Curtains by R. L. Stine

Warning: Contains Spoilers!!!  This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself.  Do NOT continue to read unless you want to know who the bad guy/girl/decapitated swan is.

Tag Line: The play's the thing...until the blood begins to run.

From the Back of the Book:  Curtain going up - on terror!  Her terrifying secret was buried - until a drive Broadway director tore it out of her during a performance onstage.  Suddenly Rena wasn't safe anymore.  And the Meritt Baxter Summer Theater Camp had become a trap.  Bax had made her the star of Curtains, and he would stop at nothing to elicit emotions that could lead to murder - onstage.  She was the envy of every other would-be actress at camp.  Including Hedy, whose parting threat was, "You'll never play the part. Never!"  Even Julie, her best friend, was acting strangely.  But when the stage blood turned out to be real, Rena knew the play was over, and the horror had just begun...

This book is not a Point Horror, but it IS the book that gave birth to this blog.  I read this book last year because I had it confused with another book from my teen years that I actually wanted to reread.  This book (Curtains) was so awful that I went to Goodreads to see if anyone else felt the same way about it.  One of the reviewers mentioned that she was fond of a blog where they recapped Point Horror books (they had not recapped this particular one, smart ladies that they are) and she provided the link to it.  I went to it and fell in love with the whole concept.  I told my daughter about it and she fell in love with it too.  It is better written than mine and WAY more entertaining.  But the girls who write it have lives and weren't posting enough for my daughter's liking.  I jokingly said I should start one of my own and next thing I knew, the kid was scouring used bookstores to find books for me to recap.  So you all have this book to thank for poorly written and non-entertaining blog.

Now, let's do the damn thing.

This book was written in 1990 and I read it when it was first released.  I apparently forgot everything about it right after that and 25 years later would get it completely confused with a much better book, much to everyone's detriment.  The back blurb is hella boring, amirite?  I have no idea why I ever read this one in the first place.

We begin with our protagonist Rena. She's having an argument with her boyfriend Chip. Chip has been cheating on Rena with her best friend and he doesn't seem very apologetic about it. Rena begins gnashing her teeth and tearing her hair and it's all very over-the-top histrionic. She grabs a knife off the sideboard and stabs him to death. 

Whelp. That escalated quickly.

But this is a Stine book, my lovelies, and none of that actually happened. In reality, it was a scene in a play. Rena and Chip and a whole bunch of other people are attending a summer theater camp given by a Broadway director they call Bax. Bax is demanding and hard to please and not very nice. He has a tendency to compliment them and then insult them in the next breath.

Bax is described as looking like Santa with a big belly, pink cheeks, blue eyes and wild white hair/beard. Well, ho ho ho. He doesn't seem very jolly.

Rena isn't an actress. She doesn't like to be on stage and doesn't like to perform in front of people. Acting camp seems like an odd choice. She's only there because her best friend Julie begged her to come. She's more surprised than anyone when Bax gives her the lead in the play. A red-headed girl named Hedy isn't happy. She claims she was promised the lead and says that her mom expects her to get the part, be discovered and become a Broadway star.  Not sure why she would think anyone would care what her mom expects.  It might make sense if we were told she owns the camp or owns Broadway or something but that doesn't happen.

When Bax refuses to reverse his decision despite Hedy's tantrum, she leans in really close to Rena and whispers that Rena will never have a chance to play that part. Rena gasps in dismay and is instantly WAY too scared about such a small threat. I am getting the feeling that the gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair from earlier wasn't an acting choice. Rena seems like she's the kind of person that over-reacts to every little thing. She's convinced that she's going to be murdered now.

Stine tells us that Rena looks like Michelle Pfeiffer and Julie looks like Cher. I actually hate it when authors compare characters to actual people. Yes, it gives us an instant picture of what the character looks like but I'm not picturing a young Pfeiffer or a young Cher here. I'm picturing what Pfeiffer and Cher look like NOW and this book has just become problematic for me.

Julie flirts with Chip, but Chip seems more interested in Rena. I smell conflict. To be fair, her flirting attempts are ridiculous, so I can see why Chip would be unimpressed with them. She actually says: “I'm feeling kinda sultry today. How about you, Chip?” What teenager says “I'm feeling kinda sultry today”? Hot maybe. Hot would have been MUCH better, Stine.

Bax tries to continue the rehearsal but George has gone missing, so he dismisses the class in frustration. He tells them to go swimming but to stay out of the boathouse by the dock. It's falling down and when the tide comes in, it's almost completely underwater. So....what happens if there are boats in it? I know they will float up with the water, but if the boathouse gets completely submerged, won't the boats end up crashing into the ceiling or something? This seems like an ineffective boathouse to me.

Chip keeps trying to get Rena to come swim with him. Rena doesn't seem to be on board with this, but Julie tells him that they will meet him down by the water after they change. The girls head back to their dorm room, and because this is a Stine, the chapter ends with them finding a body laying in a pool of blood in their doorway.

The body belongs to George. Naturally.

Rena has a flashback. Something happened three years ago with another body covered in blood. She starts screaming hysterically.

George sits up. He's not dead at all. If only Rena was aware she was in a Stine, she wouldn't have gotten so upset. George was just trying to get her attention because apparently all the boys up in this place love a girl who looks like Pfeiffer.

Stine tells us that George looks exactly like Matt Dillon. Sigh. Doesn't anyone in this book have their own face? I guess Julie is into Matt Dillon because she calls him a fox. A fox. No teenager in the 90's called anyone a fox. Ever.

Julie tells George that she and Rena are going for a swim and he immediately says he'll join them. Then Rena pipes up and says she's going to rest instead and George changes his mind about going. Ouch for Julie.  Sucks to be you.

Rena is acting very dramatic about George's prank. Julie thinks she should calm the fuck down because nothing that bad happened. Rena reveals that before she moved to their town and met Julie, something awful happened to her and George's prank brought back memories. After dangling that tasty morsel in front of Julie's nose, she snatches it back and says she doesn't want to talk about it. 

They talk about Rena getting the lead in the play. Julie is a little jealous. She's very into the theater and very awe-struck about working with Bax and all she ended up with was the part of the maid. Rena thinks that Bax is cruel and Julie rushes to defend him. She thinks that Bax is just trying to help them tap into the emotions they need for the play. I forgot to mention but the play is named Curtains. You....probably knew that from the back of the book.  Yeah.  Um...moving on.

Julie changes into a tiny bikini and Rena admires her....boldness. She mentions that Julie seems really into Chip. To me, it seems like Julie is into anything with a penis but maybe I'm just being a bitch. Anyway, Julie mentions that she thinks she likes Chip because Chip looks so much like Danny. Well, damn it all to hell. Not even Chip has his own face.

The chapter ends as Rena gasps in dismay (she does this constantly) at the mention of Danny's name.

Danny was Julie's boyfriend once upon a time but he dumped her to go out with Rena. Rena didn't want to date him at first, but she eventually succumbed to his charm and shattered the Girl Code into a million pieces. Rena and Julie didn't speak for months until Danny dumped Rena and then Julie took her back. This is not a good friendship, y'all. Rena was a crap friend to go out with her BFF's ex in the first place. In the second place, Julie shouldn't want to be Rena's friend again just because they both got dumped by the same asshole. Anyway, Julie thought the camp would be a good way for the two of them to continue repairing their friendship.

Rena's on the bottom bunk through this entire conversation and suddenly she feels something drip on her arm from the bunk above. Something red. The chapter ends as she jumps up to find the top bunk completely drenched in blood.

A swan is in the top bunk. Its neck has been broken and its throat has been slit. What IS it with these books and killing poor defenseless animals?

Rena goes back to the “bad place” and starts to flashback about all the blood. This time we get a name when she tells us that it's Kenny's blood. Julie has to forcibly pull Rena down from the bed. Rena has a hard time coming out of her flashback but slowly comes around.

Julie is sure that Hedy is responsible for the poor swan.  Because that's what you do when you don't get a part in a play.  You kill a swan.

Rena looks down at the blood caked on her hands and starts to scream “No, I didn't do it!” When Julie asks her what's she talking about, Rena doesn't even remember saying anything. Ooooookay. Julie begins to get apprehensive about Rena's emotional state. That didn't take long. I could get mad at it, but in this case, it's reasonable. I'm kind of apprehensive about Rena myself at this point.

They talk about what to do next. Julie thinks they need to do some grand act of revenge. She suggests telling Bax but Rena points out that Bax would just tell her to use the emotion.  In fact, he might have been the one to put the swan there in order to get a reaction out of Rena.

Marcie from next door knocks on the door. She heard the screaming and wants to know if everyone is okay. Took her awhile. The screaming was a long time ago. Good thing one of them wasn't actually dying over there or anything. Marcie looks like someone else too. Stine tells us she looks like Minnie Mouse. How the eff is that even possible? Describing one of your characters as Minnie Mouse is just messed up, man. It's impossible to get that image out of your head and now we have a cartoon mouse walking around here.

Marcie again tells us how much Julie looks like Cher. We get it, Stine. We don't need it repeated. Cher.

Both Marcie and Julie notice that Rena seems odd and distracted. They clean up the mess and then Marcie goes back to her room and Julie goes for that swim. Rena tries to rest. All she can think about is blood, though, and she doesn't want to have anymore flashbacks, so she decides to take action and confront Hedy.

The chapter ends as Rena goes to her closet and discovers all her clothes have been cut into pieces.

Rena realizes only her clothes have been slashed and she wonders how anyone knew which clothes were hers and which were Julie's. This leads her to wonder if it could possibly be Julie who slashed the clothes and left the swan. She thinks it could be a case of Julie torturing her to get her back for the Danny incident. Julie's a good actress and could definitely be pretending to be Rena's friend for nefarious purposes.

The writing during this gives you a frantic feeling. Short paragraphs and choppy sentences make you feel like Rena's thoughts are whirling. Rena herself tells us that her mind is wandering and she mustn't let it do that because she needs to keep tight control of it. It makes me wonder why she thinks her mind will get away from her.

Rena talks herself out of Julie as a suspect and goes back to suspecting Hedy. Whew. That was close.  She borrows some too-tight clothes from Julie and heads to Hedy's room. On the way, she decides to tell Hedy that she is going to inform the police of what Hedy's done. The thought of the police prompts another flashback, though, of red and lights and blood and Rena frantically thinks to herself “no more police”.

Rena pounds on Hedy's door, but there is no answer. She decides to go on in. Hedy's room is a complete mess. Rena snoops around a bit and discovers a blood-soaked washcloth on Hedy's dresser. She's convinced Hedy is responsible for the swan now. As opposed to a few minutes ago when she thought it was Julie. Or a few minutes before that when she suggested it might have been Bax.

Hedy comes into the room and isn't happy to find Rena there. Rena dramatically clutches the edges of the dresser and looks at Hedy through the mirror instead of turning around. She's seething with rage. She tells Hedy that she's not going to be scared away. Hedy claims ignorance of Rena's issues and asks her if she's gone “bananas”. She seems a little scared, though, because she tells Rena that she won't report her to Bax for breaking and entering if she'll just leave.

Rena accuses Hedy of being a swan murderer. Hedy denies it and orders her out. She immediately changes tracks, though, and tells Rena to lie down and relax while Hedy goes to get help for her. Rena isn't having any of that schiz. She thrusts the bloody washcloth in Hedy's face and demands an explanation for it. Hedy says she slipped and fell and cut her hand on a rock. She shows Rena her bandaged hand as proof but Rena scoffs.

Hedy is upset that Rena is ruining her summer. It's important to note here that she's speaking perfectly normally and calmly while Rena is shouting and making very dramatic gestures throughout. Rena shouts that the part is hers. Hedy corrects her and says that it's Rena's now, but on opening night, Hedy will be the one on stage playing it. Rena shouts at Hedy to stop threatening her and Hedy calmly states that it wasn't a threat, just a prediction. Rena slams out of the room. She's very disproportionately angry here.

Rena goes stomping through the grounds, her thoughts a confused jumble in her mind. She doesn't see or hear any of the other campers who try to greet her along the way. She's just too angry. Because it's Stine, the chapter ends with a hand grabbing her from behind.

Predictably Rena shrieks and whirls. It's just George and he's concerned at her reaction. He tries to get her to sit down and talk to him but she blows him off and walks away. He follows her and invites her to take a walk with him after hours by the water. She laughs right in his face without seeming to be aware of why she did it. He's hurt, of course, but tries to talk her into it. She thinks he might be working up the courage to kiss her and she takes a big step back. She thinks he's cute and all, but he's an actor and she doesn't know what's real and what's a performance.

Rena refuses the invitation and she thinks he looks angry for a second before hurt settles in again. She walks off leaving him staring pitifully after her. I'm not sure why all the boys are coming to the yard for Rena's milkshake in this book. I know she looks like a delicious Pfeiffer strawberry delight but she's clearly a tall glass of Clamato in disguise. (Author's note.....from Wikipedia: Clamato is a drink made of reconstituted tomato juice concentrate flavored with spices and clam broth. Yes, it exists and I can only imagine it's disgusting.)

That night she has a dream about Kenny. It was her first one in a month. She used to dream about him and what happened every night, but they had tapered off over the years. Parts of the dream are completely clear: what she's wearing, the way the basement looks, the sounds of the furnace and the washing machine. She sees Kenny there with an odd look on his face. He's loading a single bullet into a revolver and spinning the chamber around. She tells him not to do it and he says that he isn't going to. She's going to do it. From there on, the dream becomes less clear. She isn't sure who has the gun. She isn't sure if she pulled the trigger or not. There's a flash and then she's screaming and then she wakes up.

Rena is alone in the room. She isn't sure where Julie is and she hears someone tapping on her window. When she goes to look, no one is there. She just gets settled back into bed again when she hears the tapping resume. The chapter ends as she gets up to see who is tapping on her window for a second time.

I guess she never figured out who the tapper was because now it's the next day and they're all eating breakfast. Julie is irritated because she went out with Chip the night before and all he wanted to do was talk about Rena. Rena thinks Julie is incredibly jealous of her and now she's back to suspecting Julie. Sigh. I hate this book.

Rena leaves the cafeteria to go find Bax and report the swan murder. I don't know why she changed her mind and decided to do this and Stine doesn't bother to tell us. She finds Bax tearing into the crew because he hates the set design. When he's finished with that, she tries to talk to him but he's busy filling out some kind of forms. The other kids start coming in for rehearsal. She doesn't want them to hear, but she really wants Bax to listen to her. She attempts to tell him about the swan, the clothes and the tapping but he blows her off so she literally stomps away like a 3-year-old.

Bax calls the rehearsal to order and then notices Hedy up on stage playing around with the props. He asks her what she's doing and she says she thought they were doing her scene first. Bax orders her away and she leaves the stage.

They are going to rehearse the scene where Chip's character gets stabbed again. Rena notices that Chip seems intense and not his usual self. He snaps at her a few times and Rena finds herself messing up because she's too worried about what's going on with Chip. Bax tells her that she has to let go and let her emotions take over but Rena can't do that. She's spent three years trying to maintain tight control over herself and she's not going to lose it now. She continues to do badly and finally Chip jumps to his feet and starts screaming at her in front of everyone for ruining the play.

Rena loses it. She gives Chip a shove and starts screaming back at him. Bax is elated. He asked Chip to act like a jerk in order to get true anger out of Rena that she could use for her performance. Chip apologizes and says that Bax forced him to do it. Rena is still pissed. She confronts Bax and he tells her it was for her own good and for the good of the play.

Rena isn't sure she wants the part anymore if this is what it means. Bax tells her to take a break and get her head on straight. He then calls Hedy up to do the part. It has the desired effect. Rena is incensed. There's no way Hedy's getting that part away from her. After the performance, Bax tells Hedy it was good but “slick”.

Rena agrees to try again. Bax wants her to be more wild with the stabbing part of the scene. He wants it to look frenzied and exaggerated. They begin the scene again with Rena determined to impress Bax. It's only after she stabs Chip that she realizes that someone switched the knives and she just stabbed Chip for real.

Later in the day both Rena and Julie are back in their room. Rena mutters something to the effect of “First Kenny, now Chip” and “more blood, more blood” to herself while staring blankly at the wall. Julie is very concerned about her. I would be too. Marcie arrives to tell them that she was just in Bax's office and the news from the hospital is that Chip is going to be fine. The police are in the camp doing an investigation to see if they can figure out who changed the knives.

Julie returns to Rena to let her know Chip is okay. She thinks that Hedy switched the knives. Not to hurt Chip, but to get Rena removed from the play. Rena absently says “First Kenny, now Chip” again and Julie wants to know who Kenny is.

Rena explains that Kenny was her boyfriend in her old town. She really loved him but he was crazy and unpredictable and moody. Sometimes he'd be up and so much fun and other times he'd be down and talking about how worthless he was. His parents had divorced and he had been split from his brother and sister. He really missed his brother because they had been pretty close. He was depressed and had “mind problems”. Those where her exact words. “Mind problems”. Sigh. Rena tried to “joke him out of it” which is probably a lot of people's first reaction and definitely the wrong thing to do.

Rena tells her that one day they were in the basement and he got out a gun. He put one bullet in and then handed it to her and told her to spin the chamber. She didn't want to , but he made her somehow. Then she doesn't remember what happened next. She doesn't remember pulling the trigger or firing the gun but she remembers the sound and the blood.

Julie tries to stop the story at this point because Rena is getting so upset and she's worried Rena will go into a trance again. Rena keeps going. She talks about how she's never really known whether she shot Kenny or he shot himself. The police ruled it an accidental suicide but a lot of their friends believed she killed them. So her family was forced to move.

Julie's caring comment afterwards is “Now I understand why you're so insecure. Now I understand why you have to have all the boys.” Nice. Rena thinks Julie hates her deep down and she wonders if Julie hates her enough to torture her.

In the next chapter, the police question Rena and Julie. They seem pretty bad at their job as per normal for these books. The only prints on the knife were Rena's.

We skip to the next night and Rena is having trouble sleeping. Julie has sneaked out with one of the set guys, so Rena's alone in the room. She starts to hear the tapping on the windows again but she's determined to ignore it this time. Pretty soon, she can't stand it and she goes to see who it is.

George is outside her window and he wants her to come out for a walk. She says she doesn't want to, but he talks her into it pretty easily. Rena gets dressed and crawls out the window. As they walk, she gets cold and he hands her his jacket. It has the initials “AM” embroidered on it and she asks him who it belongs to. He gets a little flustered but tells her it belongs to a guy he knows named “Andy”. Yeah. I buy that.

Rena comments that she was glad they had the day off and she didn't have to deal with Bax. George says that Bax isn't a bad guy. He got George a scholarship because George couldn't afford the camp. He goes off on an angry rant about being poor and his intensity frightens Rena a little but she reminds herself that he's an actor and used to being a little histrionic.  Since she keeps reminding us that she's not an actor, I wonder what her excuse is?

They sit down after awhile and George moves in for the kiss. Rena kisses back for a bit and then decides she's had enough. She tries to end the kiss but he grabs her and starts kissing her harder. The harder she tries to get away, the more forceful he gets. She almost gets away from him at one point, but he grabs her and pulls her back down. She screams at him to stop and it finally seems to get through to him. Not liking George so much right now. This was not okay. Not even a little bit okay.

Her scream startles him and he lets her go. He immediately acts like he doesn't know what her problem is even though we're told her lips are actually bleeding from his “kiss”. She tells him that he scared her and he blames his passionate nature on being an actor. That wasn't passionate, you asshole. If she's struggling to get away and you won't let her go and she ends up bleeding, that's an attack. This makes me so mad. She was just assaulted and we're supposed to believe it was just an actor's passion. I want to hit something. Stine preferably. If you are a young girl reading this, what George just did is NOT OKAY.

Rena runs off but George chases her down. He apologizes and she actually accepts it. This book should die. It should die and burn and die.

Rena goes back to her room actually physically aching from where he grabbed her. She gets into bed and replays the scene over in her mind. She describes it as “violent” and “hostile” and then this happens. I can't even...so I'm going to quote it.

                              “Or was she making too much of it?

                               George was an emotional guy, after all. Maybe he just got carried away.

                               He certainly was apologetic afterwards. He seemed upset and terribly sorry about                                acting so strangely.

                               Maybe he really did care for her.”

No. No no no no no no no. Guys, seriously. I quit life right now. This book should die and burn and die.

Okay. I just walked away for 30 minutes. I think I can go on now.

Rena manages to go to sleep and has a dream where Bax is trying to get her to rehearse the stabbing scene with Kenny.

The next morning she gets into a huge fight with Julie. Julie isn't happy with the way Rena is treating her clothes. Rena's been putting them back in the wrong drawers or something and Julie is irritated. Rena apologizes and wonders why Julie is really mad because it doesn't make sense that this is about clothes. Julie comments that Rena looks wasted and Rena says she hasn't been sleeping. Julie thinks the play is stressing Rena out too much and she ought to quit.

George comes over to the girl's dorm to let them know that Bax isn't feeling well and there won't be rehearsal until later that evening. The other girls head off to breakfast leaving Rena and George alone. He tells her that Chip won't be returning to camp so Bax gave him the lead in the play. He wants to spend the day rehearsing. Rena declines. He asks her to go for a swim. Rena declines. He presses and tries to talk her into it. She keeps saying no and he keeps insisting. I hate him. So much. She finally gets him to listen to her and he acts all hurt that she doesn't want to be with him.

That evening they arrive in the theater to find Bax looking weak and sick. Hedy and Rena have a little dust up about the part again which is repetitive and boring. Bax gives them a lecture about how they can use fear and how he tries to motivate them with fear so that they can use it in their acting. Rena thinks that's a bizarre way to motivate people.

They run through the scene and Rena isn't sure how it's going. Bax finally stops them. He sounds despondent. He says he's wasting his life with amateurs and he just can't go on like this. Then the lights go out. There's a lot of confusion and noise but no one seems to know what to do and Bax isn't answering them when they call out to them. Suddenly the lights come back on and they see Bax hanging from the rafters.

Rena ends up cutting him down. There's blood coming from his mouth and once she sees it, she starts screaming and she can't stop. Bax joyously gets up and tells her that's the fear he wants her to use. That's the fear he wants them all to use. It was him using fear to motivate them just after he gave them the big speech about how he likes to use fear to motivate them. Wow. I did not see that one coming. {sarcasm font}

Rena comes to the realization that Bax doesn't care about any of them. He doesn't want to make them better actors for their benefit. He wants to make them better actors so he will look better as a director. She wonders if he could be the one who killed the swan and slashed the clothes, etc. Haven't we been over this already? I guess Bax is the bad guy again instead of Hedy or Julie. Raise your hand if you care at this point. Anyone? Anyone?

Rena spaces out for a bit and doesn't realize Bax is calling her to start the scene. She refuses. She not only refuses, she quits. She tells Bax to give the role to Hedy because she's going home tomorrow. George tries to get her to change her mind but she refuses.

The next day Julie tries to convince her to stay too. She gets a little upset when Rena refuses. Rena asks her what's going on and Julie tells her that she feels guilty that Rena's had such an awful time because she's the one who convinced Rena to come in the first place. Rena kindly tells her that none of what's happened has been Julie's fault. Or has it? Now Rena's wondering if Julie is the bad guy again. FUCK YOU STINE.

Rena decides to take one last walk around the place. She ends up down by the water. Hedy is there getting ready to swim. They have yet another conversation about the part....which should be moot now that Rena quit the play. Rena accuses Hedy of being the bad guy which is SO UNBELIEVABLY DUMB since she just said it was Julie and five minutes ago it was definitely Bax. I'm so sick of this.

She tells Hedy to break a leg and Hedy stomps off.

Rena walks on and is surprised to run into George who has been out for a jog. He tells her that he has something he wants to show her in the boathouse that they've been warned to stay out of. She doesn't want to go in there with him, but he says it will really cheer her up. At this point, it doesn't really surprise me that she does an extremely stupid thing and goes into an isolated, out-of-sight-of-others place with a guy who just assaulted her a couple nights ago.

The thing he wanted to show her was a robin's nest with some baby birds in it. She starts to head out but he wants her to stay and talk for a bit. Despite the fact that the tide is starting to come in and they've been told the place becomes submerged, she decides to give him a few minutes of her time.

George starts to tell her his hard-knock life story. Someone he loved was killed and now his life has been changed forever. She feels bad for him, but the water's rising and she wants to leave. He asks her to stay. He thinks the danger of drowning is exciting. Naturally there are effing rats that start to scurry away from the water. There's always rats. Every. Damn. Book. Rats.

Rena insists it's time to leave. George is disappointed, but he goes to the door and tries to open it. The chapter ends as he tells Rena that someone locked them in.

The water is rising and so is the number of rats screeching around. Rena is frantic. She's screaming for Hedy to let them out because she's convinced Hedy is the one who locked them in there. George joins in. He makes a big show of trying to force the door open. Rena is getting hysterical. Big surprise. In this case, I'm with her though. George slips in his struggle to open the door and goes down in the water. In the confusion, Rena leans against the door and it pops open a little. She's surprised because George was just struggling with it a minute ago. Then a horrible thought occurs to her.

She asks George to try the door again and, again, he pretends like it's locked. She can't figure out what he's doing and whether he's trying to kill just her or both of them.

Rena reveals that she knows about the door being unlocked and George reveals that he's the bad guy. He did the swan and the tapping and switched the knives. He's planning for them both to die in the boathouse.

George's real name is Andy and he's Kenny's brother. He came to kill Rena in revenge. She asks how he knew she'd be there. Which is a good question. He says friends of Kenny's told him. Which makes ZERO sense because she isn't in contact with anyone from her past. They'd have no way of knowing where she was unless they were having her followed or something. Lazy work, Stine.

The boathouse begins to collapse. Convenient of it to happen now instead of at some other point in the summer. George/Andy tries to drown Rena but she gets away. He gets hit with a board. As the building comes down, Rena is somehow able to swim free of the rubble.

Suddenly her memory clears and she remembers that she refused to take the gun and was, in fact, running upstairs to get help when Kenny shot himself.

She sees George/Andy bobbing in the water and struggles to save him. There's a lot of near-drowning drama, but she gets him to shore and resuscitates him. He's pissed because he wanted to die.

Marcie and Julie arrive just in time to get help. Rena's parents have arrived and are ready to take her home. Rena decides that she's going to enjoy living in the real world from now on. 

Final Thoughts:  I can't even.  This book made me so very mad.  Rena was awful.  Bax was awful.  George was awful.  Why did Stine write so many of these books???