Time elapsed in this book: 2 weeks
Length of their junior year: 3 years, 3 months, 3 weeks
Jessica’s love interest: A.J. Morgan
Entertainment rating: 2/10
The cover features John Pfeifer and Jennifer Mitchell looking morose. John is miserable because he’s in love with Jennifer, who has the hots for SVH dropout Rick Andover. Jennifer’s dad has seen the entirety of Rick’s rap sheet because he’s a lawyer who sometimes volunteers at Juvenile Hall, but Jennifer thinks Rick is just misunderstood. Rick tells Jennifer they should run away to New York to start a band together. She’s thrilled and calls John to share this secret. John can’t believe what he’s hearing (to his credit, it is an exceptionally stupid plan, considering neither of them are actual musicians or anything). He share this secret with Liz, who is also appalled.
Meanwhile, Jess wants to go to a party at Dana’s the following weekend but A.J. has already made plans for them to have dinner with his uncle. Jess asks him to postpone the dinner so they can go to the party. A.J. eventually obliges, and Jess is thrilled that he’ll do her bidding. Jeffrey tells Liz he also can’t make it to the party but that she should still go without him (clearly he does not belong in Sweet Valley since he doesn’t understand that one NEEDS a date to all social events). Liz is disappointed but says she’ll stay home. I expected this plot to go somewhere but it doesn’t.
Liz runs into John at the Dairi Burger and chats with him until Rick Andover walks in. John gets tense and says Rick and Jennifer are leaving that night. They follow Rick when he leaves. He drives over to a music store and steals a guitar! John calls the store owner, and the store owner calls the police.
Jennifer waits for Rick at their pre-arranged meeting spot, thinking about how her parents will have to eat their words about Rick when they return from New York as rock stars. Let’s slow down here, Jennifer, and maybe figure out a place to live, find a job, and then learn how to play an instrument. Rick never shows up, so eventually she heads home.
The next morning, Mr. Mitchell gets a call that Rick was arrested for stealing a guitar and cash. It’s strange that Mr. Wakefield is not the first lawyer that comes to mind to defend Rick, but maybe he’s not currently working with juveniles. That’ll be in a future book, I’m sure. Jennifer says Rick must have been framed. Mr. Mitchell asks who would frame him. Jennifer immediately decides that her dad figured out she was going to run away with Rick and framed him so they couldn’t leave. She tells him she hates him!
Jess and A.J. discuss perfect vacations and have very different ideas of what they’d want to do. Liz wonders how much longer they can keep dating with these massive differences.
The police say they arrested Rick based on an “anonymous tip.” John asks Jennifer how she’s doing. Jennifer says it’s her dad’s fault and that she hates him! John is uncomfortable and doesn’t know what to do. Just then, Jennifer is called to the office over the intercom. Her dad is in the hospital! She’s told to go there immediately. John says he’ll drive her, but Jennifer says no, she has nothing to say to her dad anymore. I hate her so much.
There are some filler scenes with call backs to Liz’s recorder lessons (she’s practicing again, which is more than Jennifer has ever done on an instrument) and slam books (Jess and friends laugh about who might be named Best Kisser. Probably Bruce.).
John tells Liz that Mr. Mitchell is scheduled for heart bypass surgery but Jennifer still refuses to visit him. John doesn’t know what to do because if he tells Jennifer that he’s the one who turned Rick in, she will hate him. But if he doesn’t tell her, she’ll hate her dad. Liz says he should tell her.
They go to the Mitchell’s house. Jennifer rolls her eyes and says her mom’s at the hospital again (I hate her so much). John confesses that he turned Rick in. Jennifer can’t believe it! She blames John for letting her hate her father. Talk about taking no responsibility for her own actions; I blame Jennifer for assuming it was her father in the first place. Jennifer says she needs to get to the hospital right away. Once there, she learns that her dad has taken a turn for the worse and is in surgery! Thankfully, he makes it through surgery and feels much better afterward.
John thinks he’s ruined everything with Jennifer and that she’ll never forgive him, so Liz decides to get involved. She buys flowers, writes a card “from John,” and delivers them to Jennifer and her parents at the hospital. Jennifer realizes that if John hadn’t turned Rick in, she’d have run off with that loser and not been around when her dad was in the hospital. I mean, she was barely around for her dad, but sure. She meets John in the hospital parking lot, and they decide to have a soda together in the hospital cafeteria.
Up next: is tennis star Kristin Thompson interested in Bruce Patman?