Sweet Valley Confidential: Chapter 16
Today in Sweet Valley Confidential, Elizabeth flies back to New York. This chapter’s roughly one page long. I figured Ariel might be a little annoyed if I dragged that out to a full post, so now you get Elizabeth’s whole journey back to New York. Which is split up over two chapters, for basically no other reason than that every chapter has been titled with where it takes place, so Chapter 16 is Sweet Valley and Chapter 17 is New York. I’ll let you decide if this is silly or not.
The ride back from Sweet Valley to LAX was ugly. Elizabeth had promised herself she wouldn’t talk to Liam about what had happened. In fact, she wouldn’t talk at all.
And she didn’t for miles and miles of almost empty freeway. But Liam felt he had to explain.
Oh, boy, this is where the book has to explain how it makes sense that Liam wasn’t attracted to Elizabeth, but was attracted to her identical twin sister the second he saw her.
“I admit, I found her very attractive. So I was talking to her. Big deal. I don’t know why he went off the deep end like that.” […]
“But you knew the problem. How could you? I think it was really shitty of you.”
“I said I was sorry, but he shouldn’t have made such a big deal of it.”
“Just for the record, she’s my identical twin. I mean, most people can’t even tell us apart. So how come you…”
“I know. It’s weird, isn’t it? Pheromones, I guess.”
“It’s weird.” Yep, that’s 100% the rationale I expected.
Elizabeth refuses to accept Liam’s apology. Liam gives one final go at making the situation better.
“Okay, I know it might not be the way you planned it, but you have to admit, it did sort of work out.”
“Are you nuts?”
“Revenge? Remember?”
Every feature on her face was violent with fury. Without another word, Elizabeth slammed the door shut and walked off.
One of the most interesting themes in this book is the tension between Elizabeth’s desire to get back at Jessica and the vague, far-off notion of forgiveness. Elizabeth’s fury and hatred are totally fair, and the very idea of forgiving her sister is a mere hypothetical. It only exists as something that probably should happen eventually, so it’s even interesting to see how that idea barely exists in the book – it’s almost more the reader’s expectation than it is Elizabeth’s! I think this is why little tense moments like this – where Elizabeth can’t even process her confusion over what she wants – work rather effectively!
Unless, of course, the book continues to ignore this whole thing too. But what are the odds that it’ll suddenly drop this for something completely-
Sweet Valley Confidential: Chapter 17
Oh, we’re in New York now.
There were three messages on her machine: one from David Stephenson, her editor at the magazine, reminding her that the interview with Will was due Tuesday […] No phone call from Will. Not even a hang-up.
Oh. We’re in New York now. As in the New York subplot where Elizabeth’s burgeoning career in theater reviews hangs upon a mercurial asshole playwright. And also their sexual tension. Yayyyy everything I wanted from a Sweet Valley sequel.
To be fair, after this, the book does take some time to go through Elizabeth’s thoughts and feelings on the disastrous birthday party.
Would she ever get that horrible, shouting, vicious picture out of her head? […] the whole family had exploded in a million pieces. Not just any family, her family. Her beautiful, loving family.
What’s the book version of “I can’t believe you said that with a straight face”?
There was no one who wasn’t to blame except maybe her grandmother. Even her parents were guilty. They should have known better than to throw everyone together without any preparation and just hope, like in a movie, that at the denouement
Would it have been that painful to not take a thesaurus to something as simple as “in the end”?
it would all work out.
Yeah, what the fuck, mom and dad?
Elizabeth panics about how hard it will be to meet the deadline, because she can’t write the article because she hasn’t finished the interview, and fought with Will the last time they talked. Which seems like a pitfall we should see in every story about a female journalist who sleeps with the guy she’s interviewing. So, every story about a female journalist…
Good thing we got this Sweet Valley follow-up to assure us that when our favorite characters grow up, they behave exactly like every character in every other story!
Thankfully, Will calls at that exact moment to see if they can meet up to finish the interview! Phew! That was convenient. Also super convenient, apparently one of the book’s themes now is Elizabeth worrying she’s turning into Jessica.
“Will, can we just keep this professional and finish the interview?”
“I’d feel better if we talked about it.”
“Work, first. Okay?”
Was she turning into Jessica, the manipulator? Or had she always been this way, only cleverly disguised? From herself.
This would be an easier theme to accept – here, suddenly introduced 84% of the way into the book – if this looked even remotely like manipulation. They, uh… they do have to be professional and take care of this? This is her actual job, which is on the line?
Elizabeth jumped right into the safety of work. “How did you first get the idea for a play about Samuel Johnson?”
She really was Jessica?
Really? This is hardly Jessica leaking secret information to create a best friend breakup that will result in a real breakup that will result in her getting a date to a dance who’s already taking someone else. Which was the actual plot of book #2, in case you forget. It didn’t make sense then either.
Anyway, time for the moment you’ve been waiting for: Elizabeth and Will get it on!
You were waiting for that, right?
“I’m not really hungry.”
“Me, neither.”
“So what are you?” It was a seduction scene and Elizabeth was the seductress and she was liking it.
Not a single clause in that last sentence rings particularly true.
Will tried not to let his surprise show, but he couldn’t stop the delight. “Anything you want me to be.…”
Oh dear god, let’s just skip to the sex.
She wanted this guy more than she knew, and the body doesn’t lie. She was going to go with it. All the way.
Well, that was a mistake. We need to go to after the sex.
The heat and sweat of their fervor combined to fling them onto their own trajectories and land them together at almost the same moment.
…is this about sex or not???
After the sex, Elizabeth reflects on how different being with Will was from being with Todd, and concludes that after the two years (???) she was together with Todd, their passions had “quieted”.
Suppose it wasn’t love that had broken her heart. Suppose it was rejection and duplicity.
You think?
Also Elizabeth concludes that she was only still with Todd because she was to much of a “commitment freak” to end it. Which is now also apparently a theme, suddenly, with four chapters left of the book.
Maybe that’s what she would have needed to end it. Something catastrophic. She could never have ended it by falling out of love. She never would have known that she had; she cared too much. She was the commitment freak.
So Elizabeth seems pretty ok with that whole “my sister and her fiance who is my ex-fiance got into a fight with me at my grandma’s birthday” thing now.
She just needed to get laid? That’s what this book is telling us?