Sweet Valley High #7: Dear Sister
Publication Date: April 1984
Liz is still in a coma. A cute doctor tells Jessica to talk to her and maybe she’ll come back to the world. And it works! Liz wakes up by the end of the first chapter. A couple days later, she’s sitting up in bed and complaining to Jessica about how terrible she must look. Jess brings her some makeup and makes her pretty, but Liz isn’t satisfied and she paints her face some more. Then Todd comes to visit and Liz acts bored and says she’s tired. A minute later, Todd hears her laughing and flirting with Dr. Cute Doctor.
Liz has to stay in the hospital for three more weeks and then spend another two weeks recovering at home. She’s bored to death and she insists on her and Jessica throwing an “I’m Not in a Coma Anymore” party when she’s fully recovered. She says they should only invite boys, but Jessica talks her down, saying if they do that none of the girls will ever invite them to a party again. Liz reluctantly agrees.
It’s about this time that Jessica, always observant, starts thinking maybe something is different about her sister.
Todd comes to the house but Liz tells Jessica to send him away. He’s obsessing over the accident, and in the style of a gothic romance novel he asks, “Does it haunt her, Jessica? Does she blame me? Jessica, does she ever ask for me?” Jessica tells him to calm down. She says everything will go back to normal when Liz gets back to school, and that she’ll probably have all her backed up work done before Jessica even finishes her Moby Dick book report. This leads to one of my favorite exchanges in the series:
“I mean, Todd, who really cares about whales?” Jessica asked in annoyance.
Todd did, but he let the comment slide by.
Still funny to me.
Liz’s first week back at school is weird. She’s dressing like Jessica and everyone keeps getting the twins confused. She tells Mr. Collins about the great looking doctors at the hospital. She doesn’t want to hang out with Enid and she doesn’t want to be alone with Todd. When it comes time for the twins’ party, Liz goes to the mall for a “vitally important” errand and leaves Jessica to get the house ready by herself. Liz ignores Todd all night and flirts with all the boys, and after the party she claims a headache and goes to bed so Jessica has to clean up by herself.
Out of nowhere one night, the Wakefield parents announce that the Percys are going to Europe and their twelve-year-old twin daughters, Jean and Joan, will be staying with the Wakefields. Never heard of the Percys and I don’t think we ever see them again after this. As soon as the Percy twins get to the house, Ned and Alice leave to go play bridge somewhere because they’re apparently a hundred years old. Jessica has a date with Danny Stauffer, and while she’s getting ready, Liz puts on a miniskirt and tells the Percy twins that Jessica will be taking them to the drive-in. Then she leaves the house, forcing Jessica to take the girls with her, ruining her date.
The school counselor, Mrs. Green, talks to Liz about the fact that she hasn’t made up any of her schoolwork. Liz whines to Winston about it and he offers to give her his term paper so she can use it as a reference, but instead she just rewords a few things and hands it in. She also makes something up about Susan Stewart cheating on Ken Matthews and puts it in her gossip column in the hopes of breaking them up. Mr. Collins fires her from The Oracle, and Mrs. Green tells the Wakefield parents about the term paper. Now that the parents have finally noticed something is wrong with their child, they put Jessica in charge of keeping her out of trouble. What a great idea.
After school one day, Jessica comes home to find Todd sitting on the front steps, waiting for Liz to come home. They complain to each other for a bit, and then Liz zooms into the driveway on a motorcycle with Max Dellon. She runs inside to change, telling Max to wait for her. Jessica is freaking out because Liz is grounded and if she leaves the house Jessica will get in trouble. After Liz takes off again with Max, Jessica makes Todd follow them. He pulls up next to them at a stoplight and plucks Liz off the back of the bike and puts her in his car. He tries to talk to her about what’s going on with her, but she’s a brick wall so he drives her home.
Jessica wakes up one Saturday at 7am to the Percy twins telling her she has to drive them to a flute audition. The Wakefield parents, true to form, have left anyone but themselves in charge of these kids they’ve invited into their home. Jessica is supposed to meet Danny at the beach at noon, but she’s at the place for five hours before the girls even get called in to audition. She speeds back to Sweet Valley, getting a ticket along the way, and then pulls into the beach parking lot hours after she was supposed to meet Danny. She sees him with his arm around another bikini-clad girl. Then she bumps into another car and just starts crying. The Wakefield parents try to yell at her about the dent and the ticket, but the mini twins stand up for her and say the dent was the other guy’s fault and that she couldn’t have been going as fast as the cop said because if she had they’d be carsick. So now Jessica and the mini twins are friends.
That night, Lila throws a pickup party, which means everyone arrives single and picks up whoever they can. New couples form, old couples break up, it’s a whole big thing. Liz ends up with Bruce Patman. They end up leaving together to go to Bruce’s father’s club “down on the beach,” and I don’t know what that means. Is it a clubhouse? Is it the country club? I don’t know. Bruce parks in the lot, produces a bottle of wine and a cup from behind his seat, and pours Liz a glass. She’s already drunk, but you know, he just has to make sure she’ll be drunk enough to have sex with him. Suddenly, Todd opens the door, pulls Liz out, and once again puts her in his car and drives her home.
At school, Bill Chase talks to his buddy Todd about Liz and how down Todd is feeling about the fact that she isn’t interested in him anymore, and sensitive Bill asks if Todd would mind if Bill asks her out. What a guy. Liz agrees to go out with Bill on Saturday, but then Bruce calls and she decides to go out with him instead. When Bill shows up, Jessica decides she’s had enough of all this so she pretends to be Liz and goes out with Bill herself. This is doubly fortuitous for her, because Bill rejected her one time and Jessica has been waiting for the right time to get even with him.
Bruce takes Liz to his family’s beach house, where they make out and drink wine. He lays her down in his bed, and then goes downstairs to get more wine. So much wine in this book. While he’s gone, Liz gets up and stumbles over a chair and hits her head on the floor. She has no idea where she is or how she got there. Bruce comes back and she’s utterly revolted. She tries to get away from him, but he says he’s going to take what he wants. He tries to kiss her but she bites his lip, yells at him about what a pathetic creep he is, and runs out the door. The beach house is close to the beach club where all the kids are hanging out, and she runs right into Todd. He takes one look at her and realizes it’s his old reliable Liz. He seems confused, though, because he just saw Liz and Bill on the beach, and if Liz was with Bruce then who was with Bill? He’s not very bright.
Meanwhile, Bill has had a lovely evening and he tells the twin he thinks is Elizabeth that he loves her. That’s when she drops the bomb that she’s actually Jessica. The End.
Notes:
1. Ned and Alice Wakefield are terrible parents. They always are, but this book really drives it home. They seem to be completely absent unless they need to ground someone.
2. I love the soap opera level drama of the head injury and the subsequent personality change. It’s funny that a blow to the head turned Liz into Jessica, and makes me wonder if Jess was dropped on her head at some point.
3. Bruce fucking Patman. What a garbage human being. Also, by the way, Bruce is a senior. We literally never see him hanging out with any other seniors. He’s always hanging around our group of juniors. He’s probably already alienated everyone in his class so he had to move on.
