Tag Line: He was crazy about Jenny. Crazy enough to kill her.From the Back of the Book: He had said, "I'll be keeping my eye on you." Jenny is new in town. With her parents away, she is all alone in an isolated house. The looming mountains frighten her; the days are hot and stifling. But she already has a secret admirer who courts her with sweet messages and flowers. Jenny also has an enemy. Someone leaves a dead rattlesnake at her door. A sinister black motorcycle chases her down a deserted road. Does Jenny know too much about the mysterious "accident" on the cliffs? Jenny has no one to turn to. Except her secret admirer....But who is he?
Again, this book is "ish". It's listed as a Point Horror on the list my daughter found, but it doesn't have the traditional blood spatter mark on the spine. Still, I already owned it, so I decided to just go with it.
This book came out in 1989 and I loved it so much I forced my best friend to read it. I even kept my copy through several bookcase cleanses over the years. When my daughter suggested I read it for this blog, I told her she probably wouldn't enjoy the recap. See, I tend to be funnier when I hate the book and those are the posts she loves. But every single time I look at my pile of waiting books, I'm terrified of accidentally pulling out another Sister Dearest or Party Line (the horror!!) so I went with one I knew I could get through. It's been 26 years since I fell in love with this book and...well...it's possible my daughter might like this post just a little bit after all.
Our protagonist Jenny wakes up in the middle of the night and is temporarily disoriented. She tells us that she's used to that feeling because they've moved four times in six years. Her dad's job forces them to relocate often and her mom actually gets antsy if they stay in one place too long. It would be super cool if her dad was a spy and her mom was on the run because she murdered her entire family, but I'm pretty sure nothing that exciting is going to happen in a Point Horror (ish). Jenny introduces us to her elderly, overweight dog Peaches before she goes downstairs to wander around. Apparently this is something Jenny does in every new house in order to get used to it.
Jenny tells us that they haven't gotten around to putting curtains up but it doesn't matter because her house is seriously out in the middle of absolutely nowhere. She's not really worried about the wolves or the deer seeing her in her nightie as she wanders around. I don't know. I'd be pretty worried about it. I mean, she wouldn't be in a book like this if something gnarly wasn't about to happen to her. But maybe she doesn't know she's in a Point Horror (ish) book. These girls are usually pretty dim. Outside the window she can see the Rimrocks and they give her the creeps. I had to look up Rimrocks. Apparently they are limestone formations in the Billings, Montana area.
The next day Jenny mentions to her dad that the rocks creep her out and he tells her the only cure for that is to get out and climb around in them. Jenny is all "Pshaw" at that idea. She tells us that she is overly cautious and nothing like her adventurous parents. We're gifted with Jenny's description of herself now. She has blonde hair, brown eyes, freckles and long legs. I guess those are the important parts. I'm kind of picturing her without a torso now, but whatever. Mom comes in and says the house they are trying to sell in their previous town has a contract on it and they need to go iron out the details. And there we have it. This book got the parents the hell out of there in the first chapter. It's seriously efficient. It doesn't say where they lived before coming to Montana, but I'm just going to go ahead and assume it was Europe because that's where all the Point Horror parents go. Jenny notices that her parents are only booking two seats on the plane and is all like "did you forget you have a daughter?" Of course they did. That's what Point Horror (ish) parents do.
Jenny's mom tells her that she needs to stay put and deal with the painters when they come to give an estimate. Hello? She's sixteen. Her parents are leaving her all alone in an isolated house with no curtains and no one to contact if she needs help AND they are going to let strange men come in the house while she's alone to look at walls? Sheesh. This set might take the cake. Clearly they're tired of her overly-cautious, lazy ass and are actively looking for ways to get her killed without getting their own hands dirty. Maybe they've done this before and that's why they move around so much. They're hiding a long trail of murdered-by-painters-in-houses-with-no-curtains daughters.
Jenny leaves her neglectful parents to their packing and list making and drives into the town of Rimrock to explore. There isn't much of a town and very few shopping options. She goes to the little grocery store and buys a few random things. As she's putting them in her car, a girl rides up on a horse and introduces herself as Sally. She tells Jenny that she lives down the road from her but she hasn't come by to say hello because she was away visiting relatives all summer. She tells Jenny that the teenagers in town tend to scatter when school is out, but they'll all be returning soon. In fact, the next night is their annual scavenger hunt. It's a big deal in the town and all the teens participate. A teacher makes up the list and they have a wild, wild time every year. Somehow I don't believe that.
In the blink of an eye, Jenny is at said scavenger hunt waiting for her wild, wild time to commence. We meet a lot of characters here. Jenny does her best to remember everyone and so will I. First is Dean. He's sandy-haired and blue-eyed and the group nerd. He's somewhat of a computer expert which was a lot more unusual in 1989 than it is today. He has his own computer equipment so I'm assuming his parents have some money. Next we meet Brad. He's all big and burly and the star of the school's sucky football team. There's Alice who's an airhead and Marc who thinks he's a player but really has no game and Karen who is almost as smart as Dean. Sally gives Jenny the gossipy cliff notes as they go around. She also tells absolutely everyone that Jenny is going to be home all alone for the next several days and gives them her address and phone number so they can make sure she's not lonely. Apparently Sally has never heard of the idea that you keep it to yourself when you're home alone so no one murders you. Maybe Jenny's parents hired her as part of their evil plan to do away with their lazy daughter.
The last two people arrive and clearly they are the ones we've been waiting for. Ellis builds up their arrival so we know they're important unlike those other losers we just spent all our time meeting. Diana is gorgeous which probably means she has no soul because no one but the protagonist is allowed to be beautiful AND nice. She's blonde and thin and she's just gone through a messy break up with Brad because he was too possessive. She arrives with David and the angels sing.
David immediately has Jenny panting. He's tall and lanky which is apparently her type. He has dark hair and dark eyes and she describes him as loose-limbed which conjured up images of grace in my youth but now just makes me think of marionette puppets flopping all around. Sally sees the gleam in Jenny's eye and rushes to introduce her to David and Diana. Diana is rude and hateful to her and I'm SHOCKED at this surprising character trait. {sarcasm} Jenny finds herself conveniently alone with David and he tells her not to take Diana too seriously. He thinks she's stressed out about something and doesn't mean to be a total bitch. David's pants spontaneously combust because he is clearly a lying liar who lies when it comes to Diana's bitch status. He asks Jenny to be his partner for the hunt and she faints dramatically at his feet before accepting. Okay, I might have made that fainting part up. Maybe.
They get ready to commence the hunt. The first team to finish (or quit) will build a fire and start roasting hot dogs for the others. The entire town is happy to let teenagers wreck their houses looking for random crap and the clues are clever. I guess. Jenny and David are having a great time. In between items, they talk as if they've known each other all their lives. They have deep conversations about what they want to be when they grow up and what their favorite color is. I'm laughing at the thought that Jenny thinks this is a deep and meaningful conversation. Jenny is already head over heels in love. Which seems out of character for a girl who has been described as "cautious" more than once in the span of two chapters.
Jenny thinks David might just like her back {swoon} because he's stayed with her for the entire hunt while the other teams keep changing. She's proven right when he kisses her and tells her that he falls fast. It seems reasonable. I mean, he knows what she wants to be when she grows up and what her favorite color is. Relationships have been built on far less.
One of the clues is to find an empty nest. David wants to look up on the rocks but Jenny isn't too keen on that idea. It's clouding up and looks stormy and she's worried about trying to climb in the waning light. He's pretty insistent though and she doesn't want to botch their deep and meaningful relationship, so she reluctantly agrees. They head up but she's nervous and finally she reaches her limit and she tells him that she wants to go back down. He agrees that they should.
As they are making their Jenny-cautious way down, David sees something and tells her to wait there while he goes to check it out. He leaves her alone. She freaks out. It starts to rain and she starts to scream his name. She has no idea where he's gone or if he's ever coming back. The longer he's gone, the more she worries that he's fallen on the slick rocks and injured himself. She continues to scream his name as she makes her cautious way down the rocks. Finally she thinks she hears an answer. The noise from the storm makes it hard to hear, but she definitely hears another voice. She yells for David but he doesn't respond. Then, over the wind and rain and thunder, she hears a shout and seconds later a prolonged scream. Jenny loses her effing mind.
Her slow descent down the side of the rock is described in great detail that I found incredibly tedious to read. When she reaches the bottom, she is stunned to bump into David who is unharmed and holding a soggy bird nest. Jenny goes all Compton on him for leaving her up on the rock in a storm just to win a stupid scavenger hunt. David calmly tells her that he didn't leave her to get the nest. He just found it a second ago. He does apologize for leaving her up there. He says he went farther away than he'd thought and had trouble getting back. When he got there, she was gone. Jenny angrily tells him that's impossible because she was there the whole time. Um, Jenny? I hate to break into your unreasonable, unjustified tirade here, but you're standing AT THE BOTTOM OF THE ROCKS. Clearly you WEREN'T there the whole time unless you magically teleported. If that were the case, we wouldn't have gotten all those pages of rock climbing description. Still, she maintains her position for a hot minute and tells him that he must have gone back to the wrong spot. He looks at her dubiously and she seems to notice she's on flat ground because then she says maybe he got back to the place after she had already left. You think? David agrees this is possible but now he's looking at her all funny and she thinks he thinks she's lying. Personally I think he's just thinking she's a complete brat. Or maybe that's me. Whatever.
She demands to know why he didn't answer her when she called his name. He reasonably points out that he couldn't hear anything over the storm. Even though she knows that's probably the truth, she doesn't settle down. She asks him why he shouted and screamed. David looks at her funny and says he didn't which she doesn't believe for one fecking second. In her head she knows he slipped on a rock and screamed and is too macho to admit it. This makes her really, really mad. She continues to be petulant that he abandoned her and she got wet and she generally acts extremely snotty toward him. For the first minute, I was kind of on her side because he DID leave her up there. But he apologized and she will not let. it. go. Finally he tells her that he'll just take her home. The cook-out was cancelled because of the rain anyway. The ride to her house is tense and silent.
The next day Jenny takes her mom and dad to the airport. On the long, lonely drive home she realizes what an asshole she was the day before and wonders if David will ever talk to her again. Not if he's smart, Cookie. I think you revealed your true colors up there on those rocks and he didn't like the shade. She knows she owes him an apology but she's still pretty pissed at him for not admitting he screamed.
When she arrives home, there are three messages on the machine. One is from the painting company to confirm the date and time of their appointment. The second is from Sally. Since the weenie roast was cancelled, she's trying to get everyone to meet at the diner the next day to hang out. The third is from a Secret Admirer. He has a soft, silky voice and tells Jenny that he's crazy about her and he'll be keeping an eye on her. She finds this tremendously exciting and flattering. I think it's creepy as eff, but to each her own I guess. Jenny detects a note of shyness in his voice and she thinks it's super sexy. She listens to the message over and over and then saves it on the machine to listen to again later. It crosses her mind that this might be some kind of cruel joke on the new kid in town but she dismisses that reasonable thought pretty quickly. Only 12-year-olds play jokes like that in Jenny's mind and that sexy voice did not belong to a preteen. No, this must be true, serious love and she's going to bask in it.
I think her logic is flawed. Yes, it's a juvenile prank to play (if it IS a prank) but there are plenty of juvenile asshats in high school. My study hall was full of them. And playing a prank on the new kid was definitely in their repertoire.
Her parents call and check on her the next day but she doesn't tell them about the SA. Of course. Kids in these books don't tell adults jack. After the call, Sally shows up at her door. While they're sitting around chatting about the hunt, the painters call again. Jenny tells the guy that she's home alone and he gets a little pervy on her. It's hella creepy, y'all. In my head, I'm screaming at Jenny for letting him know she's home alone. Isn't that the first thing a parent always tells a child when they go out the door? "If anyone calls, tell them I'm in the shower, honey. Don't say you're home alone." It's basic survival 101. Announcing you're home alone is pretty much handing every psycho in a ten mile radius an engraved "Please Murder Me" card.
After she hangs up, Sally completely reads my mind and tells Jenny how stupid it was to let the painters know she's alone in the house. Get out of my head, Sally. Jenny knows it's true but chooses to get defensive over it because didn't Sally JUST announce to everyone at the scavenger hunt that Jenny was isolated and unprotected? A whole lot of people know Jenny is by her lonesome.
Jenny plays the SA message for Sally a few times but Sally doesn't recognize the voice at all. Clearly its been disguised because Sally's known every boy in town since birth. She asks Jenny if it could be David but Jenny tells her that's pretty far-fetched. Jenny can tell that Sally is a little wistful about David and asks her about it. Sally admits that she thinks David's hella fine but they went out once and she drove him absolutely nuts with her non-stop gabbing. David has horrid luck with women. Sally makes sure Jenny is coming to the diner later and leaves.
When Jenny gets to the diner, everyone except Brad and Diana is already there. Sally is forcing them to play some lame game where they disguise their voices. Jenny can tell it's Sally's extremely heavy-handed way to smoke out the SA and she's embarrassed. The group gives up the game and talks about the hunt. Everyone is surprised to hear that David and Jenny got caught up on the rocks when the storm hit.
Brad comes staggering in to tell everyone that some hikers found Diana at the bottom of the rocks. She's alive but in a coma. She's apparently been lying out there since the night of the scavenger hunt. Karen says that she saw Diana about 30 minutes before the storm hit. Diana had been with Dean at the time but he took off to find a zither and Diana was in a really bitchy mood and told Karen she was just going to go home. I'm not sure how she was going to do that since she arrived at the hunt with David in his truck. No one seems to pick up on the fact that she would've had to have found someone to beg a ride from though. They all wonder why she would have gone up on the rocks all by herself.
Dean absently says that she must have screamed when she fell and he wonders why no one heard her. Jenny quietly says that she might have heard just that. She tells them about getting separated from David and hearing a shout and a scream. Everyone wants to know what the shout was but she says she can't remember. Brad gets angry and hits the table, demanding she remember. Yeah, because it's SO easy to remember things when people are all up in your face acting violent. Dean suggests that maybe the storm played tricks on her ears and she didn't really hear anything at all. Wait a minute? Wasn't he JUST the one who wondered why no one heard her scream? Which is it Dean?
Everyone seems to accept Dean's explanation though and agrees she must have heard the wind. Jenny is sure it was a person but she lets it drop because Brad is acting all Incredible Hulk and she's afraid he'll turn green and rip his clothes off any minute. She gives Dean a grateful smile for diffusing the situation. He smiles back and then gives her a slow, seductive wink which curls her toes and turns her insides to goo. She practically has to call for the smelling salts, this wink made her swoon so hard. I'm not even sure how a wink can be seductive. It's the closing of an eyelid. Mostly to me it just looks like someone has dust in their eye. Jenny decides there's no way Dean can be the SA because anyone that bold could never sound shy.
She glances around the table. Almost everyone looks upset but David is staring at her like he's trying to mind meld with her. She grows uncomfortable with his predatory gaze.
Everyone filters out of the diner but Jenny hangs around. She's hungry but she feels guilty for being hungry because everyone else was so upset about Diana that they couldn't eat. Jenny, girl, you barely knew Diana and she wasn't exactly nice to you when you met. Eat the hamburger. Dean comes back in before she gets her food and tells her that he left his keys behind. He ducks under the table and then comes back up and pats his pocket. Jenny smiles and says it sounds like he found them. Dean pulls out a handful of change and tells her that her hearing is shit. Well, maybe not like that, but the implication was there. He tells her that hearing can't be trusted and leaves again. What kind of bullplop was that? Why is Dean trying so hard to convince her that she didn't hear anything that night? I think the obvious answer is obvious. We're having another "effing Justin" moment in this book.
Jenny gets her burger and she gets one bite in before David reappears. What is wrong with these people and what do they have against homegirl getting her grub on? Jenny tells him she's feeling guilty because if she had insisted that he listen to her about the scream, Diana might have been found right away and wouldn't be in a coma now. Well, that was manipulative. Basically she's telling him that HE should feel guilty because if he had listened to her, Diana would be fine. Wow, Jenny. Maybe you don't deserve that hamburger after all. She's super passive-aggressive, y'all.
David asks her if she's sure she heard a shout and a scream that night. She is but she lies and tells him she isn't because she's tired of all this weird intensity. Wait. She JUST told him that if he had listened to her about the scream she heard Diana would be better off and NOW she's saying she isn't even sure she heard anything. Oh, Ellis, what are you doing here? You're contradicting yourself at every turn and it's making me want to burn this book that I absolutely adored as a teen. I feel my world crumbling down around me. Everything my life was built on was a lie. Oh woe. WOE!!!!!!
David asks her what she thought of Diana which is borderline odd because he was there during her only conversation with the girl and she was a complete bitch to Jenny. Then he asks her if she met up with Diana at any time during the hunt. Damn it, Ellis. This is a fecking stupid question and even JENNY realizes it. She was with him the. entire. hunt. He would know if she met up with Diana again. What the eff? She tells him that he knows the answer to that. She can't figure out what he's doing and honestly neither can I. Clearly Ellis has no clue either. David leaves her to her cold hamburger. I feel like Jenny is going to lose a lot of weight in this book if it keeps going on like this.
When Jenny gets home she finds a hanging basket of wildflowers on her porch. There's no card and no pot inside with water or dirt. She figures it's a welcome wagon gift and just leaves it there to die because she can't be bothered to care enough to bring it in. There's a message on the machine from her SA. He tells her that he couldn't resist picking the flowers anymore than he could resist picking her. I throw up everywhere but Jenny is elated. She runs out to rescue the flowers because NOW they are worth saving. As she arranges them in a vase, a glitter bomb goes off in her heart. The SA turned her entire day around. She sits and contemplates her SA. She decides that it can't possibly be David, Dean or Brad. David is too distant. Dean is too bold. Brad is too angry. It must be someone else. Maybe that Marc dude who thinks he's God's gift to women.
Jenny goes up to take a shower. She takes a lot of showers in this book. When she gets out, she just pulls on a shorty robe and heads back downstairs. She's pretty comfortable walking around a curtainless house with just a shorty robe on. I mean, it's evening so she has lights on. Anyone driving by could see her. I don't know about her robe, but all the ones I've ever owned tend to gap open. She must not mind sharing her goodies with random passerby.
Sally calls to tell her that Diana is the same. A bunch of them went to the hospital and sat around but no one was allowed to see her and there wasn't really any news. Jenny asks her if she wants to come over and keep her company but Sally tells her one of the horses is sick and she has to wait around for the vet. Meanwhile, Jenny notices that Peaches has taken up some kind of weird vigil at the front door. She's not barking or anything. She's just standing there. Sally tells Jenny that they all told Brad he needs to apologize to Jenny but she doesn't know if he was listening.
After they hang up, Jenny decides that Peaches needs to go out to potty. She snaps on a leash and opens the door. I guess she doesn't mind going outside in nothing but a shorty robe either. Brad is on her front porch and he's clearly intoxicated. Ellis glosses over the fact that he drove out to Jenny's house completely drunk and that makes me hate her a little.
Brad asks her again what she heard that night. Jenny isn't interested in having this conversation with him while he's drunk. He was violent enough when sober. She tells him that she thinks Dean is right and her ears were just playing tricks on her. Brad doesn't look like he believes her but his brain cells are pickled in alcohol so he launches into a story about how much he hates Diana for doing him wrong. The more he talks, the louder and more agitated he gets. Jenny is getting pretty scared but luckily he staggers off and gets back in his car. Drinking and driving is one thing that makes me incredibly angry. I'm sure you all know why so I'll spare you the rant, but suffice it to say, I'm ranting full-on in my head right now.
Jenny tries to get back to walking her dog, but all of a sudden Peaches refuses to budge and starts growling at thin air. This completely freaks Jenny out because Peaches never growls at anything. She drags her dog back into the house and locks the door. Peaches resumes her vigil at the door, not even budging when Jenny offers her popcorn which she usually loves. Finally Jenny gives up and heads upstairs to read.
The next chapter begins with Jenny waking up at 2:15am after a nightmare. She's still in her shorty robe. She can hear Peaches sniffing and scratching at the door and it freaks her the freak out. She builds pyramids out of cans in front of all the doors and tops them off with silverware. Peaches won't leave the door at all so Jenny settles in on the couch with a fireplace poker in her hand. She intends to stay up until sunrise but ends up drifting off at some point. She doesn't wake up until the fireplace poker slips from her hand and makes a hideous clatter on the floor. Peaches is curled up asleep now. Jenny feels like that means the danger has passed.
Sally arrives a few minutes after Jenny wakes up. She's holding a beautifully wrapped package in her hands. She gives Jenny a lot of guff over the can barricades and helpfully points out that Jenny is like all those teenage girls in horror movies that get bumped off before you can finish your popcorn. Jenny isn't amused and asks her what's in the box. Sally doesn't know. She found it on the porch. Jenny is all excited because she just knows it's from her beloved SA. She ignores the fact that this asshole must have sat outside her house half the night scaring her and her dog to pieces. She tears open the box and finds a decapitated rattlesnake inside with its head resting on top of its body.
Jenny throws the snake across the room and then makes Sally clean it up. Sally grumbles that Jenny must have one whacked out SA but Jenny insists that it has to be a different person. No sane person would bring her flowers one day and a rattlesnake the next. I think Jenny's brought up a valid point, but not the one she was intending to make. They talk about whether Brad could have been the one to leave the snake. Sally tells Jenny that Brad is really obsessed with finding out what Jenny heard up on the rocks. Even after everyone else told him to drop it, he couldn't let it go.
Jenny fesses up and tells Sally that she DID hear something up there. Now it's Sally's turn to demand she remember what she heard and it produces similar results. I think we're supposed to add Sally to our suspect list here but we all know who did it. It's effing Justin. Oops. Wrong book.
Sally invites Jenny to go horseback riding if Jenny will change out of her shorty robe but the painters pick that exact moment to arrive. Sally takes off leaving Jenny all alone with the pervy painter. Sally might not be a suspect but she's a really crappy friend. Jenny shows the guys what needs done and the pervy one can't stop staring at her bare legs. He keeps making creepy comments about her being all alone too. This guy seriously makes my skin crawl. They give her an estimate and leave.
Jenny showers and gets dressed. She's hungry and doesn't want anything in the house so she decides to drive to town and buy something to eat. Part way into town she realizes that David's truck is behind her. He follows her all the way to the store. When they meet up on the sidewalk he hands her a woven bracelet and tells her that he found it in his trunk after the scavenger hunt. Jenny hadn't even realized she lost it. He seems to be ill-at-ease. He's edgy and nervous and staring at her intensely. Again, I think we're supposed to add him to our suspect list. It's effing Justin. I don't even care that he's in the wrong book anymore. It's him. You hear me, Ellis? It's effing Justin. I'm just going to say that so I don't accidentally say who it REALLY is. You know though, right? It's hideously obvious.
Finally David asks her if she's really changed her mind about what she heard that night. She tells him she hasn't really and he seems relieved. He believes her about the shouting and screaming now. He thinks it's the clue to finding out what really happened to Diana. Jenny stamps her foot and tells him that she doesn't really care about solving the mystery. Nice Jenny.
David doesn't take that well. I can't blame him. He cares about Diana and wants to know who hurt her. He grabs Jenny's shoulders and demands that she try again to remember. Jenny loses it. She tells him that she's sick of everyone acting like complete assholes about this and she doesn't want to be harassed about it anymore. She wishes she'd never even told anyone that she heard something. She's screaming by now and she says that she DID hear something but she's tired of trying to remember what it was and she isn't going to do it anymore. The outburst is conveniently witnessed by Dean and Karen so we can pad out our suspect list even more with this one encounter.
Jenny's back home. Like I said, she's going to be Kate Moss before this book is over because something always comes between her and food. Her parents have called and they're going to be several more days because the negotiations on the house aren't going well. Jenny is freaked at the idea of staying home alone again so she calls Sally to ask her to spend the night. Sally says no again. She has other plans. Jenny needs to audition Karen as the friend because Sally is failing test after test here. They do make plans to take a ride out to the rocks and cook breakfast over a fire the next morning though.
Jenny has a boring little evening at home and falls asleep early. Nothing creepy happens and she's able to sleep the whole night away. The next morning, Sally shows up as promised and they ride out to the Rimrocks. Sally is in a bad mood. She's much quieter than usual and snappish and seems annoyed at pretty much everything Jenny says or does. While they're on the rocks, she keeps looking at her watch like she's waiting for something to happen. After they eat, Jenny stretches out in the sun. After lying there for a few minutes, she feels gravel hit her face and looks up to see a rockslide headed her way. She sees a human shadow at the top and knows that it isn't an accident. A big rock is heading right for Sally and it hits her shoulder knocking her off balance. Jenny manages to grab her just in time and no one is seriously hurt.
Afterwards, Sally doesn't believe Jenny about the shadow she saw. She tells Jenny that the rockslide must have a natural explanation like an earthquake or some kind of blast. Jenny doesn't buy that shit for a second. They head home. Jenny notices that Sally keeps smiling to herself and wonders what that's all about.
Jenny takes yet another shower and decides to go to town for food. I've heard this before Jenny. You never manage to actually GET the food. You're a shop tease. She decides to take Peaches with her because she's left the poor dog alone so much lately. It's busy in town and Jenny has to park several blocks from the store. She finally realizes that she's not going to be able to take the dog into the store, and Peaches is asleep anyway, so Jenny leaves the windows halfway down and leaves her there. I don't like this. It's summer and it's been mentioned that it's hot and sunny. That dog doesn't deserve to be left like that. I wish someone would leave Jenny in a closed up car so she could know what it feels like.
Jenny browses through the store. She sees Dean through the windows and waves. Ellis actually tells us every single thing she buys. Here's a hint, Ellis. Grocery shopping is not exciting. Most of us don't care what's in our own carts, let alone what our fictional protagonist is buying. Jenny gets into the single line and realizes it's a long wait. The registers aren't computerized so it's like being at Hobby Lobby on a Saturday afternoon in December. Brad comes up to her and tells her that he's sorry for showing up drunk the other night. He seems sincere. It literally takes her an HOUR to get through the line. An HOUR. I would not wait in line for an hour for anything short of tickets to kiss Thorsten Kaye. Plus she has frozen foods and meat in her cart. They're all totally melted and poisonous by now. Damn it, Ellis. You made me care about what was in her cart after all. CURSES!!!
Jenny finally gets back to her car and realizes that the windows on her car have been rolled up all the way and poor Peaches is near death. Seriously. What does Point Horror (ish) have against pets? I'm STILL traumatized by what happened to poor Goggles in The Dead Girlfriend and now I have to deal with Peaches's heat stroke. She drops all her groceries, grabs Peaches out of the sweltering car and screams for someone to tell her where the vet is. Luckily it's close by. The vet tells her that Peaches is going to be okay but she'll have to stay a couple of days for observation. He gives Jenny a lecture about leaving her dog in a hot car which she totally deserved. Even windows half down is not enough, Jenny.
Jenny gets back to her car and groceries and decides that everything but the ice cream can be saved. Um, what? An hour in the store. At least half an hour to an hour on a hot street curb and you're going to eat that hamburger meat? We don't need the bad guy to kill Jenny, y'all. She's totally going to do herself in with the worse case of food poisoning known to man.
To complete her awful day, she gets halfway home and the car runs out of gas in the middle of absolutely nowhere. She's still going to eat that hamburger, isn't she? {shudder} Jenny decides her chances of rescue are slim since no one really uses that road. She's going to have to hoof it home. She figures it's three or four miles and she can handle it. A little ways up the road, though, she sees a phone booth. No, Shonda, it's not the TARDIS but it IS good news. She has change in her pocket and she can call for help.
She's nearing the phone booth when she hears an engine approaching. She stands in the middle of the road to flag down the motorist. It's a man on a black motorcycle. He's wearing black and a black "space-age" helmet. Whatever that is. She thinks he looks like Darth Vader and the image makes me laugh and laugh. The motorcycle heads right for her with no signs of stopping and it finally dawns on her that maybe she should get her ass out of the road. She heads for the shoulder and the motorcycle follows her, missing her by mere inches. It drives some distance away and then turns around to come at her again.
Jenny takes cover in the phone booth and closes the door. The motorcycle indulges in several near misses, generally scaring the pee out of her. She's too scared to stay in the phone booth which I find ridiculous. I know it's not a sturdy building or anything but it IS a structure and one that a person on a motorcycle is probably not going to ram into. If it was a car, I'd think maybe she had a point. But a person on a motorcycle is not going to risk the damage to run into a structure like that. Jenny thinks she'll be safer if she gets out of the booth and makes a run for the woods. Jenny. Jenny, really. He can run your ass down before you get a yard away from that booth. Thankfully she's saved from her own stupidity when the door to the booth jams and won't open.
She finally remembers there's a phone RIGHT THERE and decides to call for help. Her tormentor must have seen this coming, though, because he parks right outside and revs the motor so she can't hear anything and no one can hear her. She curls up in a ball with her hands over her ears and waits for it to end.
Finally it does. She peeks out and realizes the rider is gone. There's an extremely convenient sticker on the phone with the number to the local gas station/mechanic and she calls it to get help. The dude answers but Jenny is too freaked out to do more than whisper at him. He can't hear her though. She suddenly decides it's more important to get the door of the booth open and she works at it until it finally gives. The guy from the gas station has been graciously holding all this time and once she gets the door open she manages to tell him where she is and what she needs. Whew.
Jenny opts not to tell the guy from the gas station what happened to her. She's worried he'll call the police and she doesn't want that. She doesn't say WHY she doesn't want that but we know. It's because she's a Point Horror (ish) protagonist and they never call the law, yo. Or they do and no one believes them. At any rate, Jenny isn't traveling down that road.
She gets back home and is elated to find the SA has left windchimes on her porch. She rushes in to see if he left a message. There's one from her parents saying they'll be home the next day. I guess that means we'll be wrapping things up pretty quickly. Things are always resolved before the parents come home. She throws out all the food, thank God, and goes to take another shower. Jenny is the cleanest protagonist we've ever had.
After her shower, she goes out on the porch and applies all her wits to figuring out what's happening to her. This isn't going to take long I think. She realizes that all the bad things started happening after she told everyone that she heard a voice on the rocks that night. She searches her memory and suddenly she knows she heard not one voice but two. Diana had been arguing with someone. And now that someone wanted to scare Jenny so much that she'd forget what she heard.
Jenny goes over her suspect list. (It's effing Justin.) Guys, the answer is SO obvious that I can't believe she hasn't figured it out yet. If she'd just think for one minute she'd have it. It's right there. But, no, we have to go through this exhausting exercise so Ellis can try to convince us that Brad or Sally is the culprit here.
You guys, Jenny is an idiot and here's why. Brad is, indeed, suspect number one. He's moody and violent and he showed up at her house right before the snake appeared. Plus, he's been after Jenny from the beginning to remember what she heard. What? Jenny, really? You JUST finished saying that the bad guy wants you to forget what you heard and now Brad is your main suspect because he wants you to REMEMBER what you heard? Oi.
Suspect number two is Sally. She brought the rattlesnake inside after all. AND she kept checking her watch the day of the rockslide like she knew something was about to happen. If she was in on that, she's pretty damn dumb. She almost got clobbered over the side.
She briefly considers Dean. He seems to be around when things happen. He seemed interested to know if anyone heard anything when Diana fell and then immediately tried to tell her that she couldn't have heard what she said she heard. I'm hoping she's finally grown a brain but she tosses Dean aside and moves on to David. Again, her main evidence against him seems to be that he wants her to remember what she heard so he can find out who hurt his friend. He's also been following her around and generally acting weird. Well, that settles it. It's definitely David. Acting weird is the surest sign of a murderer. Jenny admits that she doesn't really know much about any of them.
Jenny doesn't much about anything if you ask me.
She goes back inside and discovers that her SA has left her a message on the machine. He wants her to meet him that evening up on the Rimrocks. He can't drive all the way out to her place because he has to be at work and because he's nervous about meeting her family. Bullshit. He knows she's home alone. Everyone in town knows she's home alone. I suspect everyone in Montana knows she's home alone by now. Jenny decides to turn on all the lights and turn the stereo up real loud to make it look like there's a wild party going on in case her stalker comes back. A wild party with absolutely no cars in the drive? Did the guest parachute in or what, Jenny? Oi. She practically runs out of the house to meet her SA. This will end well.
Jenny gets to the meeting place the SA described and no one is there. She waits around for awhile but it's starting to get dark and she's getting uneasy. Right when she's about to leave she hears a voice calling her name from above. It's the SA. He tells her that he's come from the top but from this point it would be easier for her to climb up to him than it would be for him to climb down to her. She doesn't like this idea at all and tells him that she'll just wait for him to come to her. He appeases her by saying he'll come down as she comes up and they'll meet in the middle. She really wants to meet this guy so she agrees to give it a try. He guides her with his voice and she can tell that he's getting closer. She comes to the end of the easy part and has to do some more serious climbing and it's not her scene. It's dark and she can't see anything and she's not an experienced climber. She tells him she's going back down.
The SA tries to encourage her to keep going but Jenny is having none of this mess. She's done, yo. Her SA goes from sweet to pissed off and he yells at her that she HAS to come up. Then he screams "I was counting on you!" It's a hella weird thing to say so I just know it's a plot point. Sigh.
Sure enough, Jenny remembers that those are the exact words she heard shouted right before Diana fell. And that was the exact voice that said them too. This seems very sloppy from our bad guy. Unless he was purposely trying to trigger her memory, you'd think he'd be smart enough not to use the words that he's been trying to scare OUT of her mind for the entire book.
Jenny is an idiot and indicates to him that she's now remembered everything. He gets all sad and says that he had hoped this wouldn't happen. THEN WHY DID YOU SCREAM THOSE EXACT WORDS #%^&@!*%#$@!
He tells Jenny that he's been trying to feel her out to discover what she knew. Then he reveals that he is the one behind the snake and Peaches and the motorcycle. Jenny is stunned out of her damn mind. Her SA and her stalker were the same person!?!?!?!? She can't even process this, y'all. Even though it's been pretty obvious for several pages now. Before she can even get her feeble mind wrapped around this turn of events, he reaches out and shoves her over the side.
When Jenny regains consciousness it's completely dark. She doesn't know how much time has passed or how far she fell. Her ankle is badly twisted. She moves and it sends rocks skittering down. She knows that she'll advertise the fact she's still alive and reveal her location if she can't be more quiet. There's FIVE entire pages dedicated to describing Jenny's tedious climb down the Rimrocks. It's hella boring. I think Ellis must love rock climbing or something because she's dedicated more time to this than she did to developing any of her feeble characters in this book.
Jenny hears someone call her name and recognizes the voice of David. She can't believe he's the bad guy. I can't believe it either, Jenny. Wow. You're a complete idiot. She makes her way slowly toward David....the guy she thinks just tried to kill her....and when she's close enough, she hits him over the head with a rock. He goes down instantly. Jenny sits and cries for awhile next to the guy she thinks tried to kill her. Then she gathers her strength to get the hell out of there.
She doesn't get far before Dean arrives and scares the hell out of her. She tearfully explains how David pushed Diana over the cliff and how he's been stalking her and how he tried to kill her. Dean doesn't seem too surprised by any of this really. He merely says "Poor David". Jenny wants to know why he doesn't seem affected by any of this and Dean looks at her like she's an idiot. Which she IS.
Finally. FINALLY Jenny gets it. I've known since the day in the diner that it was effing Justin. I mean DEAN. It's been Dean all along and she just clobbered the one person who could have helped her with a giant ass rock.
Dean tells her that he didn't really push Diana over the cliff. She fell by accident but it was convenient for him and he left her there. He tells Jenny that he'll stage her and David's deaths to look like an accident too. He moves toward her. She springs at him with yet another rock. He blocks the blow but it knocks him off balance and he falls over the side. And that's the end of our big climactic moment. Ellis described a trip down the rocks for five pages but gives us a mere few paragraphs of a final fight scene. Sigh.
David wakes up after all the dirty work is done. Despite being knocked out for heaven knows how long, he seems perfectly fine. He doesn't seem too pissed at Jenny for braining him either. He climbs down the rocks to use the CB in his dad's car to call for an ambulance. He takes Dean a blanket and talks to him for a minute before going back up to Jenny. He tells her that Dean is alive but injured.
While they wait for the ambulance, Jenny tells David the entire story. The ambulance arrives and David goes back down to the ground. He tells them that he'll bring Jenny along so she doesn't have to ride in the same vehicle as Dean. Then he goes back to her again. He tells Jenny that Diana woke up and she's already told everyone that she was arguing with Dean before she slipped and fell over the side. Apparently he was telling the truth about it being an accident but she doesn't know he just left her there to die.
Dean's grades had been slipping and his average was no longer high enough to get into the ivy league college that he was supposed to attend. His high-pressure parents would have a stroke so he hacked the school computer and changed all his grades. Diana found out about it but fell for his sob story and agreed not to turn him in. The school noticed that something funny had happened though and they were questioning everyone. Diana knew it was only a matter of time before they figured it out and she wanted to come clean to save her ass. Dean yelled out that he was counting on her to keep his secret and then she slipped.
Jenny asks David why he was acting so weird all this time and David admits that he suspected Jenny of pushing Diana off the cliff. His reasoning is even weaker than her reasoning for suspecting him. These two are NOT Nancy Drew and Ned Nickerson. Not even close.
Jenny asks David how he knew where to look for her and he sheepishly admits that he broke into her house. After Diana told her tale, David decided to drive out to Jenny's house. When he arrived and saw all the lights on and heard the music playing full blast, he worried that something might be wrong and he went inside. Once inside he listened to the message on her answering machine for some reason and heard the the message from the SA setting up the rendezvous.
Jenny asks him what took him so long to decide to come out there. It was almost dawn when he finally showed up. David says that originally he thought she was meeting a boyfriend or something and he didn't want to interrupt. But then he kept trying to reach Dean to tell him that he needed to go apologize to Diana for leaving her to rot and Dean wasn't answering his phone. Eventually he put two and two together and realized it was Dean on the answering machine.
The book ends with David and Jenny resolving to get to know each other better and Jenny thinking that at least the Rimrocks would never disturb her sleep again.
Final Thoughts: Oi. I loved this book as a 14-yr-old. I loved David and I thought the book was scary and thrilling. I wanted my very own secret admirer and briefly considered taking up rock climbing. Boy, was I impressionable. As an adult, it's pretty clear from the outset who the bad guy is and that the SA and the stalker are the same person. David isn't near as awesome as I remembered and Jenny is pretty much an idiot. I don't know what magic this book had back in 1989 but it's all gone now. I kind of regret rereading it. I feel like I've lost an old friend. {tears}
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