Sweet Valley Kids #43 - Jessica Gets Spooked
Keeping up with the true Sweet Valley Halloween theme...
I'm not as exciting and snarky as all of you guys, but I'll give it a go. And as a peace offering, here's the illustrations for the book.
So Mrs. Otis’s class are going to the Enchanted Forest for a pre-Halloween trip. For all of you no in the know, the Enchanted Forest is an amusement park. The perfect educational trip for a class of seven-year-olds. The rumour going around is that the hunted house at Enchanted Forest is really haunted by a goblin. Elizabeth thinks the stories are true, but Jessica doesn’t. Lila says some kid disappeared in there a few years ago, so I’m going to believe that story because Lila is awesome. We don’t get to ehar what Eva, Amy or Ellen think.
The morning of the trip the girls are talking about the goblin and the boys are laughing at them. Elizabeth asks them what’s so funny and they say she won’t understand because she’s a girl. Oh, not so trusty are you now, Todd. Charlie Cashman’s bragging that he’s going to go to the haunted house first. Jessica thinks she’s going to go last. Charlie joins the bandwagon and says that’s because she’s a girl. Angry Jessica wishes that Charlie would leave her alone.
On the bus Charlie keeps teasing Jessica and pulls her hair. Jessica tells him to stop and he agrees. Did that sound like it was a bit too easy to anyone else? The girls go back to talking about their goblin until Jessica finds slime in her hair, courtesy of Charlie, which personally I think was pretty daring of him. Mrs. Otis doesn’t get mad enough at him for it to be any fun and fixes Jessica’s hair for her until they get to Enchanted Forest.
The class is allowed to pair up and go around alone, with no teacher or parent supervision. It’s obvious that the likes of Alice & Ned Wakefield and George Fowler signed the permission forms for this field trip. That is, if they were even told their kids were going on the trip - who knows.
The class try to decide what they’re all going to do first. When Eva suggests the haunted house Todd says it’s not ready yet and they covers for himself. Charlie makes another jab at Jessica and she tells him to go away and advises him to “go jump in a lake” so Charlie squirts her with a water gun. I’m starting to like him. Apparently Charlie has stuff to do so he leaves them. Todd goes with them and Elizabeth is disappointed because Todd (and Kisho) promised to spend the day with her. No Miller’s Point for those two tonight. If that wasn’t enough the twins are ditched next by Lila, Ellen, Eva and Amy because they don’t want Charlie bothering them all day. Oh noes - everyone has ditched the twins.
The abandoned twins decide to go on a ride called King Abelard’s Castle which is a ride where you sit in a boat and it takes you around the king’s castle. It actually sounds cool and medieval but guess who ends up being in the boat behind them. Charlie and Bully II, Jerry McAllister! They splash Elizabeth and Jessica for the end of the ride. And Jessica thinks it would be ore fun to push Charlie in the ocean now. Come on, girl, go for the pool.
The girls run into Winston and Andy who say they’ve been in the haunted house and didn’t see anything suspicious but cynically say that maybe something’s waiting for Elizabeth and Jessica. The plot thickens. Elizabeth thinks that the boys all have a secret and that’s why they’re acting strange. No, really Elizabeth? Elizabeth decides to try and make Jessica forget about the haunted house until she finds out what the boys are doing, so she makes Jessica go on the bumper cars instead, which is also where Charlie goes next. He corners Jessica into a wall and Jessica stays there for the rest of the ride with an angry face.
Jessica and Elizabeth decide they should buy souvenirs for their trip and after having a discussion about glass horses and unicorns (ten points if you know who thinks horses are smelly and unicorns are magical) they go to a shop that’s painted in rainbow colours because every theme park has a shop that supports gays. Unfortunately it isn’t the gay-rights shop but a joke shop. Jessica thinks that the pig nose would be good for Steven. This has no relevance to the story, but it’s pretty much the only time Steven is mentioned. Charlie throws a foam rock at Jessica and Jessica announces that boys are stupid and gets huffy again.
The class meets for lunch and trade stories. The only notable thing that happened was Ellen winning a big purple stuffed elephant. Everyone’s heard about Charlie harassing Jessica all day but Jessica doesn’t want to admit that it’s true to Lila because even at seven she thinks Lila’s an ‘I-told-you-so person’ aka awesome person. Everyone else has been to the haunted house but no one’s seen the goblin.
Elizabeth goes to talk to Kisho and Todd and blackmails them into telling her what their secret is because she‘s kept their secrets. Which means that we don’t get to find out what happened to Todd at soccer practice last week or what grade Kisho got in his spelling test, which sound interesting. But we don’t find out what the secret is yet - that’s the BIG CLIMAX! But Lizzie’s not happy, whatever it is.
Elizabeth continues trying to distract Jessica from the haunted house after lunch (omg, could that have something to do with the secret) and the twins get ice cream. Charlie pushes Jessica and she drops her ice cream. And yells at him. And she almost cries. Jessica, not Elizabeth.
Finally Jessica pushes Elizabeth enough to go to the haunted house. It all sounds really blah until they get to room with a coffin that starts to open. Then something taps Jessica’s shoulder and OMG IT’S THE GOBLIN!!! Or Charlie Cashman. One and the same. And he wants to cut off her hair and toes for his soup. That’s what it actually says.
But our Jessie’s smarter than the toe-eating Charlie and tells him to grow up and tells him she thinks he’s picking on her because he likes her. Then good old Jessica threatens to kiss him and he runs away. And everyone’s friends again.
And there’s a little mention of Halloween at the end of the book. Jessica’s a mermaid, Elizabeth’s the Penguin from Batman and Steven’s a ghost. And the Wakefield’s are going away for Thanksgiving so see Idians in the next book.