She didn’t even have any real friends. Sure, she’d gotten to know some people, even a woman in her building, but there was no one she trusted. Good. About time she learned not to trust.
It was still early enough to call her best friend, the only friend she still had from Sweet Valley, Bruce Patman. It still made her smile when she thought of that impossibly arrogant and conceited boy of high school. Actually, she could hardly remember him that way anymore.
She could call. It wasn’t even eleven there. Not that she hadn’t called him a lot later than that. In fact, there were a few three-in-the-morning beauties when she first arrived in New York—whiny and complaining—she was almost too embarrassed to remember them.
She could call him now. But she wasn’t going to. Not when she was feeling so low. He took it too seriously, like a good friend would, and she just didn’t want to upset him. Bruce Patman upset by someone else’s trouble? That almost made her smile.
But she didn’t call and she didn’t smile.
The room was still. And silent. Until she hit the Replay button on the answering machine.
“Lizzie. Pick up. Please. I really need to talk to you.”
Never!
“Please, Lizzie. I really need to talk to you.”
Exactly the same words. Only it’s eleven years earlier and Jessica and I are sixteen. And it’s not on an answering machine, it’s face-to-face.
“No way, Jess,” I tell her, “Daddy said no car for the whole month, and I’m not giving you the keys.”
“You’d think I totaled the whole car. It was just a tap on a way ugly little mailbox.”
“And half the rear fender.”
“That really sucks. You can’t even see it from the front.”
“Forget it. I’m so not giving you the keys.”
But Jessica is not one to give up, and for the whole ten-minute ride from home to Sweet Valley High, she pleads with me, nags, cajoles, bribes, and finally threatens, but I don’t budge. My parents have given instructions and, unlike my twin, I follow instructions.
When Jessica sees that it’s hopeless, she resorts to punishment.
“Todd called.”
I bite. “Todd Wilkins?” Now she has my complete attention. “For me?”
“No way.”
“For you?” I can feel my voice creeping up about two octaves from my normal tone, like a squeak from a disappointed eight-year-old.
“Like you’re surprised that the captain of the basketball team would call the captain of the cheerleaders? Can’t you see we’re a natural?”
“I guess.”
For a flash, I think I see Jessica feeling a tiny prick of guilt, but it’s gone in a flash. Maybe it was never there. Truth is they are a natural, she and Todd, and besides, he’s a jock, and everyone knows I’m not interested in jocks.
Except for this one.
Ever since I first saw him in kindergarten hanging on to his ratty baby blanket with the pulled-out fringes, his face shiny with big fat tears because his mommy was leaving him. I try not to remember that his nose was running right down to his lip.
Are there pheromones at five?
And coups de foudre?
I tried to give him a tissue, but he threw it on the floor. Was that a portent of the future that I was too love-blind to see?
And just in case any shred of hope lingers, Jessica jolts me back to reality. “He called to wish me luck with Pi Beta today. I think he’s going to ask me to the Phi Epsilon dance.”
“Cool,” I say as my stomach drops. A stomach can drop even if it doesn’t really go anywhere. The sliding sensation, along with what feels like a whoosh of empty air, is absolutely physical. Especially when, as in my case, that person is struggling with an important crush.
Jessica gets quiet, so deep in some kind of plan—she is a planner, often devious—that she doesn’t even notice that I’ve stopped the car to pick up Enid Rollins, whom Jessica refers to as Wuss of the World.
Enid jumps into the backseat.
“I have to talk to you about something,” Enid whispers to the back of my head.
Enid is my dearest friend, and I really love her, but the jealousy between Jessica and Enid sometimes makes things very uncomfortable: divided loyalties, but not really. No one could be closer than my sister. I wouldn’t know how to do that.
“What?” I don’t quite hear what she’s saying.
“Later,” she says.
Jessica sticks her head between us. “I am so not interested in anything you say. Especially anything about boring Ronnie Edwards.”
Enid lets out a yelp. “Who told you? And he is so not boring!”
“Yes, he is. Ask Caroline Pearce.”
Caroline Pearce is Sweet Valley’s major gossip.
What Caroline doesn’t know she simply makes up, so she can always be counted on for some kind of information.
“Jessica!” I try for the mommy tone, but it comes out with a little giggle. “You’re horrible!”
Admittedly, Jessica is incorrigible. After all this time, sixteen whole years of life, it still fascinates me that identical twins could be so different. When I’m not the subject, I admit it tickles me.
But it doesn’t tickle Enid at all. “How can you, like, stand her?”
“Oh, who cares anyway.” Jessica has completely lost interest in our conversation. She’s too busy trying to wave down Bruce Patman’s Porsche, which is idling at the light right alongside us. “Let me out here,” she says, already halfway out the door.
“Hey, Bruce!”
Bruce smiles and motions with his movie star head for her to hop in. Simultaneously, he reaches over and flips open the passenger door; Jessica runs around our car and jumps in.
Bruce Patman is the male Jessica but a whole lot richer, as rich as Jessica’s best friend, Lila Fowler.
What Enid was trying to tell me was how much she likes Ronnie Edwards and he’d just asked her to the Phi Epsilon dance.
I know I should be listening to my best friend’s problems, but I can’t get my mind off the disappointment. Todd and Jessica.
Most people think I’ve escaped big crushes so far—that’s what it looks like to the outside world—but the secret is simple: Since that day in kindergarten, I’ve had a crush on one boy—Todd Wilkins.
For the longest time, right through grade school, he didn’t seem to even notice me or—and I was watching carefully—any other girls.
But at the start of high school, there was a change. He was still more interested in basketball, but there were times when I felt he looked at me in a special way. Though he was friendly, he never asked me out.
I watched in teenage agony when he seemed interested in a couple of other girls, but it never lasted.
At least, I comforted myself, he had never asked out Jessica, either. Until now. And that’s the one that really hurts. So close and yet about as far away as possible.
Even though my best friend is talking about the boy she likes, I am no longer reachable. Jessica and Todd. The nightmare of my life.
That’s the way it stays all day, through all my classes. In fact, I am so distracted that in English, my favorite teacher, Mr. Collins, takes me aside and asks if anything is wrong.
I convince him that I’m fine; it’s only a little headache. That it’s the size of a twin sister, I don’t mention.
That night Jessica wants to borrow everything of mine for her date with Todd. Even my new blue button-down shirt. But for one of the rare times, I’m not lending. My clothes aren’t going out with Todd, not unless I’m in them.
Jessica doesn’t press. In fact, she looks a little uncomfortable. Maybe she does suspect that I might be interested in Todd. It’s like that: Just when Jessica seems most heartless …
Oh, who am I kidding? She is a heartless bitch, and I hate her!
2
Sweet Valley
“Did you get her?”
Jessica shook her head. “No.”
“But you le
ft a message?”
“I always leave messages. All over. I text, I e-mail, I everything. It’s hopeless. She’s never going to answer.”
“What about Facebook?”
“She ignores me. She’ll never let me be a friend. She doesn’t even answer. And she’s never going to answer you, either, is she?”
Todd shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Jessica Wakefield was sitting on the couch, curled up in one corner with the phone in her hand. There were no tears, but her mouth was twisted in a silent sob.
“You know she’s gotten your letter by now, but she’s never going to read it.”
“She will when she’s ready.”
“She’ll never be ready for either of us.”
It was evening, almost nine o’clock in California, and Jessica and Todd were in the living room of their rented two-bedroom townhouse apartment. With Jessica’s natural good taste and the help of Alice Wakefield, her decorator mother, it was furnished in sunny colors, soft and comfortable, if a touch feminine. But Todd didn’t mind at all. Whatever Jessica wanted, he wanted, and taking that extra step of a man in love, he came to think he actually liked it.
Todd Wilkins was a real talent and beginning to be recognized. His sports column was regularly picked up on the wire and sometimes ran in up to ten other papers. He had an agent, and syndication was a strong possibility.
He still looked like the high school basketball star he had been, tall and well built, with a sweetness to his face that overruled handsome and made him very accessible and well liked. Until now.
Like Jessica, he, too, suffered criticism—deserved, yes, but still painful. A criticism that he could find no way to answer. But since it was never to his face, he didn’t have to. But, by God, could he feel it.
In the back of his mind was the possibility of leaving Sweet Valley. He could do it, but Jessica wasn’t ready yet.
In many ways, Todd was still that same boy from their school years, with the straight brown hair silky enough to keep sliding down over his eyes and be whipped back with his signature sweep. In those days Elizabeth used to imitate him. Now Jessica did. But he would never tell her that.
Yes, he was the same boy, yet in many other important ways he was quite different. Difficult circumstances had challenged him, and he had risen to that challenge with a maturity that belied his twenty-seven years. But there was just so far he could rise with the weight of such transgressions. There were days he was tempted to abandon everything. And everyone. Until he looked at his greatest challenge and knew he could never leave her.
Todd sat down next to his love and took her in his arms. “She’ll call. Give her time.”
“That’s what my mother says,” Jessica said, pulling away. “And it doesn’t help. It’s like what you say to a child. It’s been eight months; that’s time, isn’t it? She hates me!”
“She’s angry.”
“What do you know? She’s not your twin. Not your flesh and blood. Do you know what it’s like to be hated by someone you desperately love?”
“I know Elizabeth. She doesn’t hate you.”
Todd truly believed that—despite all that had happened—because, twin or not, he knew Elizabeth was unique.
When he’d first noticed her—and it took him a long time, almost to high school—he knew she was different. And then there was the Phi Epsilon dance business. He had summoned the courage to call to ask Elizabeth out, but Jessica answered the phone. When she said Elizabeth was in the shower, he got flustered and hung up. Later when he’d thought Elizabeth had gone out with bad boy Rick Andover, he asked Jessica instead. He remembered thinking, Well, they are identical twins.…
But he soon realized his mistake. They were nothing alike. And after staring longingly at Elizabeth the whole dance, and discovering it was really Jessica who had gone out with Rick, he and Elizabeth had finally gotten together. To this day, Todd wasn’t sure what had happened, and now, he never wanted to.
After that dance, he knew Elizabeth was going to be his first real girlfriend. She was beautiful; everything about her was soft and fragile and perfect. Her hand in his was silky, and he remembered holding it as gently as one would a small bird. She made him feel big and clumsy, just what he’d need to be to protect her.
It would be a relationship that he could count on. Something he could grow with. And where it would grow he couldn’t even begin to imagine.
There was a connection between them he never knew he could have with a girl. Girls had always seemed a pole apart from him, like another species, deeply desirable yet intimidating, which made them even more desirable.
Even though Elizabeth was as kind and tender as anyone he had ever known, and he could feel that she really cared for him, the idea that a stranger, a girl at that, would become part of his life was probably the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him. Excitement always carries with it a touch of fear, of danger, and this one did as well.
Still, it was nothing like it would have been had it been Jessica. Instinctively, Todd knew that she was the true danger. But he planned never to get close enough to find out how dangerous she really was.
And then, during senior year at Sweet Valley University, for that one night he forgot his own warning and found out everything about danger. By then it was too late.
And now?
Now it was too late, too.
If Jessica hadn’t married Regan Wollman, would it have been any different? Would Todd have gone through with the marriage to Elizabeth? He was still struggling with that answer. He knew it; he just didn’t like it.
The answer was he probably would have. Jessica despised him. She’d told him five years earlier and after that had never missed a chance to show him. And never more so than the time eight months ago when she was staying with him and Elizabeth.
And he’d begun to hate her, too. It was his only protection.
Yes, though he would never admit it to anyone but himself, he would have gone on with the wedding. He would have married Elizabeth because he loved her and she loved him.
He would never have betrayed her again.
It was the only answer he could live with.
“She hates me! And she hates you, too!” Jessica shouted, interrupting his thoughts. She was near tears.
Todd got up and started toward the kitchen.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. The kitchen. I don’t know,” he said, walking out of the room.
Jessica was alone. The expression of misery turned to anger.
“I don’t want to go tonight,” she called to the empty doorway. No answer. “You have to call them and make some excuse. I don’t care what you say. Tell them I’ve got the flu.”
Todd reappeared, a beer in his hand. “Come on, Jess. I can’t do that, Lila’s expecting us.”
“Well, I am so not going. Besides, she doesn’t really want me. She’s just hoping for some gossip.”
“Hey, I thought she was your best friend.”
“Right, like all your best friends.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means everyone hates us. We have no best friends anymore.”
“Hey,” Todd said, kneeling down in front of Jessica. “Come on, Jess. I’m not saying it’s easy or that we don’t deserve a lot of what’s happening, but if we’re going to stay here—”
“I am staying here!”
“Then we have to find a way to live with it. I love you, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, but this is no good and getting worse.”
Now the tears came and Jessica reached out and put her arms around Todd’s shoulders and held on tightly, burying her face in the crook of his neck. He rose, taking her with him, still in his arms, and they stood together, two people together, painfully alone.
The phone rang. Both pulled away, alert, a shock of excitement electrifying them.
Jessica grabbed for the phone. “Hello,” she said, breathless, her eyes meeting Todd’s
, alive with hope.
And then, “Oh, Mom … Can I call you back? I can’t talk now, I’m just out of the shower.”
Jessica put down the phone. “I hate to do that, but I can’t talk to her now.”
“Come on, baby, it’s going to work out.”
“No, it’s not. You know what’s going to happen eventually? I’ll end up hating Elizabeth for hating me. It’s a natural defense. And then I’ll even find a good reason. Something like, she knew you didn’t really love her, so why was she hanging on? Maybe because she knew I loved you.”
“You’re wrong. That’s not what’s going to happen. What’s going to happen is that Elizabeth’s going to find someone she really loves the way I love you, and then she’ll know she and I weren’t right together.”
“And then she’ll say, ‘So really Jessica helped me by sleeping with the man I thought I loved but didn’t. How lucky I am to have such a wonderful sister.’”
Just like when I do her another great favor way back when we’re sixteen and Todd calls for the first time and asks for her. Well, he doesn’t exactly ask for her, it’s more like a guess.
“Elizabeth?”
“Liz is in the shower.”
I don’t know why I do that since I never was particularly interested in Todd Wilkins, but he sounds really sexy on the phone, and I’m thinking maybe I should give him a chance. Especially now with the Phi Epsilon dance coming up.
I have three invitations already, but not one is even a remote possibility. Winston Egbert. That’s all I need: to be stuck with someone named Winston Egbert who actually looks like a Winston Egbert. And two other nonentities I just said no to without bothering to make up an excuse. What were they thinking?
“This is her sister, Jessica.” Like there’s no one in Sweet Valley who doesn’t know “the twins.”
Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later Page 2