Prom Date by Diane Hoh

**This blog contains adult language.**

Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!!  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/token "crazy" person is.

Tag Line: She'd kill for a date.

From the Back of the Book:  A night they'll never forget.  It's time for the biggest event of the year at Toomey High - Prom Night.  But there's someone in Toomey who'll do anything for a date to the prom.  This year questions like "What are you wearing?" and "Who will be crowned queen?" have become insignificant.  Taffeta and tiaras, kings and queens have been replaced by mayhem and murder.  It could be anyone: even one of the Pops - the most popular girls in school.  The question on everyone's mind is "Who's next on the killer's list?"

Trigger Warning:  There is a gratuitous animal death in this book.  I will blog it as sensitively as I can.

This book was published in 1996 and I've never read it before. I rabidly hate Hoh, though, so this should be interesting.

We begin with a prologue but at least it isn't from the POV of the bad guy. Four young girls are on a beach. They've done a “blood brother” ceremony to pledge to be friends forever. I feel like by 1996 we were all well aware that mixing your blood with other people's blood was a very bad idea. But I guess Hoh wanted the dramatics. The prologue ends with the ominous news that the girls would NOT be friends forever.

At least it was a painless prologue.

We begin in a small boutique during prom dress season. The owner, Adrienne, is working the floor along with her daughter Margaret and Margaret's best friend Caroline. Adrienne is pretty calm but the girls are flustered with the crowd. Margaret and Caroline, along with their other friends Jeannine and Lacey aren't planning to go to prom. None of them date much, though Hoh is quick to point out that it isn't because they're unattractive. It's because #they'renotliketheothergirls and only the popular crowd, with their conformist pink clothes and heavily-applied makeup, date. Margaret calls these girls the “Pops” and it honestly makes her come across as a bitch to me. It's like if girls want to look pretty they are an object of contempt to her.

Odds that Hoh will massively overuse the term Pops because she thinks it's clever: 100%

Scott comes bursting in the front door with a big smile on his face. He's does the deliveries for the shop and apparently he has a huge crush on Caroline who has friendzoned him hardcore. Margaret thinks Scott is smart, funny and respectful and warns Caroline that “beggars can't be choosers” which is just a fucking awful thing to say to your best friend. Yikes. This Margaret girl is a real bitch. It's a shame she's probably our protagonist because I'm cheering for her to die first.

Margaret decides to name off every single “Pops” girl and tell us who she is going to prom with. It's a solid paragraph of names and I'm not listing them all. They only make it in this blog if they do something worth recapping. It's an incredibly boring paragraph, though. Why should I care about who any of these people are going to prom with when I haven't even met them?

Lacey and Jeannine rock up for no apparent reason. They're just kind of hanging around. There's several pages of the Pops being mean to the regular girls just to prove how horrible all popular people are because no one ever gets to be popular by being nice. The regular girls are heckled for not going to prom and accused of being jealous which, spoiler alert, they ARE. The regular girls all feel superior because #they'renotliketheothergirls and look down their nose at the girls going to prom. It's exhausting. This book is exhausting and I'm on chapter one. There's WAY too many characters floating around already even though I'm refusing to name them until they become important. Being bitchy in a dress shop does not make you important, Stephanie!

In the end, Stephanie bought a red dress, Liza bought a black dress and Beth bought a blue dress. They were left at the shop for alterations and the Pops exit stage right. Adrienne checks out for a dinner date, Caroline heads to the library to study with Scott and Margaret is left to close up the shop. She enjoys being in there alone so closing is her favorite assignment. She gets halfway home when she remembers she left her calculus book at the shop. She goes back to get it and sees a wad of material in the alley behind the shop. When she gets closer, she realizes the material is actually the dresses the Pops bought earlier. They've been run over repeatedly and damaged beyond repair.

The violence of the “dress slaughter” disturbs Margaret. She decides to take the “murdered dresses” home with her to show her mom. I love how dramatically Margaret is describing the destruction of some clothes here. Hoh is trying to make it seem as if she discovered actual corpses or something.  I guess Margaret is just very attuned to the suffering of fabric because she's #notliketheothergirls.

Margaret doesn't even question how someone got into the locked store to steal the dresses and murder them. She doesn't check to see if the door has been jimmied or if a window is broken. She doesn't even know if anything else is missing. She just throws the carcasses into the back of the shop van and takes off. She can't stomach going to show her mom alone for some reason so she drives to the library first. Caroline and Scott are there and she shows them the dresses and asks if they will go to her to break the news to her mother. So much unnecessary drama here. It's like she really thinks they are murder victims or something.

Adrienne is dismayed at the destruction and asks if the shop was broken into and if anything else was destroyed. Margaret has to admit that she didn't even check. She says she went into shock when she saw them and I can't figure out why she's getting so unhinged over wrecked fabric. Get a fucking grip, Margaret. Adrienne says they need to go to the shop to check on things but Scott tells her he thinks she should call the police first. The bad guy might still be there. Adrienne refuses because she says the cops won't take the destruction of three dresses seriously. Wait. Really? The cops won't take breaking and entering, theft and destruction of property seriously? What the hell does Adrienne think they do all day? Plus, Margaret keeps telling us the dresses were murdered and surely the cops will take that seriously.

Main character doesn't call the police for some stupid reason? Check.

Caroline reasonably doesn't want to go to the scene of the crime where a perp could still be lurking and that makes Margaret disproportionately mad. She yells that “we don't have to worry. We're not prom dresses. We don't even own prom dresses.” Um....does she really think there's just some serial prom dress killer running around out there and they're safe because they aren't made of taffeta?

They get to the shop and don't see any forced doors or broken windows so they just go in. Nothing seems disturbed downstairs in the shop so they head upstairs to the sewing room. Hoh breaks into the story to give us SIX PARAGRAPHS of description of the sewing room. Not damage because there is none, but just random description about what it looks like and what colors everything is. It's a little odd. Buried in the last paragraph, Hoh tells us that Margaret's dad was killed when he drunkenly tried to race a train and then she goes back to talking about an ironing board. It's bizarre.

The lock is broken on the fire escape so that's how the dress killer got in. Adrienne finally calls the cops and they send someone to investigate. The incident is ultimately chalked up to “youthful vandalism” even though those three dresses were the only thing vandalized. Margaret thinks it was an act of “selective sabotage”. I mean, she's definitely right and that makes her friends my top suspects since the Pops are so mean to them.

Odds that Caroline destroyed the dresses: 25%

Odds that Scott destroyed the dresses to avenge Caroline: 25%

Odds that Jeannine destroyed the dresses: 25%

Odds that Lacey destroyed the dresses: 25%

I don't know them well enough to have a favorite suspect yet.  I honestly keep forgetting Lacey's name entirely.

We skip ahead to Wednesday. The senior class is going on a picnic to Peninsula Point. There's a lighthouse on the edge of the property that is roped off because it's in horrible shape and dangerous to enter. Margaret always ignores the DANGER sign and goes in anyway because she likes the view from the top. While the rest of the class is playing volleyball and softball and generally hanging out together, Margaret breaks away because she's #notliketheothergirls and heads for the lighthouse. At the top, the floorboards are broken and the railing is rotting so it seems perfectly safe to me. I don't know why there would be a DANGER sign here.

Margaret finds out that she isn't the only one who likes the view from the top. Mitch, Liza's gorgeous boyfriend is up there too. He startles her and then immediately asks how the shop is doing since the vandalism. Margaret is surprised he knows about it since they've all been keeping it quiet but he says that his brother Eddie was the cop that investigated. Then, for some reason, he just blurts out that he's not going to prom because he can't afford it. Margaret is surprised because Liza bought a dress so she asks him about it. He says that Liza is going with a college friend of her brother. He doesn't seem upset about it. She then answers his question about the shop, telling him that her mother is busy remaking the dresses but everything is fine. That all went in a very weird order, Hoh.

Margaret gets cold and tells Mitch she wants to head back down. He comes with her and she relishes the fact that the Pops will see her with him. She's smugly imagining their shocked reactions all the way down the stairs. At the bottom, Mitch tells her that his brother said she has the prettiest eyes he's ever seen and Mitch agrees. Mitch is the king of awkward statements I think. Margaret is preening under the compliment when Hoh pulls a Stine and ends the chapter with a scream.

Our Pops count is up to 13 in 3 chapters, by the way.

We hop into the POV of an unnamed girl. Hoh just calls her “the girl in yellow” which means she has a 99% chance of dying before we leave her head. She's just come out of the bathroom and “someone” (no name and no gender) tells her that her boyfriend just went into the lighthouse with a cute redhead. Yellow is pissed off because this isn't the first time he's cheated on her. She'd like to dump his ass but it's too close to prom and not having a date would be totally humiliating. She tells us that she's a shoe-in to be queen which makes me think that Yellow is Stephanie because Margaret told us that Stephanie was assumed to be prom queen BUT it also says that her dress is hanging in her closet at home waiting and we know that her dress is being remade. So.......

The “good samaritan” volunteers to go into the lighthouse with Yellow because Yellow is afraid to go in. They go the back way and Hoh emphasizes that no one saw them leave the park together which means Yellow is definitely going to die. The two of them get up to the top and Yellow realizes there isn't anyone else there. She confronts the good samaritan who then asks her for something but Hoh doesn't bother to tell us what she asked. Yellow laughs and says there's no way in hell that she's going to do that and calls the good samaritan “crazy”. The GS says that she's been seeing Yellow's boyfriend on the side for months and he really wants to go with her so I'm guessing GS asked if she could take Yellow's boyfriend to prom. She wants Yellow to break the date because the boyo has already told her he won't do it.

Yellow realizes that she's in a bad situation and she takes a sideways step to put some distance between her and GS. This causes her to bang into the railing and the rotting wood crumbles. Yellow falls over the side but manages to catch onto a post with one hand. She begs for her life as she dangles high above the ground. GS starts to help her but reconsiders since Yellow wasn't willing to give up her date for prom. She tells Yellow that it was her own fault – GS never actually touched her so it wasn't actually murder. Then she takes Yellow's headband and stomps on her fingers until Yellow lets go.

I mean.....that's actually murder.

As she turns to leave, GS drops something on the observation deck. She notices but doesn't bother to pick it up.

We get a bad guy chapter here with GS. She tells us that she can't believe how well everything is working out for her and all she has to do is join the crowd when the body is discovered and pretend to react to the death just like everyone else.

We go back to Margaret and Mitch and catch up with that scream (Yellow) that ended Chapter Three. Mitch assumes it came from the softball game but Margaret isn't so sure. She tells him she thinks it came from the lighthouse so they go to check. Caroline pops out of the woods nearby and Margaret asks her if she heard the scream. Caroline says she didn't but maybe Lacey and Scott did since they were in the woods too. Wow, Hoh put all my favorite suspects in a location nearby. Well.....almost all. Is it significant that Jeannine wasn't in a location nearby? Feels like it might be.

Odds that Caroline is the bad guy: 30%

Odds that Scott is the bad guy: 15%

Odds that Jeannine is the bad guy: 40%

Odds that Lacey is the bad guy: 15%

Sure enough, Yellow was Stephanie. Which means the guy that GS must have been after was......wait, I actually have to go back and look because I didn't even care at the time......

…........some guy named Michael.

Mitch says Stephanie never would have gone up the lighthouse on her own because she hated the place. He tells Margaret that they need to call the police and no one should touch the body. We have a smart one here, folks. They send Caroline and Scott to make the call and Margaret goes up to the lighthouse door to sit with Lacey. Pretty much the entire picnic comes back with Scott and Caroline and Margaret has to break the news to Michael and Stephanie's other friends. Everyone wants to rush down to the water (including Jeannine who has suddenly joined the crowd just like the GS in the bad guy chapter told us she'd do) but Margaret manages to stop them. Michael is devastated and keeps repeating that Stephanie never would have gone up the lighthouse alone.

Lacey doesn't even bother to pretend to upset about Stephanie's death so I think we can probably cross her off our suspect list. GS told us she was going to pretend to feel how the majority is feeling and the majority is acting upset.

The ambulance and police arrive. Stephanie's body is taken away and the police begin questioning everyone and searching the lighthouse. Michael seems to be a focus, especially when he mentions that he and Stephanie argued that day because he wanted to play softball and she wanted him to hang out with her instead. He clearly feels incredibly guilty about that. One of the cops comes back down with the thing GS dropped up on the upper deck. It's a pin that Margaret's mom gives away in her boutique. Most of the people in the town have one so it isn't very remarkable. It's widely known that Stephanie does not, however, because she only wears good jewelry. Margaret is convinced that someone dropped it after she and Mitch were up there but the police disagree.

The timeline confuses me here. I mean, Mitch and Margaret hadn't gotten very far when they heard the scream. So Stephanie and GS got to the lighthouse without M&M noticing them, climbed to the top, had a lengthy discussion, Stephanie hung out over the side for awhile and then she fell in the time it took M&M to walk.....what?......10 feet? Were they walking super slow? None of this feels possible to me at all.  I think Hoh effed up pretty significantly with this.

I'm not super surprised.

Everyone goes home and Margaret fills Adrienne in on everything that happened. Adrienne is sad about a teenage girl dying but manages to stamp that down to be excited that a “cute, popular boy” spent some time with her daughter. Margaret is worried that her mother is going to order wedding invitations based on a simple conversation. Later that night, Mitch calls her and they talk for hours. Mitch has some inside info from Eddie. There's evidence that Stephanie didn't fall right away and they found shoe polish on her hands as if someone had kicked her. They determined it came from a pair of black shoes.

Who uses shoe polish? I mean, really? This was the late 90's. Was anyone using it for anything other than writing on people's car windows in the late 90's?

Margaret is reeling from this news when Mitch just asks her to prom. She doesn't even register the question because she's going down a spiral of realizing Stephanie was deliberately murdered. He gets a little nervous that she isn't shouting her thanks for his invitation off the rooftops but eventually she tells him she'd really like to go with him. He asks if he can call her 'Meg' and then they end the call.

Wait.  Doesn't he have a girlfriend?  Are we just ignoring that now?

We get a GS chapter. She's going over everything that happened in her head. She's worried that Margaret will figure things out because she's so “clever” and decides that she might have to deal with Margaret soon.  I'm not so sure she needs to be worried.  I haven't seen Margaret do one clever thing in the entire book so far.

The next day at school, Margaret notices that Lacey seems ghoulishly interested in who Michael might take to prom now. Prom is a couple of weeks away and most people would assume he's just not going to go since his girlfriend just died, but Lacey is sure he will and can't wait to see who he asks. Caroline seems way more interested in who will be queen now that Stephanie is out of the running. Margaret finds the entire conversation distasteful. When Lacey goes on and on about how Michael smiled at her at the picnic, Margaret snaps and asks if he's ever even acknowledged her existence. Um......weren't you listening? He SMILED at her.

Odds Lacey's days are numbered because GS will think she's after Michael now: 85%

Margaret announces to her friends that she's going to prom with Mitch. Lacey and Jeannine both express disbelief that Mitch would ever ask Margaret but Caroline seems particularly upset by the news. Margaret is pissed that no one is happy for her and she storms away from the table. Later, Caroline apologizes for her behavior and congratulates Margaret on getting a date. She wonders aloud if Michael would ever go with someone like her (Caroline) and it makes Margaret angry all over again. She tells Caroline that they're all being very disrespectful of Stephanie and Caroline reminds her that no one actually liked Stephanie.

I pretty much hate everyone.  Except Mitch.

Margaret and Caroline go to work at the shop after school.  Stephanie's dress is missing again. Adrienne tells us that it was hanging behind the register waiting to be picked up despite the fact that Hoh told us it was hanging in Stephanie's closet just one chapter ago. They all look for it but don't find it.  I mean, Hoh can't even keep track of where it is so they shouldn't feel bad.

Stephanie's funeral is on Friday. Margaret is sick to her stomach thinking about how someone kicked Stephanie's hand away from the post on purpose but her friends don't seem as bothered. They're flitting around Michael, trying to get his attention. She thinks it's disgusting for them to act this way but doesn't confront them about it. She and Mitch have a conversation about how the 'murder' of the dresses and the murder of Stephanie must be related. Margaret thinks it was some person who wanted to go to prom but didn't get invited so they're mad and killing off people who are going. I mean, she's not super wrong but she has nothing to base this theory on at all. She's not reading the book along with us.  Why do authors always forget that?

Mitch gives Margaret a ride to the store after the funeral because her friends are all going to Stephanie's house to “pay their respects” which really means they're going to hang around Michael. Caroline justifies it by saying that they are Michael's friends which is news to Margaret and to anyone reading the book. On the way to the shop, Margaret frets about being Mitch's second choice to prom since his girlfriend had a date. Remember?  He has a girlfriend. Why isn't this being addressed at all? I mean, I know she's going to prom with someone else but the book made it sound like they were still a thing anyway. Is Margaret the side chick?  She seems like she'd be a side chick.

Mitch calls Margaret at the shop later that evening. He says he'll be with Michael until around 10:00 but then he'd like to pick her up and drive her home. I guess she had no other way to get home until he asked? Was she planning to walk? She tells him she'll wait around for him even though the shop will be closed and she'll be alone. After Mitch, Scott calls to chew her out because Caroline was crying all evening about Margaret going to prom. He accuses Margaret of being a hypocrite for going to prom with one of the 'pops' and that makes it 17 times the word 'pops' has been used in 12 chapters.

Margaret sweeps up the shop and talks to the cat who lives in the alley. She brings him a saucer of milk while she finishes up inside and has a snack. Then she goes back to retrieve the saucer and finds the cat dead. Why? Hoh could have used something else to build up tension. She didn't have to kill an innocent cat. Margaret decides to put it in a trash bag and throw it in the dumpster. As she's doing this, someone comes up behind her and grabs her legs. She struggles not to go over the side and loses a shoe. Her attacker manages to shove Margaret in the dumpster and closes and locks the lid.

I'm not even that mad about it.

Seems fitting.

I wish this book could have gone in there with her.

It's dark and smelly and gross in there. Plus there's rats which just melted my brain. I don't even want to think about it. She crawls to one side so she can bang on the metal and scream. No one comes to rescue her. Suddenly she sees a light coming from a hole toward the bottom. She's relieved at first until she notices it's a piece of newspaper that someone lit on fire and then shoved through the hole into the dumpster. She tries to put it out with bags of trash but the bags catch fire.  This book is now a literal dumpster fire.  She tries to get away from it and bangs her head hard against the metal lid. Something sharp cuts into her knee and makes it bleed. She can hear Mitch banging on the door of the store, trying to get her to come out but she can't get his attention. Everything goes black.

We get a chapter from GS. She's a little embarrassed that she used such a “crude” way to get rid of Margaret, but it had to be gone. Earlier in the day she learned that Michael wasn't going to prom out of respect for Stephanie's memory so she decided to ask Mitch instead. At the funeral. When Mitch told her he'd asked Margaret, she was surprised which.......means it can't be one of my favorite suspects because they all knew Margaret was going with Mitch. Damn. I hate it when my entire suspect pool is eliminated at once. Anyway, GS decided to get rid of Margaret so Mitch would take her to prom.

Margaret wakes up in the hospital surrounded by her mother, her friends, Mitch, Eddie and a doctor. She says a couple of nonsensical things that Hoh probably thought were funny and then passes out again. When she wakes up the next time, only Mitch and her mom are there. She asks for food and then makes some really bad jokes about her situation. They're too stupid for me even to quote here. Eddie and her friends are rounded back up and she tells them the entire story. Mitch adds the parts we don't know about how he smelled smoke and went to check out the dumpster and saw Margaret's shoe laying on the ground. There was a metal file jammed in the lock so he had to go get someone to help him open the lid. Margaret almost died of smoke inhalation. She has a bump on her head and stitches in her knee.

Eddie seems particularly interested in the milk that she gave the cat. He asks her where the container is and she says it was in the dumpster. He and Mitch leave and then everyone else steps out of the room so she can be examined by the doctor. She asks the doctor if she'll be well enough to dance at prom and he says he thinks so. The stitches will be out in a week and she should be fine otherwise. When her friends come back in, Lacey comments on how bummed Margaret must be that she has to miss prom now and Margaret tells her there's no way she's missing it. Lacey protests that there's no way she can go and Caroline backs her up, telling Margaret it would be stupid to try. Only Jeannie says that Margaret should definitely go to prom which would make me suspicious of her again except for that bit where the GS didn't know Mitch was going to prom with Margaret and Jeannine definitely did.

The girls leave but come back later that evening to play detective with Margaret. They discuss who might have been wearing shoes that required shoe polish on the day of the picnic. Someone suggests Kiki who was apparently Stephanie's best friend. She's very into fashion apparently and somehow shiny black shoes must be fashionable. They discuss how broken up she seemed at the funeral and Margaret thinks to herself that the main suspect is usually someone close to the victim. Like a best friend.

Her friends leave and then she's surprised by a visit from Liza, Kiki and Beth. Beth has a magazine with her and she gives it to Margaret, explaining that she read it already and she thought Margaret might need something to occupy her time. Margaret is grateful and starts absentmindedly flipping through it as the girls talk. It's mostly Liza taking little digs at her about looking out for Mitch while Margaret is in the hospital and I guess we're supposed to feel bad for Margaret but Liza IS Mitch's girlfriend. This was an established fact early in the book. At least it was until a sentence later when Hoh tells us that Mitch and Liza are just friends. Um.....EXCUSE ME? I know how to read, lady, and you definitely told us they were boyfriend/girlfriend.

As Margaret is flipping through the magazine she comes across a drawing of Beth as prom queen. She can see the panic in Beth's eyes when she sees Margaret discover it but the other two girls aren't looking. Margaret quickly turns the page so no one else sees the drawing and Beth seems very grateful. The pops leave but a minute later Beth returns. She says that she told her friends she had to use the bathroom but she doubled back to explain things to Margaret. She says that she was bored in class and drew it because she wants to be prom queen. I'm not sure why she came back to explain that. It wasn't much of an explanation. Margaret gives her the drawing and promises not to tell anyone about it.

I don't know if this will be important or not, but Margaret tells her friends and the pops that she's going to be released the next day and she intends to go to the prom decorating meeting.

Margaret is released the next day. As soon as they get home, she tells her mom that she's going to the meeting at the school. Adrienne is not happy and tells her she can't go but Margaret persists. Mitch is taking her and he'll be there the entire time. Nothing has happened at the school so far and the faculty advisor will be there. She promises to have Mitch bring her straight home after. Adrienne finally relents and lets Margaret go.

We get a GS chapter again. GS is pretty pissed that Margaret survived the literal dumpster fire (which again is symbolism for this entire fucking book). She still has her attention on Mitch for her date to prom but she knows she'll probably have to ask someone else just to get her to the dance. Once she's there, she'll take care of Margaret and take her place in Mitch's arms.

So during the meeting there's a very weird part. Margaret is sitting with her friends and they're talking about Michael. Margaret wonders if he's avoiding the prom because of guilt and then wonders if the girl he was seeing feels the same guilt. Um.....how did Margaret know about that? I'm super confused. Did Hoh forget that Margaret isn't reading the book again? There's no way she should have known Michael was cheating on Stephanie. I don't even know if this is some kind of clue or if Hoh just fucked up.

Let's face it, she probably just fucked up.

Margaret brings up the fact she's going to prom as if her friends don't know and then she's pissed that they don't want to “talk about her invitation to the prom, at least a little”. She thinks they should be excited for her and want to go over every detail. READ THE ROOM, MARGARET. They're sad that they didn't get invited to their senior prom and they don't want to listen to you gloat that you were. Margaret is a very lousy friend.

Caroline is supposed to go to the mall for candles but Kiki (new chairperson of the committee) doesn't have the money with her. It's locked in the faculty advisor's drawer and the FA isn't there because she's at a wedding. Kiki says she has the key and they can go up and get it but Caroline throws a tanty because it's on the 4^th floor and there's no elevator. Kiki says she'll go alone and then she leaves. Caroline tells her friends she has to get something from her locker so she's conveniently without an alibi. I mean, not that she needs one, right? I'm sure nothing will happen to Kiki.

Odds that something will happen to Kiki: 99%

Everyone scatters to take a break. The boys go outside to throw a ball around and everyone else takes off to go to vending machines or bathrooms or their lockers. So none of Margaret's friends or the pops have alibis now. Margaret and the boys seem to be in the clear though.

We take a hop into Kiki's head which is pretty ominous. At least Hoh isn't calling her by a color to try to confuse us this time. Kiki is a jumble of thoughts as she makes her way to the 4^th floor. Most of them aren't very interesting but she really does seem very broken up by Stephanie's death. In the FA's office, she gets out the heavy metal cash box. She hears someone come up behind her and turns. The GS grabs the cash box and bashes it into Kiki's face so hard it sends her flying. The GS says that Kiki can't go to prom now and she can have Kiki's date and then she leaves with the money.

Okay, I just realized a problem here. The pops can't be suspects because they all have dates to the prom already. Unless Liza isn't really going with that college guy.  I guess that's a possibility.  But the others can't be suspects and the regular girls can't be suspects which means that either Hoh is going to surprise us with some random at the end, the GS is Liza, OR she fucked something up in the story (either on purpose to throw us off or by accident).  I have no confidence in her not to have fucked something up since we know she fucked up the timeline at the lighthouse, the fact that Stephanie didn't have her dress and the fact that Margaret somehow knew about Michael cheating.  Therefore I can't really remove the #notliketheothergirls from the suspect list even though logic would tell us that it's effing Justin.  I mean Liza.

Odds that Liza is the GS: 30%

Odds that Caroline is the GS: 25%

Odds that Jeannine is the GS: 25%

Odds that Lacey is the GS: 10% (I honestly keep forgetting she exists.)

Odds that a Random is the GS: 10%

It better not be the last one.

They all meet back up and realize Kiki is missing. They go to look for her and find a couple of janitors kneeling over her body. The janitors tell the group that an ambulance is on the way and it's not as bad as it looks despite there being a pool of blood around Kiki's head. Her nose is definitely shattered and her upper lip is badly cut. Her eyes are black and swollen. They look for the cash box and realize it's missing too. Kiki wakes up and tries to talk but can't. All she says is that it wasn't David (her date for prom) and there was a voice. So I guess we're supposed to believe she didn't see anything despite the fact she was hit from the front with something the GS had to take from her hands.

Sure, Hoh.  Sure.

When Kiki is loaded onto the stretcher (I don't envy the paramedics who have to carry her down four flights of stairs – and can we just take a minute to address the fact that there's no way this school doesn't have an elevator for disabled students in the late 90's?) Margaret sees the pin on the floor. It's the same kind as the one left behind when Stephanie died. Margaret wonders if someone who isn't going to prom is trying desperately to make sure it's canceled.

Lacey pretty much immediately starts flirting with David and Margaret is disgusted. They tell the police what little they know and are dismissed. The police are sure that it was a simple theft and not related to the other incidents at all. Which is dumb. When they saw the pin they would have been suspicious. Hoh really wants us to believe this happened. Sigh.

Margaret's mom is there when they get downstairs. She tells Margaret that the police just left their house. The milk she gave the cat was poisoned and the poison was clearly meant for Margaret.

How did the police have anything to analyze after the dumpster fire? Sigh.

The poison was insecticide which leads Margaret to suspect Kiki. Beth or Liza because all their mothers belong to a garden club. Because....you know.....those are the only people who could have possibly bought an insecticide. People don't buy it to kill their ants or anything. Caroline's mother also gardens but she insists that her mother does it the organic way. Sure she does, Caroline. The police ask who had keys to the store and Adrienne said her silent partners do. Her silent partners are Kiki's mom, Liza's mom and Beth's mom (maybe Stephanie's mom, I'm not sure). Margaret has a key and so does Caroline. Caroline mentions that she occasionally lends hers to Scott who does early deliveries sometimes. Adrienne also says she keeps extras “around the store” and “around the house” just in case she loses one. This seems pretty damn unsafe to me. All of them seem present and accounted for but no one can be sure if someone took one at some point to make a copy.

The next day, Beth's dress is stolen from the shop. Margaret is worried that it's an indication of doom because Stephanie's went missing after she was killed. Maybe Beth's going missing means Beth is next. She finds out that Beth has gone to get her hair done and asks Caroline to take her to the fanciest salon in town to try to find her. Caroline thinks Margaret is over-reacting but it seems like a fun adventure to her so she agrees to go. Adrienne tells them to be careful and then slips them the info that Beth's mother uses insecticide on her garden but it went missing after Beth's boyfriend Lucas was at the house. I refuse to count Lucas as a suspect since we know the GS is a girl.  Nice try, Hoh.

On the way, Margaret expresses disbelief that someone could be angry enough to kill people over prom and Caroline paints herself red and puts on a herring costume to tell Margaret that she understands how the bad guy is feeling. Margaret scoffs and says Caroline has never hurt anyone in her life and Caroline says Margaret hasn't known her all her life. Then she talks about how some people can hide their evil side and look perfectly normal. She tells Margaret that she doesn't know people as well as she thinks she does and that anyone could be the bad guy. Thank you, Caroline, for setting yourself up as such a good little suspect.

Sigh.

We also get the tidbit that David is taking his cousin to prom. Which is odd. Why didn't he just ask someone not related to him? This isn't Alabama.

Beth isn't at the salon and she isn't at the next three they try either. They drive to a fourth one and Caroline is having a bit of a moment about how she and Margaret never spend time together so she isn't paying as much attention to the road as she should. She ends up rear-ending a car that coincidentally belongs to Beth. She claims she isn't wearing her contacts and begs Margaret not to tell the cops when they show up. The impact of the crash pops Beth's trunk open and to Margaret's surprise, the stolen dresses are in there as well as Liza's that Adrienne hadn't even realized was missing. There's also a yellow headband that Stephanie had been wearing the day of her murder, the missing prom money and a bottle of insecticide.

So.....did Caroline hit the trunk on purpose so all these things would be found? I mean, she was pretty high on my suspect list before she did the whole speech about how people aren't who you think they are and you don't know who the bad guys are. That knocked her out for me because it was such a red herring thing to do but maybe Hoh just sucks at being subtle. I mean, she clearly sucks at being subtle but I was hoping it wouldn't be this blatant.

When Margaret gets back to the store she tells her mom everything. Adrienne is confused because right before they left, when Margaret was using the bathroom or something, she told Caroline exactly what salon Beth was at. So Caroline knew before they ever left the shop. She also tells Margaret that she clearly saw Caroline putting her contacts in before they left which really makes no damn sense but whatever, Hoh. Margaret is now convinced that Caroline is the bad guy but she doesn't tell her mother.

Convinced that the bad guy (Beth) is safely under police observation at the hospital, Adrienne leaves Margaret to close the store and heads off for the restaurant that's across the alley. Margaret calls Caroline.

We get a GS chapter. She's pissed about Michael going to Utah and David going to prom with his cousin. Lucas has decided not to go at all since he can't go with Beth. That only leaves Mitch. She needs to get rid of Margaret but she needs to make sure that she has Beth with her when she does so everyone assumes that Beth did it. She tells us how she got the stuff in Beth's trunk by saying she needed to load the prom candles (which again points to Caroline) BUT then says that she got into and out of the shop by making a copy of one of the keys that Adrienne left around which definitely does NOT point to Caroline because CAROLINE HAS HER OWN KEY and wouldn't need to make a copy.

Okay, the ONLY suspect that makes ANY sense at all is LIZA. Liza is the only one of the pops that we can't confirm actually has a prom date, she wouldn't have known that Mitch asked Margaret to prom because Margaret only told her friends that, she is also on the prom planning committee and might have had the candles and she wouldn't have had a key to Adrienne's shop. If it turns out to be Caroline, I'm going to completely lose my shit which will be fun for you to read but isn't going to be fun for me to blog. Liza is the only one that works here.

We go back to Margaret. She calls Caroline and asks her why she drove all over when she knew where Beth was. Caroline says that it felt like a fun little adventure and she wanted to prolong it as long as possible because she misses doing things with Margaret. When she's confronted about the contacts, she says she did put them in at the store but then she took them back out because they were bothering her. She tells Margaret that she actually left them in the store and that's why she didn't put them back in before the police arrived. Margaret decides she's telling the truth and she isn't the bad guy after all. Caroline tells Margaret she's coming to the store so they can talk about this and hangs up.

Suddenly Beth appears in the room. She says that “she” has a key, referring to Liza who comes into the room after her. Liza grabs them both and pushes them toward the fire escape. She says that Beth is going to push Margaret over the side and then she's going to be so overwhelmed by guilt that she jumps afterwards. I don't know what purpose this will really serve because I think they're only on the second floor. I mean, the shop seems to be on the ground floor and the room Margaret was in is on the floor above that. So.....they might break something but I doubt they'll die.

They all go out onto the fire escape – though how Liza manages to force both Beth and Margaret out there without a weapon is really beyond me – and then conveniently hear Mitch having a conversation with Liza's older brother and a friend. Mitch asks if the friend is the one taking Liza to prom and he laughs and says he wouldn't take that “loose cannon” to prom and doesn't know anyone who would. Liza's brother confirms she has issues because she's always gotten everything she wanted. Margaret realizes Liza doesn't really have a date to the prom.

I'm so confused by this. If Liza didn't have a date for prom and Mitch was her boyfriend – WHICH HE WAS AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS BOOK NO MATTER HOW MUCH HOH WANTS US TO FORGET IT – then why wasn't she just going with Mitch???

Liza drags them both back inside so the boys won't see them up there. Then she does her bad guy monologue where she says she was seeing Michael behind Stephanie's back. He promised to take her to prom but then didn't want to end things with Stephanie. She says it doesn't matter because she's going with Mitch now and he's waiting at her house for her to show him her dress. She just doesn't know where her dress is. Margaret decides her best move is to encourage the delusion and she tells Liza that her dress is downstairs hanging next to the cash register and Liza should get it and go show Mitch. Liza doesn't fall for it because she remembers that she wants to kill Margaret.

Margaret asks Liza why the prom is so important and Liza says that she wants to be queen. Margaret reminds her that she's already been prom queen and school rules say you can't win more than once. Liza screams that she was never queen but Margaret continues to insist that she was so Liza attacks her with a pair of scissors. They struggled and the ancient ironing board Margaret is leaning against gives way.  This is the same ironing board that Hoh spent at least a paragraph describing to us at the beginning of the book.  So I guess it became an important character after all.  I should have bolded it.  I'm going to go back and do that.  The hilarious thing is that you aren't even going to realize why I did it until you get all the way through the recap to this part.

Anyway,  Liza loses the scissors as they fall and Margaret is somehow able to get Liza's hands behind her back and tie them with the cord from the iron. I'm not sure how she did this when Liza is apparently strong enough to force two girls through a window at the same time but whatever, Hoh.

Margaret goes downstairs where Mitch and Caroline are pounding on the door. The police are called and Liza is taken away.

You'd think this would be the end of things but you'd be wrong.

We skip to prom. Margaret is there with Mitch and Caroline is there with Scott. Beth has decided not to attend. The queen is announced (it turns out to be a random) and then a stir goes through the crowd. Margaret turns to see Liza who is somehow out on bail despite having killed one person, viciously assaulted another, kidnapped and tried to murder a third, and attempted murder on a fourth at least twice. She must have one hell of a lawyer. She's wearing a formal dress that's at least two sizes too big and she's applied her makeup with a very heavy hand. She walks up to every single boy there and gently scolds them for not inviting her to the prom. Then she gets to Mitch and asks him why he's there with Margaret. Her parents arrive and try to take her home but she says she can't leave until she dances with Mitch. He asks Margaret if she would mind and Margaret says 'no' so the two of them dance. Then Liza leaves with her parents.

We get an epilogue but it's completely useless. Margaret dances with Mitch and tells us that she doesn't know if they'll be together long but she'll always love him for dancing with Liza. Then he asks her to be on his summer softball team which we all know is practically an engagement and she says she'll play if her friends can play too. Then the book ends on that very bizarre note. What the actual fuck was that?

So I still don't know if the prologue was referring to Stephanie/Beth/Liza/Kiki or Margaret/Caroline/Jeannine/Lacey (I forgot her name again and had to look it up).  I'm going to guess the first set since the second set survived the book with their friendship intact but I'm open to debate on the issue.

This book has the stupidest plot ever. Seriously. Liza was beautiful and popular and there's no way she would have trouble getting a date if she wanted one. It would have made much more sense for a character like Caroline or that girl who's name I can't even remember to have been the bad guy in a plot like this. I think Hoh really fucked up her story but I think I always say that when I read one of her book.

Total times Hoh referred to Stephanie, Beth. Liza and Kiki as “the pops”: 26

I don't know why it annoyed me so much. It just did. It's like 'parm' or 'nutrish' or 'tasty dish'. All these things annoy me more than a chigger bite on my ass.  Fight me.