Sweet Valley Diaries

Extra Drama #44: Baggage Handler [Podcast Bonus Episode]

Why are Steven and Cara even together, amirite?

Marissa and guest reader Katie LaDue bring their personal baggage to bear on Steven's behavior, then on Abbie's. Then things turn to the baggage that other people (like the Wakefield Twins, say) bring into their assumptions about others. All the armchair psychology two book nerds can cram into 16 minutes of bonus content!

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"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." - Maya Angelou

 

Book #44: PRETENSES w/guest reader Katie LaDue [Podcast]

Basically just a fancy word for "LIES"

Cara and Steven grace the outside of PRETENSES, and they are certainly featured on its inside. But Marissa and her return guest, Steven Wakefield romance specialist Katie LaDue, agree that this is really is really Abby Richardson's story. Who is Abby Richardson? Listen to find out; then feel free to immediately forget as she drifts back into the sundrenched scenery.

 

Further reading:

This is the Eric Andre movie Katie's talking about

Book #24: MEMORIES [Podcast]

Thanks to Betsy Martin, my eggs are cold.

Steven is in a love triangle with Cara and a ghost. Elizabeth is hoping to replace Todd with a doppelgänger. Jessica is trying to get Winston to take her to The Caravan. In short, all three of the Wakefield siblings are back on their bullshit, and Katie LaDue returns to discuss it all.

44. Pretenses

Is someone coming between Cara and Steven?

Abbie had every intention of coming back to the Wakefields' house. And she was sure the best way to make them inviter her back was to make herself useful.
- p. 63

At this point in our journey, we're used to new characters popping up in books from time to time, propping up the story on their unfamiliar, misunderstood shoulders. Sometimes the characters are noble (Manuel Lopez), sometimes they're evil (Suzanne Devlin). Sometimes the new kid becomes a regular (Amy Sutton), and sometimes they're essentially never heard from again (Johanna Porter). And on some rare and beautiful occasions, the new kid is interesting, realistic, sympathetic, and manages to make both Jessica AND Elizabeth look like jerks. 

Abbie Richardson is one of those occasions. 

Abbie's sudden relevance at Sweet Valley High is not the result of a recent move or a family tragedy. She just broke up with her boyfriend, who went to Palisades High, where she used to spend all her free time. She hung out with his friends, sat on his school's side at football games, and didn't really have any friends at Sweet Valley as a result. Now she's boyfriendless AND friendless, but Abbie isn't the kind of girl who has trouble making friends. You see, she's NICE. Like, just genuinely a nice person. She likes helping people, and she has no ulterior motive. 

Not surprisingly, this kind of personality is deeply confusing to the students of Sweet Valley High. Even Elizabeth thinks all this helpfulness seems excessive and, as you know, that's really saying something. But she kind of has a point. For example, the Oracle is having a contest for a new humor feature, and Abbie offers to help her prime competition, Amy Sutton, on her project. However, everyone is wasting their time trying to figure out why Abbie would help Amy; the fact is, Abbie is just more selfless than anyone else in Sweet Valley. 

The cover of Pretenses features an angsty image of Steven and Cara. (I would like to site this cover/title as the most unintentionally hilarious one yet, since we now know that the pair's entire relationship operates on the false "pretense" that he's not into dudes. But I digress.) Abbie Richardson is not on the cover of 44, so it seems that the author would have us believe that Steven and Cara's relationship woes are the central matter. While I disagree, I will say that these woes are pretty interesting, and they blissfully intersect with the Abbie story. 

Jessica, sure that time has cooled the flames of passion between Cara and Steven, suggests that Cara add some mystery to their relationship. Cara, somehow forgetting fthat Jessica wreaks only havoc, takes the advice to heart and finds herself being very suspiscious of Steven's moodiness when he comes home from college to deal with his allergy problems. Yes, I said allergy problems. We, the readers, know that Steven isn't upset with Cara, he's just super creeped out by a secret admirer letter he got, written on the same stationery his old girlfriend Tricia used. His old, dead girlfriend Tricia. 

This is where Abbie comes in. When she starts coming over to work on her submission for the humor contest (a cartoon; see below for a shitty approximation), she meets Steven and they begin to have heart-to-hearts about his relationship with Cara. Abbie finds herself falling for Steven but, angel that she is, she realizes that he's taken and doesn't make a move. But when Liz walks in on Steven reading one of the ghostly love letters he's been getting, she gets suspicious. She and Jessica even go to the stationery store at the mall and try to get a description of who recently bought the style of stationery the notes were written on! This is pretty outrageous sleuthing on the part of the Wakefield twins, especially since this isnt even a Super Thriller!

The shopkeeper's description of a nice, pretty brunette buyer confirms Jessica's radical suspicions that Abbie is sending Steven love letters and trying to break up his relationship with Cara. In reality, the shopkeeper is describing Cara herself, who chose to write "secret admirer" letters to Steven in order to be more mysterious. Ironic, right? Jessica is always trying to get Cara and Steven to split up (as long-term relationships are boring), and now that she's succeeded (indirectly, as her "mystery" suggestion prompted Cara to send these anonymous letters) she's furious at the (innocent) person she thinks might be keeping the pair apart. That's deep, ladies. 

Steven then does the unthinkable: he invites Abbie to a basketball game INSTEAD of Cara — after all, Cara is mad at him for being distant and who wants to hang out with a girl who's always mad at you for no reason (or, rather, for a reason that you haven't figured out yet)? All that nagging will surely cutback on the enjoyability of watching Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, and the '88 Lakers (the book mentions that's the team they'll see) win the NBA Championship. Abbie is surprised to be asked; she likes Steven a lot, but doesn't want to get involved with a taken man (again, NICE):

"The game will be fun. But I'm surprised you didn't ask Cara," Abbie said directly.

Steven frowned. "I appreciate your honesty, Abbie. That's one of the things I like best about you. I can really talk to you, tell you exactly what's on my mind. The sad truth is, I can't talk to Cara anymore. We just seem to misunderstand each other completely. I think we're really on the verge of breaking up."

Abbie cleared her throat. This was a hard moment for her. Partly she wanted to stay quiet or encourage Steven in some way to follow throught with this plan. If he broke up with Cara, he'd be free to date her.  But Abbie couldn't be so selfish. Something told her that Steven wasn't saying what he really felt, and she just didn't believe it was really over beween them.

Miraculous! You didn't think I was joking about this whole "nice girl" thing, did you? Abbie is right, of course. The real reason Abbie understands Steven's moodiness more than Cara does is that Abbie knows about the creepy love letters and Cara doesn't. I mean, of course she knows about them – she wrote them. But she still has no idea that they were written on the same stationery that Tricia Martin used, or that Steven is so confused by the concept of stationery sets that he jumps to the conclusion that either (a) someone's playing a sick trick on him or (b) a ghost is writing him letters, rather than assuming his current girlfriend is trying to be mysterious. 

That's what you get for listening to Jessica. I don't think these people will ever learn.

a really lazy recreation of one of Abbie's winning, personal cartoon strips

The final scene of this book is a sweet one. I mean in the way that revenge is sweet. Abbie is confronted about her man-stealing ways by not one but BOTH of the Wakefield twins. We all know that Abbie has no such ways, but will her niceness keep her from standing up for herself? No! Finally, she realizes that maybe she's been too nice. Being considerate is great, but ultimately she has to remember to consider herself. This is kind of a weird lesson, but since it results in the twins looking awful, I'll accept it.  Abbie lets loose:

 

24. Memories

Can Cara make Steven forget Tricia Martin?

"I may have betrayed Tricia's memory once, he told himself, "but I will never, ever do it again!" - Steven Wakefield, p. 4 As you have likely come to realize, Sweet Valley High novels are not typically complex. There's a prominent A-Story and a rather unimportant B-Story. Simple, like a sitcom. And similarly hilarious. I don't know exactly what Book 24, Memories, is, but simple ain't it. For starters, the story Memories purports to be about is almost nowhere to be found in its first half. And speaking of starters, that story, focusing on Steven and Cara's possible relationship, started in Book 23 and has been an undercurrent in every book since Tricia died! While the book tries half-heartedly to catch up readers who haven’t been following along, in order to truly understand this one you need a little background on Steven and Cara’s fledgeling relationship. Most important of all is the dramatic change of heart Steven had toward Cara in the last book, basically because she’s learned what true loss means, which has changed her priorities and made her tolerable. Her parents divorced and her father and brother moved far away, so now she’s totally dateable. A little creepy, right? Well, creepy takes on new meaning in Book 24, when Betsy, the once-drunk sister of Steven’s dead girlfriend guilt-trips him into ignoring Cara. She feels like it’s their job to keep Tricia’s memory alive, and is really angry with him for trying to move on. Worse yet, Steve buys this story and is so paralyzed by guilt that he can hardly get through a date with Cara without freaking out and running off. On to the second Wakefield child. I was so pleased with the outcome of Liz and Todd's reunion at the end of Book 23 that I honestly believed she'd go a whole book (maybe even 2) without having any more romantic crises. What was I thinking? The first half of this book almost totally ignored the Cara/Steven issue to focus instead on the fact that Elizabeth meets a boy who looks a lot like Todd. His name is Michael Sellers, and he goes to Big Mesa High. She figures that if he acts like Todd, too, she's set! Crazier even than this assertion is the fact that her friends encourage her to pursue him rather than recognizing this romantic prospect as singularly unhealthy. And creepy. Unsurprisingly, Michael turns out to be a tool, and we hear little else from Liz for the rest of the book. Her only other remarks, in fact, are harshly judgmental and uncharacteristic comments about Cara. Weird, huh? Lastly, Jessica. Her story has virtually no relation to the other two, and yet is prominently featured throughout the book, which might make it more significant then Elizabeth's storyline. It's also similarly psychotic, in that Jessica still has the odd delusion that she's going to become an instantly famous movie star. So dedicated is she to this end that she agrees to partner with Winston Egbert for a school project. Whoa! Nerd alert! She overhears her mother talking to Mrs. Egbert on the phone about the latter's brother coming to stay in Sweet Valley for a while. The brother in question is a big-shot movie producer, so Jessica figures she'll just show up at the Egbert home and be discovered. She does meet Winston's uncle, and plans a meeting with him to discuss his line of work. When she realizes that she's accidentally scheduled a meeting to talk about city planning with the wrong Egbert uncle, she learns her lesson. Finally, she matures and develops a reasonable set of expectations for her career trajectory. Oh wait, I'm sorry...that last part DOESN'T HAPPEN. EVER.  Eventually, the book returns to its main characters, who are happily united by the final chapter. Yet again, little Teddy Collins (Mr. Collins’ son) is used to glue things together. Betsy is persuaded by Elizabeth that she’s responsible for stunting Steven’s romantic growth, and apologizes to Steven and Cara by drawing them pictures of each other, which she has Teddy give to them as gifts after arranging a nighttime meeting with them via the old anonymous-note trick. And it works, of course. Little drawings of each other. Who knew? How bizarre that all three of these stories are driven by intense psychological issues on the part of all three Wakefields. It’s not Betsy’s fault that Steven can’t get over Tricia, even if she’s not helping. Michael Sellers may be a jerk, but he’d probably be a little weirded out if he found out the real reason Elizabeth was interested in him. And even if Jessica had found the right uncle, she’d still have found some way to screw things up. Faithful to a dead girl, trying to replace a far-off boyfriend with a look-alike stranger, delusions of Hollywood grandeur; all in all, I think it’s time for a family therapy session.  I always knew there was something wrong with those Wakefield kids. It couldn't all be good looks and pizza parties for Liz, Jess, and Steve, it just couldn't! But I uncovered some very interesting information between the lines of Book 24: they are all suffering from acute mental illness. These things can happen in soap operas like Sweet Valley High, and I'm experiencing some serious schadenfreude over the fact that it's hit them all at once. You die-hards know what I mean. As winter approaches, I'm getting kind of sick of their perennial springtime or fall or whatever the hell fictional, Californian time warp they're living in. Some hard-core crazy will knock those jerks down a peg! Okay, I know. Now I sound crazy. But what can you expect? I've been documenting these creeps for over a year, with no end in sight! Wish me luck.