**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: High on a hillside overlooking Salem University, hidden in shadows and shrouded in silence, sits Nightingale Hall. Nightmare Hall, the students call it. Because that’s where the terror began. Johanna Dunn is strikingly beautiful, just like all her friends. Until the accident. Now her perfect face is scarred and bandaged. She’s embarrassed by the strange looks she gets on campus – even from her closet friends. A pretty face isn’t everything, is it? Somebody thinks it is. Somebody thinks she’s plain old ugly now. Too ugly to live.
TRIGGER WARNING: There are a couple of instances of attempted suffocation in this book as well as the use of restraints. If either of those things will bother you, please skip this blog.
📖The Silent Scream (Nightmare Hall Book One): Jess and Ian arrive at Nightingale Hall only to find it haunted by the spirit of Giselle. They spend the book trying to figure out if Giselle was murdered or if she killed herself and eventually the bad guy is taken out by a wet, flying photograph.
📖The Roommate (Nightmare Hall Book Two): We meet four girls (Danni, Margot, Lacey and Maureen) who share a suite in a dorm that is not Nightingale Hall. Nothing really happens other than Danni claiming to receive threatening phone calls and messages. We spend the entire book listening to her tell us that someone is after her and it ends up she's the bad guy.
📖Deadly Attraction (Nightmare Hall Book Three): The entire campus thinks Darlene is injuring/murdering people because she’s so upset that Robert dumped her. Hailey falls in love with – and then suspects – Finn who is secretly Darlene’s brother. The bad guy turns out to be Pete from book two who briefly dated Maureen. Turns out he is madly in love with Darlene and applies a broad meaning to ‘touch her and die’.
📖The Wish (Nightmare Hall Book Four): Alex and her friends – Julie, Jenny, Gabe, Marty, Kiki, Kyle and Bennett - get obsessed with having their fortunes told by a machine called The Wizard at Vinnie’s pizza place. The fortunes come true in horrible ways that leave them injured, disabled or dead. In the end, we learn that Bennett was helping The Wizard do it’s terrible deeds in exchange for better knees to play football.
📖The Scream Team (Nightmare Hall Book Five): Delle gets to campus early to attend a JV Cheerleading camp. She learns that most of the cheerleaders died over the summer in a tragic bus accident. Strange things start happening and Delle repeatedly sees a ghostly figure of a lady in a red dress that seems to be a Mothman-esque harbinger of doom. In the end, the bad guy turned out to be the Coach whose brother died in the bus accident making her form a hatred of cheerleaders in general. No, it didn’t make sense. At all.
📖Guilty (Nightmare Hall Book Six): No, you didn’t miss this one. I don’t own it and it isn’t on KU so we’re skipping it for now. Maybe someday it will be added and we can come back to it.
This book was published in 1994 and this is my first time reading it. I read it on Kindle but I own the physical copy so I was able to get a picture of the inside cover.
I don’t think this one is particularly well done but I love this kind of cover so I’m letting it slide.
{{{Note: there are several chapter’s from the villain’s POV in this book. I will be referring to them as the bad guy or BG but that doesn’t mean they are male. It doesn’t mean they aren’t, either. I have no idea. I haven’t read the book yet.}}}
We begin with a bad guy prologue as usual. It’s subtitled “Several Years Earlier”. Than what? We don’t know. We learn that BG is a child and they’re kept inside during the daytime hours by someone only referred to as “they”. {{{Note from future me: we learn later that "they" are BG's parents. Ordinarily I wouldn't put that information in the blog until it was revealed in the book, but referring to BG as 'they' and the parents as 'they' was getting too confusing. Plus it's not really a big twist or anything. It's pretty clear from the beginning that BG is talking about their parents so I'm just going to adjust the blog to make it easier to understand.}}} BG's parents say they have to stay inside for their own protection. Why? No clue, but it’s hinted that there’s something about BG’s appearance that is out of the ordinary. Their parents are keeping them away from other people for their “safety”.
We meet our protagonist in Chapter One. Her name is Johanna but she goes by Jo thank goodness. She tells us that 2nd semester has just started so we know it’s January. She’s getting ready for a party but she’s not very excited about it. She asks her roommate Kelly if they can go to a movie instead. Kelly says she’s spent too long getting ready to waste it on a movie.
A girl named Nan stops by. Nan and Kelly are super hyped about the party but Jo has a Bad Feeling about it.
Please no. Not again. I can’t take any more Bad Feelings. That Stine book almost broke me.
Kelly tells Nan that Jo is trying to get out of the party and Nan replies that they have to go. The party will suck if the Beautiful People aren’t there.
So apparently, Jo, Nan, Kelly, Reed (Kelly’s boyfriend) and Carl (Nan’s boyfriend) modeled for a department store ad back in the fall. People on campus saw it and started calling them the Beautiful People as a joke. Jo hates it but she also recognizes that being pretty and popular is way better than being plain and alone.
If you say so.
I get the feeling Nan doesn't hate the Beautiful People label. It seems to be something she's proud of.
Jo tells them about her Bad Feeling but they barely listen. Reed and Carl show up and the five of them leave for the party. It’s being held by Missy whose dad is the head of the history department or something (I honestly forgot to write down which department so don’t hold me to the history thing). They’re super rich and have a mansion on a hill.
The house is packed when they get there. Kelly and Reed peel off to explore the house and Carl and Nan go to the ballroom to dance. Jo is super uncomfortable with the crush of people and ends up in the library. She thinks it’s empty at first but then realizes there’s a guy stretched out on the couch. He’s described as tall and leggy with coffee-colored hair and blue eyes. Jo thinks he looks like an adorable nerd and she likes his smile. He introduces himself as Evan and I liked him for about a paragraph. Then Jo tries to leave the room and he grabs her by the wrist and prevents her from leaving so I don’t like him anymore. Evan says they need to get to know each other better and she tells herself that she needs to give him a chance.
No, you don’t.
Seriously. Politeness gets so many women killed. Don’t be a bitch, but don’t stay in a situation that makes you uncomfortable because you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings.
Anyway, Evan leads her over to the couch and they talk to each other for awhile. She kind of likes him despite his creepy behavior. She still has the Bad Feeling though. Eventually they go to the ballroom to dance. Jo notices a “tall, thin, plain girl with straight blonde hair” sitting alone watching everyone dance and feels sorry for her. Jo assumes the girl wants to be dancing but maybe she’s just people watching.
Missy comes up and demands a picture of the Beautiful People so Jo rounds up her friends. Missy is fussy about the picture and finally makes them pose by a sliding glass door. There’s a bench that she directs the girls to sit on and she has the boys stand behind them. Evan points out that the two candelabras on either side of the bench are going to cast shadows on their faces but Missy says the flickering candles add atmosphere.
While they’re posing, someone opens the patio door and wind sweeps into the room, making the flames on the candles dance erratically. Someone screams that Reed’s jacket is on fire and chaos erupts. Jo gets up to help Reed take off his jacket as people start rushing all around. Suddenly someone slams into her and sends her flying into the glass patio door.
Jo wakes up in the infirmary. She has a bandage on her face and one on her neck. The campus doctor (who I’m just going to call Doc because I can’t be bothered to learn her name) tells Jo that she has one “serious cut” on the side of her neck and a “less serious” one under her right eye. Hoh really broke out the medical terminology for that sentence. Both of those cuts required stitches. Doc says Jo has to stay overnight since she lost consciousness and might have a head injury.
Sounds like something she should get evaluated at a real hospital.
Reed’s fine by the way. They got his jacket off and put the fire out without damage to him or the house.
Jo tries not to freak out about her injuries. She tells herself that she’s not that superficial but in the next breath she worries that no one will like her if she’s ugly.
So I guess she’s saying her friends ARE superficial? Sounds like she needs better friends.
Jo goes to sleep and then wakes up the next morning, irritated because there’s some kind of construction behind the building and the noise is bugging her. She looks in the mirror and is shocked to see all the tiny cuts and bruises all over her face. I guess she was expecting there to be only the two injuries? Her friends show up to walk her back to the dorm and they all seem weirded out by her appearance. So does everyone else along the way. They’re all staring at her. She thinks they’re horrified by how she looks. I’m sure most of them are just wondering what the hell happened to her.
Jo sees cops walking around and asks about it. Nan says that some freshman named Sharon is missing. She was in a car accident back in the fall and her face got pretty banged up. At first I thought they were talking about the girl who got hurt in the book with the Wizard but her name was either Julie or Jenny I think. There wasn’t a Sharon in that one. I guess car accidents causing major facial trauma are prevalent in this town. Nan thinks she just got depressed and went back home but that wouldn’t explain why the cops are looking for her.
When they get back to the dorm room, they’re stunned to see that someone has glued black fabric over all the mirrors. They pry the fabric off and then everyone leaves so Jo can rest. She takes a pain pill and goes to sleep.
BG is upset because they wanted to get to know Jo but now she’s damaged. For now, they’re hoping that she’ll keep her face covered. If she does, they can wait and see how disfigured she’ll be and make a decision then. If she doesn’t, they’ll have to act to make sure she isn’t traumatizing people.
So I'm already confused. Hoh made it sound like BG was continually told that they couldn't go outside because other people would make fun of them for whatever it is that's different about them. They weren't told that they couldn't go outside because they would traumatize other people. If BG was saying that Jo had to stay inside so other people wouldn't torment them, fine. That makes sense in our story. But to say that Jo has to stay inside so she won't torment other people doesn't really fit.
We skip to Monday. People keep staring at Jo on campus and in class. Evan meets her for lunch and they go to the dining hall together. As soon as Jo walks in, conversations die down and everyone stares. This feels super unrealistic to me. She has two bandages and some scratches. It’s not going to stop everyone in their tracks. Hoh’s being pretty dramatic here.
Jo and Evan get their food and then go sit with the rest of her friends. Reed and Kelly are acting super uncomfortable around her. Jo tries to make a joke to lighten the mood and Kelly gets upset that she isn’t taking this seriously enough.
Isn’t taking what seriously enough? A cut on her face and a cut on her neck? These are not dire issues.
Jo's friends are awful.
Nan asks if Jo will get plastic surgery and offers to get her the number of the doctor her mom uses. Jo laughs and says it won't be necessary. Her modeling days might be over but it doesn’t matter since she’s pre-med. She’s okay with a couple of scars. This seems to upset Reed and Kelly even more and they leave the table.
At least I hope it is. Let’s face it, based on the history of this series, BG is either Doc or Jo herself.
Or someone I didn't bother to put in the blog because I didn't think he was important.
Sigh.
Carl and Nan head out to go to class leaving Evan and Jo alone. Evan asks if she’s going to Cath’s costume party on Friday. We know Cath. She’s the uptight chick from book one. Apparently she was sick on Halloween and has decided to throw a Halloween in January party. Jo says she hates costume parties. Evan jokes that at least she can wear a mask and everyone won’t stare at her. Lucky for him, she thinks that’s funny.
I wouldn't.
Jo goes to her afternoon class. People are staring and whispering and she’s starting to think that maybe one of her bandages has slipped off or something. She digs her compact out of her purse to check and is horrified to find that a piece of black felt has been glued to the mirror. She immediately freaks out, shaking so much that someone carries her out of the building and to the infirmary. Doc is alarmed and threatens to give her some kind of shot to knock her out. Jo snaps out of it because she doesn’t want to spend another night in the infirmary with the construction going on. She tells Doc that she just had a flashback of falling through the patio door but she’s okay now. Doc lets her leave.
Evan rushes up to her. He heard what happened and he wanted to make sure she’s okay. She doesn’t tell him about the compact for some reason. He walks her back to her dorm but doesn’t go inside. When Jo reaches her floor, the RA pops her head out to tell Jo she had a delivery. It’s an octagonal shaped box from a local department store. There’s no card. When Jo opens it, she finds a wide black hat with a thick black veil that would completely cover her face when worn.
Later, Jo tells Nan and Kelly about the compact and shows them the hat. Kelly throws the hat out the window. They decide Jo needs a distraction so the three of them go to the local costume shop.
They have a costume shop that stays open year-round? How much business does this place do in January?
Nan picks out a Marie Antoinette costume and Kelly opts for Morticia Adams. Jo can’t find anything but then the shop owner shows her a Catwoman costume that comes with a mask that will cover her face. Jo loves it. Her friends say she needs a whip so Jo leaves the costume and some money with them and then heads across the street to the sporting goods store.
Do sporting goods stores carry whips?
As Jo’s crossing the street, she thinks she sees Evan go into the store but when she gets there, he’s nowhere to be found. She doesn’t find a whip but she does find a black jump rope. She figures she can make it work. She goes back to the costume shop to find Carl and Reed trying to convince Evan that they need to go to the party dressed as the Three Muskateers.
They leave the costume shop and go to…...can you guess?
This place is eternal.
Doc is there and stops by the table to see how Jo is doing. That puts all our suspects in one place (Jo, Kelly, Nan, Carl, Reed, Evan and Doc). I’m not going to do odds for them because they’re all pretty equal right now.
After Doc leaves, Reed comments on how pretty she is right in front of his girlfriend. Carl changes the subject pretty quickly to Sharon who is still missing. I guess Hoh wants us to think that BG took care of Sharon because her face got messed up in the car crash.
Later in her dorm room, Jo empties the bags from the costume shop and the sporting goods store. Inside is a tube of full-coverage corrective makeup.
BG is proud of themself for the make up bit. They want Jo to get the hint and hide in her room until they know if there’s permanent damage. They want to protect her like they were protected as a child. They just want to keep her safe.
But if she’s permanently disfigured, they’re going to kill her.
Jo shows the makeup to Kelly who thinks the store clerk probably put it in there by accident. Jo thinks it came out of the sporting goods bag and they don’t sell makeup there. She thinks someone put it in the bag at the pizza place. Kelly says she didn’t notice anyone around the bag but she wasn’t really watching it. Then she asks if Jo is going to wear the makeup to cover her scars once the wounds heal. Jo is hurt by the question and doesn’t answer.
We skip to Wednesday. Everyone goes to the state park in the afternoon after classes to ski. Jo spends most of her time in a nearby restaurant instead. She’s in there sipping cocoa when Missy comes up. Missy says her dad has agreed to pay all of Jo’s medical costs. I’m not sure she has any. Does the infirmary charge? Ours didn’t. They didn’t do stitches or overnight observations either. Missy comments that the person who should really be paying is the one who pushed Jo into the door. Jo thinks it was an accident but Missy thinks it was deliberate.
Some random chick named Tina stops by the table. She’s forgotten her sunscreen so her face is windburned and her lips are blistering.
Does sunscreen help with windburn? I thought that’s why people wore face coverings. I don’t know. I don’t ski.
Jo suggests Tina go to the infirmary to get something for her burns. Tina says she will.
BG is pissed that Tina is walking around in such a disgusting state. They’re going to let her live, however, because blisters are a temporary condition. Unless they run into her again and can’t control their compulsion to carry out their mission. BG thinks “they” would be so proud if they knew what BG was doing.
We skip ahead to the costume party at Nightmare Hall. If we don’t see Jess and Ian, I’m going to riot. Evan is dressed as Groucho Marx. He and Jo are the only ones in the group that haven’t been inside Nightmare Hall yet and Jo is excited to explore the old house. Evan is less enthusiastic. He says he grew up in an old house and it never looked good, no matter how much his parents spent on fixing it up.
I guess we’re supposed to assume that since he didn’t like the aesthetic imperfections in his house, he’s BG who doesn’t like aesthetic imperfections in people. Sure, Hoh.
Cath is dressed as Glinda. She was ahead of her time. Not much happens for a few pages. Jo and Evan dance. He asks where she got her ‘whip’ and she mentions the sporting goods store and says she thought she saw him go into it. He says he went to the store next door but doesn’t specify which one. Jo gets hot under her masks and mentions that she’s tempted to take the bandages off for awhile. Immediately Kelly, Reed and Evan protest and tell her to leave them on. She gets upset with them because she thinks they want her to hide her face. I think they just want you to keep your wounds clean, Jo.
We learn that Jo hasn’t removed the bandages since they were placed by Doc. How the hell is she taking a shower without getting them wet? How is she checking for infection? This is not good wound care, Hoh. You know those things would be nasty after a week without being changed.
Jo flees to the attic for some damn reason. She stands there for a few minutes and then feels silly for getting angry and goes back downstairs. I’m not sure what the point of that was. Cath catches her in the kitchen and asks if she’ll go down to the basement to get more soda. Jo hesitates because the basement is probably creepy. Cath tells her to be careful on the stairs in her high-heeled boots and then takes off again.
The basement is pretty dark and cold. Jo gets the soda and turns back toward the stairs. Someone is standing at the top. She calls out Evan’s name (although I have no idea how he would know she was down there) but there’s no answer. The figure starts down the steps but suddenly another figure appears behind the first and pushes the first down the stairs.
The person falling down the stairs knocks into Jo who didn’t bother to move. They both crash into the stone wall – Jo hitting her back and the person hitting their head. Suddenly Evan appears at the top of the stairs calling her name. Jo untangles herself from the person and realizes they’re dressed almost identically to her – black leggings, black top, black ski mask (cat burglar). It’s Tina and she isn’t moving.
Evan comes down to check things out and then asks Jo to call an ambulance for Tina who clearly has a head injury and most likely a broken leg. Jo goes up the stairs, noting that there’s something slippery on the top step. She starts to doubt whether she saw a second person at all and thinks Tina might have just slipped. Later when she and Evan go back to look at the puddle, she discovers it’s gone. Kelly says there was soda there but she cleaned it up so the paramedics wouldn’t fall.
The party breaks up then and everyone leaves. NO JESS OR IAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You can’t do that to me, Hoh.
Kelly, Nan, Carl and Reed head over to………
……...but Jo isn’t hungry so Evan takes her back to campus. He says he isn’t sure that Tina’s fall was an accident. She yells at him for scaring her. He apologizes and then he kisses her.
Later, when she’s alone in the dorm room, Jo admits to herself that Tina might have been pushed and that the person doing the pushing might have thought Tina was her. She thinks it was a warning not to show her face in public.
The next morning, Jo starts to resent Kelly for being so beautiful. She acts like a total bitch to her for no reason. Luckily Kelly doesn’t seem to get too upset by it and Jo eventually apologizes. They meet up with everyone else to return their costumes to the rental place. Jo looks at the stores on either side of the sporting goods store. One is a drug store and one is a beauty supply store. She remembers the makeup and gets suspicious. She tries to talk herself out of it but she’s uneasy. She decides not to spend time alone with Evan until she’s sure.
Jo’s stitches are bothering her so she heads over to the infirmary where Doc tells her they’re inflamed and gives her an ointment. Impulsively, Jo asks if Doc knew Sharon. Doc says she did and she saw a lot of her because her wounds weren’t healing properly. Doc says she was horribly depressed about being disfigured and plastic surgery wasn’t an option until things healed.
I know this is two years before HIPPA but this is still a privacy violation, Doc. C’mon.
Doc also says something strange about how most people with facial injuries go to their rooms and never come back out. Which isn’t remotely true and is a very weird thing to say to someone with facial injuries. Jo is so bummed out that she decides to go for a walk in the woods after she leaves the infirmary. She has many philosophical thoughts about taking looks for granted and what happens when a beautiful person is suddenly rendered ugly. It’s….boring.
At one point she realizes how far from campus she’s wandered and she turns back. Then she hears footsteps behind her. She keeps turning to look but no one is there. She starts to run. So do the footsteps. She goes faster. So do they, and they’re gaining on her. Then an arm wraps around her from behind and puts some kind of soft, slippery bag over her head. It smells like a garbage bag.
Jo struggles but can’t get free. The person whispers: “You didn’t put a bag over your head the way you should have so I’m doing it for you.” Jo feels them wrap something around her neck and tie it tight and then they laugh and run off.
Jo tries to untie the string holding the bag in place but can’t. I don’t know why her first move wasn’t to tear a hole in it. I don’t care how expensive your garbage bags are, they can be torn. She does try that next but says the bag can’t be torn. I refuse to believe this. She sucks the bag into her mouth and chews a hole into it. I’m surprised that worked but her fingernails didn’t. Whatever. She manages to tear it off.
Suddenly Jo knows in her heart that Sharon is dead and the person who attacked Jo definitely killed Sharon. That’s a wild assumption to make but sure. That’s where Hoh’s probably headed.
Jo goes back to her dorm room. Nan and Kelly are horrified to see her with the garbage bag still hanging around her neck. Kelly says her face is bleeding again. Jo says she scratched it trying to get the bag off her face. She explains what happened. Nan wants her to call the police but Kelly is more concerned with her fixing her bandages so her wounds are covered again. Jo gets suspicious of Kelly. Jo says there’s no use calling the cops because they won’t take her seriously.
Protagonist refuses to call the cops even though they should? Check.
Jo decides to call Tina. Evan shows up as she’s dialing and quietly joins the group. Jo asks Tina what happened on the night of the party. Tina says Cath asked her to help with the soda so she headed for the basement. She was standing at the top of the stairs when someone came up behind her and whispered “I told you not to go running around without your face covered up, Johanna” and then pushed her down the stairs.
Jo hangs up and tells the others what Tina said. She dramatically declares that someone wants her dead. Kelly calls her crazy. Evan tells her to call the police but she says they’re coming to talk to her the next day because Tina reported what BG said.
Did Hoh forget to write the part where Tina told her that? Because I didn’t read it.
Jo thinks talking to the police will be a waste of time. She says they’ll probably laugh at her.
Evan suggests a distraction. Reed and Carl are skating at the pond and he says they should join them to take their minds off things. The girls agree. By the time they get around and get down there, it’s snowing. They skate for awhile anyway. The tape on Jo’s bandages gets wet and they slip off.
You mean to tell me they survived a weeks worth of showering and sleeping but a little snow knocked them off?
Jo can see the shock in Evan’s eyes when he sees the exposed stitches. He covers it well but she’s still resentful. She says she going to go to the infirmary to get new bandages because it’s closer than her dorm room. Evan doesn’t offer to go with her because someone asks him to join a hockey game. She’s a little surprised he’s letting her go off on her own when two attempts have been made on her life.
Me too.
I do not like Evan, y’all.
Jo considers asking Nan or Kelly to go with her but ultimately decides to go on her own. She thinks it might be a blow to BG’s ego if they see how unaffected she is.
This is so stupid I can’t even think of something to say. Hoh has rendered me speechless.
Doc isn’t in the office. The nurse is busy dealing with a sprained ankle so she tells Jo to get tape and bandages from the supply closet in the back room. Jo is digging through the supply closet when an arm wraps around her neck from behind. She’s thrown into a chair and her arms are tied behind her back. BG is wearing all black with a black ski mask so she can’t identify them.
BG mutters about how there were patient and they warned Jo over and over but she wouldn’t listen. Jo asks what they want and BG says they want her to “stop offending people with the sight of that ghastly face of yours”. BG starts winding gauze around and around Jo's head while doing their monologue about how important it is to keep the world beautiful. BG tells Jo that they had to stay inside until they were 12 but it was for their own good.
The gauze covers Jo’s eyes and nose. She begs BG to stop. BG ignores that and keeps talking about how they were protected as a child and how they were trying to protect Jo but she ignored them. The gauze runs out so BG steps away to get more. Jo tries to walk with the chair tied to her but falls. BG gets pissed. They put Jo upright again and say she’s going to learn just like Sharon learned. BG sent Sharon a veiled hat and some makeup too but Sharon refused to use them. BG says Sharon and Jo only have themselves to blame.
BG covers Jo’s mouth tightly with the gauze. Jo panics and kicks herself over, landing on her back. She kicks out with her feet and catches BG. There’s a huge crash that the nurse doesn't hear somehow. Jo gets up and starts banging the legs of the chair into the door. Suddenly it opens and a confused male voice asks if he can fill up his water bottle. Jo hears BG escape through a side door.
Where did the second door come from?
The man turns out to be one of the construction workers who has been working on the wall behind the infirmary. He frees Jo and calls the police for her. I’m just wondering where the hell that nurse is. How did she not hear the commotion?
Jo tells the cops about all the attack and what BG said about Sharon. She keeps referring to BG as ‘he’ but I’m not convinced. I really think BG is a woman.
BG knows that Jo is probably telling the police about Sharon but they aren’t too worried about it because the police will never be able to find Sharon’s body.
Do you think she’s buried under the construction? There’s a reason Hoh keeps mentioning it.
Evan comes over to Jo’s dorm room. He says he’s been looking all over for her. He realized after she left that he shouldn’t have let her go off on her own so he left the pond and went to the infirmary just a few minutes behind her. The nurse told him that Jo had already come and gone. I guess while he was doing that, the others noticed she was gone too. Kelly and Nan went back to the dorm to see if she was there while Carl went to check the burger place in town and Reed stayed at the pond in case she came back. When none of them found her, Kelly, Nan and Reed went to join Carl at the burger place. I guess they weren’t too worried.
Jo realizes that none of them have an alibi for when she was attacked.
I mean….Nan and Kelly were together. So they do.
Also, why would Carl go check the burger place? Why would he think Jo went there? She’s confused by this too and asks Evan. He says they’d all talked about going there and thought someone must have mentioned it to her. No one did.
I’m getting the feeling that the rest of the Beautiful People don’t like Jo that much.
Jo tells Evan about the attack and he’s suitably upset. He offers to stay with her until Kelly comes back and she’s grateful despite the fact she vowed not to be alone with him until she was sure he wasn't the bad guy. He apologizes to her for letting her go off alone. She can tell he feels really guilty about it, so she kisses him to make him feel better.
Eventually the Beautiful People show up with burgers and fries for Evan and Jo. When he goes to pull his wallet out of his pocket to pay them for the food, a hot pink receipt falls out. It’s from the beauty supply shop next to the sporting goods store. The Beautiful People leave again so Jo and Evan can be alone. Jo asks him about the receipt and he says he bought sunscreen there but he turned out to be allergic to it so he kept the receipt to return it.
Why the hell would be buy sunscreen from a beauty supply shop instead of someplace like Walmart? It had to be twice as expensive there.
Jo is immediately suspicious that he actually bought the full coverage make up there. She tells him that she needs to put clean bandages on her face and then she goes into the bathroom. She’s standing at the sink trying to convince herself that Evan isn’t BG and then suddenly BG is right behind her. They’re wearing a ski mask but she can see their blue eyes. Evan has blue eyes. And Evan was the only one in the room when she came into the bathroom.
BG forces her head down and then takes off the ski mask and instructs her to put it on backwards. When she doesn’t comply, BG does it for her. They lead her out of her dorm room and down the fire stairs. Somehow no one sees her being led across campus wearing a backwards ski mask. BG forces her into a car. It smells like leather and cinnamon gum and aftershave that Jo immediately associates with Evan. She feels a nick on the armrest and knows immediately that she’s in Evan’s car.
C’mon, Hoh. Jo’s never been in Evan’s car. You never once mentioned cinnamon gum or a nicked armrest. This is sloppy.
Jo asks BG why they’re doing this. BG says “because you’re ugly”. Well. That was direct and to the point. BG drives for a minute and then stops the car. They tell Jo to face the window and then they remove the mask from her and put it back on themself.
BG drags Jo out of the car. She sees that they are behind the infirmary where the construction is being done. No one is there right now. BG directs her to a deep hole beside the wall that’s being poured. They say the hole will be filled with concrete tomorrow. BG instructs her to take a stick and write her name on the wet concrete of the wall so it can serve as her headstone. While she does, BG tells her that Sharon is under another part of the wall and points it out.
We’ve come to the bad guy monologue portion of our book. BG says they killed Sharon to save her and then launches into their life story. They were born with a port wine stain birthmark that covered the entire left side of their face. They were kept inside during the daylight hours for 12 years because their parents thought everyone would make fun of them. Then their mom learned about a new laser treatment that was having promising results. BG had the treatment and it cleared up their birthmark entirely. They decided to make it their mission to save people as they had been saved. Not the laser treatment part but the part where ugly people have to stay hidden from the world for their own good. And so others won’t have to look at them.
Jo says BG’s parents were wrong to do that to them. BG says they were just being protective. They pick up a shovel and act like they’re going to hit Jo with it but then they start crying. They say it was easier to kill Sharon because they didn’t know her. They don’t want to kill Jo but she is giving them no choice. Jo gets up and tries to run but BG hits her with the shovel. Jo falls into the hole.
It turns out the hole is only about shoulder deep on Jo. So not as deep as Hoh made it sound at first.
BG starts to shovel dirt in the hole. They reassure Jo that she won’t be buried alive but Jo doesn’t take much comfort in that. BG starts muttering and singing to themself about being locked up in a hot room while other kids play outside. Jo notices Evan’s keys on the ground and realizes BG dropped them at some point. She uses the stick she was writing her name with to snag the keys and drag them toward her. Luckily BG is too busy shoveling to notice. Jo sticks the keys in her pocket but then has no idea what to do next. BG might not have seen her get the keys but they’re sure to notice her climbing out of the hole.
All the shoveling makes BG hot and they rip off their ski mask.
Any guesses?
I’ll give you a minute.
It’s not Evan.
And I was right about BG being female.
I was wrong about BG being Doc though.
Pity.
It’s Nan.
Which makes no damn sense when you think about it because Hoh said she was with Kelly when Jo was being attacked.
Nan says she hit Evan over the head, stole his keys and then stuffed him in Jo’s closet. Jo asks if she can have a last wish. At first Nan doesn’t want to entertain it but she does kind of like Jo so she agrees. Jo whispers something. Nan leans closer to hear what she’s saying and Jo stabs the stick into her face, scratching her deeply. Nan immediately freaks out about her perfect face being ruined again. Jo crawls out of the hole and makes a run for Evan’s car. Nan is in hot pursuit but Jo is able to reach the car and get in. Then instead of backing up and driving away, Jo chooses to go forward. Into Nan. She fucking hits Nan with the car.
Nan doesn’t die though.
Someone sees Jo plow into Nan and calls the police. Jo tells them about the murder attempt and about Sharon being buried under the wall. They go to dig her out so RIP the wall. That thing’s never getting finished.
The book ends there.
This was one of the better ones. There were some holes (LIKE KELLY AND NAN BEING TOGETHER WHEN JO WAS ATTACKED IN THE INFIRMARY) and the fact that Nan's motives didn't really mesh with her backstory very well but it still held together better than most of them. Or maybe I just liked it better because Jo wasn't super annoying and there wasn't some lame supernatural element thrown in for no reason.
I still don’t like Evan though.
#bringbackIanandJess
No comments:
Post a Comment