it without calling Jessica back. “What kind of sister am I?” Liz asks herself, and then she wonders why “in spite of everything that was happening to Jessica, Elizabeth was still thinking about Mike. And hoping he would call.” I’m wondering the same thing, too, and the only answer I can come up with is that Liz has NO HEART.
The Wakefields employ a psychiatrist to come to the house and give Jess some sedatives. He’s ugly, with black hair in his ears, so we know he won’t be helpful. He tells Jessica what color she feels like and she says black. I don’t think she means it like Steve Martin in the The Jerk. She tells the shrink about her angel and he makes the cuckoo symbol by twirling his finger by the side of his head.
Tom goes to Theta House to talk to Lila about Operation Isabella. Li and Bruce are having a fight about somebody named Chloe Murphy, a high school senior who is coming to visit the SVU campus. Lila wants Bruce to set up a blind date between Chloe, a Fowler Family Friend, and one of his fraternity brothers. Bruce says no, that Lila describes Chloe as having a “great personality” and that means she’s butt ugly. He’s not going to do that to his bros. Tom steps in to ask for Lila’s help in contacting Isabella’s hospital in Switzerland; Lila gets a gleam in her eye and says she’ll do it as long as Tom takes Chloe on a date when she arrives. He says OK, but he’s kind of disgusted that she’s only in high school. Lila calls and gets the name of Isabella’s hospital. Tom decides to pass the number on to Danny.
Jess leaves more devastating messages for Liz, which Liz does not return. Jessica goes to sleep and dreams about her angel, who is Nick! She wakes up and the window is open. She wonders if it really was a dream?
Oh. This is so. So sad. Jessica misses Elizabeth so much that she tries to clean up the bathroom, thinking that will make Liz come back. Then she dresses up like Elizabeth in some of Liz’s clothes from high school and talks to her reflection in the mirror like it is Elizabeth. She makes “Elizabeth” say, “I love you, Jess.” She worries that Elizabeth won’t ever come back to her. Jessica’s “Guardian Angel” watches over her, and thinks about how one day he will “be with her.”
Todd and Dana are deliriously happy together. They’re out and about, doing all those nauseating new-couple things, when they run into Elizabeth, who warns Todd to be careful around Dana because she’s a sneak and she only is dating him to get back at Elizabeth for dating Tom. To which Dana replies with the most awesomest speech of this series: “Listen, Elizabeth. This isn’t about you. It’s about me and Todd and we have nothing to prove to you. Get it?...Because you really need to work on getting your own life-and staying out of ours. That way we can get on with our relationship and you can get on with being lonely and bitter…or whatever it is you do when you and Tom Watts aren’t busy with your tedious little on-again, off-again relationship.” !!! I officially love Dana. Elizabeth can’t really respond so she just huffs away.
Elizabeth is still fuming when her editor calls and tells her to go to LA to cover some sort of conference for the school newspaper. She calls to tell her mother she can’t come to the dinner they are having to cheer Jess up. Mrs. Wakefield is actually kind of pissed, and mean to Elizabeth about it. But Elizabeth thinks that she’s not in the mood to deal with her crazy sister after the spectacular dressing-down Dana gave her. She tells Alice she’ll try to stop by when she gets a chance. Jessica goes down to dinner and when she realizes Elizabeth isn’t coming she thinks Elizabeth has been kidnapped and her mother won’t tell her because she doesn’t want to worry her. I would say that’s crazy talk, but Elizabeth has been kidnapped before. Like, three times!
Elizabeth has just checked into the hotel in LA when Mike McAllery shows up. I wonder if Elizabeth knows the term “booty call?” Mike takes her to a 50s style diner. Then they go back to Liz’s room. They’re making out when Mike tells her he forgot to bring protection with him. Elizabeth doesn’t understand what he means. Mike says, Condoms. But they probably sell them at the hotel convenience store. Elizabeth is having convulsions because someone brought up sex to her. She says she’ll go get them and races out of the room. She wonders if she should have sex with Mike to show everyone that she’s not a prude? That’s a stellar idea, Liz! Do it! But she can’t buy the condoms. She can’t do it. She races out of the store, wondering how to get out of this mess? I don’t know, Elizabeth. Maybe the same way you always do? By telling the guy you’re not going to sleep with him and then making all sorts of value judgments against him for even wanting to have sex?
Mrs. Wakefield gives Jess the number of Liz’s hotel suite. She calls and the receptionist at the front desk tells her the man in Liz’s room told her to hold all calls. Jessica is even more convinced that Liz has been kidnapped. She thinks that without Liz, she is nothing. She walks to the window and looks out-and sees her Guardian under a tree! She runs outside and calls to him, “It’s you!”
Instead of telling Mike she isn’t ready for sex, Liz blames it on Jessica. She can’t sleep with him, because it might hurt Jess’s feelings. This is really shitty of her. She’s using her sister’s feeling as an excuse when really she doesn’t care or she would be at the special Jessica dinner. Lame, Liz. Lame, lame, lame. Elizabeth decides she needs to pull herself together for Jessica’s sake but whether or not she really means it is debatable.
Jessica tells Steven about her angel and Steven wants to call the cops. He convinces Jess there is no angel, it’s just her meds making her hallucinate. I can’t snark on him, I’d probably do the same thing. We cut to the dorm, where Jessica’s “angel” is sneaking into her dorm room with some sort of plan about how he’s going to get her back. We don’t know what it is yet, but I’m sure we will, soon.
Liz arrives back at the dorm and finds a note: “Jessica needs you.” It’s been slipped under the door. Something about the handwriting makes Liz “look as though she’s seen a ghost!” Elizabeth decides to go home a day early. Jessica is so happy to see her that she doesn’t leave Elizabeth’s side. She tells her sister, in a childlike voice, that she thought she’d never see her again. Jess says a lot of things in this book “in a childlike voice,” probably to underscore the fact that she is crazy now. Instead of telling Jessica that she missed her, too, Elizabeth tells her that she’s cutting off the circulation in her arm. But then she wipes Jessica’s tears with her sweater cuff, which almost makes me like her.
It’s heartbreaking how nice Jessica is to Elizabeth in the next few scenes after the shitty way Elizabeth has treated her over the course of the last four books. Jessica tells Elizabeth that she doesn’t even care what they do as long as they are together. Jessica tucks Elizabeth into bed, plumping up her pillows. But then-creepiness! She sneaks into Elizabeth’s room to watch her sleep. When Elizabeth wakes up she is understandably sketched out. I can’t blame her for that, either. Jessica says she was pretending that they were back in high school, fighting over the bathroom. Jessica tells Elizabeth about her angel. He’s always watching over her. She had a dream and he had Nick’s face. Elizabeth is like, “……..” And then she tells Jessica that she needs to come to terms with the fact that Nick is not coming back. Jessica freaks out and starts shouting at Elizabeth. “First you’re not around at all…then you show up and all you can do is smash my hopes-just shatter the only thing that keeps me going. If I’ve gone crazy, it’s all your fault. What kind of sister are you?” Elizabeth can’t say “A bad one,” but she does “cower” under Jessica’s gaze which means she knows exactly what’s up. But then Lizzie makes a little speech of her own. “It’s not my fault! I can’t do everything for you-you have to help yourself! I have my own life, which happens to be falling apart at the moment, because I’ve been a wreck over you! You have to get on with your life, Jess…stop living in the past, and stop blaming me!” Jessica is “pale as death, and shaking, by the time she’s finished, and even Elizabeth thinks she might have gone too far this time. Which is a first. But then! Jessica admits Liz is right. She’s not a bad sister. Jessica apologizes for “pushing” her sister away. I really was hoping Jessica would not apologize for ELIZABETH not being there for her, but I knew it would happen that way and I was prepared for it. The twins kiss and make up and Jessica thanks Elizabeth for “all” she’s done for her. That picnic. And don’t forget the barbecue!! Elizabeth, to her credit, promises to be there more in the future, but she doesn’t really mean it, because in the next scene she is on her way back to school and Jessica doesn’t want her to go and is sort of asking her not to.
Danny calls the Swiss hospital where Isabella is getting treatment and Isabella’s father answers. Mr. Ricci is not exactly thrilled to hear from Danny. He hasn’t forgotten that Isabella was driven to jump off the roof of the frat house by a dose of PCP, and he tells Danny that he doesn’t want his daughter to have anything with the “freaks and druggies” who drove her to do it. As far as I know, Danny had nothing to do with it besides just being at the same party. I bet this is because he’s black. Mr. Ricci is about to hang up when we hear Isabella’s voice in the background: “Dad? Is that Danny?”
OK, I keep going back and forth on Elizabeth in the latter half of this book. One of the reasons Liz wanted to get back to school was to figure out a way to get Jess re-enrolled at SVU. She and Nina brainstorm and then all out of the blue Elizabeth is like, “The Americans With Disabilities Act!” It’s the answer to their problems. Here is Liz’s plan: Jessica is crazy, and the ADA extends to mental health disabilities. She’s going to argue that to kick Jessica out of school would be unconstitutional, because she is covered by the ADA. OK. I happen to be studying disability law this very semester, and here is why this would not work. First, the school didn’t kick Jessica out because she’s suffering from a mental defect. They expelled her because she cheated. I guess they could somehow try to prove that Jessica cheated because she was crazy, but I don’t know how easy that would be considering that Jessica doesn’t have a stellar academic reputation and has been accused of cheating many, many times before. (Randy Mason changing the school grades in the computer? That sketchiness with the SATs? I am sure there are other examples.) But assuming they can prove it, a university’s only responsibility under the ADA is to 1) not discriminate in admissions on the basis of disability and 2) to provide reasonable accommodation for disabled students, like sign-language interpreters, seeing eye dogs, notetakers, stuff like that. Someone having a disability does not excuse their compliance with the school’s honor code. But. This is a Sweet Valley book, so who cares? Face transplants aren’t real either and that’s happened. And Vampires. So whatever. Elizabeth goes to Tom to get some research they did before the Great Sex Breakup on a piece on the ADA for WSVU. He helps her; they seem to have called some sort of truce. Tom warns Liz that ADA claims in the area of mental health are not very successful; that is somewhat true. But Liz doesn’t need to worry about it because I’ve read books that come after this one and Jessica is back in school. In the middle of their research session, Lila calls about Tom’s blind date with Chloe. Liz can hear everything Li is saying, and she freezes up again. JESUS WOMAN! YOU’RE NOT DATING HIM! He can see whomever he wants! And MAY I REMIND YOU, you ALMOST HAD SEX WITH MIKE MCALLERY LIKE YESTERDAY??? How is that OK and Tom going on a blind date not? Tom actually thinks he owes her an explanation and tries to explain, but Elizabeth won’t have it. She asks Tom if he’s “already sleeping with this one, too?” SLJ:LSKDJF:LSKDGJ:FJKG:FDLJG. I hate her.
Since Steven called the cops they’re patrolling Calico Drive and Jessica’s angel is hiding in the shadows. He thinks, “I’ll see you soon, my sweet.” I never thought of Nick as being the type to call someone “my sweet.” Oops! Did I say Nick? Disregard, disregard. Move along, nothing to see here.
Elizabeth won’t have anything to do with Tom (again) so she enlists Steven in their crusade to get Jessica back in school. What a brilliant strategy! This is sure to work. Actually, it will, but it wouldn’t in real life, because Steven is dumb and only pre-law. I’ve been in law school for three years now and I still wouldn’t know what to do in this situation. If someone asked me, I’d be like, “Maybe you should hire a real lawyer. But not Ned Wakefield because he sucks.”
Jessica calls Liz, but Liz isn’t answering. To be fair, she’s at the dean’s office, trying to help Jessica get back into school, but it’s still sad when Jessica thinks, “Be there…be there like you promised.” Aw. Jess thinks her angel has abandoned her, too. If I knew I was crazy and the “angel” I’d been seeing skulking around all scary-like in the shadows suddenly wasn’t there, I’d be so relieved. But Jess is bummed out.
Oops. Dana and Todd are walking on the beach and she mentions she wants a beach wedding. Todd is eighteen, so he’s freaked out to hear her mention it. Oh, Dana.
Tom’s date with Chloe ends up going better than he expected because she’s smart and hot. Trust me, if she were only smart, but ugly, he wouldn’t think so.
Jessica misses her angel so much. She thinks that he was only a side effect of her pills. She’s stopped taking her pills, and now he’s gone, so she thinks if she starts taking the pills again he’ll come back. She thinks that she will take all the pills at once, just to be sure. She starts floating and says goodbye to her family. She leaves a message for Liz that says she forgives her. She misses her angel, she says. She takes the pills. Liz gets the message and realizes through her twin spidey sense what Jessica is about to do. She hops in the Jeep and races home to Calico Drive, but she doesn’t call her parents or the paramedics, which seems like a pretty big oversight to me. What if she hits traffic? What if Tom Watts thinks about sex again and she has to go chide him for it?
Jessica goes outside to take the last of the pills. She sees her angel come out of the trees. It’s Nick! He’s her angel! She thinks the pills are making her see things, but then Nick comes to her and puts his arms around her. It really is him! He was just pretending to be dead! He did it for Jess-he knew that as long as he would alive, Jess would miss him too much and want to be with him. GREAT PLAN, NICKY! SHE JUST TOOK A BUNCH OF PILLS. You might as well have taken your chances, because the way things turned out, Jess isn’t doing so well. Nick says he loves her and that he has to go. He doesn’t say anything about the fact that JESSICA JUST TOOK ALL THOSE PILLS. He just leaves. Elizabeth shows up, though. She finds Jessica on the ground, unconscious. Elizabeth shakes her really, really hard and Jessica wakes up. I guess she didn’t take enough pills to kill herself? She took at least four, y’all. Depending on the dosage, that could be enough. It doesn’t seem to matter. Jess is happy because she knows Nick is alive and she can get through anything with Liz by her side. She doesn’t want to die anymore. Maybe she should go get her stomach pumped at the hospital just to be sure? No one suggests that, though. They just hang out. And Nick walks down the street and thinks about how he will never see Jess again. And then he turns the corner and disappears into the darkness. So-everything’s-all better? Hmm.Oh, and Isabella is not back yet and I think Danny might have a drinking problem, but we'll have to find out for sure in the next book.