Desperately Yours by Jahnna N. Malcom

Warning: Contains Spoilers!!!  Warning 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/lovelorn is.

Tag Line: Someone at Fairview High will do anything for attention.

From the Back of the Book:  A killer deadline.  Even though Virginia Wells doesn't believe in horoscopes, she does seem to fit the Virgo profile of being neat, precise and too critical.  At least that's what her staff tells her.  But as editor of the Fairview High newspaper, it's her job to keep everything running smoothly; a job that's been close to impossible lately.  First there was reporter Kim Keller's mysterious disappearance, then the major sabotage of the newsroom, including a sliced up photo splattered with blood.  But most eerie of all are the letters coming to the paper's advice column: bitter and threatening messages that convince Virginia the sender had something to do with what happened to Kim...and wants Virginia to join her.

Can we talk about that summary for a second?  First of all, could Malcolm make our protagonist less appealing?  I mean, I'm sure she could, but I'm not exactly jumping at the opportunity to read a book featuring a heroine who is "too critical".  She does not sound fun.  Second, since when are mysterious letters more eerie than the disappearance of a teenage girl.  That's kind of fucked up, Malcolm.  Missing girl should trump everything.  Always. 

This book was written in 1995 and it's not technically Point Horror.  My manager saw it mentioned in the comments of another blog and figured it was going to be super bad...and thus super entertaining.  It was a good theory but the fact she found this book residing on my keeper shelf should have been a warning that I mostly liked the book.  OR...I liked the guy.  See, books earn a spot on my keeper shelf for one of two reasons.  Either I really enjoyed the book and I want to read it over and over again or I really liked the guy.  There are some epically awful books on my keeper shelf just because the guy was awesome (I'm looking at you, Trick or Treat).  It's been a long time, so I don't remember if I kept this book for Reason A or Reason B.  I guess we'll figure that out together.

We begin with our protagonist Virginia Wells. She's arrived at school 45 minutes early to work on the newspaper. The newspaper office is in a little wooden building behind the school. As she approaches she can hear an argument going on inside.

“When is this going to end? Will you ever stop torturing me?”

Virginia is surprised when Kim Keller comes storming out of the office. Kim drops the box she's carrying and things go everywhere. Virginia stops to help her and picks up an ankle bracelet with a dangling heart charm. Kim yells at Virginia to leave her alone. Virginia asks Kim who she was fighting with but gets no answer.

Kim starts to head for the parking lot but Virginia tells her she can't leave. The paper is due at 3:30 that afternoon and Kim hasn't done her section yet. Kim tells Virginia that she gives zero fucks about the paper and Virginia accuses her of trying to sabotage things because she wasn't chosen as one of the potential editor candidates.

In case you care, Virginia, Jo Plunkett, Emily Wolfe and Sam Calhoun are in the running to be editor for the next school year. Virginia is the current editor and clearly wants to retain the position. 

Kim also gives zero fucks that she wasn't chosen to be in the final race for editor but Virginia isn't sure she believes that.  Clearly EVERYONE wants to be editor because it's the ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IN LIFE.  

Kim heads to the parking lot with Virginia in pursuit. Virginia refuses to let Kim leave until she turns in her column. Apparently Kim writes the Heart-to-Heart column which is like a Dear Abby kind of thing. Kim shoves some papers at Virginia.

“Dear Heart, I got a lousy grade on my chemistry exam and I'm sure it's because Mr Schwartz doesn't like me. He's always calling on me when I don't know the answers. What should I do? Stumped”

Kim has written the following advice on the bottom. “Dear Stumped. Study.” Virginia is pissed. I thought it was funny but Virginia is clearly anal. She demands that Kim redo it and Kim refuses. She gets into her car and peels out of the school driveway. Virginia starts toward the newspaper office and then hears another car race from the lot. She wonders why so many people are leaving school before school even starts.

We skip ahead to 1:30 in the afternoon. Virginia is nervous because the paper is due in an hour and they are two articles and a passel of sports pictures short.

Did I suddenly forget how to do math?? Earlier Virginia told Kim the paper was due at 3:30. Now she's telling us it's due at 2:30?? Malcolm isn't getting off to a good start here. We're only 11 pages in and we've hit the first continuity error. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come.

We meet Jo, the assistant editor. She's described as wearing a big paisley vest and sporting short, spiky hair that looks like a scrub brush. Sounds more like an 80s thing, but maybe she's retro before retro was cool. Jo is tense and Virginia thinks she's worried about the editor's race. Clearly Virginia thinks the paper is first and foremost in everyone's life just because it is in her life.

There's a lot of newspaper crap here that I'm too bored to type in. I guess if you've ever had a burning desire to hear how articles were glued into copy for print back in the early 90s, you should read this book. It's described. In detail. I skimmed it.

Trip McFadden comes in. Virginia describes him as being so skinny he looks like a parenthesis. That's pretty damn skinny, Virginia.  And maybe he should have his spine evaluated by a professional???  She tells us that he's laid back but he writes dark, sarcastic, ruthless cartoons. He asks about Kim and is told that she left campus that morning. 

Emily comes in next. Virginia describes her as delicate and “wonderfully feminine”.  What exactly IS "wonderfully feminine"?  Emily arranges some fresh cut violets in a vase on her desk. Apparently Emily writes the horoscopes for the paper. Virginia asks her whether she truly believes in astrology and Emily tells her that they are surprisingly accurate.

Now Sam comes in. Virginia describes him as a muscular African-American with a dazzling smile. I don't know what he does for the paper. I know he eats cheese puffs.

Jo's computer suddenly crashes and there's a whole lot of newspaper drama. She finds a rough copy in the trash can and sets out to use another computer to get it typed up. While she's doing this, Casey Collier comes into the newsroom. Man, there's a lot of people in this book already. Casey is the staff photographer but it's clear she's not the greatest because none of her pictures of the dance turned out.

I. Really. Don't. Care. About. This. Newspaper.

They start talking about horoscopes again. Emily insists that they are predictive. She says last summer her horoscope predicted a special day and that's when she and her boyfriend had a picnic in her secret garden. It sounds dirty but it's really just the old greenhouse in her backyard. He picked one perfect rose and gave it to her.

Virginia is Forever Alone and a little jealous of Emily and her secret garden and her one perfect rose.

The staff babbles some more about astrology and then the subject turns to a locket that Virginia lost back in September. It had belonged to her grandmother and she was devastated. They finally buckle down and get to work but it only lasts for about five minutes. Then someone remember's Kim's advice column and the search is on for the Heart-to-Heart letters. Virginia checks Kim's bulletin board and notices all the fashion pictures Kim has tacked up. She muses about how odd it is that Kim puts up a picture one day and then seems to show up in the outfit the next.

They find the letters in the filing cabinet and Trip tells Virginia that it's her job as editor to take over the column. She's reluctant because she doesn't have much real life romantic experience, but they all awkwardly sing her praises for a few minutes until she agrees to do it.

“You always get top grades,” Sam added. “The teacher's think you're the greatest thing since canned tuna.”

Canned tuna. 

CANNED TUNA. 

Virigina > canned tuna. 

What a compliment. I'm dying. Sam really knows how to flatter the ladies.

Most of the letters in the file are pretty typical: “what can I do to make him notice me”, “cheerleading tryouts were rigged”, “the popular kids act like they rule the school”. I'm pretty sure any one of those could have been written by every high school student in America. One of the letters is a little disturbing, though.

“If you cut me, I will bleed. If you hurt me – I will die. He hurt me. My heart aches. I am dying. I want him to know my pain.”

It's signed “Desperate” and Virginia is a little scared by it.

The bell rings signaling that the hour is up and suddenly they're back to the original timeline where they have one more hour to work because Malcolm gives no fucks about continuity. Virginia yells at them all to get to work because the clock is ticking and then she goes into the advisor's office to answer some Heart-to-Heart letters.

We timehop and now it's evening. There's a little scene about Virigina thinking the neighbor she's had a crush on for years is asking her to go to the basketball game with him but then it turns out he's going with his girlfriend and is just offering Virginia a ride. I think Malcolm is just using it to emphasize Virginia's “pathetic” forever-alone status. There's nothing wrong with a girl being single, but this is Point Horror (ish) Land where every girl must be attached at the lips to a guy in order to be complete.

Virginia decides that answering Heart-to-Heart letters is the best use of her time since she's epically undateable. The newspaper only has space to publish 3-4 a month but Kim has always answered every letter received. There's a little heart-shaped mailbox on the outside of the newsroom where she drops her replies. Virginia vows to do the same until Kim comes back. She begins by writing a response to Desperate.

“Dear Desperate, I want you to know you're not alone. My heart aches too. The boys I like don't like me. I don't know why that is, but I'm learning to accept it. Part of it is, I've always lacked the courage to tell them how I feel. Maybe you should try that. Talk to this boy. Tell him you're hurting. Maybe he doesn't know. Whatever he says – remember you're a good person.”

She signs it “Heart” just as Kim always does.

The phone rings and it's Trip calling from the school. Virginia can hear the noise from the game in the background. Trip tells her that Kim is missing. Her parent's think she might have run away. But that isn't the weirdest thing. He went outside to put his sweatshirt in the car because it was so hot in the gym and he noticed the lights on in the news building. When he went to investigate, he found something odd. He refuses to tell Virginia over the phone what it was and insists that she come down there immediately to see for herself.

Hey, Malcolm, missing girl trumps everything else!  Always!  Learn it - live it.

Virginia gets to the school and takes time to drop her response to Desperate in the little box before she goes into the newsroom. Once inside, Trip points out the knife that has been driven into the back of the door. Not only that, but a picture of the basketball team has been hacked into tiny pieces and appears to be covered with drops of blood.

We timehop to Monday morning now. We learn that the news staff spent the weekend posting Missing posters with Kim's picture all over town. All of Kim's pictures mysteriously disappeared from the files so they are using a grainy picture from last year's yearbook. What idiots. Why didn't they ask Kim's parents for a clear, current picture? Do they not want Kim found? These kids are hella dumb, y'all.

Virginia checks the heart box outside of the newsroom. The response to Desperate has been picked up. There's a new letter that has been signed Nobody.

“I guess I'm not good enough for him. He ignores me now. I thought he kind of liked me. But I was wrong. What's the matter with me?”

When she goes into the newsroom she realizes something is different. It takes awhile for her to work out what it is but she finally realizes that Jo's desk has been cleaned up and Emily's flowers have been changed from violets to roses. She wonders when both of these things happened. She dashes off a quick response to Nobody and puts it back out in the box.

Casey comes in looking for film. She mentions to Virginia that she has to be very clever at hiding it because things turn up missing all the time. Despite having told us earlier in the book that Virginia lost a locket and suspected someone in the newsroom of stealing it, Malcolm writes Virginia full of indignant disbelief that someone in the news room would steal. Because fuck continuity again.  I really hope Malcolm is at least buying it dinner first.

Virginia and Casey talk briefly about the cut up photo. Casey thinks it was an accident because everything else sounds too melodramatic. Virginia asks her about the members of the team and Casey gives a pretty self-absorbed description of them (featuring herself as the object of their desires). Virginia takes careful notes because....well, because she's Virginia.

The principal summons the entire newspaper staff to his office. He asks them to bring back issues of the paper and all the Heart-to-Heart letters that Kim had received. Virginia grabs the file but hides the letter from Desperate before she turns it in. She's afraid the principal will cancel the column if he sees it and the paper is more important to her than helping the police find Kim apparently. Virginia kind of sucks.

The run into Jo who is trying to sort through things in her locker. She says that she's been ordered to bring everything that might belong to Kim to the office. She isn't even sure whose stuff is whose anymore. Virginia notices she has a bandage on her finger and asks what happened. Jo replies that it's just a stupid Red Herring and we're supposed to think she's the number one suspect in the murder of the basketball picture. Well, technically she said her cat bit her, but I was reading between the lines, obvs.

It turns out most of what Kim was storing in Jo's locker are clothes. They all troop to the office together where the principal, the newspaper adviser and some kind of counselor are waiting. They ask some questions about Kim. The teens tell them that Kim has been moody and distant lately. They describe her as a “clothes horse” and say that she always changed clothes as soon as she got to school. Jo theorized that she was doing it because her parents wouldn't want her to wear the “flashy” clothes she wore at school. As they are answering questions, they realize how little they actually knew about Kim.

The counselor tells them that Kim's car was found smashed against a tree in a park in the center of town. No one can believe it because they were all over that park putting up fliers over the weekend. Apparently the car was hidden by some brush which tends to indicate someone was covering something up and it wasn't a traffic accident. Kim was found dead in the car.

Everyone is upset and has trouble going about their day. Virginia is grateful when it's over and she can go home. She's barely in her front door when Sam and Trip show up. Trip says weird things are going on. An article Sam wrote about the Science club has vanished and his back up discs have been stolen. Trip had an honor roll list on his desk that he later found crumpled up and in the trash.

They decide to put the slashed picture back together to see if it gives them any clues. After assembly, they realize two people are “missing” from the photo – Adam Fellows and Skip Parker. Virginia decides it might be a good idea to compare those names to the Honor Roll list and the members of the Science Club to see if either of them are on all three. Trip promises to have the information for her the next day and the boys get ready to leave. On his way out, Sam hands her a Heart-to-Heart letter that he found in the box.

“Dear Heart, Dingdong the witch is dead. Now she calls the grave her bed. She did us all a favor.”

It's signed “Happy?”

Somehow Virginia identifies it as a letter from Desperate and dashes off a reply.

“Dear Desperate, I'm not happy about Kim. Don't write to me anymore. You're very sick. Get professional help, now.”

Virginia drops the letter in the box the next day and then goes into the newsroom to look for the lists Trip was supposed to give her. While she's looking, Emily arrives to work on the horoscopes for the paper. Virginia notices that Emily has a bandage on her palm and asks her about it. Emily says she cut it picking up a broken glass.

Sam comes in triumphantly brandishing a couple of floppy discs. Oh, nostalgia. He says he backed up his article four times which seems excessive to me. As he's printing out a hard copy for Virginia, they hear the creak of the Heart-to-Heart box outside. Virginia dashes to see who is taking Desperate's letter and is stunned to find a shy, quiet girl named Alice at the box. She dashes away before Virginia can ask any questions.

Trip and Casey show up. They decide to do a special feature on Kim. Virginia asks Casey for some photographs of Kim and Casey tells her there aren't any. Kim asked for all her pictures weeks ago and Casey turned them over. She thought Kim might be in some group shots but when she searches for them, they're missing too.

Virginia checks Sam's Science Club article and Trip's list of honor roll students and two names stand out. Adam Fellows and Skip Parker again. She finds another letter from Desperate tucked into her English book and starts to throw it away when a couple of lines catch her eye.

“He's disappearing slowly. First his name. Then his face. Soon he'll be gone without a trace.”

Virginia thinks it's related to the missing article and honor roll list (his name) and the hacked up picture (his face). She thinks either Skip or Adam is in danger and she needs to warn him.

She starts with Skip because she knows who he is and what he looks like. She approaches him at lunch and asks him a couple of awkward questions. Skip reveals that he's been dating a cheerleader for a couple of years so Virginia crosses him off her list. I guess in Virginia's world, a boy with a girlfriend could never possibly give another girl a perfect rose in a secret garden. She has a seriously strong pair of rose-colored glasses. She asks Skip to point out Adam and Skip tells her that Adam isn't there.

Virginia has no idea what Adam looks like, so she goes to the office to ask for his schedule. The secretary is reluctant to give it to her but Virginia claims it's for the paper and she's so straight-laced and responsible that the secretary gives in and hands it over. Virginia checks out his next class but apparently he's absent. Frustrated, she goes back to the secretary and asks for his home address. The secretary says it's against the law to give that out but then she goes ahead and does it anyway because Virginia is too boring to do anything nefarious with it.

After school, Virginia heads for Adam's house. When he answers the door, she's shocked at how gorgeous he is. Virginia tells him that she wants to interview him for an article the paper is doing on the basketball team. He tells her that he might not be the best subject because he's the head bench-warmer.

Adam is fairly new to town. He moved from Georgia the previous October. They try to talk inside his house, but his younger brothers and sister make pests of themselves until he tells his mother that he's going out for awhile. He and Virginia head to a local pizza parlor where most of the teens hang out after school. On the way, he tells her that his family lived in a duplex from October to January. A girl from their school lived on the other side and for awhile she was his only friend. This would be the place where any reasonably intelligent person would ask the girl's name. Virginia proves she's not reasonable or intelligent by not bothering to do so. Idiot. Things would move much faster if she wasn't so dumb. She decides she's having too good of a time talking to him to do any investigating.

Sigh.

Why does Point Horror (ish) think girls have to give up their brains as soon as a cute boy walks by??

They get to the pizza place and it's packed. The suspected Desperate (Alice) is there and so is every member of the news staff except Jo. Virginia tries to get them seats away from everyone else. They make small talk while they wait for their pizza. Adam mentions that he knew Kim. He gave her a ride one day when her car broke down. Virginia awkwardly asks him who he's been dating and he says he hasn't dated anyone. For the longest time he only knew the family in the next duplex. Once again, Virginia fails to ask him who the girl was. This is just stupid. Malcolm is purposely trying to delay things but there's no way a person wouldn't ask.

Virginia decides that there's no way Adam can be the guy mentioned in the Desperate letters because he hadn't dated anyone since moving to the area.

She's so dumb. SO DUMB.

That night Virginia wakes up, hearing a noise in her yard. She gets to the window in time to see a dark figure leaving her yard. She debates waking her parents for a bit and then decides to go back to bed and deal with it in the morning.

The next day is Kim's funeral. When Virginia goes downstairs, her mom hands her a note that was left on the doorstep. It's from Desperate and the note wastes no time getting to the point.

“Stay away from him, bitch. Or what happened to Kim will happen to you.”

Virginia realizes this has to be about Adam after all and calls him to warn him about Desperate. She starts out by telling him about the destroyed picture and missing article and crumpled list. He doesn't seem to see the point of it all. Before she can tell him about the letters, Trip arrives to take her to the funeral. She tells Adam they'll talk afterwards and hopes that he'll be safe until then.

The funeral is packed. Virginia goes to sit with her staff but the counselor from the police department pulls her aside. She says she has something that belongs to Virginia and then she places a locket in Virginia's hand. It's the locket that went missing earlier in the school year. It had been found in a box in the backseat of Kim's car and had been labeled with Virginia's name. It turns out Kim was a kleptomaniac and no one knew until after her death. The counselor also revealed that the case was now a homicide.

Isn't a funeral the wrong place for this? I mean seriously. This could have happened at any other time. It seems heartless and disrespectful for this to occur at the funeral.

After the funeral, Adam comes up to Virginia. He greets Emily, Casey and Jo by name, surprising Virginia. She asks how he knows them. He tells her that Casey practically lives with the basketball team. That's....not very nice, Adam. Emily is the girl that lived next door to him in the duplex. He met Jo on the day he gave Kim the ride. He brought her back to his house and she called Jo for a ride home. Jo took a long time to show up, though, so Kim ended up eating dinner with his family and Emily's family. She charmed the whole room. Then Jo showed up and they all hung out and had a good time.

During the burial, Virginia reaches into her purse to get a tissue and pulls out a note instead.

“That's it. Two strikes and you're out.”

Someone seriously needs to brush up on their baseball. That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.

Adam sees Virginia go pale and shaky and he carries her away from the grave site to a fountain where they can sit down. She proceeds to tell him all about Desperate and how she thinks they are in danger. Adam is slow to accept it because he's not dated anyone since moving to the area. Virginia eventually convinces him that some girl must have misconstrued something and built it up in her mind into a relationship with him.

Virginia spots Alice heading for her car and dashes after her. Adam follows. On the way to the parking area, she tells him that she thinks that Alice is Desperate. They get into Adam's car and begin pursuit. Adam tells her that he doesn't really know Alice. She has a locker near him and he says hi when they pass in the hall because she seems lonely. Virginia thinks this is proof but he reasonably points out that they can't accuse Alice of being Desperate just because her locker is near his and she goes to places that other people in their school go to.

I like Adam.

Virginia refuses to listen to him because, to her, all the pieces fit Alice too well. They end up following Alice to the school. Adam tries to stop his car but the brakes fail. He does some evasive maneuvers and they end up missing the building but impaled on a bike rack. It's an odd choice of words. When they get out of the car, Adam looks underneath and finds that the brake lines have been cut.

They head toward the news building. Alice is there at the Heart-to-Heart box and she's crying. They hide behind some bushes and watch her leave a letter in the box. When she leaves, Virginia dashes to pull it out. She's stunned when she realizes that Alice isn't Desperate. She's Nobody.

They sit in the newsroom and try to Sherlock the whole thing out. Adam reasonably points out that it sounds like an inside job. The building was never broken into and everything seems centered around the paper. Virginia remembers that both Jo and Emily showed up with bandages after the whole picture slashing event.

Sam comes into the newsroom. Virginia shows him the Desperate letters and he points out that they were printed out there in the newsroom.  Thank God for the boys in this book because Virginia is just dumb as a post.  Anyway, there was a glitch in the printer that always printed the second line lighter. Virginia asks him if there's any way to see who accessed the computers or printer. Sam tells her they are out of luck for the first two letters but after his files got erased, he installed some kind of spy software on the computers to track who was using them. He can track who printed out the letter Virginia got at her house after the pizza parlor.

While Sam is looking up who used the system, Virginia begins to smell something weird. She finally realizes it's paint thinner.

Sam finally identifies Desperate as Emily right as Emily bursts through the door holding a lighter. Emily reveals that she knew about Kim's little stealing problem and she tortured her with letter after letter threatening to expose her. She chased Kim with her car the day Kim left the school so upset. Kim ended up crashing into a tree but she was still alive. Emily covered the car with branches to make sure no one could find Kim and save her.

Dude, that's cold.

Emily tells Adam it was his fault for inviting Kim to “their” house for dinner and for showing her “their” secret garden. Adam explains to Virginia and Sam that there was an old greenhouse behind the duplex that Emily had taken over. She grew all kinds of plants and flowers in there and his younger brothers and sister liked to play in there. They called it their secret garden like in the book. Emily tells him that he picked one perfect rose for her there and he shakes his head and tells her that the rose had fallen on the ground and he just picked it up and handed it to her so the kids wouldn't trample it.

Virginia realizes that Emily has poured paint thinner all over the outside of the building. Emily says she's going to burn her letters and everyone else with them. She lights a letter on fire and then tosses it down into a puddle of paint thinner. The place goes up in flames. Sam knocks her to the ground and rolls with her so she won't get burned. She hits her head on a filing cabinet and is knocked unconscious.

The door is blocked and the walls are engulfed in flames so they can't get to the windows. The only way out is up through a ceiling panel onto the roof. They drag a desk underneath the panel. Sam goes up first and Adam and Virginia manage to lift Emily up to him. Then Virginia is boosted up. Adam is last through. The roof is heating up and glass is exploding down below. They're worried the roof will collapse at any moment. Virginia finds a side where the flames are a little less intense but there's so much smoke she can't tell what might lie beneath them. Adam picks up Emily and the three of them jump from the roof.

The next chapter opens with a Heart-to-Heart letter from Virginia to the readers of the paper. She urges everyone to talk to someone if they're feeling sad or alone or out of control. The column will be written by a “professional” from that point on.  She doesn't tell us what kind of a professional.

We learn that Sam was chosen as the editor for the upcoming year. Virginia was sad at first but then realized that the best choice was made. Adam is in a walking cast. He was the only one seriously hurt and that was because he was holding Emily when he jumped. Emily is now residing in a hospital where “she can't hurt anyone” until the trial.

The book ends with Adam kissing Virginia and asking if she'll go out with him for pizza and a movie.

Final Thoughts:  Wow, Malcolm has issues with continuity.  I don't think I ever noticed it before, but it was glaringly obvious now.  Sometimes I think writing this blog has made me look more closely at the things I'm reading and I'm not getting swept away in the moment as much as I used to.  

I'm going to be honest...I'm not sure why I kept this book.  It wasn't an awesome story.  Adam was amazing for a Point Horror love interest but there's nothing about him that stands out enough for me to have kept the book because of him.  Actually, most of the boys in the book were amazing for Point Horror males.  They weren't throwing the girls around or acting like the girls needed a boy for protection.  They weren't condescending or sexist.  They were likable characters and we just don't see that very often in these books.  To be fair, Jo and Casey and Kim were written as good characters as well.  Even Virginia wasn't too bad.  She was just shockingly stupid for a character we were TOLD was so smart. When judged against your typical Point Horror, this book was kind of refreshing.  But I still don't know why I kept it.