Sweet Valley High #1: Double Love
Publication date: October 1983
Welcome back to Sweet Valley, the most terrific place in the world. Our series opens with Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield getting ready for school. Jessica is excited because today is the big day the twins find out whether they got into Pi Beta Alpha, the best (and as far as I can tell only) sorority at Sweet Valley High. Jessica is delighted when hunky basketball team captain Todd Wilkins calls, but is immediately annoyed when he asks to talk to Elizabeth. Jessica tells him Elizabeth can’t talk now and then tells Elizabeth Todd called to wish Jessica luck with Pi Beta. We find out very quickly that Jessica just lies all the time. Can’t help it. Elizabeth is sad because she has a crush on Todd and she thought he liked her.
I’m gonna go ahead and save you some suspense and let you know the twins have been accepted into Pi Beta. Jessica is ecstatic. Elizabeth doesn’t care. We don’t hear about the sorority again until the dance the Pi Betas are throwing with the Phi Epsilon fraternity. None of it matters.
Todd tries to talk to Elizabeth on their way into school but the bell rings and they agree to meet after school under the fancy clock. (The school has a fancy clock.) Liz gets there just in time to see Todd and Jessica drive off in the Fiat Spider the twins share. Elizabeth is pissed about walking home and heartbroken that Todd apparently likes Jessica and not her. When confronted, Jessica brushes the whole thing off and says she was just helping Todd get some decorations for the dance. She quickly changes the subject to their brother Steven, who has been coming home from college every weekend. Jessica thinks he’s seeing someone and she’s just dying to know who she is.
The next day, everyone at school thinks Todd and Jessica are an item, but Jessica can’t get him to ask her to the dance no matter how much she bats her eyes at him. He just wants to know who Elizabeth is going with. Jessica lies and says Elizabeth is always dating different guys and wouldn’t it be a shame if Jessica was the only one without a date to the dance. Todd just grunts and walks away because he’s stupid. Jessica is outraged. She decides the only thing that will make her feel better is getting catcalled on her way home.
So off she goes, swinging her hips. She succeeds in catching the attention of Rick Andover, a seventeen-year-old delinquent who dropped out of school six months ago and now spends his time cruising around in his totally cool Camaro. He drives Jessica home because he knows where she lives, which isn’t creepy at all. He tells her he’ll pick her up the next night and take her out. She knows her parents won’t let her go out with him so she has to sneak out. She won’t tell Elizabeth who she’s going out with so Elizabeth assumes it’s Todd and mopes about it.
Rick takes Jessica to Kelly’s Roadhouse. Picture the grossest bar you’ve ever been in and add country music and that’s Kelly’s. Rick is drunk after one drink and gets all handsy, and he starts a brawl when Jessica tries to leave without him. The cops show up and take Jessica home, but one of them calls her Elizabeth when she gets out of the car. Caroline Pearce happens to be walking by, and wouldn’t you know it, Caroline Pearce is the biggest gossip in the world.
The whole school is abuzz the next day about Elizabeth and Rick and the brawl at Kelly’s. But for some reason, nobody is more angry about it than Enid Rollins’ boyfriend, Ronnie Edwards. Like, he is disgusted with Elizabeth and I have no idea why he cares so much. Enid is Elizabeth’s best friend and she tells him she talked to Elizabeth and she denied everything, but Ronnie doesn’t care and he convinces Todd not to believe her either. Really, this is just setup for the next book. Enid has a secret and seeing how Ronnie reacts to the Elizabeth thing is freaking her out. She vows he “must never know about me.”
At this point I need to inform you of some stupid irrelevant stuff. The Patmans and the Fowlers are fighting over the school football field. The school board let the lease run out and now the Patmans want to plant an English garden on the land and the Fowlers want to build a factory. There’s a whole court case about it, and the twins’ dad Ned is the attorney on the case. He’s been working long hours with his assistant, a pretty divorcee named Marianna West. The twins’s mother has also been working a lot lately and the twins are low key convinced their dad is having an affair.
Anyway, Elizabeth is PISSED that Jessica isn’t correcting anyone about the Kelly’s Roadhouse situation. Jessica tries to be a good sister for a minute and tell Todd the truth, but he’s a moron and thinks Jessica is just so noble for trying to cover for Liz. He kisses her and finally tells her he’s taking her to the dance.
Elizabeth goes to the dance with good friend Winston Egbert, who you know is a nerd because he wears glasses and his last name is Egbert. Todd and Jessica do a sexy dance that everyone clears the floor for, but after that he mostly just stares at Elizabeth the whole time. When he drops Jessica off at home later, he gives her a peck on the cheek instead of the steamy kiss she thought she’d be getting. Well, that’s just the last straw. She decides to get even with Todd by telling Elizabeth that he groped her and she had to beg him to stop. Liz is furious.
Oh, we find out that brother Steven has been dating Tricia Martin. Tricia’s father is the town drunk and her sister Betsy is a drug addict so Jessica disapproves. Who cares?
Elizabeth is covering the whole ridiculous football field thing for The Oracle, the school paper. She goes to court where her father and Marianna West are arguing on behalf of, I don’t know, the football field itself? In the end neither the Patmans nor the Fowlers are allowed to buy the field. Elizabeth doesn’t like seeing her dad hanging around Marianna West, and all three kids are horrified when Ned and Alice announce they’re having Marianna over for dinner and they have an announcement. The kids think Ned is going to announce he’s divorcing Alice and that he invited Marianna over to do it. Which is ridiculous. Turns out the announcement is that Marianna is a full partner in the law firm now, and Ned has been spending so much time with her to help her get promoted. This is also ridiculous because why would your kids care about this woman they don’t know getting a promotion? Why is this a family dinner announcement?
One night when the twins are on their way home from the Dairi Burger, the car stalls and Rick Andover swoops in out of nowhere and jumps in the driver’s seat. He’s drunk and he drives like a lunatic all over town, finally whipping through the Dairi Burger parking lot, where Todd sees Liz screaming out the window in terror. He follows the Fiat to Kelly’s Roadhouse, and when Rick gets out of the car Todd beats him up. He drives the twins home, and Jessica says she never wants to see the inside of Kelly’s again. Todd realized she’d been telling the truth earlier, and now Todd and Elizabeth can sort through all Jessica’s lies. They’re a real couple now and isn’t that sweet.
1983 Fiat Spider
One last thing before we go. Elizabeth anonymously writes the Eyes and Ears gossip column for the school paper. It’s a tradition that every year when the author is unveiled, that person gets thrown into the school pool. Liz and Jessica go to a football rally, and Liz makes sure Jessica is dressed like her. Sweet Valley High’s hottest band, The Droids, are playing at the rally. Elizabeth pretends to be Jessica and tells the Droids lead singer, Dana, that her sister is the Eyes and Ears columnist. Dana makes the announcement and Jessica, dressed like Elizabeth, is thrown into the pool. The End.
