The moral of the story: No motorcycles! Motorcycles=death!

The Big Deal: Enid’s sweet sixteen party

Synopsis:

For some reason Liz is afraid to tell Todd that she isn’t allowed to ride his new motorcycle. For once, Jessica is the voice of reason and tells Liz to just tell him what’s going on. She does and he understands. He offers to talk to Ned and Alice to see about getting the restriction lifted, but they say no. Todd promises them he’ll never let Liz on the bike.

Todd starts giving rides to other girls and Liz gets jealous. She talks to Mr. Collins, naturally, who tells her she needs to talk to Todd about how she’s feeling. Guy Chesney offers her a ride to the Dairi Burger, and on the way there he’s unexpectedly flirty with her. What’s that all about? Anyway, Todd gets jealous when Guy and Liz pull up and wants to know what his girl is doing getting a ride from another guy. Hypocrite. Liz tells Todd she was jealous too and they have a good laugh over how silly they’ve both been.

Todd ends up missing Enid’s sweet sixteen party and Liz is paranoid and angry. Then he finally shows up and tells her he’s so late because he was working out a deal with Crunch McAllister. He’s going to sell his bike. At this point, the party has migrated to some rock club and it’s so late that Liz has no way to get there except on Todd’s bike.

So of course they crash. Crunch is out driving around drunk and hits them. The bike is totaled, Todd is limping and Liz is in a coma. The Wakefields are super pissed at Todd for letting Liz on the motorcycle, but Jessica tells them Liz would never have gotten on the bike if she’d gone back to give Liz a ride like she was supposed to. She realizes she’s been a crappy sister all this time and vows to change. Yeah, right. We’ll see how long that lasts.

The book ends with Liz still in a coma. Sad times.

Oh, also in this book, we find out Enid is only fifteen. She’s been dating a college freshman. Nobody seems to think this is odd or weird or anything. This means that two years ago, when all that stuff happened with Enid and the drugs and stuff, she was thirteen. George would have been about seventeen. That ain’t right.

Quotes:

It was going to be another gorgeous day in Sweet Valley.

Do we really need this affirmation in every single book? Is it ever not a gorgeous day in Sweet Valley?

He hadn’t even had the consideration to break the date in advance, and the more she thought about it, the more she realized that she was, in effect, being stood up.

Seriously? The boy is out on a motorcycle, a “death machine” as you like to call it, and you’re sure he’s stood you up? I thought you were smarter than that, Liz.

The Cover:

Liz: OMG, this is, like, so totally awesome!

Todd: What? I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.