Ice queen, right ahead

[the_oracle]

Lovestruck
March 1986

Will Suzanne succeed in changing Ken?

Madly in love...


   No one at Sweet Valley High can believe that football star Ken Matthews has fallen in love with super-sophisticated Suzanne Hanlon. Suzanne likes poetry, gourmet food, and art films, while Ken's idea of a good time is listening to rock 'n' roll and eating pizza. Two people couldn't be more different.
   Elizabeth Wakefield knows that snobbish Suzanne is wrong for Ken. But Ken seems to be blindly in love with Suzanne and is willing to do anything she wants. Can anyone help Ken come to his senses before he gets hurt?

  Kay, wait a second here while I recover. Ken is supposed to be the one sooooooo in love that he overlooks the simple fact that Suzanne is the name of the devil. Doesn't matter whether it's Suzy D or Hands-Off Hanlon, the name means the girl is a bitch with a capital B. And yet, Suzy looks totally into Ken doll there, and he... well, he looks a bit cro-mag. Which is just uncool as Ken is supposed to be cute. [He's one of the saving graces of SVH:SY for me.] He also doesn't look at all interested in her. While we're stuck in superficial-ville, Suz is really pretty. I wasn't aware the Valley allowed the short haired brunettes to be pretty, but they must.

  So. Ken has fallen, cover appearances aside, for Suzanne Hanlon, one of the richer girls in their class, and one of the few to give Lila a run for her snobby money. Perhaps because while Li preaches about glamour, etiquette, and culture, she also knows how to have a good time. Suz doesn't seem like she'd know what a good time was even if it walked up and clocked her. And after a few minutes with her, you really wish someone would do the honors because oh my lord, she's suffering from such an acute case of pretension that you'd think she went to college back east.* The kicker is that Suz seems to have fallen for him, too.
  But... she hasn't. She keeps trying to change all the things that make Ken... uh, Ken, and that means, at best, she's fallen for the idea of what she could make him. And the fact that he's got to be cute, because she doesn't seem to try and change the exterior. Maybe dress it up a little, but nothing drastic there. Too bad that's about the only thing she seems to like as-is. She disapproves of his musical tastes and shoves some Mozart on him. Which is fine, you do try and share what you love with someone you like. But instead of occasionally tolerating some classic Rolling Stones, she belittles them and the entire genre [rock, darling] by saying it's for people with no taste. Ouch. So Ken listens to Mozart around Suz and rocks out when she's not around.
  She takes him to a movie he can't stand and glosses over the fact that he was totally lost and doesn't seem to WANT to see enough that he'll "get it" sooner or later. She puts down football every chance she gets and the kicker? He lets her. He tries, half heartedly, to get her to understand that he loves football, but she doesn't listen and he knows it. There's no way this can work. We know two things about Ken by this point. One- he's blond. And two, and it's the big one, he IS football.
  Sigh.
  Soooooooo... Ken's failing English, something we learned last go round. Poor Ken. If he can't get a passing grade on his short story, he'll flunk and he can't play in the Centennial exhibition game. Woe? Woe. Saint Liz decides to help him and gives him a copy of a story she wrote, including outline, notes, revision... Basically everything from start to finish. She makes him promise not to share it with anyone, as it's okay for people to read her nonfiction, but she's really protective of her short stories. Ken agrees and is thrilled to have a blueprint for success basically handed to him.
  Every time Ken goes to work on this all important short story, Suz comes out of the woodwork and asks him to do things. Not wanting to upset her, or let her know how badly he's doing in English, Ken agrees and desperately tries to work on his paper after their dates. Doesn't work. Dude's staring at a deadline with no idea in sight, and the only thing he can think to do to save his skin is to turn in Elizabeth's story with his name on it.
  So he does it, rationalizing that it's just a stupid paper and that the only two people who will see what he's written [or hasn't written as the case may be] will be him and Mr. Collins. There's one logical problem with this scenario, and that's that one day Liz might take her excellent story to her favorite teacher and ask him what he thinks, and he'll ask why she and Ken have written the same story. However, that's not what happens.
  Nope. Mr. Collins proves he's got boundary issues by handing out copies of Ken's fantastic paper and basically making sure that it's printed in The Oracle for their Centennial Celebration issue.
  Without.
  Asking.
  Ken.
  First.


   Liz reads the story, freaks the hell out, and literally runs to find Ken. She sends Aaron Dallas into the boy's locker room to retrieve Ken and when he appears bitches him out. Sort of. She intends to, but then he looks so sad, so puppy dog cute... You get the idea. He assures her he's going to get Mr. Collins to pull the story, fix this mess somehow, and stalks off to his imminent doom. Where he promptly runs into Suzanne who is beyond proud that her jock boyfriend proved that he's got a literary brain after all. Bitch suggests he drops football and Ken's so shell shocked that he doesn't make it to his date with disaster. Instead, he heads home, confused and alone, and hopefully prettier than the cover would lead you to believe. [No, I will not stop with the cover mockage. Shush!]
  As everyone knows, when you've got nowhere else to go, inspiration tends to appear. Ken writes furiously on his typewriter that he uses like an old person at a keyboard. [Hunt and peck.] He has a new story, one that he's proud to call his own, misspellings and grammatical errors be damned. He pulls a total "STOP THE PRESSES!" moment by ambushing Liz on her way to the printers. He has her read the story and convinces her that if they switch them, everyone will understand. She agrees and when the issue is out, Ken's story is all anyone can talk about.
  I'm not sure what Liz expected to happen when Ken basically admitted that he stole someone else's story and then turned it in as his own, but she's a hundred and thirty-seven different kinds of shocked when Jessica tells her that Ken's been called in to see Chrome Dome.
  DUH, Liz. What he did tends to be frowned upon by the staff, y'know? So again she runs off and offers to say that Ken's new story was just better than his old one [where upon hearing such nonsense, people would say no, the first one was better and Liz would feel better] and so they decided to go with that instead. Yeah, no one's gonna buy that, no matter how much Liz proclaims it as truth. Ken points this out and says he did the crime, he'll do the time. So into the office he goes, never to be seen or heard from again...

   Obviously untrue. He goes in, marvels as the light his Chrome Dome's chrome dome just so perfectly, and awaits his death. It never happens. Mr. Collins asks if the story is true, Ken admits it is. He explains that he was under so much freakin' pressure and that what he did was wrong, but kind of hints that maybe if three grown men hadn't been meddling in his life, demanding things from him and offering him so little effing support, maybe... but no. Crime doesn't pay.
  So they think. Mr. C would've given Offsides an A, but in light of what happened, he gets a C. This is enough to keep Ken at passing and he can play in the game and oh yeah, there's no special treatment in this. *snort*
  Ken runs off, thrilled that not only does he get to play in the game, they actually thought his story was well written. Woo!
  Til he tries to talk to Suz who points out that he is not the guy she's been bragging about and no, she really doesn't have time for him. Ice queen!

  Centennial day comes, the game's at 2, and Ken is playing so well that if I didn't know better, I'd think someone sold their soul to the devil. Ken saves the day, wins the game, and even Suz is impressed. Ken's ready to slip back into their strange relationship when she tells him that he should hurry, they're going to skip the picnic and go to the library.
  Understandably Ken slams on the brakes and tells her no. She's right, he should be making his own decisions and starting right about now, he's thinking kissing booth, picnic, being himself would be better than trying to pretend anymore that the life Suz has mapped out isn't boring as all get out. In fact, come to think of it, Suz is boring.
  And he walks away.
  [I love you, Ken. I do.]

   This is as good a time as any to update you on our B story. It's classic goofy Jessica. As you might recall, Bruce put her in charge of the Centennial Picnic. So she pops in at various times throughout the book to try and con someone into doing something for her. She gets Liz and Ken to man the kissing booth, convinces Lila that she's co-chairperson of the picnic when, in reality, she's Jessica's wench. Hee. The posters have the wrong date because Jessica looked at the wrong month on the calender, she obsesses over the music before realizing she could just frickin' ask the Droids to play... but her real moment of wtf happens at the actual picnic. Seems Jessica forgot to confirm with the caterers and they dropped her order.
  So what does the culinary genius do?
  She makes a gazillion and twelve peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and serves 'em with chips. I hope it was grape jelly...And that no one in the whole friggin' town is allergic to nuts. :P
  Naturally, Jess comes out on top. In serving such cheap food, she helped the fund raiser go way under budget, and is publicly applauded. Literally.
  Winner and still champion!


Trivial:

• It's been a little more than a week since Regina's rescue in the last book.


• Suzanne's parents insist on being called by their first names: Hank and Marian. Oi. Her little brother's name is Jeffrey.


• Mason, the Hanlon's butler, used to play cowboys and Indians with Jeffrey and Suzanne. Apparently there's a picture out there of him tied to a tree, cowboy hat on. I demand proof! So does Ken. ;)


• When Mason answers the door, Ken mistakes him for Hank Hanlon. Oops.


• The Hanlons live up on the hill with the rest of the rich families, like Lila, Bruce, and the Morrows.


• Ken deep sea fishes, and caught a small shark the year before. Mmm, shark.


• Suzanne's family has a Silver Shadow Rolls Royce and another one that we aren't really told about. Woo.


• Ken drives a white Toyota that his parents helped him buy.


• Ken and Suzanne go with her friends to see The Seventh Seal. Ken is lost as white subtitles on white parts of the movie? Impossible to read.


• Suzanne's friends: Allan Partridge and Meg Winters, both seniors at SVH. Paul Larchesi, another senior who acts in a lot of the drama department's stuff, and finally Mark Andrews, a film student at SVC. He's think, with long black hair, and piercing dark eyes. He also seems to be a prick and have a thing for Suz.


• Scott Trost is the main receiver for the Gladiators. He's 6", with brown hair, blue eyes, and he runs track, too.


• Elizabeth's story is entitled, "The New Kid." It's about a kid who moves from NYC to Sweet Valley and how he sees the town for the first time, only to ultimately conclude that he might be happy in the Valley. Honey, everyone is happy there. They put something in the water.


• At the Literary Meeting, Olivia reads a poem about her grandfather, Winston does a series of short, funny poems, Ted Jenson, a senior, reads a melodramatic short story about a dead squirell, and Joanie Shreeves, clad in black, does this epic poem about Daphne, a woman murdered by her husband. We gets bits and pieces and it's pretty awful. Liz reads a poem about how much her mother's friendship has meant to her. The rest of us wonder why this is necessarily any better than the schlock she just mocked Joanie and Ted for. But it is. Oh, how it is.


• Henry Patman donated a new mural for the post office in honor of the Centennial. Awesome?


• Jessica's posters proclaim the picnic is the third, not the fourth. Oops.


• Ned Fulbright owns Valley Printing as Liz knows him well enough that had the error been his, she could have gotten him to fix the posters. Alas, it was Jessica's error, so break out the white out.


• Ken's story is "Offsides."


• The Centennial kicks off with a parade, then there's a pit stop at the post office to admire the mural, and then on to a party thrown for SV's oldest citizen, Lionel Howard who recently turned 100, and has lived in SV for the last 75 years. Whoa. Then at 2PM the game kicks off, followed by the picnic. Be there.


• Cara is Liz's relief at the kissing booth.


• Palisades won the division championship last season.


• The picnic fund raiser managed to raise $1,900.87.


• Lila flew to NYC to visit her aunt less than a week before the Centennial, leaving Jessica to do all the rest of the work by herself... until she could sweet talk other people into helping. Like getting Winston to come up with the decorating ideas, though she did have to ix nay a chicken wire and tissue paper computer to represent their "leading industry."


• SV won the game 34 to 31. Yay, Ken.

Quote me:
"What guy in Sweet Valley wouldn't pay a dollar to give Jessica Wakefield's twin a kiss?" - Jessica's humility knows no bounds. p5

  "So what's on the agenda for this afternoon? More daring rescues? Foiling an assassination plot? Or are you two just going to try something simple, like taking over a small country?" - Alice is remarkably okay with her daughter's brush with violence, but it results in the best quote EVER, so I forgive her. p9

  "And watch out, Regina. He cheats." -Ken foreshadows the Bruce/Regina 'ship ever so nicely. p52



  I shouldn't like this book, but the ghost writer has style and it's done in such a familiar 80's funtastic way that I can't help myself. Bad cover, good book.
  I really relate to Liz being so private about her writing and yet being really hopeful/interested in what Ken thought of it. Sure, I know she's supposed to be ever so perfect, but who doesn't want to be told that what they've been agonizing over is well worth the trouble?
  I'm not sure if I really like goofy Jessica as much as I love bitchy Jessica in theory. I hate it when she drives someone to suicide but when she's nice, when she's made a fool of, even momentarily, the world seems off-kilter somehow.
  Last, but not least: How badly could Ken have been failing if a C would bring his average back up to passing?



* I have a friend I love dearly, like a sister without all the clothes swapping and boyfriend stealing, but when she came back from college for various breaks, the rest of us would give her a visit or two right after her return, listen to her go on about something we knew was completely insane [and not in a fun way] and then we'd hide for a week or two until she'd cycled the pretension out of her system. Suzanne will NEVER be able to cycle her try-too-damn hard ways out of her system.


I hope you have a great NYE, and that 2008 is excellent.