Sweet Valley High #8: Heartbreaker

Publication Date: May 1984

After the events of the last book, Bill Chase is hopelessly in love with Jessica and she’s having a great time leading him on. They’re playing the leads in the upcoming spring play even though Bill would rather be surfing. Liz tells Jessica that Bill offered to give DeeDee Gordon surfing lessons and Jessica hates the idea that something might cut into time he might otherwise spend pining over her. She calls him up and says she lost her script for the play and wants to borrow his. He rushes it over to her house but she’s already left for a date with Tom McKay. Liz tries to tell him to stop being in love with Jessica, but of course he ignores her. We’ve had this exact conversation before, but with Robin Wilson.

After leaving the Wakefield house, Bill goes to the beach and thinks about things and we learn why he’s such a loner. Before he moved to Sweet Valley, he lived in Santa Monica and had a girlfriend named Julianne. They got into an argument at a party one rainy night and she left with a friend. The car she was in crashed and she died. The twins look just like her, so basically Jessica is traumatizing him all over again without realizing it. Not that she’d care if she knew, I’m sure.

Todd’s girlfriend from freshman year has moved back to Sweet Valley after living in Paris for a while. Her name is Patsy Webber and she’s gorgeous. Liz calls Todd one night and his mom says he isn’t home so Liz assumes he’s out with Patsy.

Everyone is hanging out at the beach one day. Jessica sees Bill teaching DeeDee how to surf so she has to go interrupt him and get him to rub suntan lotion on her. Then she says she’s hungry so Bill goes to the Dairi Burger to get her some food. Patsy comes up wearing a teeny bikini and Liz has to go to the parking lot to cry. The Nerd Brigade shows up, consisting of Enid, Olivia, and Lois Waller. Olivia says a lot of super insensitive things about how great Patsy looks and tells Liz Todd and Patsy never really broke up, she just moved away. God, shut up, Olivia. So Liz is feeling worse than ever.

At school a few days later we have another play rehearsal. DeeDee is there, watching Bill and Jessica play out a love scene and being miserable because she’s in love with Bill. As far as I can tell DeeDee isn’t even in the play but she’s at all the rehearsals. Bill continues to act like a lovesick idiot whenever Jessica is around and it’s really annoying but endlessly entertaining for Jessica. Todd has been hanging around rehearsals too, which Liz thinks is weird until DeeDee mentions to her that Patsy is doing the costumes.

Over the next few weeks, it’s more of the same. Liz is jealous of Patsy, DeeDee is jealous of Jessica, and Bill is a moron. At one point he thinks it would be nice if he could talk to Jessica like he can talk to DeeDee, but DeeDee doesn’t look like his dead girlfriend so Jessica must be the one he cares about.

Jessica has all the drama club kids over to swim after a Saturday morning rehearsal (except DeeDee, who didn’t want to watch the Jessica and Bill Show), and she makes a big show of wanting Bill there, but then Tom McKay shows up and she just flirts with him. Liz comes home from the library and goes out to the pool to find Todd rubbing suntan lotion on Patsy’s back. Oh hell no. She runs back inside and locks herself in her room to cry while Todd bangs on her door in stupidity. At school a few days later she thinks, you know, this is silly, so she goes to Todd’s locker to talk to him and sees him with his arms around Patsy. She spends the rest of the book avoiding Todd and not returning his calls.

Throughout this book, Liz has been working on an article for the paper about summer job opportunities for high school kids. Sounds like a really fun read, I know. After she’s done crying about Todd and the suntan lotion, she thinks doing some work on the article would be just the thing to cheer her up. Her father tells her the manager of his office building is usually in on Saturdays so she goes there in the hopes of talking to him about jobs. When she gets there she finds a classmate we’ve never heard of until this book, Roger Barrett, is on janitor duty. Liz thinks this is great, she’d love to talk to him about his job for the article, but he’s super embarrassed and begs her not to tell anyone she saw him there. He doesn’t want anyone to know his family is poor and he works to help pay bills. This is all setup for the next book. We’ll talk about it more then.

Back to the play. It turns out DeeDee’s father is a big Hollywood agent who apparently discovered Matt Dillon. He comes to a rehearsal one day, and afterward DeeDee tells the cast he saw someone he thinks has real talent but he won’t tell her who. Jessica, of course, assumes it’s her. Now that she thinks she’s going to be a big star, she doesn’t have enough room in her head to care about leading Bill on anymore. He asks her to the cast party on opening night, but she says she’s going with Tom and he should ask DeeDee. He’s heartbroken but then he thinks, “Maybe I will take DeeDee! Maybe I’ll even like it!” You show her, Bill.

Bill is giving DeeDee a surfing lesson later that day, but it’s cloudy and the waves are choppy. DeeDee gets clonked on the head with her board and Bill brings her to shore. It’s while she’s laid out on the sand almost dead that he realizes how pretty she is. So now he’s in love with DeeDee and they make out after she wakes up. Which is nice, I guess.

Finally, it’s the night of the damned play. It’s a smashing success. It turns out DeeDee does have a small part near the end of the play, which explains why she’s been hanging around rehearsals all the time doing nothing. DeeDee’s Hollywood father shakes Jessica’s hand and then goes to tell Bill how amazing he is and talk to him about doing some screen tests. Jessica can’t believe she isn’t the great talent he’d mentioned earlier, and she assumes it’s DeeDee’s fault since she and Bill are dating now. So even though she doesn’t care about Bill anymore, she sidles up and flirts until DeeDee slinks away with her head down.

DeeDee sits outside being sad until Roger Barrett pops up again and says he knows how she feels. He’s in love with Lila but he knows she’d laugh in his face if he asked her out. DeeDee had decided not to go to the after party at Lila’s, but now after talking to Roger she’s gonna hold her head high and take Roger with her to the party.

Elizabeth was not going to go to the party, but Jessica convinces her she needs to. As soon as she gets there Patsy asks her if she’s seen Todd. Liz just turns around and walks out, planning to go home. Suddenly Todd is there. He tells her he was hugging Patsy that day because her Paris boyfriend had sent her a breakup letter and he was just comforting her. Suddenly, it’s, “Oh, Todd, I’ve been such a dope.” But no suntan lotion boundaries have been set so this will probably happen again.

Jessica is making an ass of herself, sitting on Bill’s lap and yapping about how much fun they’ll have when he’s a big Hollywood star. He can’t get a word in edgewise to tell her about him and DeeDee, but when DeeDee walks in he stands up, knocking Jessica off his lap. She shakes herself off and goes to stand next to him while he tries to talk to DeeDee, but Bill is done. He tells her he and DeeDee are together now and he won’t be hanging out with Jessica anytime soon. Jessica has also lost Tom McKay because she bailed on him for Bill. Tom is now dancing with Patsy.

By the way, at some point during all this, DeeDee came in third in a surfing competition. We’re all very proud.

Notes:

1.     This is one of those over-the-top Jessica stories where someone falls all over themselves for her. These are fun because they usually end with her getting a comeuppance.

2.     There’s so much talk about DeeDee and surfing and how she’s going to be in this competition, and then at the end it’s just, “Did you hear DeeDee came in third?” It was apparently the morning of the play.

3.     The boys in this book are so dumb. Todd acting like he really doesn’t get it when Liz is jealous, Bill just generally being a puppet.

4.     No best outfit for this book. Pretty much every description of clothing pertains to one of the many bikinis on display.