**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. Please be aware that the story WILL be spoiled in every way imaginable. And mocked. Mercilessly.
From the Back of the Book: Karin isn’t scared . . .When someone starts making prank phone calls to baby-sitters, Karin isn’t scared. Even when Karin is attacked on the way home from a baby-sitting job, she thinks it’s all a joke. But then Karin’s best friend is killed while baby-sitting. Now no one’s laughing . . . now everyone’s dying. But Karin still isn’t scared. She thinks she knows how to win the killer’s game. But she doesn’t know what she’s up against. This killer hates baby-sitters—a baby-sitter let the killer’s sister die. Now all baby-sitters are going to pay. . . . but should she be.
TRIGGER WARNING: There is mention of suicide several times in this book. If this is a sensitive subject for you, please take care of yourself and click away.
This book was published in 1994 and this is my first time reading it. The blurb on the back is pretty horribly written and that pretty much sets the tone for the book so buckle up. I think we're in for a rough ride.
(((Note from future me: this is accurate.)))
I don't know how closely this book is related to the first one, but I thought I'd give a quick review just in case. In the last book, we met Alice who was babysitting to help pay for college. All her clients were the victims of robberies and vandalism and the police suspected Alice of being involved. A couple of people died and then the bad guys were revealed to be Alice's boyfriend, her best friend and her best friend's boyfriend. They were stealing/vandalizing out of boredom and a need to fund a drug habit.
We begin with a “silent figure” standing outside a house in the dark. They're throwing clods of dirt at the door until the young babysitter opens the door and screams at them to stop or she's calling the cops. The figure can hear a small child cry inside and that bothers them. They don't want to scare or hurt the child in any way but they definitely want to hurt the babysitter.
Through the curtains, they can see the babysitter calling the cops and they know they have to leave before they get caught.
Suddenly we're with our protagonist with no chapter break or indication of any kind that we were shifting focus. I'm reading the Kindle version and it's possible that something was lost when they put it in ebook format. I hate it when authors/editors don't check to make sure things are formatted correctly. Issues like this really make the book hard to read.
Karin, our protagonist, answers the phone to a heavy breather. It's the third prank call in a row and she's irritated. The little girl she's babysitting asks her what's wrong and Karin tells her that someone is just playing a stupid joke. She tells us that it's not an isolated joke either. Apparently there's been a lot of prank calls and rock throwing going on around town lately. Karin isn't too worried about it even though it's freaking out some of her friends.
It's really early for this, but......
Character receives a creepy, anonymous phone call? Check.
Karin puts little Brittany to bed and then settles in to do her chemistry homework. She doesn't really like the class but her lab partner Amy is a lot of fun. The phone rings again but this time it's the aforementioned Amy. It turns out Amy was the babysitter in the opening that the "figure" was throwing dirt clods at. She called to ask Karin a question about the chemistry homework but Karin hears a noise outside the back door and assumes the parents are home so she gets off the phone. When she goes to look out the door, however, the driveway is empty. She assumes she just heard a random noise but then another noise comes from outside. When she looks out again, she sees Brittany's bike laying on its side with the wheels spinning. She nearly unlocks the door and steps outside to investigate but comes to her senses at the last second. As she's standing there, trying to decide what to do, a brick comes flying through the window and narrowly misses hitting her in the face.
Karin calls 911 just as the parents come back home. She waits around to make a police report and then goes back home. She doesn't tell her mom or stepdad what happened because they're already asleep.
We skip to the next day at lunch. Karin meets Amy and another friend named Faye at a picnic table outside. Faye is talking about a new boy in school – David – and I'm already annoyed at all the characters. It's not even that many really. I'm just annoyed in general because Karin spells her name weird and it keeps tripping me up. Oddly enough, my spellchecker doesn't seem to think it's weird...
Karin's not interested in David. She wasn't able to finish her chemistry homework the night before and she needs to get it finished before class. She asks Amy for help but Amy's notes are in her locker and she doesn't seem inclined to do homework on her lunch break. Which is fair but not really a great show of friendship. Before Karin can protest much, David rocks up and asks if he can sit with them. Faye is clearly into David but he keeps looking Karin.
We get a short segment from the “figure”. They were watching the babysitters eat lunch and thinking to themselves that the memories would never stop until all the babysitters were dead.
{{{Blogger Note: Normally I use 'he' for the bad guy even when I don't know for sure that it's a 'he' but I'm trying to be a little more sensitive to appropriate pronoun use these days so I'm going to use 'them' until I know one way or another. It's also why I changed the "Spoilers Ahead" portion of this blog. I wanted to make it less binary.}}}
When Karin gets home from school, her mother meets her at the door. She needs to take the neighbor to the hospital to get checked out because she might be in labor. Unnamed mom asks Karin to keep an eye on her half-sister Becky who needs to finish some homework before she can go to a friend's house. Karin makes a snack. Becky does her homework and leaves to go to her friend's house. It's all riveting content. Faye and Amy come over as Becky is leaving. They gossip a bit about some kids at school. Amy has a secret crush on some boy named Chuck but he has a girlfriend named Linda. It's all super tragic.
This cast list is getting a little long here, Daniel.
Again, without any kind of warning, we seem to be onto a new section. It's really jarring because one second we're in the middle of a bunch of high school gossip and the next second we seem to be back in the “figure's” head. It might also be a new day. Someone seriously should have checked the formatting on this book because it's awful and it makes it hard to read.
Anyway, the “figure” is listening to a group of babysitters talk about all the phone calls that girls have been getting on the job. The girls are freaked out about them which makes the "figure" happy. So far, none of the girls are freaked out enough to actually tell the police about the calls which makes the "figure" even happier. Then we get this sentence and it confused me so much I had to try to work it out verbally to my poor husband who had to pretend to be interested.
“The copycat caller thought all the calls were a joke. But when the first baby-sitter died, only one person would be laughing.”
Um.....what?
We know that the "figure" has been making calls because they told us that they did. So who is this "copycat caller"? Is someone else making calls too? Why? And how does the "figure" know about the "copycat caller"? Unless the "figure" has a puppet......????????
They decide that it's time to make their big move but they're not planning to call first this time. They think “encouraging the copycat calls hadn't been such a good idea”. So....it must be a puppet then. The "figure" has someone else making phone calls for some reason. This is unnecessarily muddy and complicated.
At the lunch table, while the “figure” is eavesdropping I assume, David asks Karin for help with chemistry that evening. She tells him she's babysitting for her regular Wednesday client so she isn't available. He ends up setting up a time to get some help from Amy instead which seems like the better option since Amy is better at chemistry.
Karin's night goes pretty smoothly at first. The only odd thing is that the cat doesn't come to get his dinner. I know that would trip a thousand alarms in my house because my cat does not EVER miss dinner. Awhile later she hears the trash can outside get tipped over and she goes to the window to look. The cat is outside playing in the trash which is odd because it's an indoor cat and all the doors are shut. Karin knows she has to get the cat back inside before the client comes back because he's not supposed to be out there.
She grabs a heavy flashlight and some cat treats and goes outside. She's only gotten a few steps when she hears a footstep behind her and feels some kind of cord brushing against her neck. She turns, swinging the flashlight and catches someone with it. She turns to run but doesn't get far when she's shoved hard from behind. For some reason, instead of attacking again, the assailant runs off. Karin hears an engine rev and then the night is quiet again.
This attacker feels pretty inept. And not very committed to their task.
When Karin gets back inside, the cat is there eating his dinner. She calls 911 and then searches the house to figure out how the cat got in and out. She finds an open window and closes it, totally fucking up any evidence I imagine. When she assesses her injuries, she finds only a skinned knee.
We're back with the “figure” now. They tell us that they opened the window and then lured the cat out with tuna. It definitely would have worked on my cat. She goes insane every time we open a can. They're irritated because getting a cord around someone's neck isn't as easy as it looks on TV. They seem personally offended that Karin fought back and vow to kill her next time.
We settle back into Karin's head. The police don't believe her when she says that someone tried to kill her. They assume that the cat got out accidentally and that there was a person in the yard getting ready to throw something at the window in a harmless act of vandalism when Karin came out and surprised them. They don't think it's anything deeper than that and literally tell her that she hallucinated the rope that the person tried to put around her neck.
Someone accuses the protagonist of being "crazy" when their life is legitimately in danger? Check
Karin gathers with all the cast behind the school at lunch to fill them in. There's also some chick named Jenny there because apparently Daniel didn't think we had enough people to remember. The girls are all pretty freaked out about it but David and Chuck don't seem to take it seriously. Chuck jokes around about the caller/vandal being a horny teenage boy just looking for love or something equally dumb. Amy tries to talk to David about the chemistry quiz and he completely blows her off, turning to talk to Faye instead. It really hurt's Amy's feelings and makes David look like a total dick.
That evening, Amy, Faye and Karin have plans to go to the mall to look at Homecoming dresses. At the last minute, Amy begs off so Karin and Faye go without her. Faye also needs to get some things for a party she's throwing. I guess she's been in town for a year and she's throwing a party to celebrate that. Seems weird but whatevs. They spend a long time looking at CDs and dresses and finish up about 15 minutes before the mall closes. To their surprise, they see Amy in the distance with Chuck. It seems dumb for her to go to the mall where she knows her friends will be if she's trying to hide this relationship with Linda's boyfriend.
David calls just as Karin is getting home to ask for some chemistry help. Karin is still irritated from the way he treated Amy at lunch and she asks him what his problem is. He heavily insinuates that Amy is a ho that just wants to get in his pants and I strongly dislike this man already. Karin, however, decides that Chuck probably warned David away from Amy because Chuck likes her which is NOT what David was implying at all. This alternate version of reality Karin weaves for herself allows her to help David with his homework I guess.
Becky starts hassling Karin for the phone and this gives Karin the opportunity to ask David if he has any brothers or sisters. He gets a little weird about it and tells her no before rapidly getting off the phone. I'd like to think that was a red herring but I'm not sure Daniel is good at that.
Odds that David is the “figure”: 50%
Of course, it could be Faye. They're both fairly new to town and the “figure” would have to be, right? I mean, if they're a local, everyone would know about the whole dead sister thing.
Odds that Faye is the "figure": 50%
I'm giving them even odds just because they're the new kids. It's probably a fallacy but I don't care.
After the phone call, Karin and her mom go around a little bit about her coming home from school late and about her buying an expensive Homecoming dress even though it was 100% Karin's money spent. The tension leads her to decide to take her dog for a walk even though it's late and dark. Her stepfather tries to stop her, rightfully saying that it could be dangerous but Karin ignores him. She figures her dog will protect her. She gets nervous as she's walking, though, and decides to cut it short. She keeps thinking she hears someone following her but there's no one there. The dog is acting weird which she thinks is evidence that she's being watched but it turns out he's hunting a cat.
We get a couple paragraphs from the “figure”. They were, indeed, following Karin around. They decide that it's too dangerous to approach her with the dog around so they'll just wait until she babysits again. Which means they might have to move another babysitter to the top of their list and bump Karin down a bit. Tragic. We also find out that the "figure" is back in the "copycat caller's" fan club because the CC is calling girls in general and not just babysitters so it's helping the “figure” hide their targets.
The “figure” wants to make their move tonight. All they need to do is find a babysitter, you know, babysitting. They plan to kill this time so that people will know they're serious. It's all for Shelley.
So Shelley is the dead sister's name. Noted.
We skip to Saturday afternoon. Karin calls Amy to get the deets about her mall date with Chuck the night before. Amy says it went really well and she's glad to be out in the open now. Amy asks if Karin plans to go out with David and Karin says 'no'. She doesn't tell Amy why but she tells us that David slut shamed Amy and said she chases after every dick she sees. Which is odd because he's only been at that school for like a week and shouldn't have formed opinions quite that quickly.
They talk about the phone calls a little because several girls they know have recently received one. Amy thinks it might be a group of guys just having fun but Karin is convinced it's something sinister. She asks if Amy and Chuck are going out again that night but Amy is babysitting. The call pretty much ends there.
We land back in the head of the “figure”. They've been scoping out the target house and they've checked out a book on wiring from the library so they're pretty confident they can cut the lights to the house. Once it's dark, they'll break in and kill the babysitter. They remember Shelley and how she cried as the babysitter just talked on the phone and ignored her. They vow to get vengeance for Shelley that night.
This has to be the stupidest plot I've ever read.
Well, I guess that can't possibly be true, but it has to be up there among the stupidest.
We slingshot back into Karin's head. She's home alone because of course she is. Her half-sister is sleeping over at a friend's house and her parents have driven into the next town for their anniversary dinner. She's bored because she doesn't have a date and all her friends are busy. She grabs some food and then goes to the store to rent a few videos. She's just settled in on the couch when Amy calls. Amy thinks that someone is outside the house where she's babysitting. She keeps hearing odd sounds and she's pretty much terrified. Karin asks her if the door's locked and Amy admits that the backdoor is open because it's so warm. The screen is hooked but that's not much security. Karin tells her to lock the door and to call the police.
Someone forgot to tell Karin what kind of book she's in.
Also, I think we need to recognize Amy for her utter stupidity.
Character seriously needs to listen to a few True Crime podcasts? Check
Amy gasps and tells Karin that the lights to the house just went out. Karin again tells her to hang up and call the police. Amy does not. She also does not let Karin hang up so Karin gets to hear her friend scream before the phone goes dead.
Amy calls 911 and tells the dispatcher everything she knows. She wants to go over and check on Amy but the dispatcher tells her to stay at home by the phone in case they have to reach her for more information. A little while later, a couple of detectives show up at Karin's house to ask her some questions because Amy was found stabbed to death. She tries to help but she doesn't know much.
We land with the “figure” who is feeling pretty proud of themselves for actually taking one of the babysitters down. At the same time, they seem a little shaky about the way it felt to actually stab someone and the sound of Amy's scream. They tell us that they had to leave the knife inside Amy but they disposed of their gloves and bloody clothes in a hospital dumpster where finding blood wouldn't be unusual. They're going to strike again eventually but they want to wait for everything to calm down a little first.
I'm not so sure their disposal method is a good one. Hospitals have very specific regulations about how and where they can dispose of bodily fluids. Bloody things just out in a hospital dumpster might actually attract attention.
Karin spends Sunday in a bit of a haze. She goes over to talk to Amy's parents in case they have questions for her but they really aren't ready to talk about it yet. She gets a lot of phone calls – some from friends who genuinely care and some from people who just want juicy details. By Monday morning, she's very sick of being the witness. At lunch she tells her friends that she believes the murderer is someone they know.
Fucking hell, Karin, why don't you just paint the target on your back. If you think one of them is the murderer, WHY WOULD YOU TELL THEM THAT?
I find your lack of basic survival skills truly alarming.
Karin wants to find out who the killer is but Linda says she's not going to play Nancy Drew when there's an actual murderer murdering people.
Bonus points to Linda.
This reasonableness pisses Karin off because they're all well aware what kind of book they're in. She's determined to do this alone if she has to.
The funeral is the next day. Most of the junior class attends. Including the “figure”. They're annoyed that Karin is figuring things out. They decide she has to be next before she ruins everything.
And THAT, Karin, is exactly why we don't announce that we're onto the bad guy.
The next day, Karin finds out that police questioned Linda because she and Amy fought before Amy's murder. Karin spends the whole morning in a fog, unable to think about anything except Amy's murder. She leaves campus for lunch and is surprised when David shows up to join her. He asks her why she decided not to like him and she tells him that she didn't like how he slut shamed Amy. He claims that someone warned him that Amy was going to turn him into her next conquest and that's the only reason he said what he said. He doesn't like girls who play with guys' feelings and hurt them for sport. Karin says that Amy wasn't like that and David accepts her assessment.
David asks Karin out and she decides that all their misunderstandings are just because he's exceptionally shy. I......What? Him being shy made him slut shame Amy? If he was shy he wouldn't have come right up to all of them on his first day in a new school. This makes no logical sense. Karin tells him she can't go out with him because she's babysitting that evening.
When she gets home from school, there's a message that the police want to talk to her again. She's eager to help if it will help them find out who killed Amy, so she goes right down to the station. She's expecting them to ask about Amy's phone call again but this time they want to know about the night that Karin was attacked. She's confused because they didn't take it at all seriously before. In fact, they insinuated that she was hysterical and imaging things the first time around. She says as much to the detective and he acts surprised that she'd been treated that way. He says that he believes the two incidents are related because their town just doesn't have much crime.
We hop into the “figure's” head and they're upset about the questions Karin was asked during the interrogation.
Excuse me?
Daniel. Can I have a word?
HOW THE FUCK DID THE “FIGURE” KNOW WHAT QUESTIONS KARIN WAS ASKED IN AN INTERROGATION ROOM LOCATED IN A POLICE STATION???
Okay, that was several words.
And they were a little loud.
Sue me.
But there's no way this person could have this information. I feel like this isn't the first time that's happened in this book either.
Anyway, I have no idea how this asshole knew what she was asked or what she answered but apparently they somehow magically do. Sigh. They're upset that the focus was put on the phone calls so early but glad that the CC muddied the waters a little bit in that area. They vow again to get rid of Karin.
That was all repetitive and useless and mostly impossible.
Now we're with Karin at her babysitting job. There's a new chain on the backdoor and the mom seems a little nervous to leave. The little girl (Brittany) has heard about the babysitter killer on the TV and she's a little nervous too. She gives Karin a wooden baseball bat that she can use on the bad guy just in case he comes to kill her. The evening goes by normally. Karin puts Brittany to bed and then reads and just generally kills time while she waits for the parents to come home. She's expecting them at midnight.
At 11:30, the lights go out. Karin is instantly alert. A few seconds later she sees movement at the patio doors and then the sound of breaking glass. She drops to the floor behind the couch and tries to crawl toward where she left the baseball bat without making any noise. The "figure" is in the house now and they use a flashlight or something to locate Karin and blind her. She decides she can't just sit there and wait for them to kill her, so she rushes them. Instead of grabbing the bat. Because she's dumb like that.
The two struggle and Karin ends up thrown backwards over the coffee table. She feels some kind of blow to her shoulder and pain explodes through her. She frantically tries to locate the baseball bat that she should have located in the first place. Just as she locates it, Brittany comes into the room crying because all the lights are out. It distracts the attacker and she's able to take a swing at them. She misses and feels a pain in her hand. She swings again and connects this time as Brittany screams in fear. Karin can hear the sound of a knife hitting the floor. She screams at Brittany to hide in her room even as the attacker makes a run for the broken patio door.
When she's sure the attacker is gone, Karin calls her mom first and the police second. She hugs Brittany to reassure her and Brittany tells Karin that her shoulder is all wet. That's when Karin realizes she's bleeding. She finds a flashlight and realizes she's been stabbed.
She still hasn't called Brittany's parents.
The police arrive a few minutes before her mother. They discover that a brick was used to break the patio doors. They also find the bloody knife on the floor. They ask Karin a ton of questions and then allow her to be taken away in an ambulance.
We land in the “figure's” head now. They're really rattled because Brittany woke up during the attack. They don't want any little girls to be scared or hurt like Shelley was hurt. They decide that they can't attack while the babysitters are actually babysitting anymore because they won't put innocent little children at risk. Carefully they dispose of their clothes in the hospital dumpster again. They tell us that their arm hurts from the baseball bat.
When Karin gets to school the next day, she hears that Chuck has been in some kind of a car accident so I guess that's who Daniels wants us to believe is the “figure”.
Odds of Chuck being the “figure”: 3%
Faye says that Chuck was driving around drunk at 3am and hit a telephone pole. He broke his arm in the accident so we're really supposed to suspect him now.
Sigh.
They all leave campus for lunch. A few girls try to question Karin but she isn't answering any questions. David strides into the restaurant and pulls Karin to her feet and kisses her in front of everyone without any kind of consent whatsoever. Karin finds it cute. They haven't even gone on a date yet. Things like that are fine in a relationship if both parties are known to be okay with it but we're not talking about that here. Guys can't just go up to girls that they aren't dating and have no understanding of consent with and put their hands or mouths on them. It's disgusting. David asks her out again and she agrees even though she should have kicked him hard in the balls.
Later, Karin wonders if Chuck really broke his arm in a car accident or if he was the attacker.
Sigh.
I'm only 52% through this book, y'all. This is painful.
David and Karin decide to have a pizza and watch some videos at her house that night instead of going out. It goes pretty well other than an interruption from Becky that Karin handles like an entitled shrew. After the video, they drive around for a little bit and then David takes her home again. Karin decides that she's probably in love with him.
Sigh.
Saturday, David and Karin have pizza again and Sunday he comes over to work on Chemistry homework. It's the start of David coming over practically every day for supper which makes me wonder if he's being fed at home.
We land in a dream. A little kid is trying to get the attention of their babysitter because their little sister Shelley is crying. The babysitter is on the phone and hits the little kid for interrupting her. She tells the kid to take the baby outside and make it stop crying. The kid doesn't like the crying but doesn't know how to stop it. Even after Shelley floats face down in the water, the crying keeps going.
Did the kid kill her? It sounds like the kid killed her.
Oh. In the next paragraph we're told that Shelley didn't actually die that day. They took her to the hospital and revived her but she had extensive brain damage. The kids' parents couldn't take care of her so she was put in a special home. They never visited her and never talked about her again.
The “figure” wakes, more determined than ever to kill babysitters to avenge Shelley.
This book is hella repetitive.
The next morning, Karin's mom wakes her up to tell her that Jenny was stabbed in her own driveway the night before after coming home from a babysitting job. She's alive but they aren't sure if she's going to make it. I keep forgetting about Jenny.
David is extremely protective of Karin all day – walking her to every one of her classes and chasing off people who want to ask her nosy questions. At lunch, Faye talks about canceling her party but Linda encourages her not to. She says that they have to keep living their lives and not let this maniac take their happiness away from them. Most of them agree that it's what Amy and Jenny would want.
Later that evening, David comes over to spend some time with Karin and to eat dinner. They've heard that the police found some evidence in the hospital dumpsters but no one seems to know what it was.
I told you it was a bad place to hide things.
We get a few paragraphs from the “figure”. They're upset about the evidence being found and decide that they can't kill with blood anymore because there's no safe way to dispose of bloody things. They figure it's fitting anyway because there hadn't been blood when Shelley was hurt. We learn she DID die years after her initial accident from some kind of infection.
Now we're with Karin and she's woken up in the middle of the night by her pillow being placed over her face. She struggles to breathe as someone holds the pillow tight against her mouth and nose. I know it's depicted on TV a lot, but this is actually a pretty stupid way to kill anyone older than an infant. She tries to grab the person's wrist but it's slippery or something and she can't get hold. She's pretty sure she's going to die but then her dog starts barking and the person releases her. She hears a crash as her chair is knocked over and then her stepfather is coming into the room. Karin sees the open window and races over to look out. She sees someone running away that is too short to be Chuck.
Girl, I told you a very long time ago that it wasn't Chuck.
Karin goes to school the next day even though her mom wants her to stay home. Not much happens. They review the book for us as if we haven't been reading it. Karin decides that Chuck might be the bad guy after all. She's also suspicious of Linda because Linda's been acting odd like she's hiding something.
Linda? Where did that come from?
We land in the “figure's” head now. Linda has called them and asked them to come over. It turns out Linda is the CC and the “figure” suggested to her that she make the calls as a prank because everyone was freaking out about the real calls. Linda wants to go to the police and tell them so the extra calls won't muddy things up anymore. She thinks maybe the police will be able to find the real killer if they aren't focused on the fake phone calls. The “figure” waits for her to turn her back and then they put an extension cord around her neck and strangle her.
RIP Linda.
So. It can't be David then. Linda would not be pranking people with David. She barely knows him. It has to be someone else. Someone she's actually friends with. If anyone but a friend suggested prank calls, I don't think Linda would have gone along with it.
I think it has to be Faye. She's the only other new person in town and she's actually friends with Linda. I get that Faye wanted to puppet Linda to take some of the eyes off her but why did Linda agree to do it? It seems weird to me.
It turns out the police already knew that Linda made some of the calls. One of the people she called had a tracer on their line for some reason and the call was traced back to her. The police hadn't acted on the information yet but they knew. So if the “figure” killed her to prevent them from finding out, it didn't work.
Things just don't seem to go the "figure's" way very often.
Chuck calls Karin and it's pretty clear he's drunk. He apologizes to her and says that he loved Linda and this is all his fault. Karin worries that he might be intending to commit suicide so she calls the detective in charge of the case. When she can't reach him, she asks her stepfather to drive her over to Chuck's house so she can check on him.
When they get to Chuck's house, his door is open. They hear voices and follow them back to Chuck's bedroom. There's a lot of blood. David is kneeling beside Chuck attempting to give first aid. Karin's stepfather leaves the room to call 911 as Karin puts pressure on Chuck's injury in an attempt to stop the bleeding. David tells her that Chuck called him and he came to the same conclusion that Karin did. They manage to get Chuck to the hospital in time. The police assume he tried to kill himself out of remorse because he's the bad guy.
CHUCK IS NOT THE BAD GUY!
I'm pretty sure the "figure" is a bad girl.
That sounded oddly sexual. Sorry about that.
We skip ahead to Faye's party. Everyone is confident that the murderer is currently in a hospital bed under surveillance so their guards are down. Karin is getting ready for the party when her mom runs in to tell her the neighbor is in labor. They need Karin to watch the other kid so she's going to have to miss the party. Since the kid is so young, they decide it will be best if Karin goes over to the neighbor's house rather than bringing the kid to Karin's. The locks on the doors have been changed and neither Karin nor Becky have keys which is an issue because Becky is over at a friend's house and won't be able to get back in when she returns. Karin's mom leaves a note on the front door telling Becky to go to the neighbor's house and wait with Karin when she gets home.
There's a big to-do with them trying to call Becky at the friend's house and not getting an answer. I hope nothing bad has happened to Becky. (((Note from future me: this goes nowhere. Becky is not relevant in any way, shape or form.)))
Karin calls Faye from the neighbor's house to tell her that she won't be able to come to the party after all. Faye is understanding and promises to tell David what's going on when he gets there. Karin tries to do homework but little Sandra is confused about why her mommy left so abruptly and demands lots of attention. They're playing dolls together when the doorbell rings. Karin is expecting it to be Becky so she opens the door. It's Faye which is super confusing since she should be at her party.
Faye brings in a foil wrapped plate and a thermos. She tells Karin that she felt so bad about Karin missing the party that she wanted to bring her something. So I guess she left her own party to do so. Karin should definitely be suspicious at this point but she's kind of an idiot. Faye pours Karin a cup of punch from the thermos and suggests they make a toast to all the friends they lost. Sandra tries to get the cup away from Karin so she can have a drink and Faye jerks her away calling her 'Shelley'.
That was almost an effing Justin situation. It was close.
Faye shows Karin that she has a knife and tells her to put 'Shelley' away in her room. Sandra is upset and doesn't want to go to her room but Karin finally manages to talk her into it. When they're alone in the room, Karin asks Faye why. Faye says that all babysitters have a little bit of 'Anna' in them. Anna was the babysitter that was there when Shelley was hurt and Faye needs to kill all the Annas.
Faye puts a knife to Karin's throat and then takes a bottle of prescription pills out of her pocket. Somehow she gets the lid off a prescription bottle with one hand and I call BULLSHIT on that.
I haven't called bullshit in so long. Clearly I've been slacking.
Anyway, she tells Karin to take the pill with some punch. She doesn't want to scare Sandra so she wants Karin to simply take a 'nap'. She doesn't want to have to use the knife because the blood will scare Sandra. If Karin doesn't cooperate, however, she will use the knife and then she'll take Sandra with her so the little girl won't see the blood. Of course, Faye plans to use the knife at the party so there will be blood there too but she figures she can just lock Sandra in the car. Karin is terrified at the idea of Faye taking Sandra so she decides to cooperate. She tries to hold the pills under her tongue but Faye makes her take drink after drink of the punch – which is also drugged – and Karin ends up swallowing a bunch of the pills.
Faye sits and waits for the pills to take effect. Eventually they do and Karin drifts off.
Faye tells us that she's been hearing Shelley cry constantly for days. She thinks it will stop once she kills all the babysitters. She plans to kill everyone at the party (maybe with the spiked punch???) and then kill herself with the knife. Then the crying will stop.
She thinks briefly about Chuck and how his suicide attempt threw the cops off her trail. So I guess he really did try to kill himself. I half wondered if she had done it. Poor Chuck.
Today is a special day because it would have been Shelley's 13th birthday. Faye is glad she decided to celebrate it with a party. As she drives back to her house, she remembers the day Shelley died. Anna had told Faye to take Shelley outside so she did. There was a small plastic pool in the yard and Faye decided to teach Shelley how to swim.
We go back to Karin. Sandra is trying desperately to wake her up. Karin drags herself through the drugged fog and realizes it's been less than 15 minutes since Faye made her swallow the pills. Which seems odd to me because Daniel told us that Faye stuck around for awhile to make sure they worked. It feels like that should have taken longer than 15 minutes to me but whatevs. Karin somehow manages to stagger to the bathroom where she forces herself to throw up. Afterwards she feels okay enough to try to call the police. The line is dead. She can't get into her own house to call so she decides to drive to Faye's house. Even though she's still so drugged she can barely see straight.
She leaves a note for Becky, telling her to find a phone and call police. She writes 'Faye's party' on there but gives no details. The note is barely legible anyway. She tells Sandra they're going for a drive and......
I don't think I have the words to tell you how angry this makes me, y'all. She could go to a neighbor's house to use the phone instead. Other people still exist. They live in a neighborhood, not in the middle of nowhere. There's no reason for her to endanger the life of that little girl or anyone else who might be on the road by driving while under the influence of a metric fuck ton of sleeping pills. I can't even believe Daniel thought it was okay to write this.
I am 95% done with this book and I intended to finish it tonight but I can't. I'm so mad I can't even read the last 5%. Maybe I will tomorrow. I make no promises.
Okay, it's the next day. I don't want to finish this but I need to so I can move on to the next terrible Sweet Valley book.
We hop back into Faye's head and get to learn her plan. She's going to drug the punch so everyone will go to sleep. Then she's going to kill the babysitters and herself with a knife, leaving everyone else to just wake up later. Once the party officially begins, she makes a toast to the friends who aren't with them and everyone drinks. The sleeping pills kick in unrealistically fast and people start instantaneously dropping like flies. Faye pulls out the knife and goes to the first person on her list while singing 'Happy Birthday' to Shelley. David stops her and she's confused. She can't figure out why he's not asleep. She's even more confused when Karin shows up in the doorway.
So I guess we should all congratulate Karin for not killing anyone with her irresponsible driving under the influence behavior.
I wish I had a sarcastic gold star to hand out.
There. I made one.
Faye takes off toward one of her intended victims and Karin yells at David to stop her. He tackles her and the knife goes flying. They all scramble to get it but Faye reaches it first. She stabs at David who falls back. Then she runs at Karin. Karin manages to evade her somehow and the two girls fall to the floor, struggling for control of the knife. David recovers and comes back to pull Faye away from Karin. He's holding Faye from behind when Karin realizes that Faye is trying to harm herself with the knife. Karin is trying to take it from her when Sandra wanders inside to see what's going on. When Faye sees the little girl, she drops the knife and starts crying.
Now we're at the Epilogue. Karin tells us that she hasn't felt well for days because of her drugging incident. The rest of the party goers have recovered, though some needed a hospital stay for a brief period of time. Faye is in a psychiatric hospital because of course she is. Karin finds out about Shelley and how the one-year-old died because four-year-old Faye was trying to teach her how to swim. Faye's parents thought it would be best to just never speak of Shelley again so Faye wouldn't feel guilty about her role in things but that just ended up fucking Faye up. Faye grew up with the fantasy of finding Shelley someday and healing her with love but that was dashed when she found Shelley's death certificate. That's when she put her babysitter killing plan in motion.
David wasn't affected by the drugging that night because he never drank the punch. As the son of an alcoholic, he immediately smelled the booze in the punch and wanted nothing to do with it. It also explains why he was always at Karin's house for dinner. His father isn't much of a father. There's no mention of a mother, so I assume there isn't one.
The book ends with Karin telling us that she plans to go into police work and that she'll never babysit again. I'm glad for that, at least. She wasn't the kind of person I'd ever want watching my child.
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