Sweet Valley High #12: When Love Dies
Publication Date: September 1984
Today’s story is about the twins’ brother, Steven Wakefield. We haven’t spent much time with Steven so all we really know about him is that he comes home from college every weekend to see his girlfriend, Tricia Martin. Jessica hates that Steven is dating her because the Martins are a “trashy” family. Dad’s a drunk and older sister Betsy is an unspecified mess who will end up “either pregnant or in jail in another year or so.” Steven is depressed because Tricia has been distant lately. Jessica hopes they’ll break up soon.
Steven calls Tricia’s house but she isn’t home, so a little while later he heads on over to the poor side of town to see her. You know it’s the poor side of town because of the broken glass and uneven roads. Tricia’s father answers the door and says Tricia doesn’t want to see Steven, but Steve barges in anyway and finds Tricia in her room packing a suitcase. He demands to know what’s going on but she just says she’s going out of town. Steven says she must be seeing someone else and she’s going away with him for the weekend and Tricia doesn’t deny it. They break up and Steven leaves, and then we find out the truth. Tricia has leukemia and she’s going to die soon. Her mother died of leukemia when Tricia was nine, and her death is what turned Tricia’s dad into the alcoholic he is today. Tricia doesn’t want Steven to go through that so she thinks breaking up is best. The suitcase is because she’s going to be spending a couple days in the hospital.
On the bus ride home from school the next day, we get a whole lot of extraneous information from Cara Walker. She tells Jessica she’s dying to go out with Steven now that he’s single. Then she mentions that a local popular (and gorgeous) talk show host named Jeremy Frank is in the hospital with a broken leg. Finally, she says a new rich family by the name of Morrow is moving into a giant mansion in Sweet Valley. All of these things are now bullet points on Jessica’s to-do list. Task one is to get Liz to volunteer with her at the hospital. She imagines herself somehow saving Jeremy Frank’s life…from his broken leg, I guess. Speaking of which, who stays long term in a hospital just because of a broken leg? Task two is to find out more about the Morrows. Ned Wakefield is the lawyer handling the estate and he tells the twins that Kurt Morrow used to be a famous football player and then started some kind of computer company that made him a millionaire. He has a daughter the twins’ age and a son Steven’s age. Task three is to get Steven and Cara together, but that’s gonna have to wait.
Their first day as candy stripers at the hospital, Liz meets a weird orderly named Carl who gives her the creeps. Every time she sees him, he’s staring at her and just being creepy. She also meets Jeremy Frank while Jessica is sentenced to the maternity ward. Liz stupidly tells Jessica which room he’s in, so Jessica saunters in and introduces herself. She then proceeds to lose her balance and catch herself on one of the cables holding Jeremy’s leg up. It gets pulled loose and she has to run and get a nurse. The next time she sees him she accidentally spills a pitcher of ice water on him. Liz, in the interest of saving Jeremy from further harm, comes up with a plan to get Jessica to back off. The plan is to have Jeremy pretend he actually likes her, because that’s usually when Jessica loses interest in the boy. Jeremy is a good sport and goes along with it. After a week of giving her roses and stuff, he asks her to marry him. Jessica freaks out and runs away. Problem solved until a few days later when she’s had time to consider the benefits of being engaged to a celebrity. She tells Jeremy she accepts his proposal so he has to tell her it was a ruse. To make it up to her, he tells her he’ll let her be on his talk show.
In the interest of fixing up Steven and Cara, Jessica tells Steve that Cara is having a party and he simply must stop by. Trouble is, Cara isn’t really having a party so she has to scramble to get a couple people over. Hardly anyone can get there on short notice, so pretty soon Cara and Steven find themselves alone in the living room. Steve is miserable. He knows Cara is a gossip so he asks her if he knows anything about what Tricia is up to. Cara says Caroline Pearce saw Tricia and some man at the drugstore together and she was hanging all over him. Steven is suddenly feeling vengeful and he pulls Cara off the couch to dance with him. Then he kisses her and he hates it but she thinks he’s super into her now.
Elizabeth sees Tricia at the hospital but Tricia runs away from her. Liz catches her at school one day and asks her about it, and Tricia says she was visiting a friend. As they’re talking, Jessica and Cara make sure to walk by so Tricia can hear Cara talking about how Steven is taking her to a college party this weekend. Liz can tell Tricia is heartbroken, and she doesn’t understand why she broke up with Steven when she’s clearly still in love with him. The next time Liz works at the hospital, she’s assigned to a new patient, and it happens to be Tricia. Tricia tells her everything and makes her promise she won’t tell anyone, especially Steven, that she’s sick.
Over the next week, Elizabeth is consumed with woe. She regrets promising Tricia she wouldn’t tell anyone her secret. And I’m all about keeping your promises, but this one is maybe a little much for Tricia to have put on her ex-boyfriend’s little sister. She finally talks to Mr. Collins, who gives her the advice I would, which is to tell Steven what’s going on. She wants to tell him that night but first she has to work at the hospital and then Steve leaves for his date with Cara right after dinner. I feel like in real life there would be a split second where Liz could call him or pull him aside and tell him, but not in this book. He takes Cara to a party and Liz sits around stewing about it at home. Steve is miserable at the party and Cara asks if he’s thinking about Tricia. She says if they’re going to be a couple now he’ll need to get over her. Steven says they are most definitely not a couple and he’s still in love with Tricia. When he gets home from the party, Liz tells him everything. He rushes over to Tricia’s house and tells her he knows. They hug and profess their love for each other and it’s really pretty sad.
The Morrows, the new family in town, are throwing a party and pretty much everyone is invited. Liz has to work at the hospital first, and as she’s leaving, Carl the creepy orderly knocks her out with chloroform and puts her in a van.
The End.
Notes:
1. I don’t think I realized until this book that Tricia is a high school senior. I guess I thought she was Steven’s age but too poor to go to college.
2. I love descriptions of the poor side of town. You cross an invisible border and suddenly everything is dirty and broken and we get an internal dialogue of a Wakefield thinking what a shame it is.
3. Steven Wakefield is like a block of wood. As we progress through the series, you’ll find he gets stupider the more we read about him.
