Tagline: He was crazy about Jenny. Crazy enough to kill her.
Back tagline: He had said, “I’ll be keeping my eye on you.”
Summary: Jenny is new in town. With her parents away, she is all alone in an isolated house. The looming mountains frighten her; the days are hot and stifling. But she already has a secret admirer who courts are with sweet messages and flowers.
Jenny also has an enemy.
Someone leaves a dead rattlesnake at her door. A sinister black motorcycle chases her down a deserted road. Does Jenny know too much about the mysterious “accident” on the cliffs?
Jenny has no one to turn to. Except her secret admirer….
But who is he?
First impression: This sounds like the traditional stalker Point Horror storyline, which isn’t too exciting but it’s been a while since I’ve read one like that, so maybe that’ll bode well for it. My copy was published in 1989 and it has that weird old-book smell, which is kind of putting me off, but oh well.
Let’s talk about this cover. There’s two other versions but this is the best one, mostly because of how funny that menacing shadow is. The stalker doesn’t seem that threatening, it just looks like police told him to put his hands up. To be fair, though, it actually would be kind of creepy if someone approached you like this because you’d be like, “Wtf, why is this guy walking like that?” Not sure about Jenny’s face, but the scenery is great. I also love how the title’s font gets progressively more jagged with each word.
It looks like this phone booth is in the middle of nowhere, too, which is kind of random, so I hope this is an actual scene from the book. Let’s find out!
Recap
Roll call:
Jenny – Our heroine who’s just moved to a new town.
Sally – Jenny’s chatterbox neighbour and resident gossip queen.
David – Jenny’s love interest who she falls in love with after roughly 4 seconds.
Diana – The bitchy girl who has a mysterious accident on the cliffs.
Brad – Diana’s ex who’s very affected by her accident.
Dean – A computer whiz who might be crushing on Jenny.
The book begins as our heroine, Jenny Fowler, wakes up in the middle of the night and is unable to get back to sleep. This is a common occurrence when she’s living in a new house; it’s the fourth time her family has moved in the last six years, and it takes a while for the new place to feel like home. Her dad’s a freelancer and her mother just doesn’t like staying in one place for long, and I guess they selfishly don’t care about stability in the formative years of their only child’s life. Jenny decides to take a tour of the house, which usually helps tire her out again, and wakes up her old dog, Peaches, to join her.
The living room is what sold the Fowlers on this particular house; it takes up almost half of the first floor with a high ceiling, a stone fireplace, and a wall of windows at that back that look out over aspen-and-pine-tree-covered hills. Beyond that is a rocky bluff that rings the town on three sides and is its namesake, Rimrock. The rimrocks are great for hiking and climbing, but Jenny isn’t interested in that and hasn’t even visited the bluff yet. The rimrocks give her the creeps, not just because she’s sure they’re full of dangerous animals, but because the bluff itself is quite menacing. [You’d think the rimrocks are sentient with the way she’s carrying on] The Fowlers only moved here about two weeks ago, so the whole town will take some getting used to.
The next day, Dad encourages Jenny to face her fears and explore the rimrocks, and Jenny just knows he’s gonna plan a family day out so she and her parents can get some exercise. But at least it won’t be happening today, because in comes Mum with good news — their old house has sold! She plans on heading back there to get the last of their stuff and make sure the sale goes smoothly, and Dad tells her to make two reservations, because he was planning to go back for a business deal next week anyway, so they may as well kill two birds with one stone. [At first I thought they meant at a hotel, and I was like why do they need two rooms when they’re a couple? But I guess by reservations they mean plane tickets?] Jenny gets to stay home alone to deal with the painters when they arrive as well as keep an eye on the house, since the nearest neighbours are 1.5 miles away, but she has her concerns about the situation — she’s still not used to the place and she doesn’t know anyone in town yet because school doesn’t start for three more weeks.
Mum and Dad can’t get plane seats for two more days, but Jenny’s spared from a family trip to the rimrocks anyway because they want to get some stuff done around the house before leaving. Jenny offers to pick up some supplies from town for them and drives into town, which really only has the necessary stores. Jenny doesn’t mind; she enjoys the small-town quiet after only having lived in busy areas so far. In town, Jenny meets a girl on top of a horse. It’s Sally Rafino and her horse Emma, [Emma as a pet’s name is so funny to me hahaha] who happens to be Jenny’s neighbour! Sally’s been visiting her grandparents so only found out about the Fowlers yesterday when she’d gotten home. The girls are the same age and will both be juniors at Evergreen High, and Sally assures Jenny that there’ll be a lot more teens around when summer’s over. Sally invites her to tomorrow night’s annual scavenger hunt, which is super fun, and also suggests they ride her horses up to the rimrocks sometime and go climbing. As she rides off, Jenny glumly realises that she’ll be visiting the rimrocks at some point whether she likes it or not.
It’s time for the scavenger hunt now, and Rimrock’s teens are gathered in the school’s parking lot examining the list of things they need to find. Chatterbox Sally’s already introduced Jenny to everyone, going as far as to overshare information like which house Jenny’s moved into, and that her parents will be a away for a few days — ‘Sally kept reminding people to call Jenny so she wouldn’t be lonely.’ [Sally, plz] As Sally, who’s clearly a bit of a gossip although not in a malicious way, is giving Jenny a brief rundown of their classmates, a battered Toyota rocks up and a very pretty, ‘almost beautiful’ girl [Almost? Lol, drag her] steps out alongside a lanky, long-legged guy, and lanky long-legged guys are one of Jenny’s weaknesses! [She would absolutely love Pete Davidson then] It’s Diana Benson, who’s recently had a bad split from Brad Billings, the school’s only football star, and David Howell, who I guess is going to be Jenny’s love interest. Sally notices the lust in Jenny’s eyes and hurries over to the pair to bring them to meet the new kid, but Diana seems like she’s in a bad mood and isn’t very polite:
“I hope you like it here in Rimrock,” she said without a trace of sincerity. “You’re a fool if you do, of course.” Her violet eyes flicked over Jenny. “You’re not a fool, are you?”
Jenny laughed a little. “I hope not.”
“Mmm.” Diana swung her silky hair over her shoulder. “If you’re not, what are you doing here tonight?”
“Come on, Diana,” David said.
Jenny didn’t know what Diana’s problem was, but she felt a spurt of anger. “I could ask you the same question,” she said.
Diana’s lovely face hardened. “I’d be careful if I were you,” she said. “You’re not getting off to a very good start.”
[Diana can fuck right off. Good on Jenny for biting back] Diana stalks off to talk to class brain and computer whiz Dean Latham while Sally goes to talk to Brad, leaving Jenny alone with David, who apologises for Diana’s poor welcome. Evidently she’s not the warmest person, but she’s not usually this bad, so David thinks something’s on her mind. He also suggests Jenny partner up with him for the scavenger hunt, and Jenny agrees as long as he really doesn’t mind. No need to worry, though, because the only thing David would mind is if he was paired with a fool, ‘”And the only fool around here just walked off with Dean Latham.”‘ [Hahahaha amen]
The scavenger hunt gets started, and Jenny and David quickly bag 10 of the 20 items. The whole town seems prepared for the teens, being helpful and handing over items on the list that they have around the house, which is cute! Jenny and David get to know each other as they scavenge, and Jenny really enjoys David’s wry sense of humour — she’s never liked someone so much so fast! His one con is that he enjoys climbing the bluff, but she won’t hold that against him. Jenny has the feeling that David’s into her too, because it seems like everyone swaps partners during the hunt, but he’s willingly stayed with her so far. Her suspicions are confirmed when he kisses her at one point, confessing he’d been wanting to do that since they met an hour ago.
The next item they need is an empty bird’s nest, and David reckons the bluff is the best place to find one. He’s a self-proclaimed expert climber so Jenny is less apprehensive about venturing to the rimrocks, although the setting sun is making her a little nervous. David assures her the sun takes ages to set and they set off in his car, admiring the crimson-bathed bluff as they approach. Soon they’re climbing the rocks in search of a nest, but Jenny grows more uneasy when the sun disappears behind some wicked-looking clouds. Rimrock often gets brief late-afternoon storms consisting of big winds, dark clouds and a tiny bit of rain, and Jenny isn’t keen to be stuck on the bluffs as one passes through. Luckily for her, David notices her fear and they begin inching their way back down.
Soon, thunder booms and lightning flashes in the sky, and David instructs Jenny to stay put for a sec while he heads further down a few feet to presumably check for ledges and footholds. It quickly starts pouring rain, and Jenny worries that David’s slipped and injured himself. She calls out for him and thinks she hears a muffled voice reply but can’t make out the words, and shortly after ‘the lightning flashed around her like a sheet of white neon’ and she hears a scream. [I feel like that reads as if someone was struck by lightning, right?] Thinking David really has been hurt, Jenny bravely continues her descent down the bluff so she can get help, terrified out of her mind.
She eventually finds David standing on a ledge, completely unharmed and holding a bird’s nest. She lays into him about abandoning her and deeming the bird’s nest as more important than her, but he insists he’d gone farther than he’d planned and was just about to come back for her when the storm got wild. It had taken him a while, but he eventually made it and she wasn’t there, [Hmm, I don’t know about that] and he allegedly found the bird’s nest when he was on his way back to her. Jenny decides he either went to the wrong spot or got to the spot after she’d left, and tells him how scared she was because she’d heard a scream and he wasn’t answering her shouts. David didn’t scream and he didn’t hear one, so it was probably the wind, and Jenny silently wonders why he seems so eager to convince her it wasn’t a real scream. [Ooooh, do we have some gaslighting already?] She hopes he didn’t scream in panic after slipping and is just too embarrassed to admit it, because that means she’s gotten him all wrong! David drives her home in silence, thankfully realising she doesn’t want to talk and only opening his mouth to ask for directions.
Jenny drops her parents off at the airport the next day and on her journey home, she realises she was probably too harsh on David. She decides she should call and apologise, and hopefully he’ll offer his own apology so they can start over. She’s distracted by a few messages on the answering machine, though: one from the painters, who will be over the day after tomorrow; one from Sally, who’s trying to gather people for a visit to the diner tomorrow since the rain thwarted their usual post-scavenger hunt cookout last night; and the third one from an unfamiliar, soft-spoken boy’s voice:
“You’re going to think I’m crazy, Jenny,” it said. “And I guess I am. Crazy about you, that is. Don’t laugh. This isn’t a joke. You’re really incredible. Maybe someday I’ll be able to tell you face to face. Until then, I’ll just keep my eye on you. And believe me, that’s one spectacular view. Bye, Jenny. For now.”
Jenny saves the message and ponders over it after listening a few more times. She assumes it’s not a prank call since he knew her name and had to have gotten her number from information, because the Fowlers’ number isn’t listed yet. And besides, this kind of joke was for 12-year-olds, and the caller didn’t sound 12. She decides the message is flattering; it’s not every day she gets a message like that, and it’s come at a good time. After last night’s disaster, a secret admirer could be fun! [She’s not at all alarmed by the message, which kind of seems out of character. Like, everything about the new house seems to creep her out, but she’s completely unbothered by anonymous message from someone who’s watching her carefully? While alone in the house that spooks her?] She hangs around the house all day, partly because she has nowhere to go but mostly because she’s a loser and hopes her secret admirer will call again. She also tries to call David and Sally throughout the day, but never gets an answer, and she goes to bed that night call-less and disappointed.
She leaps out of bed when the phone rings the next morning, but it’s just Dad checking up on her. [Jenny, you need to calm down] A short time later, Sally pops over for a visit, explaining she hadn’t been home yesterday because her mother sent her on thousands of errands. As the pair chow down on Pop Tarts, McPherson, the painter, calls to confirm tomorrow’s appointment with Jenny’s mother. Sally explains her parents are out of town, and McPherson shows off his creepy side when he hits her with, ‘”So you’re on your own, huh? All by your lonesome?”‘
After the call, Sally points out that Jenny probably shouldn’t have told a complete stranger she’ll be home alone, and Jenny finds it curious that Sally even cares when she’d told everyone at the scavenger hunt Jenny wouldn’t have supervision over the next few days. [True!] Sally’s eager to hear the juicy details about Jenny’s time with David the other night, but Jenny wants to sort things out with him first before opening her mouth, so she plays Sally the message from her secret admirer instead. Sally has no idea who it is because whoever’s behind the message is doing a damn good job at sexily disguising his voice. She suggests David’s responsible, and Jenny disagrees, admitting they’d had an argument on the scavenger hunt so David probably won’t talk to her again.
Sally seems to think quite highly of David, so Jenny asks if she’s interested in him herself. Sally confesses they’d gone on a few dates, but she probably drove him crazy because she talks so much, whereas he’s a lot more quiet. She says she’s over it now, but Jenny’s not so sure about that. Sally speculates that Dean the nerd or Brad the jock left the anonymous message, but also admits that neither of them seem the type for that. It’s also brought up that Diana might be interested in David, and Jenny worries that he might be keen on her too. [Jenny, you met him for about 2 hours, if that, fkn relax] Jenny decides she’ll just have to wait for her mystery man to call back, but Sally’s impatient and plans on doing some subtle sleuthing this afternoon at the diner. [Does Sally even know how to be subtle?]
Later that afternoon, Jenny rocks up at the diner where Sally, David, Dean, and a girl named Karen are waiting for more people to show up. Sally basically forces Jenny to sit between her and David, who doesn’t seem that thrilled by Jenny’s presence. It seems Jenny’s rocked up just in time — Sally’s been making everyone play a game called ‘Whose Voice Am I?’, where everyone shuts their eyes and take turns talking in a different voice while everyone else tries to guess who it is. [Hahahahahahaha nice try, Sally] They’ve already tried bored voices, which everyone guessed correctly, [It’s not the smartest game, really. Even if it did sound like someone else, you could tell who’s talking because you know where everyone is seated] and Sally wants them to put on mean voices this time. Jenny has absolutely no doubt that in round three, everyone will be forced to talk in a shy-but-sexy voice, which she thinks is ridiculous because if the caller was one of the boys here, they wouldn’t give themselves away so easily. [Exactly!]
No-one’s keen on playing so Sally agrees to drop it, and the conversation turns to where everyone was when the rain hit during the scavenger hunt. David isn’t keen to go into detail and Jenny senses some tension between him and Dean; is it because Dean scavenged with Diana? Soon, Brad arrives [Sally made it seem like she invited everyone from the scavenger hunt, but it only seems be Jenny, Sally, David, Dean, Karen and now Brad at the diner] with bad news about Diana — she was found unconscious at the bottom of the rimrocks by some climbers yesterday and is now in a coma! [Did her parents not notice she never came home Friday night? Like, did no-one report her missing?] Karen remembers that Diana had been with her and Dean shortly before the storm, but Dean went off to find an item on the list and Diana, who was in a foul mood, said she was going home. [Did she somehow know David was taking Jenny to the rimrocks and decided to follow because she was jealous?]
Remembering the scream she’d heard while caught in the rain, Jenny admits she may have heard Diana’s scream as she fell. A distraught Brad presses Jenny for information, but Jenny can only remember hearing a yell, not what was yelled. [Wasn’t it too muffled by the storm to make out any words anyway? That’s what was written back when it happened…] Brad doesn’t like that she forgot something so important, [She didn’t know it would be important, pal!] and is so angry that it seems like he might hit her. Luckily, Dean diffuses the situation by pointing out that because of the loud storm, it’s possible and probable that Jenny didn’t hear Diana, and it was actually the wind and thunder playing tricks on her. [I mean, I don’t think that makes more sense than Jenny hearing Diana screamed, especially because Diana was found unconscious the next day. I’m wondering if David’s a red herring, or if he spotted Diana and left Jenny alone for a few minutes to go push her off the cliff…] Jenny smiles gratefully at Dean, who gives her a seductive wink, which is a surprise. She’s flattered, but definitely not interested so she’s glad no-one noticed, especially given the timing right now. No-one’s really in the mood for company after that and everyone leaves by 4pm, except Jenny who decides to order some food. Dean returns, claiming he left his keys, and we get this weird interaction:
When he straightened up, he patted the pockets of his jeans. Jenny heard a jingling sound.
“Sounds like keys to me,” she said.
He pulled a handful of coins from his pocket and held them out for her to see. “Sounds like you heard wrong.”
“Okay.” Jenny shrugged and smiled. “I get the point.”
“What point is that?”
“That I heard wrong on the rimrocks, too.”
He raised his eyebrows. “What’s your point? That you didn’t hear wrong?”
Jenny just shook her head, shrugging again. “I wasn’t making any point at all,” she said.
“Neither was I.” Dean put the change back in his pocket. “Except that sound can fool your mind. Make it play tricks on you, make you think you heard one thing when it was really something else.” He reached into the other pocket and took out his car keys. Looking at them, he smiled slightly. “Guess I didn’t leave them after all. Bye, Jenny.”
[Why was this so menacing?] Jenny chows down on her burger once he leaves, but soon David returns. Jenny ends up sort of apologising and admits she feels guilty about what happened to Diana; if she’d insisted it was a scream she’d heard instead of arguing with him, Diana may have been found sooner. David asks for Jenny’s opinion on Diana, and Jenny admits she didn’t really like her based on their first conversation, but like David had said, Diana had had something on her mind. He then asks if Jenny and Diana had talked during the scavenger hunt at all, and Jenny reminds him that he would know if she did, since they were together the whole time. He seems tense and his mood is making Jenny nervous so thankfully he heads off, leaving Jenny to wonder wtf that was all about.
A short while later, Jenny arrives home to a bunch of flowers in a basket on a porch. She’s seen these ones growing beside the roads and in fields as she’s driven around town, but all together in one bouquet they look beautiful. There’s no pot or dirt, though, so some of them have already wilted!. Inside, she finds a new message on the machine from her secret admirer, who says the flowers remind him of Jenny so he couldn’t resist picking them for her. Jenny puts the flowers that haven’t completely wilted in a water-filled vase and wonders if the mystery man is psychic or just has good timing, because this is twice now that he’s perked her up after a rotten day. Playing the tape again, she decides that based on her interactions today, the caller isn’t David, Dean or Brad — David was too distant today, Dean is clearly more forward than his nerdiness suggests, and Brad was way too angry with her earlier to now be so into her.
‘Having a secret admirer was the perfect cure for jangled nerves’, so Jenny is feeling quite relaxed for the first time since hearing about Diana. After a nice, warm shower, Jenny gets a call from Sally, who’d just gotten home from the hospital. Some of the teens had gone to visit Diana but weren’t allowed to see her, and there’s been no change in her condition. Brad was still really angry, and they’d all encouraged him to apologise to Jenny for his behaviour at the diner, but clearly that hasn’t happened yet.
After the call, Jenny finds Peaches at the front door. Thinking she needs the toilet, Jenny opens the door to find Brad standing on the porch, and he’s clearly been drinking. He apologises for what happened earlier and wants to know if she’s remembered what she heard Friday night, but Jenny can’t be bothered getting into it with him so lies that Dean was right, it was just the storm playing tricks on her. Jenny’s keen for him to leave but instead he opens up about Diana, revealing she made him think she cared about him, then dumped him as if he were nothing, which is apparently a hobby of Diana’s. He hated her after that, but that didn’t mean he wanted something like this to happen to her. Jenny remains silent this whole time, worried about setting him off if she says anything, and he apologises again before leaving.
As Jenny and Peaches venture down the porch steps, Peaches starts growling, spooking Jenny back inside with the dog. Peaches remains by the door, but Jenny goes into the kitchen to make some popcorn, where she’s startled by her own reflection in the window at one point. Popcorn-loving Peachescan’t be enticed away from the front door, which Jenny finds strange, but she ignores the red flag and heads to her room to settle down with a book. [I’d probably be shitting bricks if my dog was acting weird and I was alone in a creepy house at night. I haven’t mentioned it, but this house has no curtains yet lol]
At around 2am, Jenny wakes up from a nightmare and can hear Peaches panting at the front door. She goes down to investigate and finds the old dog pawing at the door, and Jenny’s convinced there’s someone standing outside. Jenny’s terrified but manages to stay calm, remembering that she’d locked all the doors. But actually, when Brad had visited, she’d left the door open while she and Peaches were outside… could someone have snuck in then? [Oof, don’t think like that] Peaches has stopped pawing now and is just staring at the door again, and Jenny realises that if someone was inside the house, Peaches wouldn’t be sticking to the one spot.
As an extra layer of protection, Jenny stacks some tin cans and cutlery by several of the doors, which will alert her if anyone manages to get inside, then plops down in the living room to wait for sunrise. Soon, a piece of silverware clangs, and Jenny’s pooping her pants as she forces herself to investigate. The pile of cans is still in tact by the front door, but the fork she’d placed on top is now on the floor. It seems Peaches had knocked it off, so Jenny replaces the fork and sternly tells her ‘no’ a few times, but the dog’s too focused on the door and barely even glances at her. After ensuring no other traps had been disturbed, Jenny settles back onto the couch, this time with a iron poker from the fireplace for extra protection.
By the time Jenny wakes up in the morning, Peaches has joined her on the couch, which means whoever was outside must have left. There’s a knock at the door, and Sally’s standing on the porch holding a giftbox wrapped in crimson paper and a white bow. Sally notices the stacked cans all over the place, and Jenny tells her about the super scary night she had, but leaves out the part about Brad because she doesn’t want Sally gossiping about it. Jenny is still pretty terrified, so it pisses her off a bit when Sally keeps making jokes about her situation being so similar to a horror movie, but she doesn’t say anything. Jenny finally asks about the giftbox, which was on the porch when Sally arrived to invite Jenny horseback riding, which she has to turn down because the painters are coming today.
Peaches is sniffing at the box so there might be something tasty in it, and Sally theorises Jenny’s secret admirer dropped it off last night. Jenny hadn’t considered that, but it makes a lot of sense and would explain Peaches’ behaviour. Jenny eagerly opens the box and pulls out a shitload of tissue paper to find a dead rattlesnake inside — ‘Jenny knew it was dead, because its severed head had been placed carefully on top of its limp, lifeless body.’ [Good work, Jenny! A severed head is a clear sign that something’s dead!]
Jenny doesn’t believe her secret admirer left this gift for her, telling Sally about the flowers and the newest phone message she’d got from him. Sally agrees it’s probably someone else, and comments that a dead snake is a great way to tell someone how you feel about them. Jenny brings up Brad’s visit, and Sally supposes he could be behind it, since he is pretty hung up on the fact that Jenny heard something on the rimrocks. Jenny is pretty positive she did hear something, but whenever she tries to remember it, she can only hear the voice, but not what was said. Sally wants to know if the voice sounded angry or scared or anything like that because surely Jenny would be able to tell that much, and Jenny wonders why Sally’s pushing it so much. [Maybe there’s a whole big conspiracy in the friend group and they all wanted Diana dead, so now they’re gaslighting poor Jenny so their cover isn’t blown?] Jenny argues that it doesn’t matter either way; Diana shouted, fell and screamed, there was nothing Jenny could have done. Sally speculates that Brad thinks Jenny could have done something, since he’s so obsessed about it, and maybe he sent the snake to let Jenny know how he feels about her. Jenny thinks that maybe it was a junior high prank, because it has that sort of feel to it, but Sally seems pretty eager to blame Brad.
Sally heads off, agreeing to dispose of the snake for Jenny, just as the painters pull up. McPherson and Son accept her offer for a coffee and plop themselves down at the dining table. Jenny’s in a bathrobe, and she notices that the younger McPherson, who looks about 30, hasn’t taken his eyes off it. [Oh god] Jenny lies that she’s expecting someone soon and leads them around the house, pointing out the areas the Fowlers would like repainted. They give her a price, which seems quite high, but Jenny agrees to let her parents know and confirm with the McPhersons tomorrow.
Once they leave, Jenny showers and heads to the grocery store for some food, but recognises David’s car driving behind her. He parks next to her at the store and doesn’t bother with a “hi, how are you?” when he gets out, instead telling her he’d tried to call and didn’t leave a message because he hates answering machines, [That’s a stupid thing to hate lol] but had found the bracelet she was wearing Friday night in his car. She smiles at him as he hands it over, but he doesn’t smile back, and eventually he tells her he’s been thinking about that night. She’d said she’d heard a scream, and also brought it up at the diner, but then changed her mind and said it was the wind. Jenny explains she was just going along with what Dean had said because ‘”I didn’t feel like getting punched or strangled.”‘ [Hahahaha true] David’s relieved she simply backed off instead of changing her mind, admitting he also really wants to know what she heard. He’s been trying to assemble what happened that night in his mind, and she’s got the missing puzzle piece. Jenny asserts that it doesn’t really matter what she heard anyway, and David insists it could make a huge difference, although he can’t get into why:
“I don’t see why,” she said. She was uncomfortable, but her nervousness was fading and she was starting to get annoyed. “She probably yelled ‘help’ or ‘oh, no,’ or something like that. Whatever it was, she said it right before she fell, and there was nothing anybody could do, unless maybe they’d been standing next to her.”
“That’s what I’m…” Another quick shake of the head. “You don’t understand, Jenny.”
“Well, explain it to me, then! I’m not dense.”
“I can’t!” This time David did grab her shoulders. “I just wish you’d try to remember. It’s important!”
[Hmm, so I’m thinking either David suspects someone pushed Diana and is trying to work out who, or he pushed Diana and he’s trying to make sure whatever Jenny remembers about Diana’s shouts won’t incriminate him] Jenny’s sick of talking about it and feeling guilty over something that wasn’t her fault and declares she’s not going to try remembering anymore, then stalks back to her car. Karen, Dean and another girl she doesn’t recognise are coming down the sidewalk towards them, and Jenny can tell they heard her shouting just now. Jenny pulls away in her car, glancing back to see David talking to the others, probably telling them some lie. She’s certain he was just trying to make her feel guilty about Diana, which is super annoying because he was the first one to suggest the storm had played tricks on her. Now, he clearly wants Jenny to remember so he can ‘wallow in a bunch of “if only’s.”‘ [No, I don’t think that’s what’s going on, Jenny] Well, Jenny Fowler isn’t gonna accommodate him, and plans to bury the whole night at the bottom of her mind.
At home, there’s a message on the machine again, and she’s hoping it’ll be from her admirer so it can cheer her up. Instead it’s Dad, who informs her they’ve been held up at the old house and will have to stay a couple of extra days. She calls her parents back and Mum agrees the painters’ price is highway robbery, but they’ll accept it anyway. Jenny then calls McPherson and leaves a message to let them know the family is ready to have them start painting as soon as possible, so just call back with a date. Next, Jenny calls Sally and invites her over for the night, not wanting to be alone again. Unfortunately Sally has to go visit a family friend with her parents, but she invites Jenny to go riding in the morning. Jenny accepts, and after the call she realises how famished she is, annoyed that she didn’t actually get to the grocery store earlier because of David. Speaking of David, he’d almost seemed scared or desperate or something earlier, but Jenny convinces herself she’d imagined that weird look in his eyes.
The next morning, Jenny and Sally ride some horses to the the bluff for a bacon sandwich breakfast. They climb for a bit until they reach a flat rock, then make a small fire out of old twigs. Sally’s not as talkative as she usually is and almost seems annoyed, but Jenny doesn’t bring it up because she’s sure if Sally wanted to talk about something, she would. She does, however, call Sally out for checking her watch so often, telling her to just say so if she wants to leave. Sally explains that she’s going to to visit her aunt tonight until sometime tomorrow and isn’t too keen on it, so she’s checking the time ‘”because I keep hoping it’s magically slowed down.”‘ [Weird… is this a lie? Why not just enjoy your time before you go visit?]
Jenny, who’s laying on her back, staring up at the sky, is suddenly showered with dust and grit from above. She sits up and turns around just in time to see a small avalanche of small pebbles come tumbling over the rock outcropping above the girls’ breakfast spot, followed by a rock the size of a bowling ball. She jumps to her feet and alerts Sally, who isn’t fast enough and is hit in the shoulder with the large rock. It almost sends her tumbling over the edge of the flat rock, which is 10 feet above the rocky ground, but luckily Jenny’s able to grab her in time.
Jenny’s sure the rocks hadn’t simply fallen, like Sally reckons, because she saw a human shadow when she first glanced up at the tumbling pebbles. As they ride back to Jenny’s place, Sally tries to convince Jenny that it was an animal, or some sort of geological event, but eventually she concedes that maybe it’s another prank being played on Jenny. When questioned if she thinks Brad is behind it, Sally remarks, ‘”That’s for you to find out, isn’t it?”‘ and smiles to herself. Jenny, who’s realised on this trip that she really doesn’t know Sally that well, wonders if her new friend knows who’s behind all the strange things happening lately…
Sally drops Jenny off and thanks her once again for saving her ass on the bluff, promising to call in a few days as she rides off. [How long is she visiting her aunt for? Is this a cover story? Is Sally in on whatever’s happening?] There’s a message from the younger McPherson on the answering machine, who comments, ‘”Still alone, huh? Too bad”‘, before informing her they can start painting in 10 days. Jenny’s weirded out by his comment, remembering how his eyes had devoured her in her bathrobe, and hopes that he was just guessing she’s alone rather than stalking her.
Jenny heads to the supermarket now, bringing Peaches along for the ride, and has to park two blocks away because the parks are all taken. Peaches is fast asleep in the back, so Jenny winds all the windows down halfway so she won’t be uncomfortable in the heat. [I swear to god, if this dog dies…] The supermarket is quite crowded so it takes Jenny a while to get checked out, and as she waits in line she spots Dean walk past the window. Brad also appears and apologises for his behaviour the other night, and Jenny asks if he left anything behind. rad seems confused so Jenny doesn’t bother elaborating about the snake, [As if he’d admit it if it was him, though?] and finally she pays for her stuff makes her way back to the car.
Unfortunately, someone’s wound all the windows up and poor Peaches is suffering from heatstroke, barely breathing in the back. [Noooooooooo] Frantic, Jenny gets directions to the vet clinic and decides it’s easier to run there than drive, leaving her groceries next to the open car as she scurries off with Peaches in her arm. The vet takes Peaches into an examining room, and 30 minutes later returns with the good news that the dog will pull through. He scolds Jenny for being so careless in this hear, and Jenny doesn’t bother trying to defend herself because she knows he’ll think she’s lying. The vet plans to watch Peaches overnight and tomorrow, but she should be good to go home on Monday.
As she drives home, Jenny wonders who could have done such a horrible thing, and then her bad day gets even worse when her car runs out of gas on a long stretch of empty road that leads to her turn-off. [Did it run out of gas because it actually needed topping up, or did someone sabotage the car?] She sets off for home on foot so she can call the gas station, hoping someone will drive past and help her, but nobody seems to live out this way except her and Sally. Lucky for her there’s a phone booth she’d completely forgotten about further up along the road, and she eagerly hurries towards it when it comes into view.
As she’s nearing the booth, she hears an engine in the distance and decides to flag the vehicle down in the middle of the road, because with her luck the phone will be out of order. As it gets nearer, she realises it’s a motorbike, with its rider wearing all black and a helmet that covers their face, reminding Jenny of Darth Vader. It quickly becomes obvious the rider isn’t gonna slow down, so she hurries back to the side of the road and turns around just in time to see the motorbike coming right at her!!
It swerves at the last second, kicking up a shower of dirt and gravel, then roars off. Realising it was deliberate, Jenny takes shelter in the booth when she hears the bike coming back. He does the same thing several times, always swerving at the last second, and Jenny finds that the booth’s door is stuck, so she can’t even escape to the field behind it.
When she tries to make a phone call, the motorbike rider stays nearby and revs the engine as much as possible, making it impossible for her to hear anything. Eventually the coast seems clear, and she dials the gas station number that’s on a sticker in the booth. She starts sobbing as soon as there’s an answer, though, feeling claustrophobic in the warming-up glass booth. She eventually manages to get the door open, relieved to feel the cool air again, and finally responds to the gas station worker on the phone who’s wondering wtf is happening.
It’s late afternoon by the time Jenny arrives home with her car, and her secret admirer has left a wind chime hanging from the porch for her. There’s also a message from her parents on the machine letting her know they’ll be arriving back home at 6pm tomorrow, which is welcome news. Even though Jenny should call the police and tell them about everything that’s happened, she decides against it because she wouldn’t be able to give them a reason why it’s happening. [So doing absolutely nothing is a better option?]
As the sun begins to set, Jenny plops herself down on the porch steps and listens to the calming wind chimes as she tries to get her thoughts together. The bad stuff had started happening the day after she told everyone she may have heard Diana on the bluffs, so she focuses her mind on that night and eventually realises she heard two voices; one shouted, and the other screamed. Whoever it was must have been present at the diner, and is now trying to scare Jenny so bad that she stays silent. But who?! [To me, David is the most obvious choice since we know he was there, he disappeared briefly and then tried to make Jenny believe she didn’t hear anything] She considers Brad again, and Sally had been so weird this morning, so could she be his accomplice? Was she checking her watch so often because she’d known the rocks would fall, and it had simply backfired and hit her instead? [The heroine never usually suspects the bad guy, so I guess I’ll scratch her off my list] Dean had been nearby when Peaches was locked in the car, could he be behind it? Finally, after putting it off because she doesn’t want to believe it, she admits that David could be behind it all. [OK, well now I have no suspects. Surely it’s not one of the painters. It has to be one of the people Jenny is suss about! Which means we can’t rule any of them out! That’s a nice change]
Jenny eventually goes inside and finds another message on the answering machine. It’s from her secret admirer, who assures her all the calls and presents aren’t a joke and urges her to meet him at the rimrocks tonight before he has to go to work at 7:30pm. [Don’t do it, Jenny] If she likes him, he promises to come to her house next time to meet her parents. Jenny wastes no time, turning all the lights on and leaving the radio up full blast so anyone passing by will think someone’s home, then she heads out the door. She plans on staying at the airport tonight and all through tomorrow so she doesn’t have to stay in the house alone again, but first she’s got a date at the bluff — ‘She wasn’t even afraid of the rimrocks if her secret admirer was there.’ [Jenny, plz, this is how people get kidnapped and/or murdered! This idiot is really going to a secluded place at night to meet a total stranger she knows absolutely nothing about. What’s the bet the menacing stalker and the secret admirer are the exact same person, and he’s alternating between being sweet and threatening so she’d be more inclined to meet him? Jenny was smart and logical up until now lol]
Jenny arrives at the bottom of the rimrocks and climbs to the rendezvous point, a flat rock in the centre of the U-shaped bluff. She waits for a while as it continues to get darker, and eventually hears the dulcet tones of her secret admirer from above. She can’t see him when she looks up, though, because another rock juts out part way over the one she’s on, and he explains he came from the top. Apparently it’s flat up the top of the bluffs, and there’s even a road up there, so maybe he lives up that way. Jenny asks him to come down, but he insists it’s easier for her to come up than him to go down, and he’ll even meet her halfway to assist. [Why is she not asking his name?] She stupidly agrees because she really wants to see his face [Apparently not even considering that she’ll have to go back down to her car at some point… Maybe he’ll show her a shortcut and shove her off the top!] and starts climbing up.
Every so often she calls out to make sure he’s still coming down, and his voice gets closer every time, so he’s definitely on his way. Soon, though, her path gets trickier and she struggles to find footholds in the dark. The admirer urges her on, but eventually Jenny decides she wants flat ground beneath her feet and declares she’s going back down. She offers to wait below for him to get down, or they can each go back to their cars and meet at a diner or something, but he encourages her not to quit. Jenny’s getting annoyed now because they’re arguing already and they haven’t even met yet, and his voice starts sounding desperate as he insists she continue heading upwards, yelling ‘”I was counting on you!”‘
Those four words trigger Jenny’s memory, and she realises she’d heard them shouted by whoever was with Diana the night she fell… not only that, but it’s the same voice! ‘”You,”‘ she says without meaning to, realising her secret admirer has been behind the bad stuff. [Called it!] Her admirer quickly catches on that she’s remembered and starts moving down quicker. He admits to hearing her up here that night but had hoped she hadn’t heard him, and then tried to scare her out of town when he found out she had heard something. [But he was pretending to be a secret admirer before that? Was he just sowing the seeds in case he needed to manipulate her?] Jenny struggles to find the footholds so she can descend the bluff, so her admirer quickly catches up to her. She doesn’t even have a chance to look up before, with one big push, ‘her secret admirer sent her tumbling back off the face of the rimrocks.’ [If only you weren’t so naive, Jenny!]
An unknown amount of time later, Jenny comes to with her back pressed up against a rock and realises she must have somehow twisted around and managed to brace herself with her feet and hands. [I don’t really get what this means… I think she’s got her legs up against one side of a rock and her back pressed against another… but if she was unconscious, wouldn’t she have just gone limp and fell all the way?] She scolds herself for her stupidity, coming out here to meet a total stranger she thought she could trust based on his voice, and wonders if he knows she’s alive. He surely would have come down to check, then killed her when he’d seen she was still breathing. She decides he may not be able to get to her and isn’t sure whether she’s dead or not, so is probably waiting until there’s enough light to see before making his move.
Jenny’s not gonna stay here like a sitting duck, so she painstakingly makes her way down, hindered by an injured ankle she struggles to put weight on. Eventually, just as it’s starting to get light, [So she was passed out for like, 12 hours???] she finds herself on the flat rock she’d come to when she’d first arrived, and that’s when she hears David’s voice calling out to her. [Definitely a red herring, but why is he here?] She can see him climbing up toward where she is so she finds a rough, uneven rock and whacks her unsuspecting love interest in the head when he’s close enough.
Just as she starts to feel safe, another voice says her name, and she spots Dean standing in the gully on the other side of the rock. It’s super obvious to anyone with a brain that he’s our bad guy, but Jenny’s must have tumbled out of her ear in her fall and still thinks David’s behind everything, explaining he’d tried to kill her. [Props to Carol Ellis for switching it up and having a suspect, albeit a minor one, actually be the bad guy!]
Dean moves onto the rock as Jenny expresses her confusion — why was Dean looking for her? How did he know she’d be here? Why doesn’t he seem bothered that his friend tried to murder her? [When’s that other shoe gonna drop, Jenny? This is painful] Dean tells her the ordeal’s not over, and his voice changes back to the soft, voice of her secret admirer. And then it all makes sense; why he’s dressed all in black, why he’s here in the first place, his unfazed reaction to David, etc. Jenny climbs to her feet as Dean confesses that he didn’t push Diana, she’d just fallen by accident, although it did work out well for him until Jenny started blabbing about hearing something. David being here is convenient, too, because now it’ll just look like he and Jenny simply had a lover’s quarrel and both fell — it’ll all be deemed a tragic accident. He moves closer as he talks and when he’s close enough, Jenny lunges at him with her rock. It doesn’t connect, but Dean is thrown off balance as he tries to protect himself, and a ‘tiny intake of breath was the only sound Dean made as he fell backward toward the rocks below.’
David comes to and Jenny apologises for striking him before explaining that Dean fell. David peeks over the rock and notices that Dean’s moving a little bit, so he’s still alive. David hurries down to his dad’s car, which has a CB radio, and calls an ambulance, then returns to Jenny, who explains everything from the very beginning. The ambulance comes and takes Dean and his broken leg away, and David explains his side of things as he helps Jenny down the bluff.
Diana woke up and is completely fine, and she told everyone how she fell. Dean hadn’t been lying before, her fall really was an accident. But she was arguing with Dean because his grades had been slipping, and since he’s such a computer whiz, he’d figured out how to hack the school’s system to give himself A’s on everything. His family push for him to be the best, you see, and I guess this was the only way he could ensure he’d get into a great school. Diana somehow found out and had agreed to keep his secret at first, but the school got suspicious of something funny going on and Diana knew it wouldn’t be long before they found out what happened. Up on the bluffs, [I guess they were looking for a bird’s nest too?] she’d tried to convince him to confess, but he went crazy and started yelling about how he was counting on her, and then she fell.
David admits he’d been acting weird himself lately because although he didn’t think Jenny would have pushed her, he suspect she’d been with Diana when she fell; the girls didn’t have a great first impression, and he’d left Jenny alone for a brief period of time on the bluff. Everything pointed to Dean, though, but David didn’t want to believe his friend would leave another friend to die like that. Jenny confesses she’d suspected everyone, even him, so she’s not upset that he didn’t trust her, especially because they really don’t know each other.
Anyway, when Diana woke up and told everyone about Dean, David went over to Jenny’s house to apologise and talk. Jenny forgot to lock the door, [For fuck’s sake, Jenny] so he let himself in to investigate since the place was lit up and music was blasting. He’d listened to the message on the answering machine hoping it would give a clue to her whereabouts, and Jenny questions why it took him so long to get here if he broke into her house last night. Well, he didn’t recognise the voice and just assumed she had a boyfriend, so he went home. Everyone was calling everyone about Diana’s recovery, and David decided to call Dean to let him know she was awake, so he’d have a chance to go to her and apologise, maybe. There was no answer, though, and that’s when it clicked that Dean was who Jenny had gone to meet. [OK, but he still didn’t come to the rimrocks until the early morning?? This doesn’t explain his delay lol]
He regrets not talking to her earlier and explaining what had been on his mind, but Jenny completely understands. She’s happy to leave the past in the past, and they agree to get to know each other better. By this point there in the car, and the book ends as Jenny glances back at the rimrocks — ‘The nightmare was over, and she knew without a doubt that the rimrocks would never disturb her sleep again.’
Final thoughts
I enjoyed this one more than I thought I would! Honestly, I wasn’t expecting too much going into it; I thought it would just be another typical stalker book, which it was, but Carol Ellis’ writing elevated it for me. Her characterisation of Jenny was really good; the story was told in third-person, but we got a lot of great insight into Jenny’s mind. Another reason I probably liked it so much is that I was pretty much on the same page as Jenny the whole time in terms of the mystery; she suspected everyone for the same reasons I did, and that made it harder for me to guess who was actually stalking her. There were some really good suspense scenes here too, with the motorbike harassment and and the chase at the rimrocks.
Jenny was also quite smart and logical for the most part, except at the end when she went to meet a complete stranger at the rimrock. As much as I hate to admit it, though, I can understand why she did that — of course she wouldn’t suspect her secret admirer was also her stalker, and since she couldn’t trust anyone she actually did know in person, she’d want to seek solace in the one person she thought was on her side. I don’t know if I can forgive her for believing David was her stalker until Dean explained himself, though.
I didn’t like how Sally disappeared by the third act, especially when she was being so weird on their breakfast date. I guess it really was because she didn’t want to visit her aunt, but her explanation was just weird. Like, why are you counting down the minutes instead of enjoying yourself before you have to go visit her? Oh well.
202 seedy painters creeping on underage girls out of 250!
