Time elapsed in this book: 2 weeks
Length of their junior year: 1 year, 4 months
Jessica’s love interest: Surprisingly no one
Entertainment rating: 6/10
I sighed a lot while reading this book. Bill is just not that interesting to me. Neither is DeeDee. Neither is their relationship. I didn’t especially care about them as a kid, and that sentiment is still true as an adult. The cover doesn’t even fully save this. Bill looks smug and like a total bro in a sweatshirt on the cover. Perfect depiction of a California surfer dude when away from the beach! DeeDee looks like she’s about 30 and like she’s listening for Bill’s heartbeat or something. Also, the book should really be called Too Codependent.
We open with dinner at the Wakefield house. Liz announces that there will be a talent show at Sweet Valley High and she has been put in charge of organizing it! She doesn’t know if Todd will participate because he’s been busy lately, working at his father’s office about ten hours a week. I don’t know what business his father’s in, but I am shocked to find out that someone at Sweet Valley High has a job and it’s just stated like a normal thing. I mean, it is a normal thing, but all my memories of SVH involve teens with seemingly endless money who never work for it. I didn’t realize Todd ever had a job in this series until reading this. Consider my mind blown! Jess says she’s sure Liz will wrangle Todd into performing at it anyway.
Their parents ask how the twins feel about being home alone for a few days. Apparently Ned is handling a case that involves illegally smuggling goods into the U.S. from Mexico, so he needs to go to Mexico to pick up some documents from a lawyer there. What kind of international law is he practicing now? Who is he representing? No clue. Also no clue why the other lawyer can’t just mail the documents. But they’re eager to go to Mexico City to pick these up and have a vacation in the process. The twins agree they can take care of themselves.
Liz calls DeeDee to ask her to design the sets for the talent show, since she’s artistic. DeeDee is surprised to be asked and says she’ll need to talk to Bill, her boyfriend, before she agrees. Liz doesn’t know what Bill has to do with anything but says okay and then worries about whether their relationship is okay.
We cut to DeeDee’s perspective. She hurries over to Bill’s house to see him, but he’s not there and she’s devastated. Apparently when her parents got divorced, her mom said that they hadn’t spent enough time together, so DeeDee is now determined to not let that happen to herself and Bill! She thinks Bill needs to see how much she depends on him and then he will never leave her. DeeDee needs to get a grip because WHOA. Talk about fixing something that’s not broken!
The next day in the school cafeteria, DeeDee has lunch with her best friend, Patty Gilbert. Patty is a senior and she’s also black, the first non-white person to be featured in this series! Patty asks how DeeDee’s art classes are going and DeeDee says she stopped going. Patty is shocked, and DeeDee mumbles excuses because she knows Patty won’t like the real reason she stopped going: because Bill wasn’t there with her.
After school, Bill tells DeeDee that he qualified for the regional swim championship in the butterfly stroke. DeeDee is thrilled! Bill says the competition is Friday night (weird…. aren’t swim matches usually in the mornings?). DeeDee is suddenly crushed because that’s the night they were supposed to have a double date with Patty and her college boyfriend Jim, who will be in town. Bill suggests she go without him, but DeeDee says maybe she’ll bring Jim and Patty to watch his swim meet. Bill mentions that Liz asked him to do a reading for the talent show, so this makes DeeDee brighten and she thinks she will design the sets for the show after all so they’ll at least have one thing together!
Thursday afternoon, Liz meets with Mr. Collins and everyone who’s scheduled to be part of the talent show. Mr. Collins asks Liz if DeeDee agreed to do the sets. Liz says she hasn’t heard back from DeeDee. After the meeting, Patty approaches Liz and says she doesn’t know what’s going on with DeeDee but she’s sure it has to do with Bill. Liz says that Bill approached her earlier that day to cancel his reading since he was too busy. Patty sighs and assumes this is why DeeDee hasn’t agreed to do the sets yet. Patty says DeeDee needs a project of her own so she can talk about something other than Bill!
Bill finishes swim practice and is about to drop off notes for his history project when he runs into DeeDee. He’s confused why she’s there, since they didn’t have plans. DeeDee says she hoped they could get dinner or something. Bill says he’s too busy, and DeeDee looks on the verge of a breakdown. He offers to give her a ride home and she lights up. Bill feels resigned. He liked the old independent DeeDee and this new pathetic version of her is driving him crazy. It’s driving me crazy too. I know the message is “don’t be so codependent,” which is a good message, but it’s so heavy-handed and DeeDee is just so incredibly pathetic!
On Friday, DeeDee goes to Bill’s swim meet with Patty and Jim, neither of whom are thrilled about spending their “double date” at the pool. Jim asks what DeeDee’s been up to and she says not much, she’s just been busy supporting Bill.
Bill wins the race, and DeeDee makes a huge show of racing over to his side and throwing her arms around him. He’s embarrassed because it was just one race but doesn’t say anything. DeeDee can feel his discomfort and doesn’t know why he’s acting like this but decides she just needs to try harder. The four of them then go out for Chinese food. It’s a good time and everyone’s laughing, but then DeeDee feels left out because Bill isn’t just hers and starts to cry. Bill is exhausted.
Elsewhere, Jess tells Lila her parents will be out of town, so the two of them start planning a party. Lila suggests that they invite college guys so the attendees won’t just be the usual crowd. Apparently Lila has been dating Drake Howard for the past few months, someone I thought was just a throwaway character when he was first mentioned a few books ago. He’s a sophomore at Sweet Valley College, and Lila says he should invite his friends. Jess is unsure but eventually agrees.
On Saturday, Bill goes to the movies with Dana, who got tickets to a W.C. Fields movies called My Little Chickadee and invited him since she thought he’d be interested. They have a good time together and Bill is glad to be out with someone who doesn’t stress him out. When they leave the theater, they run into Jess and Cara. Bill is worried that they’ll tell DeeDee, who didn’t know about his plans, since he thought she’d just get weird about it like she’s been weird about everything else.
Sure enough, Jess is already scheming about how to use the information to her advantage since she doesn’t like DeeDee and is pretty sure DeeDee didn’t know that Bill was out with Dana, even though Jess knows nothing’s going on between them.
Mrs. Wakefield calls to check in on the twins. She says she left some drawings on her office desk and that they’re her only copy of them so please make sure nothing happens to it.
The talent show committee has a meeting at the Wakefield house. DeeDee’s there, so Jess pulls her aside and casually works into conversation that she saw Bill at the movies with Dana on Saturday. DeeDee is shocked and hurt and immediately leaves.
DeeDee can’t get ahold of Bill until Monday, when she sees him at school. She confronts him, and Bill says that Dana’s just a friend and that he didn’t tell DeeDee because she’s been acting weird lately and he thought it might upset her. DeeDee says he doesn’t understand anything. Bill agrees and suggests that they break up because he’s not happy. DeeDee is crushed. She runs into Liz and tells her the whole story, because who doesn’t confide in Liz? Liz suggests that DeeDee talk to Bill when she’s calmer.
At lunch, DeeDee finds Bill and says she knows she’s been acting differently lately but does he still love her and think they have a chance? She wants to get back together! Bill does love her, but he tells her he needs more time. He wants DeeDee to be able to stand on her own two feet first.
Tuesday after school, Liz helps DeeDee with the sets for the talent show. DeeDee is driving her crazy because she seems so helpless. She called Liz four times on Monday night, wanting to talk with her about how to get Bill back (this despite us being told earlier that she and Liz are friendly but not friends; who wouldn’t call Liz if given an opportunity?!?), and she can’t seem to make any decisions about the set on her own. After Liz leaves, DeeDee thinks about how everyone else seems so happy and self-confident and wonders why she isn’t like that anymore. That evening, Liz talks to Patty and they come up with a plan to make DeeDee regain some of her lost confidence.
Liz calls DeeDee and says she’s sick and that she needs DeeDee to take over her responsibilities organizing the talent show. DeeDee isn’t sure about it, but Liz insists. She hangs up hoping this new responsibility will knock some sense back into DeeDee.
Liz and Todd do their homework together, and Todd suddenly gets all sentimental and tells Liz she’s beautiful and that he hates the thought of ever losing her. She doesn’t know what’s come over him and worries about what’s going on.
DeeDee gets so busy working on the talent show that when Bill calls her, she has her mom tell him that she’ll call him back. DeeDee shocks herself with this! She then asks her mom if she thinks she would have stayed married to DeeDee’s dad if she hadn’t been so strong-willed. Her mom says no, that it’s hard to quantify why two people split up and that their divorce wasn’t about something either of them did. She also says that if she didn’t have her own interests, she would have gone crazy. DeeDee suddenly realizes how ridiculous she’s been and is mortified about how she was inadvertently pushing Bill away.
The rest of the week, DeeDee runs around fixing potential crises around the talent show. She’s exhausted! Even Bill compliments her on what a great job she’s doing and suggests they go out to the Dairi Burger to talk, but she doesn’t have time for that.
Saturday night, Jess and Lila host their party. Lila says that Drake put up a flyer about the party in his frat house, which worries Jess, but Lila assures her only a few people will show up because it’s midterms. The doorbell rings, and Jess opens the door:
She had never seen so many guys in her whole life, all huge, all eighteen or nineteen-or even older-and all reeking of beer. She felt positively sick.
I don’t know why frat guys showed up at this party to begin with, but what a visual!! The music keeps getting turned up, and their neighbor Mrs. Beckwith keeps calling to say they need to turn the music down or she’ll call the police. Lila and Drake get into a screaming match about something. Winston shatters a crystal vase of their mom’s while practicing his magic act. Suddenly, the police arrive! They say that unless someone over eighteen is at home, they’ll need to take the twins down to the station until they call their parents. Steven appears in the nick of time and says he’s eighteen and will take responsibility. Everyone leaves, including Lila and Drake, who’ve made up with each other. That’s when the twins discover that someone spilled a beer on their mom’s only copy of design plans in her study!
Sunday morning, Jess begs DeeDee to help with the design plans. She apologizes for gossiping about Bill and Dana and says she knows DeeDee is an amazing artist and that she’s their only hope for fixing the plans! DeeDee agrees and uses her artistic skills to draw up an identical copy of the design. She’s a lifesaver! Liz thanks DeeDee for this too and says she needs to apologize for lying to DeeDee about being sick, explaining that she’d only lied because she wanted to help DeeDee. DeeDee says she never would have guessed and that she’s not angry because it did help her. Because of course Liz saved the day.
Sunday evening is the talent show. Liz gives an opening speech and then introduces DeeDee, who comes onstage to enormous applause. When DeeDee leaves the stage, Bill approaches her and says he wants to get back together and give their relationship another shot. They reminisce about their relationship and make out for a bit. DeeDee says they’ll need to take their rekindled relationship slowly. Bill says she’s worth being patient for.
The talent show goes on. Winston and Ken do a hilarious magic show with Jessica as their helper. Then Todd goes on. He says he’d planned to do a comedy act but doesn’t feel like it and instead recites a poem called “Remember.” Liz doesn’t know what’s going on. He confides in her offstage that his dad is being transferred to Vermont and that they’re moving in a week!
Next up: what will happen to Liz and Todd if he moves away?!??