Tag Line: She loves him. She loves him NOT.From the Back of the Book: Is his girlfriend back...from the dead? Annie just met Jonathan. She doesn't know about his last girlfriend. Doesn't know how beautiful she was. Doesn't know how popular. Doesn't know how she died. But Annie is about to find out. Because Jonathan's old girlfriend might be dead. But she isn't gone.....
This book was written back in 1993 and I wasn't reading as many Point Horror books by then. If I read this one, I don't remember. (Note from future me: I did NOT read this one. There's no way I'd forget what's to come. And, believe me, I wish I could forget.)
We begin with our protagonist Taylor Swift saying she knew Jonathan was trouble when he walked in. Well, maybe not, but I bet I got that song stuck in your head now. You're welcome. Anyway, our protagonist DOES say something similarly dramatic and annoying about her first meeting of Jonathan. Only it hasn't happened yet. It's a statement from the future, y'all. Oh, and I'm just assuming she's our protagonist. I could be wrong.
She's new to town and taking a tour on her brother's bike. Pedal, not motorcycle. That would be far too cool for this book. She has a driver's license so she could totally be cruising around in the family car, but riding bikes is her PASSION. It actually says this. I would not make up something that lame. Her own bike was stolen or something so she's forced to ride her brother's BMX. She's wearing green lycra bike shorts and a bright blue wife-beater. I don't think an outfit could get more 90's than that. Her hair is pulled back with a bright blue ribbon and I can't help but feel that this is an important story point so I'm mentioning it. (Note from future me: it totally isn't.)
It's a small town and it doesn't take long for her to explore. It does have a bicycle shop and she literally goes up to the place and presses her nose against the glass to drool over the fine specimens they have inside. Sweetie, you can't possibly look cool in this new town of yours if you're going around pressing your nose to windows like you're five-years-old and looking into a toy shop.
She remembers the realtor telling them about the falls outside of town and she decides to ride up them. When she reaches the top, she gives herself a giant pat on the back because she's not out of breath at all. She tells us that being in good shape is very important to her. I hate her already and I don't even know for sure who she is. I mean, from the back of the book, I suspect she's Annie but we occasionally get random chapters from other people in these damn books so I can't call it with confidence. Stine spends a lot of time describing to us how the bike path goes right along the edge of the cliffs and there's no railing so she could totally fall over at any moment. And then she totally does!
Sorry, we didn't get that lucky. I was channeling Stine there for a minute. He loves those stupid, fake-out, chapter-ending cliffhangers. This book is full of them.
Our lycra bike goddess makes it safely to the top in time to see a boy her age standing at the edge of the cliffs. He looks like he's going to jump and she screams. He takes a step and there's our first cliffhanger. Technically I have to give Stine credit for staging one of these on an actual cliff. It may be the only credit I give him today.
Our girl tells us that this boy is super dreamy. He looks like Luke Perry. Nothing dates a book faster than a comparison to a celebrity. Fortunately I was addicted to 90210 for the first few season so I know what Stine was aiming for here. He even has sideburns and we all know that sideburns possess magical powers that make girls swoon. The boy is startled at first. He thinks she looks like someone he knew once. I bet it was that ribbon. I knew that ribbon would be important. (Note from future me: it wasn't.)
She tells him that she thought he was going to jump and he laughs at her so she falls madly in love with him. Jonathan Morgan meet Annie Kiernan. Shake hands. At least we know who our girl is now. She's so blinded by love and his sideburns that she doesn't even ask him the obvious question of why he was standing at the very edge of a cliff. Pfffft. Who cares? He has SIDEBURNS. Sideburns, dammit.
OMG, y'all, he rode his bike up there too!!!! <3 <3 <3 <3 Annie decides they are fated to be mated. Bound forever by their mutual love for things on two wheels. Be still my heart.
They talk a little and she tells him she's new in town. I'm sure he already knew that since the town is so small and he's never seen her before. He tells her he can introduce her around. They'll start with his best friend Caleb Dorsey. Jonathan tells her that Caleb is a "wild man". I'm just going to go ahead and predict that this means Caleb is a colossal douche. Caleb throws a party every Saturday night while his parents are working and Jonathan invites Annie to go with him. She giddily accepts and tattoos Jonathan's name on her ass right there on the cliff. Well, she would have if there had been a shop right there. I have no doubt. He has SIDEBURNS.
When Annie goes back to retrieve her bike, she finds that tires have all been slashed!!! Oh noes.
Jonathan offers to help her get it home. He seems extremely angry and she's a little scared by his mood change. She's willing to overlook it though. Because Luke Perry. He insists that she should walk his bike back to town and he'll walk hers. He's completely silent and broody all the way home and she is in anguish wondering if that means he doesn't like her. She. will. lose. it. if he doesn't like her, y'all. She will die right there in the street. Her life means nothing without....what was his name again?....oh, yeah, Jonathan....her life means nothing without Jonathan in it.
When they get back into town they are stopped by another girl on a bike. I've never seen so many bikes in a Point Horror before. She's also wearing lycra. Her name is Ruby Bonds and she ignores Annie and giggles at Jonathan a lot. Before she pedals off, though, she throws a warning over her shoulder. Annie should stay away from Jonathan. He's dangerous.
Jonathan seems annoyed by Ruby and they continue back to Annie's house in renewed silence. He leaves her and the BMX in front of her house and takes off. Down the street, Annie notices someone watching Jonathan from behind a hedge. It turns out to be Ruby and the two of them ride off together.
Annie is hella confused.
I guess it's Friday now. Caleb Dorsey turns out to be just as gross and obnoxious as I thought he'd be. Annie thinks Jonathan is a different person around him - looser and more relaxed. Caleb also warns Annie about Jonathan but she can't tell if he's being serious or just razzing his friend. Annie meets his girlfriend Dawn Pedderson at the party. She's described as wearing short, bright blue shorts over a gray lycra catsuit. Annie tells us that the outfit is "very sexy". I'm just wondering if Stine has some kind of bizarre lycra fetish. And what's with all the "bright blue" going on? When Dawn hears Annie is there with Jonathan, she makes a face and mutters that Annie must be new. She starts to warn Annie about Jonathan but gets interrupted.
Caleb says they have to go to a place called Sportsworld because he and Jonathan made some bet I don't care about to do something I don't care about that involves batting cages. But I don't care about it. A bunch of them pile into two cars. Caleb drives one and Jonathan drives the other. Jonathan drives like a complete asshole. He's going 75 and swerving all over the road on purpose. He even deliberately drives over the curb into people's yards a few times. Somehow they make it to this Sportsworld place without killing anyone.
Annie is all breathless and she tells Jonathan how scary the ride was. He tells her that sometimes he just feels like an asshole. Sorry. I mean, he tells her that sometimes he just feels out of control. Then he's all like: "JK! LOLOLOLOLZZZZ!" and Annie swoons at his feet again. "Does he like me? I think he likes me. What if he doesn't like me? Sideburns." {simper::blush} Gag. me. now. Is it too early to root for the complete and total destruction of every single character in this book?
Caleb climbs up the batting cages and begins acting like a chimpanzee to the amusement of all his stupid friends. I'm too old for this effing book. Sigh. Employees come running and demand he get down but he ignores them. He razzes Jonathan for not joining him and calls him a wimp. Annie thinks Jonathan's face is a mixture of anger and fear as he stares tensely at his best friend. They watch in horror as Caleb suddenly falls. Annie screams and Stine ends the chapter.
He's effing fine, of course. But he does get his ass thrown out which means I'll never really know what that bet I didn't care about was for. How will I go on? I must be brave and soldier forward. Jonathan seems to get all lost in misty, hazy memories and acts extremely odd for a bit. Annie thinks his mood changes are a little frightening but then talks herself out of these very valid feelings by telling herself that she has a tendency to over-analyze everything and see sinister shapes in every shadow. Right. It's all in your head, Annie. Jonathan's not acting weird AT ALL. Sigh.
They head home. Annie is obsessing over whether Jonathan will ever ask her out again. Meanwhile, the rest of the people in the car are talking about how many times Caleb's been arrested for doing stupid crap. Oh, Caleb, and your hi-larious hi-jinks. Boys will be boys.
Jonathan is the perfect driver this time. He drops Annie off last. She agonizes over whether he's going to kiss her or not but he never even looks at her. He tells her he'll see her at school on Monday and that's the end of that. Annie goes inside her dark house and something grabs her shoulders so Stine can end the chapter.
It was her cat. His name is Goggles. He's not exceptionally tall or anything - although a giant cat would do much to improve this story. I guess he jumped on her shoulders or something. Stine doesn't care if it makes sense. The cat doesn't seem to like Annie much and I can't really blame him for that. Annie goes to sleep wondering if Jonathan will ask her out again and if she's officially his girlfriend yet. After ONE DATE. Oh, Annie. Bless your heart.
On Monday she talks to Dawn and hopes they'll be friends. Dawn asks her where she met Jonathan. Annie tells her they met up at the falls and Dawn doesn't believe that shit for one second. There's NO WAY Jonathan would EVER go back to the falls after what happened. {dramatic pause} She acts all mysterious and drags everything out to the point that she doesn't really say anything before they get interrupted. Ruby comes up first and they change the subject and make small talk. Then Jonathan joins them. He asks Annie to go for a bike ride on Saturday. After he walks off, Ruby is all pale and bitchy and takes off too. Annie demands that Dawn finish her damn story already and Dawn says she will but it WILL. CHANGE. EVERYTHING. {dramatic pause} This is effing awful. She drags Annie to a display case in the hall. Inside is a single photograph of a pretty blonde girl. The photo is draped in black crepe. It's Louisa. She was Jonathan's girlfriend and she died at the falls.
The bell rings before Dawn can say anything else and Annie is left to obsess over the story for the rest of the day. She tries to call Dawn several times but never gets through to her, so she's left hanging. The next day after lunch she leads Dawn back to the picture of Louisa because they couldn't possibly have this conversation any other place. She tells Annie that back in January, Jonathan and Louisa biked up the falls. He thought he heard someone on the path, so he went to look. When he returned, she was gone. He went to the edge and looked down and her bike was all busted up on the rocks below. Two days later they found her body in the river. The police ruled it a suicide but Dawn was Louisa's best friend and she didn't think that Louisa would ever do such a thing. Rumors surrounded Jonathan but there was no real investigation because his parents are wealthy and they hushed it up. Isn't that how these books always go? Annie asks her if she thinks Jonathan had anything to do with Louisa's death and Dawn hesitates briefly before saying no. She tells Annie to be careful around Jonathan and walks away.
Annie stays there and stares at the picture for awhile. This is completely normal behavior, Annie, and will go far in helping you fit in with your peer group. Sheesh. As she's standing there, a random boy appears by her side to tell her that Louisa didn't kill herself.
His name is Ryan Baker and judging by all the awkwardness and stammering, he has a little crush on our Annie. He asks her out for Saturday and she is so shocked by this turn of events that she just stands there with her mouth hanging open. He finally gets the hint and leaves. Annie feels uncomfortable and she doesn't know why. Finally she decides she's just prejudiced against guys who are shorter than she is. Wow, Annie. Wow.
Annie heads to the computer lab after school. She doesn't have a computer at home and needs one to do research for a term paper that the rest of the class has had weeks to work on. Her work has to be saved on a disc which is kept in a file cabinet in the lab. A disc, y'all. The 90's were so cute. When she boots up her disc, it's been erased. Everything is gone except a warning for her to stay away from Jonathan.
She runs out of the computer lab and ends up at Louisa's picture again. Her fascination with this picture is getting disturbing. She thinks Louisa's smile has changed. Now it seems to be warning her. Oh, Annie. I think all the lycra is affecting your brain. She's so spooked by the picture that she takes off running again. Annie sure runs a lot. I guess it's because being in shape is so important to her. She comes across Caleb and Dawn and still can't believe the two are a couple. She tells Dawn about the erased disc and Dawn is properly sympathetic.
Jonathan walks up and for a minute Annie is scared that he might have actually killed Louisa. But then he smiles at her and she dismisses her fear because SIDEBURNS. (You should totally picture me doing jazz hands when I say SIDEBURNS because I totally am.) He could never kill anyone. He looks like Luke Perry. All is well. Jonathan walks her to the front door of the school. He has to stay for tennis practice but he gives her a kiss. Annie sees Ruby watching them unhappily.
Now it's Friday night. This book flies through days between one paragraph and the next. Annie is home alone. There's no cable yet and she's bored. She obsesses over Louisa for awhile (I keep expecting to hear she's stolen the picture out of the showcase and tacked it onto her wall) and then decides to call Jonathan. She dials 411 to get his number. For those of you under the age of 40, 411 is Information and in the dark ages you could call it to get people's phone numbers. His mom answers and assumes she's Ruby and tells her that Jonathan left to pick her up ages ago. Annie is devastated but recovers when she realizes they aren't exactly exclusive. After their one date.
Later on, Annie gets a call and a raspy voice warns her that one dead girlfriend is enough.
At first she is angry about the call but then she gets scared and checks out all the locks. She has a restless night and calls Dawn first thing in the morning. Dawn is on her way out to an electrical engineering class at the Y and Annie is flabbergasted to hear this. Doesn't Dawn know she's a GIRL and a girl would NEVER take a class like this? She might break a nail or put a run in her stockings or something. Dawn tells Annie that she's only in the class because Ruby begged her to go and Ruby is only in the class because the teacher is hot. You're an asshole, Stine. You took something positive like two girls taking an engineering class and turned it into pursuit of hot guy. Blech. Annie tells Dawn about the phone call and how she suspects it was Ruby based on the evidence that Ruby was out with Jonathan the night before. Dawn can't believe that information either but she has to run so she tells Annie they'll discuss later.
Jonathan arrives for their bike ride and they decide to head up the falls again. They ride past Caleb's house on the way and he comes outside to see what they're doing. Jonathan invites Caleb to join them and Caleb agrees despite his reservations about Jonathan going up there so soon. We're treated to an obnoxious scene of Caleb playing chicken with a big truck on a residential street where people could be killed by such behavior. I hate all these people. All of them.
They get up to the top of the falls and Jonathan's mood changes instantly. He goes right up to the edge and just stares down again like he was on the day Annie first met him. Caleb is concerned and thinks that Jonathan shouldn't be up there. They try to get his attention but Jonathan ignores them. Annie glances around and sees Ruby messing with the handlebars of her bike.
Annie goes a little apeshit but Ruby claims she was only looking at the bike because it looks like a bike her cousin has. Uh huh. I buy that ridiculous explanation. Annie feels bad for losing it but Ruby is kind of a bitch about the whole thing. It turns out that Ruby and Dawn biked up there together. Dawn says she was hoping to run into them. How on earth did Dawn know they were going up the falls? It seems weird to me. When Annie told her that she met Jonathan up there, Dawn refused to believe he'd even be there but now it's the first place she looks for him? Plot hole alert. Don't fall in. They all talk amongst themselves about starting a bike club or something equally dumb. Then they look around and notice that Jonathan isn't where he used to be. They all assume he jumped and Ruby actually screams in terror but it's just Stine needing to end a chapter and I feel sorry for her that she didn't know that and got herself all upset.
In reality, Jonathan has ditched them all without a word and is riding furiously back down the hill. Nice of him to worry them all like that. Caleb gets pissed and blames Annie for dragging Jonathan up there before he was ready. Annie gets all depressed because Caleb doesn't like her. Boo hoo. I can't figure out why she'd even care but she seems pretty broken up about it. They all head down the cliff and go home.
Later that night Annie has some stupid nightmare about going over the cliff that I'm sure Stine intended to be tense and scary but it just isn't. At all. Her phone rings at 2am and it's Jonathan. He apologizes for taking off on her and asks her out for the next day. She turns him down to work on her term paper. This seems out of character for Annie considering how much time she's spent obsessing over whether he likes her or not.
Dawn shows up the next day with some books that Annie can use for her research. It's incredibly thoughtful of her but Annie just wishes she'd hurry up and leave. Dawn settles in, though, and tells Annie how fed up she is with Caleb and how tired she is of his stupid stunts. She wants to break up with him and she's completely pouring her heart out to Annie who isn't even listening because she wants to work on her paper. Annie's a jerk. You don't do that to a friend, Annie. Despite the fact that she couldn't spare a minute to be a friend to Dawn, as soon as Dawn leaves, Annie starts obsessing over Louisa and Jonathan. Finally she decides to take a bike ride to clear her head.
She decides to ride through the woods despite the fact it's getting dark and she's unfamiliar with them. I hope something eats her in there. She hears someone running after her and immediately assumes she's in danger. She pedals furiously away but ends up wrecking her bike and is sprawled out helplessly when her pursuer catches up.
It's Ryan. He's just been out walking in the woods because it's where he used to come with his best friend Louisa before she died. He saw Annie go by and called out to her but she didn't hear him so he ran after her. Normal. It begins to rain and they start to walk out of the woods together. Ryan tells Annie that Louisa was his special friend and she told him everything...only he does it in such an intensely creepy way that it's pretty clear that he was stalking Louisa or something and she never was his friend at all. He grabs Annie and tells her that he wants her to be his special friend now. He forces a kiss on her that she neither wants or enjoys and she pushes him away. He's stunned and hurt but she's scared enough that she gets on her bike and leaves him in her dust. As she pedals away, he screams after her that she'll be sorry just like Louisa was. Annie dismisses him as crazy. It's hard not to. He's written that way.
Now she's back at school and I have no idea how much time has past. Annie is determined to spend every single afternoon in the computer lab working on this paper. On the way to the lab, she passes Ruby in the hall and says hi but Ruby doesn't respond. At first, Annie can't believe Ruby ignored her on purpose but then decides that it isn't what happened at all. Because there's no way that a person would ignore Annie on purpose for any reason. Annie has a little bit of a Mary Sue thing going on here. She also passes Dawn who tells her there's this big bake sale going on in the gym and she wants Annie to go with her. Annie declines in favor of working on her paper and continues to the computer lab.
Annie makes it to the lab and retrieves her disc from the file cabinet. I can't believe she's still keeping it there after it got erased. I've done research for term papers before and I would have done everything possible to avoid losing my work, including taking the disc with me. I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt here and say maybe the disc is school property and can't leave the room. Either that, or she's just an idiot. Even odds. Anyway, there's this one computer that she always uses. It's an older Apple and no one else likes it but she likes the keyboard. So she goes straight to it and sticks her disc in the drive. When she taps the keys to bring up her file, sparks start to fly.
Annie regains consciousness on the floor of the lab with her teacher kneeling over her. She's had a pretty big shock from the computer and she feels all energized and amped up. The only effect seems to be a weird vibration in her body. She's suddenly furious because she's certain that Ruby is the one that rigged up her computer. She has evidence, y'all. Ruby IGNORED HER IN THE HALL. The only reason someone would do that is if she was going to kill you. Plus, she took an electrical engineering class. So it must have been her because the first thing they teach you in any Y class is how to kill a classmate.
Annie runs out of the room and down to the gym where she sees Ruby laughing and talking to Jonathan and Dawn as if she didn't just try to kill Annie. (Can we hold up here a minute while I express to you my extreme doubt that Annie is the only one who ever touches that computer in the lab? There aren't that many and I have a hard time imagining that students just waited for one of the newer ones all day long rather than using the older, available one. This is a ridiculous plot contrivance.) Annie flies at Ruby and tackles her to the floor with her hands around Ruby's throat. Jonathan apparently just stands around and watches the show but Dawn pulls Annie off.
Annie accuses Ruby of trying to kill her which Ruby denies. Ruby accuses Annie of being completely messed up which no one denies. Annie gets pissed off and yells at Jonathan to say something. Um, what is he supposed to say, Annie? Jonathan tells her that he has no idea what's even going on. Suddenly Annie isn't angry anymore and now she's just really embarrassed. She runs back out of the gym like any reasonable person would do. In the hallway she encounters Louisa's ghost.
Only it's not really her ghost. Stine just needed to end the chapter. It's really Louisa's sister Danielle. For some reason she invites Annie to go get a drink with her and they end up at a coffee shop down the street. They talk a lot about Louisa. Danielle tells her that Louisa was up at the falls that day with Jonathan AND Ruby. Annie is surprised because Dawn left Ruby out of the story when she told it. Annie asks Danielle if she thinks that either one of them was responsible for Louisa's death. Danielle isn't sure. Louisa and Jonathan had a stormy, on-again-off-again relationship and were always fighting but she doesn't think that he'd kill her. And Ruby was jealous of Louisa and in love with Jonathan but she didn't think Ruby would kill her either. She just isn't sure what happened. They change the subject and chat about other things for awhile and Annie ends up really liking Danielle. The only way I got through all this was picturing Annie in my head with her hair sticking up all over the place like electrocution victims in cartoons sitting there calmly having tea with Danielle. lol
At home sometime after midnight, Annie gets another spooky phone call telling her that Jonathan will kill her. She hangs up and the phone rings again so Stine can finish the chapter.
This time it's Dawn. I wonder if Annie has her own line or if her parents are getting pissed about all these phone calls in the middle of the night. My parents would have ripped the phone out of the wall. Dawn wants her to apologize to Ruby who is so upset she's been crying all night. Annie still thinks Ruby did it and offers up the class as evidence against her. Dawn laughs that off and says they've only had two classes so far and haven't really learned how to do anything. Beside, Ruby is only in the class to flirt, remember? Annie is kind of snotty about the whole thing and tells Dawn that Ruby is the one that is making the phone calls. Dawn highly doubts it and offers up the theory that it's Jonathan doing them instead. She says that there's something seriously wrong with Jonathan. In the end, Annie agrees to apologize to Ruby and to invite her to the Birthday Open House. What on earth is a Birthday Open House???
Before I can even figure out what it is, we're there. The place is crammed and everyone is standing around trying to eat spaghetti because that's what Annie served at her Open House. Why on earth did she think spaghetti was a good idea? It's messy enough to eat when you're sitting at a proper table. I'd have it all over myself if I tried to eat it standing up. Ruby shows up, although I wouldn't blame her if she didn't. In fact, I think it's a little weird that she did. Annie just tried to strangle her after all. She brings a present and Annie is all snotty about the fact she can tell it's a book. I'm guessing she doesn't actually know how to read.
Ryan shows up at the back door and seems surprised to find that Annie's having a party. Which means he wasn't invited. Which means he just showed up at her back door for some other reason. Which isn't creepy at all. {sarcasm} Annie invites him in to have spaghetti which is just weird after he assaulted her in the woods and all. I hate everyone in this book.
Annie goes back into the living room and Jonathan invites her to go on a bike ride the next day. Then they kiss right there in front of all the people slurping spaghetti. Classy. Ruby looks really pissed, y'all.
Now the Open House is over and I still didn't figure out how it was any different from a birthday party. It must have been the spaghetti. Annie and her mom are in the kitchen surveying all the damage. There's dishes and sauce everywhere. Spaghetti was clearly a mistake and I can't believe they didn't know that from the get go. A pot is boiling over on the stove and Annie is confused because she knows she turned the spaghetti off ages ago. She goes to look in the pot and something so horrific happens that you might want to stop reading right here. Seriously. You've been warned.
Someone boiled the cat.
Someone boiled the cat.
I tried to warn you. I almost stopped reading the book right here. Fuck you, Stine.
The next morning Jonathan calls to set up a time for that bike ride and Annie tells him about Goggles and says she doesn't want to go. Jonathan just goes ahead and shows up anyway because he knows what's best for her, mmmkay? He's wearing a black and yellow wife-beater over black lycra shorts and I can only imagine him looking like a giant bumble bee. Seriously, lycra shorts are not a good look for a man and what the HELL is it with all the lycra in this book? He talks Annie into going with him to take her mind off things and they end up at the falls again.
Jonathan does his standard go-to-the-edge-and-look-down thing but then joins her sitting in the clearing. She pours her heart out to him and tells him everything that's been happening to her and how someone is trying to warn her away from him. He just sits there and stares ahead saying absolutely nothing until she gets mad. Finally she yells at him that she wants him to tell her about the day that Louisa died. When he doesn't respond, she softens and says she knows that he really cared about Louisa. He angrily responds that he hated her so much he killed her.
Only he didn't. Stine just needed to end the chapter. In reality, he says he killed her because it was his idea to go to the falls. But RUBY actually killed her. Yeah. That's it. It was Ruby. Definitely Ruby.
Ruby emerges from the woods to call him a filthy liar who lies. Jonathan says that he and Ruby had been secretly dating behind Louisa's back and they had brought Louisa up on the falls to confess. While they were there, he heard someone on the path and went to investigate. It was Caleb and he stood there and talked to Caleb for awhile. When he got back to the top, Louisa was gone and he knew that Ruby had pushed her over the side. Ruby says it's a lie. While Jonathan was talking to Caleb, she heard someone call her name from the trees. She went to see who it was and when she got back, Jonathan was standing alone at the edge and she knew he had pushed Louisa over the edge. Clearly neither of them did it and anyone with a brain could see that, but none of these people have brains.
Jonathan tackles Ruby (because that's a completely reasonable response) and the two of them roll and wrestle their way over to the edge. In an excruciatingly long passage, they get ever closer to the edge while Annie frets about them falling over. It takes forever. I keep hoping they'll go over and take Annie with them. In the end only Ruby goes over the side. Annie marvels that she doesn't hear Ruby's body hit the rocks or the water below. But only for a minute because then she realizes that Jonathan just made Ruby go over which must mean that he pushed Louisa which must mean he's going to push her too.
She takes off running and smashes into Dawn who is coming up the trail. Dawn soothes her and takes her back up to Jonathan and for some reason, Annie allows this. Idiot. At the top, Dawn tells Jonathan that she saw everything. She saw Annie push Ruby off the falls and then she saw Annie slip and fall over herself.
No one knows what the hell she's talking about. Because they're too dumb to figure out right away that Dawn is the bad guy.
Dawn admits that she's the one who pushed Louisa over the edge. She did it hoping to get Jonathan out of the deal. She's only been dating Caleb to stay close to Jonathan. And she's the one who has been tormenting Annie. She gives Annie a running shove and Annie tells us that she feels her body fly over the edge of the falls.
Only she doesn't. Stine just wanted to end the chapter. In actuality, Annie only IMAGINED herself going over the side and Jonathan has easily tackled Dawn and is sitting on top of her.
The police show up. The reason that Annie never heard Ruby die is because she didn't. She only has a couple of broken bones but she was able to walk out of there and go get help. They take Dawn away but leave Annie and Jonathan to ride their bikes back into town. Before they head down, they take time to kiss. Okay. WTF? She's okay with the fact that he wrestled poor Ruby over the side of a cliff with no remorse? We're just ignoring that because she survived? I guess we are. Because SIDEBURNS. Sigh. Annie. Seriously. I can't even. This book is over and I can't even.
Final Thoughts: I wish I had some. I'm traumatized from the boiled cat and I hate EVERYONE in this book. I can't even get upset about Annie and Jonathan ending up together because clearly they deserve each other. I just can't with this one. Peace out.
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