Crash Course by Nicole Davidson

**This blog contains adult language,**

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/stereotype is.

Tag Line: A secluded cabin on the lake was a perfect place to study...or to die.

From the Back of the Book: As the water closed over his head, he imagined he felt a hand grasping his jacket - pushing him deeper... He thrashed his arms and legs in the irrational hope he might break the surface, his chest tightening, burning... Too soon, a paralyzing lightness overtook him and he gave up to the icy current as the spring below pulled him deeper...deeper.  And then there were seven...The weekend had begun as a crash SAT prep course given by a strict teacher in a secluded cabin at Deep Creek Lake - four boys, four girls, cramming for college entrance.  It ended with a bone-chilling scream breaking the silence of the night.  For one of them, it was all over....forever.  For the rest, the terror had just begun...Now while their teacher goes for help, seven terrified teens wait, not knowing if a lunatic killer lurks in the darkness...or sits among them, ready to strike again.

This book was published in 1990.  I didn't read it back then.  I hope I never have to read it again.  The blurb was pretty accurate for a change.  The cover fits the contents.  Those might be the last positive things I say about this book.

We begin with a prologue. Yay. A boy and an unidentified companion get into a rowboat and push off into a lake. In the dark. The boy tells us he's doing it to save “her”. He observes that his companion's attitude has changed from angry and accusing to afraid. He rows to the deepest part of the lake and then stops. He tells his companion to just jump in, sink and then take a deep breath of water and it will all be over. To his surprise, his companion jumps up and screams that he/she won't do it. Hands hit the boy and rip the letter off his letter jacket. The motion upsets the balance of the boat and the boy goes overboard. His heavy winter coat and the unnamed objects in his pockets weigh him down. Soon he can't even tell which way is up. He feels like hands are dragging him down. And then it's over.

I honestly don't know who our protagonist is going to be. The back of the book gives us no clue. I'm hoping it's not a book like The Ripper where we just head-hopped through the entire book and never really had a protagonist.

We begin with Kelly Peterson who may or may not be our protagonist (Odds of being protagonist: 75%). She's just getting home from school after an awesome day and she's excited to check the mail. She's not expecting anything, but you never know what might be in there. I get it, Kelly. I'm the same way. There's nothing more exciting than those 30 seconds when you're pulling open the mail box and imagining some wonderful surprise inside. This time there's an envelope with the words “To the parents of Kelly Peterson” stamped on the front. Words to strike fear in any teenager's heart for sure. For Kelly, they also bring a poignant sting because her mother walked out on them two years ago and it's just her and her dad.

She's dying with curiosity about the envelope. A neighborhood friend, Brian Lopez, works in the school office so she heads to his house to see if he might know what's in it.

Along the way, we get a little intel on Kelly: shoulder-length red curls, ivory skin, wide green eyes, beautiful teeth, pretty (Odds of being protagonist: 50%). If she'd had violet eyes, we could have closed the file on this protagonist mystery.

Kelly rings Brian's doorbell and waits impatiently for him to answer. She can hear an argument going on and is just about to leave when Brian's girlfriend Paula Schultz opens the door. Paula is described as blonde, blue-eyed, petite and a rescuer of lost, injured souls. Paula tries to get rid of Kelly by saying that she and Brian are in the middle of a pretty intense conversation, but Kelly just breezes right by her into the house thinking in her head that Paula is just possessive.

Wow. Kelly's pretty self-centered and inconsiderate of the feelings of others (Odds of being protagonist: 80%).

She settles herself into the den with Brian and asks him if he knows of any school-to-parent mass mailing. He doesn't.

Kelly stops to give us some intel about Brian. She makes sure to mention that he's light-skinned despite having a Hispanic father because we wouldn't want to have any actual people of color in a PH book. Or at least, no people of color dating a white, blonde-haired-blue-eyed cheerleader. No other details are given about Brian's appearance. Apparently all that matters is that he's light-skinned. Davidson, you're so gross.

Brian and Paula have been an item for a couple of years and they seem madly in love. Recently, however, Brian accepted an appointment to the Air Force Academy in Colorado after graduation and Paula's parents refuse to let her go to college out of state, so there's friction in the relationship. Paula wants Brian to give up the opportunity to go to college with her and he's refusing.

Paula breaks in and says she thinks the envelope is an informational packet for Mr Porter's SAT prep course that's being held over Thanksgiving weekend. Kelly is pissed her dad signed her up for it without her knowledge. She vows she's going to get out of going.  Brian says she can use the phone by the bar to call her dad and Paula gives her an irritated look for prolonging her stay. Kelly calls her a bitch in her head (Odds of being protagonist: 95%) and thinks it's all jealousy. No, Kelly, it's because she TOLD you when you shoved your way inside that she was trying to have an important talk with her boyfriend.

Kelly dials her dad's work number but then quickly hangs up. Holidays have been hard for the two of them since her mom left and she wonders if her dad signed her up for the prep course to avoid another painful thanksgiving. Wait. The thing is taking place over the actual holiday? I thought it was a Friday to Monday sort of thing. Parents usually like to have their whole family together for thanksgiving. I know PH needs to have the kids separated from the parents and at least this is a new twist instead of just sending the parents off to Europe, but it's not very believable.

We've had our first head-hop. It's not even a new chapter. This does not bode well, y'all. Sigh.

Our head-host is now Jeff Mitchell. He's left school early courtesy of a forged note and has driven around to the teacher's parking lot. We get an entire paragraph about his white Corvette and I did not pay one whit of attention. If you're a car person, you've come to the wrong blog, friend. Jeff is lying in wait for Alexander Porter of the SAT course fame. He's heard Porter leaves the school early every day. He catches the teacher before Mr Porter can reach his car. Jeff demands to know why Porter reached out to his parents about the weekend course and Porter says Jeff's parents signed him up because of his poor scores on two previous attempts.

Jeff is Harvard bound (like every other male member of his family) and he needs a high score to get accepted. His 4.0 has already been ruined by Porter's class. He still doesn't want to take the course but Porter boasts he can increase Jeff's score by an easy 300 points and Jeff reluctantly agrees it might be a good idea to go. He asks Porter who else is going to be there and Porter hands him a list.

Before the chapter ends, we hop into Porter's head as he watches Jeff drive away. He thinks that Jeff could be trouble and he'll have to be watched to make sure he doesn't ruin Porter's plans.  (Note from future me: this never goes anywhere.  We never find out what nefarious plans he had or how Jeff could have ruined them.  Davidson just forgets all about it.)

The next chapter puts us back in Jeff's head as he ponders the list. Jeff knows everyone on the list except Angel Manson. He's excited when he sees Kelly's name on the list. Jeff has been hot for Kelly ever since his best friend Warren Knight dragged him to see some play Kelly was in. He thinks having her there at Deep Creek Lake is going to make it hard to concentrate on SAT tips but it still makes the trip sound like more fun.

As he's leaving the parking lot, Nathan Grant jumps in front of his car. Nathan needs a ride to the movie theater where he works and Jeff agrees to take him. Nathan will also be at the Deep Creek Lake SAT thing.

Too many characters, Davidson.

Nathan is surprised to hear that Jeff is going to be at the SAT thing too. Jeff tells him there's a list of the people coming on his floorboard and Nathan snatches it up to take a look. In addition to Jeff, Nathan, Brian, Paula, Angel and Kelly, we have: Isabel Smith and Chris Baxter (the black football player I forgot to mention a few pages ago. Oops.). Nathan doesn't think highly of Chris. He thinks the guy is a “monster” and violent. 

Jeff thinks Nathan is weird because he always wears shades. He thinks Nathan must do cocaine or something because that's a fair thing to assume about someone with no proof. Nathan says he's taking the course because his father is going to kick him out after graduation and he doesn't want to end up working in the movie theater his entire life, so he's going to need a good education. It makes me wonder if Nathan is hiding bruises. Nathan admires Jeff's $50,000 corvette and Jeff immediately wonders if Nathan's going to steal it (Odds of being a complete dick: 99%)

We're back in Kelly's head now without even the benefit of a new chapter. Brian comes over the day before the trip and the two of them hang out while she packs. Kelly is super nervous about taking the perfect clothes because she's heard Jeff is going to be there and total dick is apparently her type. Mr Porter has decreed that they bring one bag and their clothes should be warm, loose and casual to avoid distractions. She frets about not being able to bring her hair dryer because there won't be any electricity.

All evening, Brian seems like he wants to tell her something. He ends up hugging her awkwardly and telling her to take care of herself. Great. Is he going to end up being the bad guy? (Odds of being the bad guy: 60%)??

Yeah, I don't know why I'm doing the percent thing either, but Ima run with it for this one. Cool? Cool.

Brian gives Kelly a ride to the school the next morning so they can catch the bus out to Deep Creek Lake. Kelly sees Chris and thinks to herself how shy he was freshman year before football changed him. The mysterious Angel is there too and Kelly is convinced that she must go to a different school because there's no way Kelly would have missed seeing something as freakish as this girl. Angel is full 90's goth with lots of eyeliner and choppy hair and an entirely black wardrobe. Paula snarks that Angel is........thin. She couldn't seem to say any of the other adjectives that I'm sure were swimming around in her bitchy brain. So, thin it is!

As they wait for the bus, Isabel comes up to introduce herself to Kelly. She's new in school but pretty so it's all going to be okay. Kelly thinks Isabel might be Hawaiian or Oriental and I want to slap Davidson. Seriously. Must all your characters be reduced to their skin color or nationality? In trying to show how amazingly diverse you are, you're just drawing attention to things that shouldn't even be a factor. You can say Isabel has caramel colored skin without having your protagonist (Odds of being protagonist: 95%) decide she has to attach a label to her. And for the record, Hawaiian and Oriental are two very different things. Or do they all look alike to you, Davidson?

Kelly makes a crack about Porter and Isabel rushes to defend him. She says he is a sensitive man and he only does what's best for his students. Kelly assumes Isabel never had him for a class. Which is a pretty safe assumption considering she's NEW.

Everyone gets on the bus and Kelly frets for about two pages because Jeff is late. He finally shows and seems startled to see Angel. Angel pulls out a peach and starts to eat it. The driver yells at her that there's no food on the bus. Angel and Porter have a stare down about it. Finally she squeezes the peach until she can fit it all in her mouth and then she swallows it pit and all. Well, that's normal.

The ride to Deep Creek takes three hours and the heat is on high. It doesn't take Kelly long to fall asleep. She dreams a stupid dream with wolves and blood and wakes up with a start. She thinks the wolf in her dream looked familiar. Like it was one of her friends or a person she passed in the hall every day. Or maybe a person on the bus? Dun dun dun. Might as well have used a NEON SIGN, Davidson.

There's a weird paragraph where Kelly notices Isabel's ring. It's a silver sunburst with a turquoise stone. It seems weird and out of place.  The paragraph, not the stone.

Isabel admits that she thinks Chris is cute which I guess is okay since we know she's caramel colored. Brian and Paula warn her to stay away from Chris while Kelly says he's okay, he just has a bad temper. As they get closer to Deep Creek Lake, Porter wants to lay down some ground rules. Chris is asleep, so Porter demands that someone go wake him up. Kelly is the only one who is willing. She tells us that Chris wakes up “rough” like her dad and I'm left wondering how she knows this about Chris. Seems suspicious to me. He does, indeed, wake up swinging but she's perfected her technique and all is well.

Porter tells them that the cabin has three bedrooms. Boys in one, girls in the other and he'll take the third. There is no bathroom, only an outhouse. They are to always go in same-sex pairs while outside. The lake is cold and there's a dangerous current so they are to use caution if they are brave enough to try to bathe in it. The cabin is ten miles away from the nearest neighbor and there are no phones. The bus is leaving, so they are completely cut off from civilization.

Speaking as a parent, I would not have allowed my child to go off in these circumstances. What if there was a medical emergency? I'm beginning to think the parents in the book really hate their children. They didn't want them home for Thanksgiving and they've sent them into a potentially dangerous situation. AND THEY PAID FOR IT.

Porter warns them that they need to stay on paths and watch for stones marked with red paint. Apparently, there are spots where the land has eroded over deep caverns and you could fall through. I'm sure that won't be important to the plot or anything. NEON SIGN

They get to the cabin and the girls go to settle in their room. Kelly gets through unpacking first, of course, because she's just AWESOME. She tries to talk to Paula but is brutally rebuffed so she graces Isabel with her presence. Isabel asks Kelly to put her clothes in neat piles under her bunk (seriously, has the girl never heard of spiders and scorpions?) while she puts the sheets on her bed. Kelly is unpacking and chatting when something in Isabel's suitcase cuts her hand. Isabel calmly reveals an 8” knife with an intricately beaded handle. She says it's useful for all kinds of camping things and her grandfather made it for her. Kelly realizes from that very small and inconsequential clue that Isabel is Native American rather than Hawaiian or Oriental.

NONE OF THOSE THINGS ARE THE SAME, DAVIDSON. Oh. My. God.

Unpacking done, Kelly and Isabel start to leave the room. Isabel asks Angel if she wants to join them and Kelly is irritated. She thinks Angel is a candidate for Social Exile (Odds of being protagonist: 110%). Angel is sitting on her bed surrounded by crystals and a book wrapped in black velvet because Davidson is super huge on stereotypes and skin color and awfulness. Angel puts a large skull necklace around her neck and then begins to talk to the skull. She says she's ready to begin and perform her duties and obey.

I cannot believe how annoying this book is and we're 54 pages in.

Sigh.

We head-hop into Chris' head now. I was really hoping we'd stay with Jeff and Kelly. Even though he's a dick and she's awful, it would have been nice if Davidson contented herself with the two of them guiding our journey. Chris is waiting to unpack until the others leave the room. There's something in his suitcase that he needs but he doesn't want the others to see. I'm putting my bet on steroids because Davidson loves her stereotypes. Chris thinks about how much football means to him and how he's done everything to get a scholarship to UCLA.

Chris is good at football but the major universities have shied away from him because he can't control his temper and gets into fights during the games. Chris is full of rage and hates everyone. He wants to succeed as revenge to all the idiots in his life. Porter told him that a high SAT score would show the big schools that he was more than a brawler. So that explains why he's there.

Things are awkward during lunch. We're back in Kelly's head. Angel is sitting at the table chanting under her breath. Finally Brian snaps at her to stop and Angel gives him a creepy smile. She says she knows him. Paula asks her how she knows Brian and Angel replies “you are a beast”. Paula gets butthurt and demands to know why Angel called her a beast but it's pretty fucking clear to anyone with a brain that she was calling BRIAN (Odds of being the bad guy: 75%) a beast not Paula. Angel replies that she knows him from another life.

Despite the fact that Nathan and Chris are both clearly at the table eating lunch when all this Angel/Brian crap is happening, suddenly they are both in their room and there's an altercation going on. Yes, folks, Davidson forgot where her own characters were. This is a common affliction in Point Horror land. Keeping track of more than two characters seems to present a challenge to many authors. Anyway, they all rush into the room to see Chris pinning Nathan against a wall, clearly ready to kill him. Chris says Nathan's been looking through his stuff. The boys try to drag him off and Kelly screams in his ear because THAT'S how you diffuse a tense situation, but it's Isabel who breaks things up. She gets between Chris and Nathan somehow and talks soothingly. As you do. She tells Chris that Nathan was curious but he won't tell. For a new chick, she seems well informed.

We're in Nathan's head now because Davidson hates us all. But especially me. Counting the prologue we've been in five heads so far. I just feel dirty. Nathan is thrilled that he has blackmail material on Chris now. He's an idiot. Clearly JEFF and BRIAN are mega-rich. If he's wanting blackmail material, he shouldn't pick the poor football player. There are much bigger fish to fry.

Porter starts the SAT thing by telling them what kind of scores the schools they are interested in will require. Jeff needs 1200-1400. Chris needs at least 1000. Everyone else needs somewhere in between except for Nathan. The community college only requires a 700. He begins teaching them the standard trick of eliminating answers that cannot be correct and narrowing down your choices. For some reason, Jeff seems to think this is cheating. How? It's how you take a damn test, Jeff.

The method is kind of interesting and helpful although not foolproof by any means. It would take me forever to type and quote it out here. But my manager should check it out at some point. It's on pages 68-71.

Davidson is now referring to Isabel as “the Indian girl”. And Chris is usually “the black footballer” or something similar. How gross is that? Are we really supposed to think of people in relation to their race or nationality? Why can't Chris just be Chris and Isabel just be Isabel? We know he's black and plays football already. We know she's Native American. We can keep up, Davidson. Clearly YOU can't, but we can.

That evening, Jeff is feeling pretty claustrophobic in the cabin. He's being driven "stark raving mad" (this turns out to be a contagious affliction) by the awesomeness that is Kelly so he asks Porter if he can go out and build a campfire. Not sure how that's going to help his Kelly problem unless he plans to burn her at the stake for bewitching him. 

Sorry. 

That was an aberration. Won't happen again.

Nathan and Paula are on dinner duty, but the rest of the group gathers outside around the camp fire. Kelly urges Isabel to tell everyone an “Indian ghost story” and Isabel replies that she'll tell them the legend of Deep Creek Lake. Brian tries to talk her out of it (Odds of being the bad guy: 85%) but she isn't swayed.

Isabel begins the story. Long ago on the land there lived a peaceful tribe. There was a white settlement nearby. Everything was fine until a settler was murdered and a tribe member was suspected. The settlers massacred the entire tribe save for one maiden and her lover who were off alone together. See, kids, sex doesn't kill. It saves lives. The survivors were so distraught that they decided to go to the creek to see if they could see their souls. Legend had it that if you looked into the lake on a moonless night, your soul would be revealed. You had to be careful, though, because Gweemush, the god of the dead who lived at the bottom of the lake, would steal your soul if he was able. The survivors stared into the water and saw nothing. Believing that Gweemush had already stolen their souls, they drowned themselves in the lake.

After the story, Kelly charmingly thinks Isabel is “wacko”. Brian storms off and the group breaks up leaving just Isabel and Angel by the fire. Isabel sighs and says she doesn't know what else to do. Angel nods.

After supper, the group again goes out to the fire. This time they have marshmallows to roast. Angel announces that she needs the outhouse and she orders Paula to go with her. Paula doesn't want to, but does. After they are gone, there's some weird thing where Kelly asks Brian if Paula talked him into skipping the academy thing in Colorado and Brian says he has it handled. Then Isabel gets emotional and begs him not to “do it”. Brian tells her to shut the hell up. Nothing's going to happen. Kelly has no idea what's going on. Again, Isabel seems oddly informed and in the loop for a new chick.

Ten minutes pass and the girls aren't back. Brian wants to go look for them. He can't go alone so Kelly says she'll go too. But Porter's rules say a boy and girl can't be alone together away from the group, so Kelly orders Jeff to accompany them. There's a lot of ordering going on around here and I have no idea why the others are putting up with it. Isabel joins them, leaving Nathan and Chris alone at the fire.

They follow the path to the outhouse but see no signs of Paula or Angel. Kelly turns to Isabel and asks her if she can track them because she's an Indian and DAVIDSON IS AN ASS. I can't believe this book, y'all. Wow.

They eventually come across Angel, but Paula is nowhere to be found. Angel takes off in a huff before they can really question her. Kelly suggests they go back to the cabin to see if Paula's returned but Brian wants to keep looking. Despite the rules, they split up. Isabel and Brian continue to look for Paula while Jeff and Kelly return to the cabin. Kelly and Jeff make awkward conversation for a bit and he snaps at her. He apologizes, saying that he has a lot on his mind and Kelly ACTUALLY thinks in her head “Oh, Jeff. What could be more important than me?”. For fuck's sake, Kelly. Can you BE any more self-centered?

I hate her. So hard.

Angel is back at the camp fire by the time they get there. Nathan is making a full court press but she seems pretty indifferent.

Eventually, Brian and Isabel find Paula. She explains that she got separated from Angel and lost in the woods. All is well again. Yay.

In the middle of the night, Kelly is awakened by a scream coming from the direction of the lake. She gets up, dresses and grabs a lantern. No one else seems to hear the scream and so she heads outside alone. To her surprise, Jeff is jogging back to the cabin from the direction of the lake. He says he heard the scream and went to check it out, but stopped and turned back to get Porter. Porter, meantime, has heard the commotion and come out to investigate.

They hear the scream again. It's a girl screaming for help. The three of them run toward the lake. Isabel comes out of the house and joins them. They find Paula soaking wet on the shore. In the distance, they can see a rowboat floating in the lake. Paula is hysterical. She keeps saying there was a stranger and Brian was trying to protect her. Kelly yanks off her pants and shoes and dives into the water.

Um. At the shore? Where the water isn't deep? Okay, Davidson. Okay.

Kelly swims out to the boat but Brian isn't in it. She can't see the bottom of the boat well but it feels lumpy. She dives into the freezing water over and over trying to find him. During one dive, she feels something yanking her deeper and she wonders if it's Gweemush.

The next thing she knows, she's back at the cabin and Isabel is giving her coffee. Everyone else is in the main room of the cabin except Porter who is still by the lake and Angel whose whereabouts are unknown. Kelly tries to question Paula but doesn't get much sense out of her. Paula says they were going to go for a glide on the lake but she changed her mind and Brian went without her. Then a stranger attacked him and he was gone. Angel comes in, then, from outside and Kelly accuses her of murdering Brian because that makes perfect sense. Nathan accuses Chris which makes even less sense.

Porter returns and tells them to get a couple of hours of sleep. They can't mount any kind of search until daylight. They'll look for Brian along the shore on the off chance that he reached shore and was too exhausted to make his way back to the cabin. If they don't find him by noon, Porter will walk the ten miles to the nearest neighbor to get help while the rest of them remain in the cabin.

Does anyone else think that Paula and Brian had a suicide pact or something? That Isabel knew and was trying to warn people with her legend?

We hop into Angel's head for a page or two and it's completely pointless. The only thing we learn is that she writes everything in her diary (which we already fucking knew) and that Nathan stole Isabel's knife.

Daylight comes and the search begins. Paula and Isabel are left in the cabin. The rest of the group splits up to look for Brian. I know Chris and Jeff are together but have no idea what the rest of the groups look like.

Almost immediately we are hopped into Paula's head. It's pointless. She makes a plan to sneak out the window so Isabel doesn't know she's gone. That's it.

We're bounced into Kelly's head. She's searching with Nathan and Angel but she doesn't think they're trying very hard. Kelly takes a second look at the boat to see if she can figure out why it felt lumpy. There's no obvious reason for it, but she feels like she's missing something. I'm sure it won't be important. NEON SIGN Davidson isn't very good at being subtle. She could have just left it at Kelly checking and finding nothing and leaving it up to the reader whether it was important or not, but she makes Kelly hammer it into our skulls instead so we KNOW it's important. Not skillful writing.

Kelly begins to suspect that Angel knows something but it's clear that Angel doesn't want to speak in front of Nathan. Kelly sends him off to check somewhere else and he follows her orders because clearly Kelly is the Alpha bitch of the pack....or maybe just the bitch. When he's gone, Angel says that she warned Paula about the dangers of the lake. Kelly presses about the “stranger” and Angel says there was no stranger. Kelly asks her who she saw and Angel says the name Jeffrey.

We land in Jeff's head now. He's eating his lunch outside by the campfire because he's so butthurt that Kelly isn't paying attention to him. She just lost her best friend, but whatever, Jeff, let's make this about you. He thinks about the search. They didn't find another boat so he concludes that there wasn't one. You know, because the bad guy couldn't possibly have just taken his boat with him or anything. These people are so stupid and short-sighted. Jeff thinks this means that Brian got into the boat with someone he knew. 

Nathan joins him and he's clearly drunk. He rants for about two pages about rich guys and how selfish they are. He takes a few jabs at Brian and Jeff and then says he can't wait for the cops to show up because he has plenty to tell them about the group. Then he wanders off. That was largely pointless.

We jump into Kelly's head as she heads out to the fire to confront Jeff. She stares into the fire, noticing that someone has used writing paper as kindling. Wow, I bet that won't turn out to be pages of a diary or anything. They have some tense conversation where they're basically snapping at each other but not really saying anything. Jeff thinks that one of them is a killer and that's not news to Kelly since she thinks Jeff is the killer (Odds of being the bad guy: 10%). She tries to leave and he grabs her wrists and forces her to stay even after she asks him to let her go. This is not okay, Jeff. Not. Okay. He says he'll let her go when she tells him what's going on in “that crazy red head” of hers and I think it's perfectly reasonable for her to kick him hard in the bro globes right now. She doesn't, of course, because girls are too delicate for that in PH land.

Kelly asks him why he was running from the lake toward the cabin the night before. He says he was running off some sexual tension because he's hot for a girl and Kelly leaves before he can tell her that she's the one he's hot for. Fucking pointless.

Porter leaves at noon, saying he'll be back in 3 or 4 hours. He still hasn't returned at seven. Everyone has packed. Isabel is finishing up when she discovers her knife missing. She says she searched all the girls' bags and now she's going to search the boys' bags. Chris goes ballistic and chases her down. He grabs her by her hair and shakes her until she drops what she's holding. A bunch of steroids fall out to no one's actual surprise.

Isabel, Paula and Kelly head out to the outhouse. They talk about whether Porter reached help and who could have killed Brian and why. Our favorite “psychos don't need a reason to kill” line gets uttered by one of them. They're all starting to blend together. The only thing that differentiates them are their stereotypes which I refuse to participate in, so they're just one indistinguishable bundle of awful right now.

We're back in Jeff's head. He's playing poker with Chris. Nathan and Angel are making out in the woods but Nathan comes back alone. He says Angel took off chasing chipmunks. Jeff thinks Porter is behind everything because he's “crazy”. Wow, Davidson, is there any group of people you don't stereotype?

The girls come back. Angel comes back. Everyone goes to bed. It's raining the next morning. Are you enthralled yet? Has anything happened in this book? Oh, Brian “died” I guess.

YAWN.

Odds of me falling asleep: 68%.

When Kelly wakes up, Angel is the only one still in the room. Kelly grills her about the night Brian died. Angel says there were two people in the boat. They yelled. They argued. One got pushed overboard and then the other jumped in too.

Oh, wait. I just realized the prologue is probably what happens to Brian. Oops. (Odds of being the bad guy: 10%) Yeah, I probably should have picked up on that sooner.  I thought it was part of the Deep Creek Lake past.  Bad blogger. I guess I'll be forced to retire in shame.

Yeah, like my manager would allow THAT. You should see the stack of books she has for me to recap.

So I'm back to suicide pact. She panicked and changed her mind. He went over.

Kelly realized that it was Angel screaming for help that night by the lake and not Paula. Angel witnessed the entire thing. Kelly thinks about telling the others, but then decides it might be dangerous for Angel so she keeps her mouth shut.

Wow. That's pretty advanced thinking for a PH protagonist. Props to Kelly.

They join the others in the main room. The boys are playing poker. Nathan is continually baiting Chris about being the bad guy. Chris is too obvious of a suspect, you moron (Odds of being the bad guy: 2%). Nathan says that there was a witness to the crime but it wasn't him. Which makes it COMPLETLY obvious who it was because only Angel has given Nathan the time of day the entire trip. Such. A. Moron.

Nathan declares he wants to play “real poker” and he pulls a ten off a pretty hefty roll of cash. Kelly immediately thinks he stole it from Brian before he pushed him into the lake. Again, too obvious (Odds of being the bad guy: 20%) but more likely than Chris. Money IS a motive after all. Nathan says it was his last paycheck from work. Kelly asks why he brought it with him when there would be no place to spend it. Jeff gently says it was probably because of Nathan's dad and Nathan reluctantly admits if he had left it at the house, his dad likely would have found it and spent it on booze.

By noon, it's sleeting and Kelly is at her breaking point. She says she'll go “stark raving mad” if she doesn't get out of the cabin. No one else really wants to go out in the weather so she raves a bit and then stomps out alone. Jeff follows her. They clear up who Jeff is lusting after and Kelly goes into full on flirt mode. Which is just painful. Fluttering eyelashes. Cliche, Davidson. Not that I'm surprised because you wrote ALL YOUR FUCKING CHARACTERS AS CLICHES. Anyway, they make out for a bit. As you do. While in the sleet. With a killer on the loose. You know.

We end up in Nathan's head now since Kelly and Jeff are busy. Back in the house, Angel is muttering to herself about “it” happening again, totally ignoring Nathan who is trying to talk her into having sex with him. He's a charmer, that Nathan. We're told Isabel is reading, Chris is taking a nap and Paula is in her room. Angel decides she's going to take a walk and Nathan trails along after her thinking that he's going to get lucky (Odds of Nathan getting “lucky”: -5000%).

Angel is determined to find Jeff and Kelly and save them from “it”. Nathan is determined to have sex. Bet you can't guess who gets their wish? Angel takes off and leaves him in the woods. Then Davidson gives us this exceedingly charming sentence: “He was disgusted, drenched and his pants fit accusingly tight in the crotch.” Lovely. Thank you for that, Davidson. Why accusingly? That makes so sense. What is his erection accusing him of? I'm not sure Davidson knows how to word.

Nathan doesn't want to go back to the cabin right away. Everyone will know he struck out if he does. Besides, he has Isabel's knife strapped to his chest and he's feeling cocky. He yells for Angel a couple of times and then is surprised by an unnamed, unidentified person. Nathan knows who X is, though, and doesn't seem super surprised to see X so I guess we can conclude that it isn't Brian. I think Nathan would have had a bigger reaction to Brian coming back from the dead (Odds of being the bad guy: 2%).

X comments on the knife and says that it's too bad that Nathan doesn't know how to use one. Nathan is all like “And you think you know how to throw one? Bitch please.” for some reason. How do you go right to knife throwing? What world do these people live in? When I hear a person say someone doesn't know how to use a knife, my brain goes to using it in an offensive or defensive way, not to throwing.

X says he/she is capable of throwing it and FOR SOME FUCKING MORONIC REASON Nathan asks for a demonstration.

Let's examine this, shall we? He's going to let someone throw a knife at him when there's a killer on the loose. What does this tell us? I mean, other than the obvious that Nathan is too stupid to survive this book. I think it's a girl. I don't think he'd ever let Chris throw a knife at him. Or Jeff. He didn't say “hey where the hell have you been?” so I don't think it's Porter. That leaves a girl. Paula maybe (Odds of being the bad guy: 75%)? Because she pushed Brian off the boat and Nathan was boasting about having a witness?

To no one's actual surprise, Nathan gets stabbed and left for dead in the leaves. I think he's dead but I'm not willing to state that as fact (Odds of being dead: 90%).

We land in Kelly's head. Everyone (except Nathan) is back in the cabin. Angel is very upset that he's missing and wants to go look for him immediately. The others decide to wait an hour and see if he comes straggling in. They don't want to go back out in the sleet if snogging isn't involved.

They wait until almost midnight before beginning the search.  They find Nathan easily enough. He still has a pulse and the blood flow seems to have clotted (Odds of being dead: 0%). Isabel becomes upset. She says she thought she knew what happened to Brian because of conversation she overheard that first day but it doesn't make sense that someone would have tried to kill Nathan. Because she overheard a suicide plan???? Maybe???? Still my theory.

They bring Nathan back to the cabin and put him on a cot close to the fire. They decide to crash in the main room that night because they all wanted to be where they could keep an eye on each other. The next day Kelly thinks she has everything figured out (Odds of this: 50%). She takes Isabel's knife and hides it somewhere on her person. Don't know where, don't care where. She announces to everyone that she knows who killed Brian and she just needs to go outside for awhile to make sure the clues are still there for the police.

This sounds lame even to me. They should all be seeing right through this. But they won't. At least one of them won't.

Jeff protests that she can't go out alone. Kelly gives in and says she's going to go grab a jacket. While she's in her room, she puts a tape recorder in her pocket along with the knife. Then she climbs out of the window.

Suddenly we're in Paula's head. I don't think we've been here before. Which is weird considering the amount of head-hopping we've done. It's like Davidson hasn't wanted us to hear Paula's thoughts (Odds of being the bad guy: 85%). Everyone except Paula and Angel have left the cabin to search for Kelly. Angel accuses Paula of burning her diary and Paula says she had to. It was full of lies about Brian. Then she threatens to kill Angel if Angel tells anymore lies about Brian. So, does that make her too obvious now too (Odds of being the bad guy: 50%)?

We land in Isabel's head. She pulls Chris aside to talk to him. She tells him that she heard Paula talking about a suicide pact on the bus. Paula thought the tale of two young lovers sacrificing their lives to be together forever was incredibly romantic. She wanted Brian to do the same for her. With her. Brian didn't want to from the beginning and was trying to talk her out of it on the bus but Paula was giving him the “you'll do it if you love me” business. Isabel thinks that something must have gone wrong with the pact. Chris tells her that he doesn't think they should wait for the bus to show up on Sunday and asks her if she wants to take a walk in the woods.

We're back in Kelly's head and it's pretty much empty. She doesn't really have a plan. She thinks she'll be safer in the water because that worked so well for Brian. She's going to get in the rowboat and paddle out a few yards. Then her suspect will show up on the shore and Kelly will question him/her while secretly recording the whole thing. Good plan, Kelly. {two thumbs up}

Before she can get the boat in the water, Paula shows up. Kelly confronts her about the lack of a “stranger” the night Brian died. Paula pretends to not know what Kelly is talking about and then purposely misunderstands what Kelly says in order to implicate Porter. Kelly isn't having any of it, however. She asks what Paula did to Porter. Paula denies but Kelly pushes and eventually Paula bad-guy-monologues all over both of them.

You all already know most of this. Suicide pact. Romantic death. Together forever. Paula says it was all for love and then in the next breath says she's never felt anything for anyone but herself. Make up your mind, Davidson. Those are two different things. Paula tells Kelly that Brian was talking “weird” in the boat. He was talking about how it would feel to die and suddenly it was all too real and Paula didn't want to do it anymore. Kelly says that was the point. Brian was trying to talk her out of it. Paula says what happened to him was an accident. She thought he was going to throw her in and she reacted by pushing him away. He fell overboard and she took the rocks out of her pockets and tried to save him but couldn't.  The rocks were the lumpy things Kelly felt in the boat. 

Paula says that Brian was particularly sensitive to people thinking he would kill himself. So she had to make sure no one thought that. She knew Angel had seen things and written about it in her diary. Nathan read it before Paula could steal and burn the diary. She knew that one of them could likely be discredited but two people with the same story would be much harder. So Nathan had to die. Kelly tells her how dumb that was because the accident with Brian probably wouldn't be held against her, but stabbing Nathan definitely would. Paula is tired of Kelly and jumps her. After a brief struggle, Paula throws a boulder at Kelly's head (Oh! Odds of being the bad guy: 99.999999999999%).

Angel has witnessed the entire thing. She's paralyzed with memories of being abused and finding out she was adopted. This seems......very out of place. Like an afterthought. Like Davidson was scrambling to find a justification for Angel not rushing to help Kelly so she gave us this big abuse story in the middle of nowhere. If she had set it up earlier, we could have cared. The way it was tacked on here was haphazard and sloppy and didn't allow us the time to develop empathy for a character who is more that what people see. Angel could have been an actual fleshed-out character but she's reduced to an excuse at the end of the book.

We hit Jeff's head because Davidson doesn't want us to stay with one character long enough to get to know them. He's looking for Kelly. He sees Angel running and confronts her, thinking she's done something to Kelly. She tells him about Paula hitting Kelly. They go back to the spot but Kelly is gone. There are drag marks and blood in the sand. Which they can see in the dark. Because they're special. They follow the tracks.

Back in Kelly's bashed head. I don't really notice the difference. She's always been a little post-concussive acting. Paula has tied her cheerleading sweater around Kelly's neck and she's stuffing the pockets with rocks. That done, she drags Kelly toward the water. Kelly does her second smart thing in this book and starts talking about how nice it is that Paula is going to bury Kelly with Brian so they can be together forever. Possessive Paula doesn't like that one bit. Then Kelly points out that Brian's parents will spare no expense to drag the lake and recover his body. When they do, they'll find Kelly too and she'll be wearing Paula's rock filled sweater. Paula immediately removes the sweater.

Kelly and Paula struggle a bit but Kelly's too weak and Paula's too determined. She holds Kelly's face under the water and just when Kelly accepts her death, Jeff and Angel arrive and save the day!

It's not even a new fucking chapter but suddenly it's after Brian's funeral. LEARN HOW CHAPTERS WORK, DAVIDSON!!!!!!!! Brian's parents banned them all from the funeral thinking that they didn't do enough to save Brian but they gathered afterwards. Kelly thanks Chris and Isabel for going to get help while Jeff and Angel were searching for her and Paula was attempting to murder her. Thanks to them not waiting, Kelly received medical care in record time and Paula didn't have time to escape and kill them all. Turns out Porter had tripped in one of those stupid cavern things from the beginning of the book and broken his leg because Paula removed the rocks with the warning symbols. Isabel and Chris found him too.

They spend some time reviewing the ENTIRE FUCKING BOOK for each other while telling Kelly how wonderful she was to have figured the whole thing out. Gag. Then they call Paula “crazy” a few dozen times and speculate about her trial. She's being tried for the attempted murder of Nathan (who is expected to recover) and Kelly (who will always be a moron – no hope for recovery there). Brian's death was ruled a suicide.

Davidson ends the book with Kelly and Jeff kissing OVER BRIAN'S COFFIN. Oh. My. God.

Final Thoughts: Do you need them? I think I've been pretty clear with my thoughts on this one.  There's a sequel and I actually own it (Odds of me rushing to read the sequel to this book: -infinity).