Time elapsed in this book: 2 weeks
Length of their junior year: 3 years, 6 months, 2 weeks
Jessica’s love interest: None
Entertainment rating: 10/10
Now THIS is a Super Thriller! It’s not the most thrilling book and there’s nothing particularly deadly about it, but it is SO entertaining. Absolutely A+ material. The subplot features Jess and Lila scheming together in this most brilliant way, and the main plot culminates with Bruce taking the fate of Sweet Valley into his own hands (literally). Incredible!!
Lila has returned from London with an Ouija board, and she and Jessica have been playing with it nonstop. Liz thinks they’re dumb for acting like it’s real and tells Lila this to her face when they’re all at the Dairi Burger. Lila gets pissed and wants revenge. Her plan is to get Liz to play with the Ouija board and have it predict something that will come true so she’ll start believing in it. Lila even has the perfect prediction in mind: thanks to her dad’s business connections, she knows that the Endless Summer concert scheduled for that weekend is going to be postponed. Jess thinks that’s perfect and says she’ll also read one of Jeffrey’s letters to Liz (he’s been writing to her from a summer camp) and get something from there to predict too.
They convince Liz to try out the Ouija board. The first thing the Ouija board tells Liz is that Jeffrey has secret news. Liz gasps and asks if Jess has been reading her private letters. Jess lies and says no. Then the Ouija board says the concert will be delayed a week. Liz laughs, saying that’s ridiculous.
Liz leaves, laughing about how dumb the concert prediction was. Just then, the phone rings. It’s Seth, a journalist at the Sweet Valley News where Liz and Jess are still interning (in case you were confused about which Sweet Valley summer this was). He says the concert is being postponed so the article they’ve been working on needs to be rewritten! Liz is shocked. She doesn’t know how Lila and Jess could have predicted this and doesn’t want to believe in the Ouija board, but it’s too weird to be a coincidence…
The next evening, they play with the Ouija board again and ask where Liz’s lost journal is. The Ouija board says to look at the refrigerator. Sure enough, the journal is on top of the fridge! Jess swears she didn’t put it there (obviously a lie) and Liz is perplexed. She heads off to babysit for Mrs. Bartel and wonders how the Ouija board knows these things.
Jess tells Lila that their plan is working perfectly and that she even spotted Liz reading Beginner’s Guide to Occultism. SO GOOD! Lila suggests they take their plan one step further and predict that Bruce Patman is dying so Liz will start feeling bad for Bruce and going out of her way to be nice to him. Jess agrees, and Lila is thrilled. Lila has never gotten over the fact that Liz landed Jeffrey despite Lila making a play for him when he first moved to Sweet Valley, so she hopes Liz will be so distracted by Bruce that her relationship with Jeffrey falls apart, allowing Lila to move in. I love how Lila is still angling for Jeffrey, even after her plan to break up Liz and Jeffrey using slam books didn’t work out. Lila tells herself that she’s a genius. I couldn’t agree more. Seriously, this subplot is brilliant!!
Friday afternoon in the Sweet Valley News newsroom, they hear that Donald Redman has escaped from a nearby psychiatric hospital! Redman grew up in Sweet Valley and went to Sweet Valley High, where he fell in love with some cheerleader named Melanie, who rejected him so he kidnapped her and tried to kill his own parents with a homemade bomb! There’s concern he might return to Sweet Valley and continue his reign of terror.
When Liz babysits that night, she tells Mrs. Bartel about the Redman news. Mrs. Bartel gets really weird. Liz assumes she’s scared because she’s worried for her safety. I, however, suspect something else is going on. Mrs. Bartel says she doesn’t need to go out and sends Liz home.
When Liz gets home, she finds Jess and Lila with the Ouija board. Liz joins them because she is hooked and hopes it’ll know something about Redman! The board says nothing about Redman but does say Bruce is dying and that he knows but he’s keeping it a secret from everyone else. Liz feels bad for Bruce.
The three of them go to the Beach Disco. Liz greets Bruce, who’s surprised but asks her to dance. She readily agrees. Liz asks how he’s doing and when he says he’s fine, Liz wells up thinking about how brave he is to pretend nothing is wrong.
Saturday at the beach, Bruce asks if Liz wants to go for a walk. She agrees. Elsewhere on the beach, Lila and Jess watch, and Lila says they look like a cute couple.
Monday, Jess ducks out of the office to see a movie with Lila. Shortly after she leaves, Liz answers a call. It’s Redman! He says he planted a bomb at Valley Cinema! They call the police and hurry over to the theater. Jess and the rest of the theater are evacuated. The police find the bomb. It’s a fake. Other SVH students are there too, including Bruce, who chats with Liz and looks smug that she cares about him. Jess is annoyed, so after Liz leaves, she tells Bruce that Liz is only being nice because she thinks he’s sick. Bruce looks intrigued and calls it an “interesting scenario.”
That night, Liz babysits for Mrs. Bartel and keeps answering hang up phone calls. Then Bruce calls! He tells Liz he’s depressed and asks if he can come over. Liz wants to help him but says no, she’s babysitting. After their call, the doorbell rings and Liz assumes it’s Bruce, not taking no for an answer (a reasonable assumption). But no! It’s a man she’s never seen before. He says he’s an old college friend of Mrs. Bartel’s and will stop by in the morning. He tells Liz she looks like someone he used to know.
Fifteen minutes after that, the doorbell rings again and this time it IS Bruce! Of course he didn’t take no for an answer! Liz is kinda flattered he was so desperate to see her. Bruce sits next to her on the couch and says he doesn’t know how much longer he can act like nothing is wrong. Liz thinks he’s about to kiss her, but instead he asks if she wants to get lunch tomorrow. Liz agrees.
On Wednesday, Bruce drops by the Wakefield house to hang out with Liz. As Bruce and Liz cozy up on the couch, the doorbell rings again. Jess answers. It’s Jeffrey! His secret news was that he was coming home from camp early! Jeffrey walks in on Liz telling Bruce she thinks he’s amazing. Liz says they were about to leave for the “Be True to Your School” rally (which is inexplicably taking place over the summer) and that Jeffrey should join them. Bruce says he’ll drive, and Jeffrey says his car is bigger. Bruce says he meant that Jeffrey could follow him and Liz. I am cracking up!! Liz says she’ll go with Jeffrey because he just got back. Way to make him feel special, Liz!
At the rally, Bruce and Jeffrey keep trying to one-up each other. Liz thinks they’re “like two dogs circling around a tasty bone.” The Droids play, saying this rally is a gig they do every summer. When did they form their band?? Mr. Cooper goes on stage and announces that they need to evacuate. Redman has called in a bomb threat!!
The bomb squad arrives and discovers real sticks of dynamite, but with the TNT powered emptied out of them. Another fake! But the real sticks prove he has the real thing.
Thursday, Liz picks up a newspaper and stares at Redman’s picture. She realizes it’s the same man who showed up at Mrs. Bartel’s!! Liz thinks about calling the police but calls Mrs. Bartel instead. Mrs. Bartel hesitates, then says she knows her friend looks like Redman, but it’s not him. I can’t believe Liz thinks she has a journalist’s eye for the truth when she believes this rubbish so easily.
We cut to Mrs. Bartel’s point of view. As I suspected, she knows more than she’s letting on! Her visitor was Redman! They’re siblings, and Redman thinks Liz is the cheerleader he was once obsessed with. Mrs. Bartel is worried, but she doesn’t want to turn him in because he’s her brother. Oh brother (pun intended).
On Friday, Jeffrey runs into Bruce, who says he’ll be seeing Liz that night. Jeffrey is annoyed and says no, he has plans with Liz that night. Bruce says they’ll see about that…
Bruce calls Liz and says he’s running out of tomorrows. Liz says she’ll meet him at the school tennis courts. Liz tells Jess and Lila (who are, of course, playing with the Ouija board) that when Jeffrey gets there, they should tell him that an emergency came up but NOT give details about where she is, since Liz knows he won’t understand.
Naturally, Lila has no intention of following Liz’s request. She goes outside to meet Jeffrey and acts surprised to see him, saying Bruce just called Liz and she went to meet him at the tennis courts. Lila acts dismayed when Jeffrey seems upset. He rushes off to the tennis courts, and Lila congratulates herself on arranging this!
We cut to Redman’s point of view. He’s at the SVH stadium, working on a real bomb! He hears voices and catches sights of the female speaker: it’s Liz, but he thinks it’s Melanie, the cheerleader he used to be obsessed with!
Meanwhile, the Ouija board tells Jess and Lila that Liz is in danger at the stadium. Jess tells Lila to knock it off, but Lila swears she wasn’t pushing it. She asks Jess to swear the same, and Jess does. They are frightened, since they don’t know where this message came from. They rush outside and run into Mrs. Bartel, who finally decided to do the right thing and warn Liz she’s in danger. She calls the police from the Wakefield’s house and the three of them race to the stadium.
Liz and Bruce are locked in an embrace! He kisses her shoulder. Liz doesn’t want to believe he’d take advantage of the situation, so she tells herself “his lips moved because he was fighting tears.” Bruce looks deep into her eyes, and Liz feels like a bond is being forged between them. Just then, Jeffrey appears!
Liz is furious with Jeffrey for interrupting and demands to know why he can’t just trust her! Jeffrey asks why he should trust Liz since Bruce was bragging earlier about having a date with her. Liz is confused and turns to Bruce, who she realizes looks quite healthy. She asks if he is or isn’t sick. Bruce says he feels a headache coming on. Liz can’t believe she fell for the BS Lila and Jess were pedaling. She runs off to the utility room to cry…. but the room has been turned into a bomb laboratory! Worse: Redman is there!
Liz screams. Bruce and Jeffrey follow the screams to track her down. Redman tells them not to move or else he’ll hurt Liz or trigger the bomb. He says the bomb can’t hurt him since he built it. Bruce asks how that works (because yeah, the dude is crazy) and Redman starts bragging about how there’s one bomb, which will trigger multiple loads of dynamite (including in that room) that will explode.
Jess, Lila, Mrs. Bartel, and the police all arrive at the school. The police confirm with Mrs. Bartel that Redman is her brother (how are they so incompetent that they didn’t do this basic research earlier?!) and say they’ll set up a communication link.
The police and Mrs. Bartel start talking to Redman, who gets agitated. Jeffrey launches himself at the madman and wrestles the remote control from his hand with help from Bruce. Redman says he’s already clicked the button, so Bruce grabs the bomb and sprints away with it in his arms! Redman is shocked (as am I!) and races after Bruce, yelling at him to give the bomb back!
Liz and Jeffrey start yanking out wires connecting the dynamite sticks in the room, hoping to keep it from exploding. Just when they think they did it, there’s a huge explosion! Liz and Jeffrey aren’t hurt, but they assume Bruce couldn’t have survived. When they emerge from the room, however, they see Bruce! He calls Liz “Goldilocks” and explains that Redman snatched the bomb from his hands and ran away, laughing maniacally! The nightmare is over!!