Tag Line: It wasn't a date. It was a nightmare.From the Back of the Book: She would kill for him. Kerry's had a pretty rough year. First he got into a car accident and his brother disappeared. Next, he broke the leg of the star quarterback on his own football team. Then he started getting weird threats. Things aren't going too great for Kerry - until the phone call. It was the hottest voice he'd ever heard. "Hi, Kerry," she said. "I'm your blind date." She had to be a fox - and Kerry was sure she sounded crazy about him. Too bad he didn't know how right he was.
This book was published in 1986 and this is my first reading of it. This book was boring, y'all. It was so boring that I began to come up with wild theories about what was happening in the story. You'll get to read every ridiculous one. Unfortunately, only one of them turned out to be true and it wasn't the most exciting one.
We begin with our protagonist and, for a
change, it's a guy. His name is Kerry and he's on the football field.
He's just accidentally broken the leg of one of his teammates (Sal). Only
no one else believes it was an accident. The rest of his teammates
are pissed and aggressive and the other guy's girlfriend (Sharon) is
hysterical. Sal's entire life was football and now he's injured and
will probably lose his scholarship and never go to college and end up
living in a box under a bridge. Or at least that's how everyone is
acting. The coach tells Kerry that he's off the team because if he
stays, he'll be a morale problem. The other guys are threatening to
hurt him if he doesn't stay out of their way.
We're told that Kerry looks like Ralph
Macchio. I remember when that would have been a compliment. His
younger brother Sean looks like Sting. Another book where no one
looks like themselves. Kerry's older brother Donald is...gone. We
don't know why yet. Their parents are divorced and the two boys live
with their dad who is a police officer.
Kerry gets home and is grateful that
his dad is still at work and he doesn't have to admit he was cut from
the team. He goes up to his room to lie down and hears the phone
ring. He waits for Sean to pick it up but it continues to ring so he
finally gets up. A sexy female voice on the other end asks for him
and tells him that she's his blind date.
Kerry tries to get the girl to tell him
her name but she's secretive. He likes her purring voice and sexy
laugh. She seems to know where he lives and a lot about him. She
tells him that she's new to town and a girl named Margo told her to
look Kerry up. Margo is a girl Kerry used to know who recently moved
away, so he buys this explanation pretty easily. He asks her if she
wants to go out Saturday and she tells him she'd love to. She
quickly tells him her name and address but he can't hear her very
well. He thinks she says her name is Amanda.
Can we just pause and talk about how
entirely stupid it is to agree to meet up with some random person who
calls you out of the blue? Seriously, this is a very bad idea. I
guess the boys in these books are just as dumb as the girls.
Kerry goes downstairs and finds his
father has come home from the precinct. We're told his father looks
just like Andy Renko from Hill Street Blues? Why do authors do
this?? Now I'm picturing these three sitting around the dinner
table.
Kerry tells his dad about getting
kicked off the team and his dad is furious. He goes on and on about
Donald and what a great player Donald was and how Donald's little
brother belongs on the team. Kerry screams at his father to stop
talking about Donald because Donald is gone.
Apparently Kerry doesn't remember what
happened the night that Donald disappeared and no one will tell him.
After midnight that night, Kerry is
working on an essay when the phone rings again. This time it isn't
his sexy mystery woman. It's someone speaking into the phone with
her nose pinched closed. She says “sticks and stones can break
your bones” and then sings a bit of the song “the toe
bone's connected to the foot bone....the foot bone's connected to the
ankle bone....”. This is powerful writing y'all. Kerry
assumes it was Sharon getting him back for accidentally breaking
Sal's leg.
Saturday arrives and Kerry heads out to
meet his mystery woman. He thinks “Amanda” is too much of a
pioneer name to suit her sexy voice so he decides to call her “Nadia”
instead. He figures she'll like that. Yeah, because girls LOOOOOVE
it when guys call them by the wrong name. Kerry figures she has long
black hair like Crystal Gayle, deep green eyes and a heart-shaped
mouth with dark lipstick. Of course, she'll be built like a Playboy
bunny. He figures she won't want to have sex with him until after
they watch the movie but that's okay with him.
Is it too early to say that I hope
“Amanda” fillets him like a catfish? I seriously hate this
guy.
Kerry's worried because he's not
exactly Burt Reynolds even if he DOES look like Ralph Macchio.
Seriously, Stine, knock it the fuck off with all these celebrity
references. This is not US Weekly.
“Amanda” lives in the rich part of
town but her house is run-down and the yard is unkempt. He goes up
to ring the doorbell and at first no one answers. He decides he's
been punked and he turns to go back to his car when he hears the door
open. An older man and woman are there so he tells them he's looking
for “Amanda”. The woman starts screaming and the man looks like
he's about to faint. He tells Kerry that Amanda is dead.
Suddenly the woman recognizes Kerry.
She yells “it's him” and asks why he's come back to torture them.
Kerry has no idea what she's talking about. He gets scared and runs
back to the car. It floods when he tries to start it so he's forced
to sit and wait a minute before he tries again. This brings back
memories. My car wouldn't start unless I pumped the gas exactly
three times before turning the key. If I did it two times, it wasn't
enough. If I did it four times, the engine would flood. I feel
Kerry's pain at this point.
While he's nervously waiting until he
can try the car again, he looks back toward the house. Suddenly he
has a flash of what the basement looks like. He freaks out because
he has no idea why he knows what the basement looks like in a place
he's never been before.
Kerry finally leaves and drives around
for awhile. He thinks at first that the Amanda call must have been a
prank. Then he wonders if his own subconscious led him to the house.
He hadn't written the address down after the phone call. Maybe his
own mind substituted in the address of the house in an effort to prod
him into remembering some of the things he's forgotten. He even
begins to wonder if the girl really told him her name was Amanda or
if his subconscious just told him that.
He feels bad for standing his mystery
caller up due to his stupid subconscious. He remembers she said that
his friend Margo had told her about him, so he decides to call Margo
to try to get the girl's name and number. He heads home to find the
house empty. He is getting ready to call Margo when the phone rings.
It's the nasal caller singing the foot bone song again. This time
she reaches the line about being connected to the leg bone and then
proceeds to just sing the words “leg bone” over and over, louder
and louder. Kerry finally hangs up.
The next morning he is woken up by the
ringing of the phone. He yells for Sean to answer it but it keeps on
ringing.
Wait. Pause.
Have you noticed that? Both times the
mystery woman called, Kerry waits for Sean to answer the phone but
it's like Sean isn't hearing it ring. The nasal caller happened once
in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep and then again
when Kerry was home alone. Are these phone calls even real? Is this
just happening in his head? I bet it's all just in his imagination.
Anyway, the mystery woman is back on
the line. She says her name is Mandy and they talk for awhile about
what happened. She gives him her address which is close to the one
he went to (Sizemore instead of Sycamore). She says she's starting
at his school the next day and asks him to meet up with her in the
morning to show her around. Kerry is all worked up over the idea of
meeting her.
After that call, the nasal caller
strikes. She says sticks and stones will break Kerry's bones and
then asks if he's ready to die. Kerry still thinks it's Sharon. He
goes down for breakfast and his father tells him that Sal is still in
a coma from the accident on the football field. There's an article
in the paper about it and Kerry is FAR more worried about whether his
name is mentioned as the cause of the accident than he is in how Sal
is doing. What an asshole.
I guess it's not just the night that
Donald disappeared that Kerry doesn't remember. He doesn't remember
a lot of the previous year. That's a huge gaping hole in a person's
memory and you'd think he'd be doing more to recover it. What if he got married? Robbed a bank? Killed someone?
Kerry goes out to play basketball with
Josh. While they are at the courts, some guys from the football team
show up to harass Kerry. They get ready to jump him and beat him
down and what follows is several pages of the cheesiest most horrible
writing that I've ever read. I'm not even kidding. Kerry turns into some kind of ninja-Clint Eastwood-kung-fu-master and it's the dumbest thing ever. I'd type it all
out here for you to read and marvel at but it's way too lengthy and I
don't want to get sued. Trust me, it's awful. The entire time I
kept praying that it was a dream sequence because it was too awful to
be real. Thankfully, it was a daydream. I mean, don't YOU start
daydreaming when four thugs are poised to pound you into the ground?
I know I do.
They pound on Kerry for a bit while
Josh apparently watches and then everyone goes home.
The next morning, Kerry looks around
for Mandy but no one is waiting on the outside of the school. There
IS a girl by his locker though. She's tall with light blonde hair,
pale blue eyes, power-white skin and dark purple lipstick. I'm waiting for Kerry to tell us whose face she owns. She's
wearing a ribbon in her hair with little hearts on it and an old-fashioned blue smock. Kerry finally identifies her face-owner. It's Alice in Wonderland.
Like....the cartoon? She looks like a crayon drawing or something?
Cool.
She has a soft, kittenish voice but a
loud, dirty laugh.
Stine, you're killing me here.
Whoa. Wait. I just remembered I'm
reading a Stine. This is significant because I'm halfway through the
book and I forgot I was reading a Stine for awhile there. That's never happened
before. His style of writing is so distinct that I'm always fully
aware of who I'm reading when I'm reading a Stine. So how did I
forget this time? This is really weird.
Oh. I know what happened. There are
no cliff-hanger chapter endings in this book. It's from a different
decade than the books I usually read for this blog. Does this mean
the cliff-hangers are something he adopted? Like he didn't
start out writing that way and he adopted it on purpose?? I
always just assumed he was born this way.
Back to Kerry and Mandy whom I barely
care about. He shows her around the school, noting how cold her
hands are. People keep staring at them but it might be because his
face is smashed in from the football players the day before. I keep
wondering if this girl is even there at all. She's either a ghost or
a figment of his imagination, right?
He asks her questions about where she
went to school before and where she lived previously. She says she
went to a private school in a private place (sounds dirty) and lived all over. Way
to fill in the details there, Mandy. She asks him if he's been in
a fight and if he often does “macho” things like that. {insert
eye roll} He gives her a pretty crappy tour and then asks her to the
dance the next weekend. When they get back to his locker, it's
smeared with red paint.
During the course of the morning, Kerry
hears that Sal has come out of his coma and will be okay....except
for the broken leg.
Kerry has a miserable day and goes home
feeling sorry for himself. He goes to bed early and has a recurring
dream. He and Donald are in a canoe headed for a waterfall but Kerry
is the only one who notices. I'm not sure how to interpret this
dream, but I'm betting it's a clue to the mystery. Maybe they were out canoeing and a large-mouth bass ate Donald.
The ringing phone
wakes him up. It's just Josh this time wanting to hear about Mandy.
They have several pages of boring, cheesy dialogue and then Kerry
goes back to sleep. Whelp, that was an exciting chapter.
The next morning Kerry finds his father
waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. He looks disheveled and
upset. He tells Kerry that he has bad news. Donald has escaped.
Huh. I thought he was dead. Does this mean the giant large-mouth bass didn't exist? Color me
surprised. Just not with red. I'm already red enough.
Kerry's dad begins to tell him some of
the story that Kerry's forgotten. He and Donald and Donald's
girlfriend (the infamous Amanda) were all in the front seat of
Donald's car. There was an accident and Amanda was killed. Donald
couldn't handle it and had some kind of a mental breakdown. He's
been away in a hospital ever since. His father admits that it's not
the whole story but he figures it's enough for now. Donald has
escaped from the mental health facility and no one knows where he is
or where he's headed.
We skip ahead to Saturday. Kerry meets
Mandy at the dance. She's a little overdressed for the occasion but
he thinks she looks great. He hands his tickets to the teacher at
the door and she says “Two?” as she tears them in half. Kerry
doesn't think anything of it, but I'm still hoping that his date's
imaginary.
Dang. Josh comes up and talks to Mandy
so I guess she isn't imaginary. Unless Josh is also imaginary. But
I highly doubt I'm going to get that lucky.
They dance one dance.
Mandy kind of aggressively herds him toward the outskirts of the room
and then gives him a kiss that leaves his lips bleeding. For the
record, that's not the proper way to kiss someone.
Unless you're a vampire. Or a piranha. Oh PLEASE let her be a piranha. This book is so damn boring that if I don't get a human/piranha hybrid I'm about to go organize a closet or something.
Before he can say
anything, Mandy takes off, disappearing in the crowd in a very un-piranha-like fashion.
Kerry searches for Mandy for awhile
with no luck. He finally decides to look outside the gym in the
corridor of the school. He doesn't see Mandy but a couple of the
football players are out there. They call his name and start running
toward him. Kerry takes off running. They end up cornering him in
the maintenance room, but instead of beating on him, they apologize.
Sal explained everything and told everyone that it was an accident
and Kerry didn't mean to break his leg. They all shake hands and I
guess that's the end of the football player subplot.
Kerry goes back into the gym and finds
Mandy at the refreshment table. She won't tell him where she's been.
They dance for the rest of the evening and then walk out together.
Kerry is dismayed to find that someone has slashed all four of his
tires and broken his windows. Mandy seems unduly upset about the
whole thing. She launches into some impressive hystrionics and screams
that she's scared. Josh and his date come along and offer them a
ride home but Mandy starts screaming “no” over and over. She
spots a bus across the parking lot and sprints to get on it. Kerry
watches her go in confusion.
Josh takes Kerry home. The entire
ride, Kerry freaks out about whether Donald is the one that destroyed
his car. He gets himself so worked up that he's violently ill as soon
as he gets home. He makes his way into the kitchen and picks up the
phone to call his dad. There's no dial tone and, at first, he thinks
that the line has been cut. Then the nasal voice starts talking and
he realizes he just managed to pick up the phone right when it was
about to ring. The girl tells him that she's going to smash every
bone in his body and then kill him. That's nice.
Kerry calls his dad and asks him to
come home because he's forgotten he's in a Point Horror. Mandy calls
before Kerry goes to bed and asks him to meet her at a coffee shop
the next afternoon. He tells her that they can't because they'll
have school which makes NO DAMN SENSE since it's effing Saturday. He JUST got home from the dance and the dance was on Saturday!! Seriously, Stine, this is a stupid mistake. Anyway, Mandy tells him
that it's a teacher's workday so they don't have school. NO, YOU DON'T
HAVE SCHOOL BECAUSE TOMORROW IS SUNDAY YOU IDIOTS! Plus, shouldn't
Kerry be aware that they aren't having school on Monday? Sloppy,
Stine. Really sloppy.
Kerry has to deliver insurance forms
the next morning. I guess we're sticking with this whole Monday thing. Sigh. While he's in town, he runs into Margo. He thanks
her for setting him up with Mandy and she has no idea who he is
talking about. She doesn't know a Mandy and she didn't tell any girl
to give him a call. Kerry is perplexed. He goes to the coffee shop
to meet Mandy but she never shows up.
Kerry goes home and the phone is
ringing. It's Mandy and she apologizes for not being able to meet
him. She asks him to go for a drive with her later that night and
says she'll pick him up. He agrees.
Then Kerry forgets he's in a Point Horror
again and sits down with his father to tell him absolutely everything
that's gone on in the book so far. AND his father is a police
officer so it's like telling the police. Then his father forgets
he's in a Point Horror as well and takes it all very
seriously. He says it's probably just a stupid kid but he's going to
investigate and involve the school authorities! This is a stunning
turn of events in one of these books. Early Point Horror (and early
Stine) was a whole different animal. The mind boggles.
Kerry's father leaves for work warning
his son to be careful and avoid being out alone. The phone rings and
Kerry is so stressed out by the nasal caller that he has to psych
himself up to answer it. This time it's Donald. He tells Kerry he's
coming home and to be careful. Kerry reflexively hangs up the phone
because he's so startled.
At the appointed drive time, Kerry is
waiting by the window watching for Mandy's car. He's on an emotional
roller coaster. One minute he feels like he's going to sob his eyes
out and the next minute he feels completely giddy. He thinks he's
just tired but it sounds like PMS to me. He should have that shiz
checked out.
Mandy picks him up and they begin their
drive. There's pages of really horrible, pathetic dialogue. Kerry
is still up and down and thinking about having sex with Mandy. Mandy
is still being weird and mysterious. THIS BOOK IS SO BORING. At one point she
swerves the car and they hit something hard before almost going in a
ditch. Kerry was distracted and didn't see what it was but Mandy
tells him it was some kind of animal that ran out in front of her
car. It was probably Donald. He was making his way back to town and she just mowed him over.
Mandy tells him that she thinks she's
being followed and she thinks it's his brother Donald following her.
Wait. How does she know Donald? She just moved to town. Kerry must
have been thinking the same thing because he asks her how she knows
Donald. She says she doesn't know him but she thinks he's following
her. That makes no sense. How does she even know his name or what
he looks like? She claims it's why she went missing at the dance.
She was sure she saw Donald in the gym. And it's why she stood him
up earlier. During this entire conversation, she seems to be driving
to Amanda's house on Sycamore. She even slows down and smiles as
they pass the house which Kerry finds bizarre.
So since she's not imaginary, is she
Amanda's sister or something? Her best friend out for revenge?
There's got to be something here. Maybe she escaped from the same
mental institution that Donald was in. And he knew she was after
Kerry so he escaped to warn his brother.
To change the subject, Kerry tells
Mandy that he ran into Margo in town. She immediately swerves the
car into the path of an oncoming car and we have our first Stine
cliffhanger chapter ender!!!!! It feels like home and apple pie and
fuzzy slippers and pigtails!!!
The other car swerves and everything's
fine but Kerry has a flashback to the accident a year ago when Amanda
dies. We really learn nothing new from it except for the fact that Kerry
was driving the car that night.
After that, Kerry asks Mandy to take
him home. Again, she drives very slowly past Amanda's house with a
weird smile on her face. Kerry goes up to bed as soon as he gets
home. He keeps reliving the night of the accident. He can't figure
out why he hadn't been punished for causing the accident. He's
wondering if Donald is coming after him to take revenge on the fact
that Kerry killed Amanda but Donald was the one sent away for it.
A few days later, Kerry's dad finally
tells him what happened after the accident. Apparently Donald tried
to kill Kerry. When the police arrived at the scene of the accident,
Donald had pulled Kerry out of the car and was strangling him on the
side of the road. It took three officers to pull him off and Donald
had been sent away. Kerry's father is concerned that Donald might be
coming back to make another attempt on Kerry's life. He tells Kerry
to lock the house up and to not go out for any reason.
Sound advice.
I'm sure Kerry won't follow it.
Mandy calls later and tells him in a
frightened voice that she thinks Donald is in her house. She says
she's locked him in her basement and now she has to leave the house.
She's going to head over to Kerry's house and Kerry is grateful that
he won't be spending the day alone. Then he gets an epiphany. Maybe
Donald is trying to kill Mandy because Kerry killed Amanda. Kind of
a girlfriend for girlfriend kind of thing. I think he has more to
worry about from Mandy than from Donald but, hey, I also thought she
was imaginary and that Donald got eaten by a giant fish so you shouldn't listen to me.
Mandy arrives in a dramatically
agitated state. She convinces Kerry that they have to go somewhere
where Donald can't find them. She suggests a cabin in the woods and
the book takes a turn for the cliché. Kerry tries to call his dad
to tell him about the new plan but the line is dead. This spurs him
into action because he's sure Donald is nearby. There's a lot of
macho, me-Tarzan-must-protect-my-woman crap for a few pages and then
they leave.
They get to the cabin and it's isolated
and desolate like a cabin in a horror book should be. Kerry collects
firewood while Mandy makes hot chocolate on the stove. They drink
their hot chocolate in front of the fire and Kerry immediately
notices that he's getting warm and sleepy. He thinks it's the effect
of the warm fire but my money is on drugged cocoa. Sure enough, he
passes out and then wakes up some time later tied to his chair.
Mandy reveals she's the nasal voiced
woman who has been threatening Kerry. Raise your hand if you're
surprised by this. {looks around} Anyone? No? Yeah, me neither.
She brings in a long mallet and tells
him that she's going to make good on her promise to break every bone
in his body. Then she reveals that Amanda was her sister. Again,
this isn't as surprising as it should have been maybe.
She swings the mallet with all her
might at his left foot, breaking the bones. He howls in pain. She
decides that she doesn't want him to be able to watch her, so she
pulls a moose head off the wall, tears all the stuffing out of it and
then puts it over his head.
He's wearing a moose head.
He literally has the head of a dead animal on his head.
This book is ridiculous.
She tells him she's about to do the
right foot and he braces for the pain but it never comes. Instead he
hears the door burst open and hears signs of a struggle. Donald has
arrived at this remote, secret, hidden location just in time to save the day.
Wow, what a completely believable coincidental turn of events this
is.
Kerry hears Donald call “Mandy”
“Nancy” and seems surprised that Mandy isn't her real name.
Because her parents would have had two daughters named Amanda and
Mandy. Well, I guess that's not too unrealistic now that I think about it. I know parents who
do things like that. I went to school with sisters named LaTonya and
LaTanya. Donald assures Nancy that he'll take care of Kerry but she
doesn't give up the mallet. Then Kerry hears the sound of Nancy
hitting the floor. Not sure how he knew it was Nancy hitting the
floor. Maybe girls sound different when they hit the floor than
boys. Like boys sound like a sack of potatoes being dropped and
girls sound like tinkling diamonds hitting the floor.
Donald comes over and takes off Kerry's
mask. Kerry is waiting for Donald to smash him with the mallet but
Donald just apologizes and says he didn't think Nancy would take
things this far. He says that Nancy isn't really Amanda's sister.
She just believes she is because she's crazy.
This book is going downhill faster than
a cheetah on roller skates.
Out of all my wild theories, the one about the hospital was
actually correct. Nancy had been in the hospital most of her life.
She'd had many different identities in that time. She liked hearing
stories and then putting herself inside them. Donald was lonely and
guilt-stricken and he ended up talking to Nancy a lot about Kerry and
Amanda and Nancy just put herself into the story. She escaped and
came to town vowing revenge for a sister she didn't even have.
Donald escaped and followed her.
While this big reveal is taking place,
Nancy comes to and prepares to attack Donald with the mallet from
behind. Instead of just telling his brother, Kerry hobbles forward
to tackle her. Which works because this story is utter crap by now.
They subdue her and the police arrive to save the day.
The book ends with Kerry at school on
his crutches. Josh asks him if he wants to go on a blind date and
Kerry is incredulous at the idea. But he'll consider it if she's
pretty enough.
Grrr.
Final Thoughts: I didn't actually read the back of this book until I was typing it into this blog. It majorly spoils the story, doesn't it? It tells you right off the bat that Mandy is crazy. The tag line tells you that she's going to be a nightmare. They spoiled their own book right there on the covers. That's pretty sad. This book was so boring. I'm not even sure how I got through it. I think my ridiculous "theories" kept me going. Too bad only one of them was true. I was really rooting for the imaginary girlfriend or the man-eating fish. The book was also the least-Stine-like Stine book I've ever read. I actually missed the cliffhangers. It would have at least manufactured some faux excitement in a hella dull book.
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