**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 do not continue to read if you don't want to know who the “bad guy” is.
From the Back of the Book: Nice girls don't kill... Johanna Wise has always longed to be part of Dennis Arthur's rich, popular crowd, and she can't believe it when he finally asks her out. Now she'll do anything to continue to hang out with his cool friends and keep Dennis as her boyfriend. So when Dennis dares her to kill their teacher, Mr Northwood, she doesn't say no. She can't. Besides, it was only a joke, right? But now the joke has gone too far, and the whole school is taking bets on Johanna. The dare is serious...dead serious. Will she do it? Will she really kill for love?
This book was published in 1994 as part of Stine's lengthy Fear Street Series. Don't worry, though, the only thing that connects these books is the name of the street. They don't have to be read in order (with the exception of a few duos and trilogies that exist) and you can skip around to the ones you find interesting. Or, in my case, to the ones I find for pennies at garage sales, thrift stores or randomly on Kindle Unlimited for some reason. This is my first time reading this one but not my first time with Stine as you well know. We know what we're in for here.
Also, I'm going to be so freaking for real with you guys. I am not typing out the name “Johanna” five million times again. I just had a Johanna in the last SVH book and I refuse. From here on, her name is Jo. Live with it.
We begin with a prologue. Jo has a loaded pistol in her hand. She tells us that she's been dared to kill her teacher. She's hoping this isn't real because she's prone to “violent fantasies” and has imagined herself doing “many frightening things”.
That doesn't sound reassuring.
Chapter one takes us back seven weeks. Jo is at a 7-Eleven with her best friend Margaret getting hot dogs for dinner. Jo tells us that her divorced mother works several jobs and is never around to cook so she has to fend for herself.
Protagonist has parents who are never home? Check.
A group of rich kids from school walk into this random 7-Eleven: Dennis, who Jo has a massive crush on, Dennis' girlfriend Caitlin, Melody, Lanny and Zack. They're all the typical rich, bratty stereotypes that you see in these books. Jo and Margaret creepily watch them as they goof around by the slurpee machine daring each other to be generally disruptive. They end up getting into a slurpee fight which Jo and Margaret seem to find hysterical. The shop owner threatens to call the police so Dennis pulls out a gun and shoots him.
{{{GASP}}}
LOLZ
It's just a water gun. Seriously, Dennis, this is how idiots get killed.
Zack hands the shop owner a wad of cash to cover the wasted slurpees and the rich kids leave.
We skip to the next school day whenever that might be. Jo is in history class thinking about how weird her teacher Mr Northwood is because he always wears turtlenecks and he likes to tape record his classes so he can listen back later. Neither of these things seem too weird to me but whatever. He's also her neighbor on Fear Street so she feels like she never gets away from him.
Jo lingers after class for some reason and ends up overhearing Dennis trying to negotiate a make-up for the midterm. Every year Dennis' family goes to the Bahamas during that week and every other teacher is going to let him make up his missed work but Mr N says no. He doesn't think it's fair that Dennis gets special treatment. Dennis argues that he'll lose eligibility for the track team if he fails the exam and Mr N basically says that's not his problem. Dennis starts going on and on about how Mr N is ruining his chances at making it to the Olympics. This all feels very dramatic.
Dennis really starts to lose his tempter and Jo looks away just as she hears a big thud. Oh noes! Clearly Dennis has clocked Mr N!
{{{GASP}}}
LOLZ
Dennis just threw a book on the floor during his tanty. Jo finally leaves the classroom that she's been lingering in for no reason. She's at her locker when Dennis comes out muttering that he “could kill that guy”. Creepy Jo laughs at this, getting Dennis' attention. They start coming up with jokey ways they'd kill Mr N. It's not serious at all and something that regular people do to vent their frustration. Like Dennis says he'd like to fold Mr N up and lock him in his briefcase. Stuff like that. Then Jo just busts out with “maybe you should just shoot him” out of fucking nowhere.
Too serious, Jo. We were all having fun here.
Dennis seems a little unnerved by her suggestion and tries to get back onto more fictional ground by saying that folding him up would be more fun. Jo won't let it go, though. She says they could shoot Mr N and then fold him up.
Jo needs some help, y'all.
Somehow in this conversation, Jo blurts out that Mr N is her neighbor and Dennis seems interested in that. Jo is practically buzzing because Dennis is paying attention to her. She wishes that there were people around to see it happening.
Not feeling great about Jo.
Dennis takes off and Jo just follows him through the parking lot. She's working up her nerve to ask him to go for a Coke but then he stops beside Caitlin's car. Jo is just kind of awkwardly staring at him so he says he'd offer her a ride but the car only has two seats. Jo smiles and says that won't be a problem. She opens the driver's door and yanks Caitlin out and then she and Dennis drive off together laughing.
{{{GASP}}}
Obviously LOLZ
In reality, Jo just watches the two of them drive away. On her way home, she dreams up all kinds of “violent, evil” things to happen to Caitlin. It's disturbing. Jo needs a therapist and Caitlin needs a restraining order.
A week passes. The midterm happens and Dennis is absent. Since she can't focus on him, Jo seems to redirect her attention to Melody who she watches way too closely in class. At one point, Melody mouths off to Mr N which prompts him to ask her to stay after class. Melody just simply doesn't because she doesn't want to and Jo is hella impressed.
Later, Jo talks to Margaret about how Mr N really seems to target the rich kids in class. It's clear that he's harder on them and she theorizes that it's because Mr N is poor and lives on Fear Street. Maybe it's because they seem to be assholes. While they're talking, Jo hears glass breaking downstairs and realizes someone is breaking in!
{{{GASP}}}
LOLZ
No one is breaking in. No one is even at her house. Stine doesn't even bother to explain what made the sound. While she's peering out her window, Jo sees Caitlin, Melody, Lanny and Zack sneaking around Mr N's driveway. She goes out to see what they're doing because she can't just leave these people alone. They're not happy to see her but she promises not to rat them out.
Lanny pours sand in Mr N's gas tank which is destruction of property and can get him arrested. Zack decides to scratch Dennis' name into the fender which is just confusing as hell. Why? Isn't Dennis his friend?
Mr N's porch light comes on and the brats scatter. They jump into Caitlin's car (wait, didn't it have two seats?) and drive off. Mr N sees Jo standing by his car and asks her what she's doing. She says she heard noises outside and came to look. He tells her that he saw the others drive off and warns her about hanging out with them. There's no way she's listening to that.
The next day Lanny, Zack, Caitlin and Melody are suspended. Mr N again tries to warn Jo away from them, saying that she's a “nice girl” and should keep her distance. I get that they're vandals and assholes and brats but I think Jo might be the bigger problem here.
Mr N says he's going to be keeping an eye on Jo to make sure she doesn't get corrupted and now he feels creepy too. What the fuck, Stine?
Although, someone definitely should #KeepOneEyeOnJoAtAllTimes.
I almost typed 'Maggie'. Oh, the memories.
Later that night, Dennis calls Jo. I guess he's back in town now. He asks her to come to a party at Melody's house on Friday night. If I were Jo, I would assume they were setting me up in some way because they thought I snitched on them and got them suspended but our girl is ECSTATIC with the invitation. Jo asks him how Caitlin feels about this because Jo is absolutely assuming this is a date and the beginning of their happily ever after. Dennis hesitates and then says they have an open relationship. Besides, Caitlin won't be at the party.
Girl, anytime there's a hesitation before the 'open relationship' it means it's only open on one end.
Jo is a little surprised Melody is allowed to have a party after getting suspended but Dennis says they were all un-suspended due to parental pressure on the principal. Jo realizes that life is very different for rich people. She knows there's no way her mother would have been able to get her out of a suspension like that.
Jo spends the rest of the night fantasizing that she's Dennis' girlfriend and a part of his group.
The next day at school, Dennis meets Jo at her locker. He gives her a conch shell that he brought back from the Bahamas. Caitlin rocks up and is pissed. She orders Jo to give her the shell. Jo smashes it into Caitlin's face, breaking her nose and cracking her teeth.
{{{GASP}}}
LOLZ
None of that happened. Caitlin did walk up but she merely collected Dennis and the two of them walked away. At this point, I don't even know if the shell was real or if Dennis actually even talked to her.
Later Jo sees Dennis and Caitlin making out in the hallway.
Surely she has to get a clue at some point. No one can be this dumb.
In class, Dennis begs Mr N for a makeup exam and is again denied. Dennis yells that Mr N is ruining his chance at being an Olympic athlete. Mr N maintains that a makeup exam wouldn't be fair to everyone else.
Didn't we already have this conversation? Come on, Stine.
Dennis ignores Jo completely for the rest of the day and she begins to wonder if he ever really talked to her or if their entire 'relationship' was all in her head.
Me too, Jo. Me too.
We skip to Friday night. Dennis shows up to drive her to Melody's house. It's a pretty standard party with kids getting drunk, dancing and making out. Dennis also ignores her at the party so she talks to other kids. She isn't really having fun and doesn't know why she's there.
Later, after everyone but the brat pack has gone home, Dennis finally starts paying attention to her. Clearly he didn't want the random kids to see him talking to her but Jo doesn't pick up on this. Dennis tells his friends that he and Jo are going to kill Mr N. Lanny dares them to do it. Jo still thinks it's probably a joke but she's starting to recognize that Dennis might be serious.
Dennis drives Jo home and gives her a goodnight kiss. They end up making out until Jo notices that Mr N is watching them like a big creeper. Dennis is freaked out and rightfully so. Jo invites him to come in but he says he needs to get home. Jo is furious at Mr N for ruining her perfect date. I guess she forgot the part where Dennis ignored her for half the night and wouldn't talk to her in front of their classmates.
Jo goes to her father's desk to get his gun and I'm immediately confused. Jo's parents are divorced and have been for a long time. Why do they still have her father's gun? And his desk? Wouldn't he have picked those up at some point? Anyway, Jo gets the gun and goes to the window. Mr N is still standing out there watching her house. If I thought this was real, I'd be pretty alarmed. Jo aims the gun at his chest and pulls the trigger just as her mom walks in.
{{{GASP}}}
LOLZ
The gun wasn't loaded. Jo tells her mom that she heard someone breaking in and got the gun out for protection. Her mom tells her that she shouldn't mess with the gun and puts it back in the desk drawer.
We skip to Monday morning. Melody tells Jo that Caitlin is pissed about her hanging out with Dennis at the party. Apparently they aren't in an open relationship after all.
Jo doesn't see Dennis until school is over. He asks if she wants to study with him at her house that evening. She can't say 'yes' fast enough but when she gets home, she starts to regret her decision a little. Her house is shabby compared to Melody's (and probably Dennis' but she's never seen the inside because she's not really his girlfriend). She's embarrassed to have Dennis see it and considers canceling but we all know she won't.
Margaret calls and asks what time she should come over because they were supposed to work on a school project that evening. Jo had forgotten that they had plans and she doesn't want Margaret to come over and ruin her 'date'. She tells Margaret that she isn't feeling well and asks if they can do it the next evening instead. Margaret agrees but she seems doubtful about Jo's excuse since Jo was just fine at school.
Dennis arrives but he isn't alone. Melody, Zack, Lanny and Caitlin come with him. Clearly he doesn't want to be alone with Jo. She's disappointed but tries to make the best of it. She hopes maybe they'll all be friends and she'll be a part of their bratty rich kid group. Zack pretty immediately starts to rant about Mr N busting him for cheating earlier that day. Zack says he didn't cheat but Mr N failed him anyway. They all grumble about how unfair Mr N is and how he seems to target the rich kids.
Maybe because they're all annoying little douche canoes.
Also, can we please stop having the same conversations over and over, Stine? Thank you.
Zack pulls a test tube out of his backpack and says it's skunk scent. He wants to pour it on Mr N's doorstep in revenge for the 'F'. Jo desperately wants to impress them so she volunteers to be the one to pour the skunk juice on the porch. They all cheer her on.
Jo sneaks over to the house. She's standing on the porch when she hears movement just behind the door. She's so startled that she drops the test tube and it shatters. The porch light comes on and Jo makes a run for it. When she meets back up with the others, Zack offers to buy her a coke at the diner to celebrate.
They all pile into someone's car and drive off to the diner where they drink cokes and eat french fries and hang out for awhile. Then they drive Jo back home and drop her off. A figure steps out of the shadows and Jo knows it's Mr N coming to get his revenge on her.
{{{GASP}}}
But not too deeply because of the skunk smell.
LOLZ
It's just Margaret with some chicken soup. She's pissed that Jo lied to her about being sick and warns her that the rich kids aren't really her friends. Jo doesn't listen to that at all and Margaret leaves in a huff.
Weeks pass. Dennis and the brat crew have started hanging out regularly at Jo's house because her mom is never home. They mostly do their homework and joke about how they want to kill Mr N. One day Dennis goes to get a pencil out of the desk and finds the gun. The boys are excited to check it out but the girls are freaked out. Melody threatens to leave if they don't put it away.
The boys start to toss it around between them. They're laughing until Dennis catches it weird and accidentally pulls the trigger. I'm not entirely sure how that's even possible but whatevs. The gun goes off and shoots Zack in the shoulder. Everyone panics. Jo calls 911 to report the shooting. Dennis and Lanny drag Zack outside and order the girls to clean up the blood in the house. Jo tries but doesn't do a very good job of it.
I'm....confused. How did the gun get loaded? We were told it was unloaded when Jo had it out earlier. Where did this bullet come from?
Dennis and Lanny end up dragging Zack into Mr N's yard and they put the gun on his porch. When Mr N hears the sirens, he comes out and stupidly picks up the gun. The cops arrive to see him standing there holding a gun with a bleeding teenager on his lawn. Dennis yells that Mr N shot Zack and the police arrest him.
Two weeks pass. Zack is okay and Mr N didn't actually get arrested because there was a blood trail leading from Jo's house, blood inside Jo's house and the gun was registered to Jo's dad. Dennis' parents manage to get the charges against him dropped and the whole thing is “hushed up” to the point that no one knows what actually happened to Zack's shoulder. Of course, being accused of attempted murder has made Mr N even crankier and now Jo is on the receiving end too. To add insult to injury, her mom has ordered her to stop hanging out with the brat brigade. Not that she listens. She sneaks out to see Dennis.
Dennis whines incessantly about Mr N ruining his Olympic dreams and Jo is so in love with him that she desperately wants to fix it. When he dares her to kill Mr N again, she agrees to do it.
By Monday the entire school is talking about the dare. Random kids keep coming up to her to wish her luck and give her high fives. It's surreal. Zack and Lanny start a betting pool. The pot is over $1000 and they promise Jo half of it if she goes through with the murder. The money entices Jo but she's starting to have second thoughts. Even though she's imagined doing all kinds of evil things in her head, she doesn't think she can actually go through with killing a person.
The murder is supposed to happen on Saturday but Jo is freaking out about it so when she sees Mr N out by his woodpile earlier in the week, she just decides to go ahead and do it. She figures her best bet is to make it look like an accident so she sneaks up on him and shoves the woodpile over onto him. All that does is knock him over so she picks up a log and hits him over the head until he dies.
{{{GASP}}}
LOLZ
Just another Jo fantasy. In reality she just watches him until he goes back into his house.
A couple of days pass. Once again, Jo decides not to wait until Saturday to kill Mr N because she worries she'll chicken out if she gives herself too much time. She grabs the gun and starts to head to his house but gets waylaid by Margaret who has come over to work on that school project.
A couple more days pass and it's finally Saturday. Mr N is outside painting his shed. There's plenty of opportunity for Jo to shoot him but she hesitates. Dennis arrives at her house because he's worried she's going to back out. She goes to the bathroom because she feels like she's going to throw up. While she's in there, she hears the sound of a car backfiring out on the street and it startles her.
Jo emerges from the bathroom and picks up the gun from the desk. It feels warm in her hand. She goes out to find Mr N kind of slumped over the woodpile. She aims the gun at his back but can't bring herself to pull the trigger. She puts the gun in her pocket, relieved that she's not a murderer after all. Mr N hasn't moved. Jo goes closer to check on him and realizes he's been shot in the back.
I can see her dismissing the sound she heard in the bathroom as a car backfiring but the warm gun really should have been a clue.
Dennis comes out and is excited that Mr N is dead. Jo says that she didn't shoot him but Dennis says she did and orders her to look at the gun. It's obviously been recently fired. He says he called the police and initially promises to say Jo shot Mr N in self-defense but he drops that pretty quickly and it's clear he intends to place the blame squarely on Jo's shoulders.
Caitlin appears and she and Dennis celebrate the success of their plan. To make sure Jo knows how genius it all was, Dennis explains it to her. I will NEVER understand the bad guy monologue. It always works against them. Someone always overhears it or secretly records it. Why do they keep doing it? Just keep your damn mouths shut and you might actually get away with things.
Dennis says he initially started to be nice to Jo because he needed someone to take the blame for the murder. To make sure she'd look guilty, he spread the news about the dare around school and had Zack start taking bets so it would look like Jo did it for the money. He used Jo's dad's gun to frame her and made sure she got gunshot residue all over her hands. Jo hears the sirens approaching and knows she's about to be arrested. She aims the gun at Dennis and pulls the trigger.
{{{GASP}}}
Is anyone really falling for this anymore?
LOLZ
Of course it's all in her head. She does nothing but stand there. The cops arrive. Dennis and Caitlin tearfully say that they tried to stop Jo but she shot Mr N anyway. They tell the cops about the bet and the money and Jo is immediately put into handcuffs. One cop reads her her rights while the other goes to check on Mr N. He's actually still alive so they rush to get an ambulance while Dennis and Caitlin start to look very nervous. I'm not sure why. He was shot from behind so it's unlikely that he actually saw who shot him.
While investigating the scene, the cops find a running tape recorder that must have fallen out of Mr N's pocket. Why was he recording while he was painting the shed? {{{SHRUG}}} Maybe he was practicing a lecture? It's not really explained at all. They listen to the recording and hear Dennis' confession.
Jo is un-arrested. Dennis is arrested and so is Caitlin. I guess for being an accomplice or something. I don't fucking know. They're taken away and the book just ends there. We don't get to find out what happens to Mr N. Hell, I'm not even sure if this book actually happened. For all I know, Jo made the entire thing up in her head.
This one was annoying. More so than usual. I don't mind an unreliable narrator per se but I hate it when I read pages of something happening and then the author is just like 'psych', none of that happened lol. It makes me feel like I'm wasting my time.
Stine wastes my time. Sigh.
I'd still rather read him than Pascal.
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