**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: Yes, Melissa, you may leave the room...
The hall pass is a privilege.
But Mr Elliot gives it out freely.
His students are the problem kids -
They need to roam.
Melissa has roamed too far.
And stumbled upon a gruesome truth...
I have to get rid of the bodies...
They're clawing back to the surface.
Now she knows what happened to the others...
I had to kill Janie...she was going to tell!
And she must face a crazed killer...
I'm a monster, Melissa. I didn't mean to do those things.
But now I must kill you, Melissa...
It's the sensible thing to do..
Join your classmates, Melissa.
Yeah, the back is really written like that. We're they trying to make it a poem? I have no idea. It's super annoying and I think it's a hint to what reading this book is going to be like. Buckle up, bitches.
This book was written in 1993 and it's my first time reading it. I think it's my first time reading anything by Hawks. I looked him up on Goodreads and I hadn't marked any of his as 'read' so I'm just going to assume this is my first experience with him. In the old days, I used to type up the book description after I read the book so I would go in blind. These days I type it into my notes so it's all ready to go when I post it on the blog so I'm forewarned about the potential fuckery headed our way. I'm not sure which is worse – knowing it's coming or being blindsided by it. At any rate, I kind of like the cover. It reminds me of my favorite era of PH and PH-adjacent books.
There's a weird little thing at the beginning and I'm not sure how it fits in with the rest of the book. Someone is writing about how they started their suicide note but it ended up being a note about all the things that bother them about life instead. Which is kind of the same thing...? It's only a paragraph or so long and that's basically all it says. I guess we'll figure it out later.
(((Note from future me: it was a bad guy passage and an annoying mechanic of this book.)))
We begin with our protagonist Melissa walking through the school halls with Holly who she calls a “red-headed raccoon” because Holly wears too much eye shadow. Holly wants to talk about the new guy Russell who she calls a “psycho”. We're only two paragraphs in and there's been a lot of name calling already. Melissa doesn't react well to that because she and Russ are both in a program called Intervention designed to help the at-risk kids stay on the right path. If Holly is calling him a psycho for being in the program, she might as well be calling Melissa one too.
Holly is offended that Melissa feels this way. She says that Russ killed his brother so 'psycho' is a description of his actual behavior and not a judgment of him being in Intervention. Melissa scoffs and says Russ just accidentally stabbed him with some scissors. He's not dead – he's just been sent to live with relatives in Florida for his own safety.
Oh, that's much different. I feel better. Don't you?
Holly tells Melissa that her parents are going off to California and asks her if she wants to stay the night. I know Holly isn't the protagonist or anything, but I have to say page 5 may be the quickest we've ever gotten a pair of parents out of the story. Hawks clearly doesn't play. Melissa says she can't sleepover because she's still grounded. Apparently she ran up $200 worth of calls to a teen line over the summer and her stepmother had put her on restrictions. There's no end in sight and Melissa is pretty bitter about it. That's not why she's in the Intervention program though. Melissa tells us that she's just a bit of a prankster and she's always getting caught. The principal finally had enough and put her in the program.
We actually head to Intervention next. I'm going to list out the Intervention kids and the way Melissa describes them because it will be faster that way.
*Janie - currently missing but considered a runaway because she's done it before
*Allison – overweight with low self-esteem
*Gary – nerd
*Tracy – music geek who is failing every class because she constantly wears headphones
*Tiny – tall. That's it. Just tall.
*Boris – loud and aggressive
*Russ – probably should be in jail for assault with a deadly weapon but whatevs
Too many characters, Hawks. Especially since we're in the first chapter. It's a lot of names to sort out right off the bat.
Russ comes in with a black eye and bloody lip. The teacher, Mr Elliot offers to give him a hall pass so he can see the nurse but Russ refuses. Mr Elliot presses and Russ gets so mad that he slams his fists into his desk and it splinters. He picks up a piece of the jagged wood and says that he should stake Mr Elliot with it because the guy is a “psychological vampire” who feeds off their emotions. Mr Elliot calmly asks if Russ really wants to kill him and Russ says he'd rather go to the library.
Okay.
The librarian isn't too happy to see them invade her space. Melissa sits at a table with a magazine and everyone pretty much dumps their stuff with her so they can wander around. When Russ approaches, she thinks he's going to do the same thing but he sticks around. She asks him what happened to his face and he makes a cryptic comment about his dad beating him which is awful. He shows Melissa a stack of folders he apparently swiped off Mr Elliot's desk and asks her if she wants to know the dirt on her fellow Intervention mates.
Melissa is paranoid that they might get caught with the files because the next stop after Intervention is a special school for troubled kids that she really doesn't want to go to. She begs Russ to put the files back on Mr Elliot's desk but he just starts flipping through Melissa's file instead. All it really says is that she has a history of pulling pranks that borders on compulsion. Mr Elliot approaches and Russ hurriedly buries the folders underneath everyone's stuff. Mr Elliot doesn't seem to notice and makes casual conversation checking in on the two of them. Russ alludes to the fact that he knows were Mr Elliot lives and tells Melissa later that he likes to follow people home.
Again......
The bell rings and there's general chaos as everyone grabs their stuff from the pile on the table.
Odds that someone other than Russ got their hands on a folder: 50%
Odds that these folders are never mentioned again: 50%
I figure it's even odds at this point. I don't know Hawks very well after all, and I'm not sure what shenanigans he likes to pull yet.
Melissa goes to her next class and realizes that she accidentally grabbed someone's notebook. It doesn't have a name to indicate the owner and it's full of bizarre poetry and just general comments about school and Intervention. Melissa realizes it's someone's diary and she feels a little bad for looking in it but she doesn't stop. She also conveniently doesn't recognize the handwriting. Melissa forgets about her class and just keeps reading the diary. One of the last entries says: “I had to kill Janie. She said she could keep the secret, but she lied, she was going to tell, going to tell, and that can't happen, not now, not yet. Although I cried my eyes out after, I was really surprised. There was hardly any blood.”
Whoever this is needs to learn sentence structure.
Melissa immediately decides that the notebook was created and given to her as some kind of practical joke. She's looking at it through her own lens since it's something she'd probably do herself. She doesn't take it seriously even though Janie is definitely missing.
Later, Holly meets Melissa at her locker. She's invited someone named Teddy over but she needs Melissa to be there too since her parents are going to be gone and she can't have a boy over alone. Melissa reminds her that she's grounded but promises to ask her stepmother if she can go to Holly's house later. As she's walking away, Holly tosses over her shoulder that Teddy is bringing a boy over for Melissa too. Melissa is not amused. She's awkward around boys.
After school, Hawks throws us two more names because we don't have enough to remember already. Terry is an adult that runs the local Texaco station and is obsessed with fixing up some old car. Curt is a classmate of Melissa's that's very into mechanics and history. He's helping Terry out with the car when Melissa stops by to get milk and bread on her way home. She waves at him and then suddenly Russ races from the back with a grease gun in his hand. He aims at Curt who instinctively ducks but Melissa isn't that fast or that lucky. Grease gets all over her clothes and purse. Terry comes out yelling at Russ to leave and never come back. Russ tries to defend himself by saying he was trying to get Curt back for shooting something at him earlier but Terry doesn't care.
Curt feels really bad and comes over to see if Melissa is okay. She's feeling really awkward and doesn't really answer him which he takes as her being pissed at him. He offers to give her money for a new shirt if she can't get the grease out but she tells him not to worry about it. She decides to go home without the mild and bread even though it's really going to make her stepmother mad.
(((Note from future me: we never see Curt or Terry again and I have no idea why this took up half a chapter when it clearly didn't matter to the plot.)))
We get another entry from the bad guy I guess. It's trying so hard to be clever that it makes very little actual sense. Apparently bad guy's dad is dead but they still hear him calling to them in dreams. Then there's something about Kipling and “You are a better man than I, Gunga Din”. Not sure how that fits in. Either bad guy sees themself as someone doing a noble thing despite adversity or he's saying that he's doing something nice for someone who was mean to him. I guess we'll figure it out at some point.
(((Note from future me: neither of those are true and I NEVER figured out what this was supposed to be referencing.)))
Melissa gets home and her stepmom is mean because she's nothing but a stereotype. She gets mad about the grease on Melissa's clothes and refuses to let her go to Holly's house later. Melissa is yelling at her when the phone rings. It's Holly. Apparently Holly took the mystery notebook when Melissa wasn't paying attention and she thinks she knows who it belongs to. Melissa is horrified that Holly has read it because it had some stuff from Intervention in it. Holly says that they can use the notebook to blackmail its owner because it's full of “gooshy” stuff.
What do you think of when you hear the word “gooshy”? It took me forever to put together that Holly is using the word to mean 'insane'. I was thinking either icky or romantic but insane never occurred to me.
This book makes no sense.
Holly will only reveal her theory of the notebook's author if Melissa shows up later. Otherwise she's just going to read the thing out loud to the boys. Melissa is freaked out at the idea because there might be stuff in there about her.
We skip ahead to Monday morning. Melissa didn't go to Holly's so we have no idea what happened there. She apparently hasn't heard from her either and just assumes that Holly is mad at her. They usually walk to school together but Holly doesn't answer the door so Melissa goes on without her. She's more worried about being late than anything.
Odds that Holly is dead: 75%
You'd think this would occur to Melissa too. Holly's parents are out of town and she had two boys over on Friday night. Melissa hasn't heard from her since. Holly probably read the notebook aloud to the person who wrote it and he stuffed her in the freezer.
Holly proves me completely wrong by being at Melissa's locker when she gets there. What a bitch. She says they need to talk about the notebook but Melissa isn't very interested. She opens her locker to find it's been completely trashed and her stepmother's sweater – one that she wasn't even supposed to borrow – is gone. Clearly someone was looking for the notebook. Holly urges her to report it to the office but Melissa doesn't see the point.
Protagonist doesn't feel it's 'worth it' to report a crime to the proper authorities? ✔
Holly wants Melissa to skip Intervention so they can talk about the notebook but she refuses. Oddly enough, she doesn't want to get in trouble which seems out of character since she does so many things that get her in trouble. She tells Holly they'll talk about things at lunch. Russ appears and jump scares them by banging on a locker. I have no idea how much he heard but Hawks really wants us to find him suspicious.
Odds that Russ is the bad guy: 10%
Pages go by as Melissa tries to figure out who might have written the notebook. She mainly suspects Allison because Allison carries around a lot of Slam Books for people to write in. Slam books are notebooks with people's names written on the pages and people can anonymously write down what they think of them or memories they have of them. She figures this notebook belongs to Allison because Allison likes to write things in notebooks.
Sigh.
I don't think the elevator goes all the way to the top.
Intervention starts and all the kids talk about their shitty home lives for awhile. It's all very predictable and stereotypical. After that, Mr Elliot decides to read the “Somebody Box”. It's an anonymous suggestion box where people can leave things they were too scared or embarrassed to say in group. Most of them are just questions about why they're there and how they can get released. Mr Elliot can't answer the second question at all. It seems like he doesn't know how people get released from the program or what goals they have to meet. He says the program is new and they haven't worked that out yet.
I feel like I'm using that one a lot.
The last thing in the Somebody Box is a strip of paper pinned to a piece of white cloth. It says: “Who do I have to kill to get my notebook back?” Melissa recognizes the piece of cloth as part of the sweater that's missing from her locker. She panics and looks around, trying to see who might have written it but their faces reveal nothing.
I'm not going to bother giving odds to all these people because I can't be assed to remember their names. Sorry, y'all. I still think that Russ is a red herring but I was just really wrong about Holly being dead so what the hell do I know?
Mr Elliot asks her to stay behind after the bell rings. He starts out by asking her about Russ but she doesn't have any information to give him. Then he asks about the sweater. Somehow he recognizes it as one she was wearing the week before and that feels weird to me. It's a tiny piece of torn sweater. How does he recognize it? How does he even remember what Melissa wore a week ago? This feels creepy. Maybe we'll give him odds.
Odds that Mr Elliot is the bad guy: 50%
Odds that Mr Elliot is a huge fucking creep: 99%
Mr Elliot asks her if Russ is the type to tear up sweaters. Melissa can't answer that. Why would he even ask? Then he asks her if Russ is obsessing over her. It's starting to feel like he's jealous and I don't like that. This entire thing feels really fucking creepy and I hope Hawks intended for it to. If he didn't, he really doesn't understand what student/teacher relationships are supposed to be like. Melissa is weirded out by the idea and says she doesn't think anyone is obsessing over her. Mr Elliot tells her that obsession is dangerous because it can easily get out of control.
Mr Elliot switches to asking questions about Russ again. He wants Melissa to tell him what they've talked about but she hesitates. For good fucking reason. This teacher should not be asking her this. Part of Intervention is confidentiality which Mr Elliot definitely knows, so he shouldn't be asking her to report private conversations to him. He tells her that there have been several threats in the Somebody Box and he can tell that Russ is fixated on her. Melissa still doesn't take the bait so Mr Elliot gives up. He creepily touches her arm before he leaves and murmurs something about control being great when you have it and awful when you don't.
Even if he isn't the bad guy, he's still really fucking creepy and I think someone needs to do a background check.
When Melissa gets to her next class, she realizes that someone has slipped a note into her Algebra book. She figures it was the person who trashed her locker. The note says: “There comes a time in every relationship when the real mystery becomes fear – who fears the most. Me, you. Consider this: even the most loving relationship is based on desperate fear – fear of loss, perhaps, or fear of death.”
Again, this person needs to spend a little more time in English class. The grammar needs some work.
Because of all that nonsense Mr Elliot was spouting, Melissa assumes Russ is the person who left the note and wrote the notebook. She sees him after class and walks right up and slaps him across the face.
Russ thinks she hit him because he got grease on her shirt the other day so he offers to buy her a new one. She starts yelling.....in a crowded hallway.....that she didn't even read the notebook because Holly took it so he can quit leaving her notes and going through her locker. Russ is hella confused. He says he didn't go through her locker or leave her a note and he isn't missing any notebooks. Melissa doesn't believe him. I think I do.
During one of her afternoon classes, Melissa hears an ambulance arrive. She isn't too concerned because it's a regular occurrence. For insurance purposes, the nurse has to call the ambulance for any injury bigger than a scratch. After class she finds out that someone fell over the rail and landed at the bottom of the stairs. She's horrified when she sees Holly being loaded into the back of the ambulance.
There's another page from the bad guy. I'm not going to lie – I have no idea what this fucking asshole is babbling about. Something about the local mob boss I think.
I did NOT sign up for a mob book. 😡
Melissa gathers up Holly's stuff from the ground and begs the paramedics to let her ride with Holly in the ambulance. They won't allow it, but they tell her where they're going. Mr Elliot rocks up and volunteers to drive her to the hospital. In the middle of the school day. When he should be working. He doesn't even ask the office to have someone cover his classroom. Does this man actually work there?
When Melissa gets in the car she notices a bad smell. Mr Elliot tells her he ran over a cat which makes no sense unless the body of the cat is chilling out in the trunk or something.
Sigh.
You all know what we have here.
I kept hoping Hawks was making Mr Elliot super suspicious to set him up as a red herring but I don't think that's what's happening here unfortunately. We definitely have a fucking Justin situation going on and I'm VERY bitter about it.
Melissa gets to the hospital and the nurse tells her where Holly is but refuses to let Melissa see her because she's not family. Melissa overhears a doctor say that they're going to move Holly to ICU and she just barges past everyone to get to Holly's room. As soon as she speaks to Holly, Holly comes to a little. She says “Please help me”, “Yales”, “Yaees lot”, “Yales lot” and “lot”.
Melissa sticks around until Holly's family gets there but then she feels in the way and decides to leave. Mr Elliot volunteers to take her home. Melissa tells him what Holly said and Mr Elliot tells her that Yail's Lot is a house that the local mob family used to live in until it burned down. He says that he's heard Russ talk about it from time to time which makes Melissa decide that Russ tried to kill Holly. She wants to go to the police but Mr Elliot stops her. He says they have no proof and they can't ruin Russ's life with no evidence. He drives her over to Yail's Lot and tells her that it's where all the bodies are buried.
I need to be done with this book, y'all. I hate anything to do with the mob. I won't even watch General Hospital and I've stopped reading more than one motorcycle club book when the mob appeared. If this goes any further, we are headed for bullet point territory.
Mr Elliot drives her home after that. He asks her to come see him before school the next morning and she agrees even though she has no intention of doing so. He's creeped her out a bit and she's anxious to get out of his car and away from him. Her stepmother is waiting for her and confronts her about skipping school and coming home late but somehow immediately gets a phone call from Mr Elliot explaining everything to her. This is the time before cell phones are common so I have no idea how he got to a phone so fast. AND knew Melissa's number.
The next morning, Melissa gets to school right before the bell and goes straight to the office to see the vice principal. She tells him about the notebook – which she can't produce for proof – and the threatening note – which she does produce for proof. She tells him that she thinks someone pushed Holly over the railing on purpose and that they're out to get her as well. The vice principal reads the note but seems unimpressed. He reminds Melissa that she comes into his office a lot to “cry wolf” and report things that aren't true. He doesn't believe her at all and thinks she's trying to use her friend's accident to play another one of her pranks.
We get another page from the bad guy. He's remembering growing up next to the mob dude and how much his dad hated the guy. That's it. It was SUPER integral to the plot and all.
Back with Melissa in the VP's office. He calls Mr Elliot into the office to talk to her because Melissa is his problem. Mr Elliot arrives and the VP leaves them alone in the office to talk. Mr Elliot is annoyed that Melissa went over his head and reported it. He asks her if she and Holly figured out who the notebook belonged to and she's surprised that he knows about it. He says he ran into Holly on the stairs the day before and he gave her a little nudge. Melissa is horrified.
I hate Justin.
Mr Elliot admits the notebook is his. He says he told Holly it was the first draft of a novel he's working on but she didn't seem to believe him. He also says that if Melissa tries to report him, he'll make her look so crazy that she'll be locked up in a mental institution before lunch. He wants his notebook back but Melissa has no idea where it is. She knows no one will ever believe her with her history of making shit up so she feels trapped.
So do I.
We still have 50 pages.
Why?
What's the fucking point?
Melissa leaves the office and almost immediately runs into Russ. She decides she needs a confidant and he's more likely to believe her because he doesn't know her very well. She tells him that she needs to go see Holly in the hospital and he volunteers to skip school and help her navigate the bus system to get there. As they go, she tells him about Mr Elliot being crazy and pushing Holly over the stair railing. I think Russ believes her. He doesn't think they can do anything about it, though, because they have no proof and they're both very unreliable narrators.
Russ is pretty self-aware. It's unusual for these books.
Melissa mentions's Yail's Lot and Russ tells her the story. Yail Vanzetti, the mob dude, lived there with his kids and in-laws. One by one they disappeared. Then the house burned down with Yail in it and after that, the surrounding neighbohoods went to hell as if they were cursed. Russ lives in one of the “cursed” neighborhoods. Mr Elliot lives in the only remaining house adjacent to Yail's Lot. So he must be more cursed than the rest of them.
😡
I hate this fucking book.
When they get to the hospital, Russ refuses to go in. He has a phobia or something. Melissa goes in alone and is somehow allowed to see Holly in the ICU. As soon as she gets in the room, Holly's body convulses as if she's choking. Melissa becomes convinced that something in one of the tubes is choking her, so she starts removing everything. Holly's dad comes in and is furious. He gets medical personnel in the room and then accuses Melissa of trying to hurt Holly. He then accuses her of being the one who pushed Holly in the first place. It turns out Mr Elliot visited Holly's parents and told them a bunch of stuff about Melissa being dangerous and unbalanced.
Holly's dad calls the police so Melissa flees. She tells Russ that they have to get out of there because the cops are coming and his reaction is amusement and I think he was a little turned on. I guess Russ has a thing for bad girls. He still thinks they should take a chance at telling the story to the police, but Melissa is insistent that it won't get them anywhere with Mr Elliot around to sabotage. So they go to the library instead.
This is the second time in this book that people just decide to go to the library to solve their problems. I guess in this case it makes a little sense because Melissa want's to do some research about Yail's Lot.
We get another page from the bad guy in the middle of this library excursion. Apparently Yail traumatized our bad guy by letting him see and pet a rabbit that Yail intended to eat for dinner.
I'm so over this.
Chapter 14 begins with Melissa saying the entire trip to the library did nothing to help them. Which means an entire chapter of the book was useless to the plot. I'd argue that most of these chapters have been useless. Russ suggests they wait for night and go to Yail's Lot to look around for some kind of evidence that Mr Elliot is doing something weird there. I guess they have to wait for night so no one sees them wandering around. Melissa agrees and they make plans to meet at the corner at 10:00.
When Melissa gets home, her dad and stepmom announce that they've been talking to Mr Elliot and they think it's best if Melissa goes to that school for troubled kids for awhile. She tries to talk to them about Mr Elliot but they don't believe her naturally. She realizes that this school is just the first step and Mr Elliot might very well get her committed to an institution if she doesn't do something so she bolts from the house.
The next chapter is just full of fuckery. {{{Sigh.}}} Melissa wanders around for a bit and then I guess it magically becomes 10:00 because she meets Russ at the mailbox. They walk in the direction of Yail's Lot with Russ babbling along the way. He tells Melissa that his brother isn't really in Florida. His dad actually killed his brother and called it an accident. The day Russ came to school all beat up, he and his dad had an altercation and Russ knocked him down the stairs and killed him. He justifies it by saying his dad killed his brother and would have eventually killed him or his sisters. Sometimes people have a good reason to kill people. He figures Mr Elliot is the same.
Russ admits that he went to talk to Mr Elliot in the hours that Melissa was wandering around. Mr Elliot offered to help him hide his dad's body if Russ got Melissa to “back off”. Melissa realizes the two are now in cohoots and she pepper sprays Russ but mostly misses. He tries to grab her and she scratches his face, leaving two of her fingernails behind. She pepper sprays him again and runs off.
Are her fingernails fake or just extraordinarily brittle?
Melissa runs through the darkness and eventually falls into an open grave.
This book is fucking ridiculous.
She cuts her leg on a shovel and panics when she realizes there's something covered in black fabric down there with her. A man pulls her out and takes her into a nearby house where he cares for her wound. For a paragraph or two, Hawks pretends like we're too stupid to know it's Mr Elliot and I don't appreciate that. Your audience is not that dumb, sir.
Russ arrives at the house and Mr Elliot lets him in. Mr Elliot says that he killed two of the people that are buried on the property but the rest of the bodies were someone else's work. He figures no one will believe that, though. One of the bodies is Janie's and he killed her because she turned against him when she found out about the first person he killed. Until that moment, they were in love despite the fact that she was a TEENAGER AND HE WAS HER TEACHER.
So fucking gross.
Mr Elliot says he's been trying to get rid of the other bodies so he won't be blamed for them. He tells them that Yail killed a lot of people and buried them on the property. Mr Elliot's father knew but said nothing. Eventually he and Mr Elliot set fire to the house to kill Yail and end the murders. The weight of what he did, drove Mr Elliot insane because all of the bad guys in these books have to be insane and not just awful people.
Mr Elliot says that he should kill Melissa but he might not have to if she kills her stepmother. Then Mr Elliot will have something over her like he has something over Russ. Then none of them can tell anyone without being exposed themselves. Melissa doesn't think she could ever kill anyone so she simply leaves and they let her.
When she gets home, her stepmother tells her that she's being sent away on a grippy sock vacation instead of to the school. Melissa tries to explain about Mr Elliot and Russ but her stepmother won't listen. She wishes Melissa would just unalive herself and stop causing her trouble. Melissa decides that maybe Mr Elliot has a point.
The book ends with Melissa deciding to go back to Mr Elliot and Russ and have them teach her their ways.
I don't.........I don't even know what I just read. I'm just glad it's done.
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