Tagline: He’s too close for comfort…
Back tagline: N/A
Summary: Randy’s friends think she’ll be scared when her father goes away and leaves her home alone. The house is large and ramshackle, and built on a deserted street, but Randy says she’ll be fine. And she is… until Julian moves in next door…
Now, being alone is the least of her worries. Randy has many new friends these days: fear is her constant companion, while dread lurks outside, demanding to be let in. And, thanks to Julian, it seems that horror is to be a permanent house guest…
First impressions: This seems to hold all the premise and promise of a trashy, made-for-TV thriller movie and I am here for it! Also, I am loving those Black Christmas (1974) vibes that the cover art is giving me. I have had a lot of fun with the other (bonkers side of Point Horror) Sinclair Smith titles I have read so far, so let’s go!
Recap
Roll call:
Randy – our leading lady.
Julian – the eponymous boy next door.
Alice – the best friend of our leading lady.
Ted – Randy’s boyfriend.
Maxine – captain of the cheerleading squad.
Shannon – cheerleading co-captain.
Also starring – Absentee parents, incompetent cops and a whole big bunch of capital letters.
We open dramatically with a news report in which a woman describes her narrow escape from a killer on the loose. Randy, our lead, returns to her bedroom with more popcorn for her and her bestie Alice, who explains the interview is just part of a TV movie. What a relief! Yet, it does let us ponder the question; is our leading lady gullible? Alice offers to stay over since Randy’s dad is away for three weeks with his home renovation TV show [Leaving your child alone for 3 weeks? Is that legal!?], but Randy, who lives in the one inhabited house on a dead end street, says she’ll be fine because nothing happens in this town [Jack: I’m sure you’re about to eat those words, Randy].
After Alice leaves, Randy sees a light flash in the house next door… the house where no one has lived for years. Unnerved, she keeps an eye out for any more activity but sees nothing. She then goes to bed, where she scolds herself for acting like a scared little child by being aware of, and spooked by all the creaking noises made by her old house.
The next morning, Randy’s alarm clock goes off thirty minutes late, even though she’s sure she set it for the correct time, which means she’s running late for cheer practice. In a fluster due to cheer captain Maxine’s distaste for late people, Randy rushes to get ready but can’t find her cheer sweater in her closet where she left it, but thankfully she has a spare downstairs. [Phew!]
Maxine is a little irritated and snippy about Randy’s lateness, but practice passes without any drama. Afterwards, Randy walks to school with her boyfriend Ted, reflecting on how lucky she is –gorgeous, good-humoured, lovely boyfriend, friends, a cheerleader… she has a perfect, perfect life.
“It didn’t seem possible that anything could spoil her relationship with Ted, or anything else about her perfect, perfect life.
But then later that night, she saw a light flash again in the upstairs window next door.”
14 pages in, she actually calls the police [This never happens!]. Officers Diva and Covik show up and are some extreme Point Horror authority figures, legit screaming at a teenage girl who’s home alone and thought she saw a prowler for wasting their time [I mean, props to Randy for being possibly the only Point Horror lead to actually be sensible enough to call the police. It’s just a shame she doesn’t know all teen horror authority figures are useless. Sympathy though, girl, because these two might actually be the worst]. Time to take out the trash. Literally.
While outside, Randy hears a bin lid clattering to the ground and is grabbed by someone who’s maniacally laughing – like, really unhinged laughter. When he turns her around, his oh-so-dreamy face and bright white teeth immediately make her ignore the host of weird, creepy shit he starts saying.
They start chatting away while he engages in some Dennis Reynolds–level flirting, informing her that her hobbies and interests are childish things that he has outgrown [Put a pin in that, we will talk about it soon]. He then goes on to tell her he’ll take her out and show her what he’s into and just like that, she’s oh-so-bored with her perfect, perfect life because Julian is ‘”so sophisticated.”‘ [Girl, look at your life, look at your choices]
After her one rather brief and frankly alarm-ringing encounter with Julian, Randy’s decided that Ted just doesn’t measure up, cheerleading is silly, and it’s time she put away her childish things [Jack: Wow, not a female character completely changing her life for a man…]. Having decided that she no longer cares, she skips the next morning’s cheer practice and is confronted by Ted and Maxine at her locker. Randy busts out with some serious “this is you, this is me, we don’t talk” energy, quitting the team and dumping Ted.
The whole school is buzzing with the news for the rest of the day, and when she overhears some girls gossiping later that day, Randy very dramatically screams, ‘”You think I’m crazy? Well, maybe I am! And I’m glad!”‘
That night, seething over being the subject of hallway gossip, Randy decides that she just has to see Julian right now! She steps outside, but there’s no sign of activity next door, and just as she’s about to go back inside, Julian steps out from the darkness of the porch. Thus begins a moonlit walk through the woods, prompted by his encouragement to be daring and some belittling of Ted. They reach a creek, at which point Julian informs her that he can ‘”walk on water.”‘ Okaay.
They cross the creek [By stepping on rocks, not the water. Disappointing] and from then on, they have regular midnight walks into the woods that always begin the same way – he whispers to her from the dark and she can’t resist how exciting she finds him. They venture further and further into the woods with each stroll [Has he cast some sort of spell on her? Are we going to have the rare supernatural Point Horror tale?] until one night, they reach a cliff overlooking a gorge. Julian stands on one leg at the edge and encourages her to do the same. Hypnotised [Literally?], she strikes a ballerina pose, closes her eyes at Julian’s request, and suddenly hears a ‘”BOO!”‘ at which point she loses her balance and slips over the edge. We have a literal cliffhanger chapter break [Jack I never thought I’d see the day!]. Julian is able to grab her around her waist and pull her back from the edge with a quick quip:
“HAVE A NICE TRIP. SEE YOU IN THE FALL!”
[Very grown up. Very sophisticated. Remember that pin? Yeah, you can take that out now. We’re only a quarter of the way through, guys, strap in] Randy loves the thrill it gave her, the taste of danger, and tells Julian that she feels so alive. Julian says some eye-rolling, vom-inducing lines that quickly veer towards alarm bell ringing.
Julian pulled back a little and looked into her eyes. “Oh, come on. You weren’t even falling, unless you were falling for me. You didn’t even get near the edge. You kept edging back – that’s why I didn’t want you to open your eyes and look. I didn’t want you to see that you were nowhere near the edge and miss the whole experience. I know about this stuff – I’ve been at it a long time.”
Next up in their pursuit of thrills is a joy ride in Randy’s car, during which Julian encourages her to drive faster and faster, and they very narrowly escape from crashing into another car [I’m unsure about the logistics of this, either Randy is driving on the wrong side of the road or it’s one of those really narrow roads that just has passing places]. Randy passes out from shock so Julian has to take the wheel, which results in him full on yelling at her about swerving, because he thinks the car would have backed off.
Randy needs a break from their thrillseeking for a while, which Julian doesn’t argue with, informing her that it’s much more exciting to mess with other people [Oh boy]. And so begins their journey into the realm of hysterical revenge pranks. Since there’s no one that Randy wants revenge against, Julian steers her towards the idea of anyone she finds obnoxious who could be taken down a peg or two [How about you, Julian?] and she realises that she in fact knows many obnoxious people.
During history class the next day, Randy thinks about how annoying the teacher is. Apparently Ms. Newton enjoys picking on students and even got someone suspended for chewing gum in class, so Randy decides it’s time for payback. Alice also passes Randy a note wondering why why she’s staring so intensely at Newton, because it’s weird [Alice seems smart, I like her].
As it happens, Ms. Newton has a well-known phobia of insects, so Randy has planted a tarantula in Newton’s desk drawer, knowing she always pulls a fresh piece of chalk from there every day [Jack: How come fictional high schoolers always seem to have easy access to tarantulas? Do US schools keep them as pets?].Naturally, Newton’s terrified when she opens the drawer and ends up fainting while all the students laugh. The tarantula ends up under the desk, where it curls up and stops moving. Someone declares that it’s dead, prompting Randy to brag about her prank – it’s not a real tarantula [Jack: Would anyone really believe a wind-up toy was a real spider? And how come it didn’t start moving until the desk was opened? Don’t wind-ups start moving straight away usually]. Everyone finds this an absolute riot, and Randy just revels in it. Our girl Alice, though, she tut tuts. As she should.
At Randy’s that night, Julian once again steps silently out of the darkness for a moonlit chat, and an entranced Randy [Reasons still unknown] begins daydreaming about her future of spring walks, summer barbecues, and beach days with Julian. When talk turns to the prank she pulled at school, Julian very rationally tells her that she should have used a real tarantula, which would have produced more scares. It transpires that he actually saw the whole thing, too, because he was watching from outside the classroom window [Jack: What a fkn creeper! This is the scariest part so far], and Julian encourages Randy to think of some other people that can terrify.
The next day, Randy posts a love note on the school bulletin board, pretending to be from a nerdy guy to Maxine. It causes quite a stir and Maxine’s boyfriend does not take the note too well, threatening to beat Ernie up. Thankfully, Ernie manages to convince him that it’s someone’s twisted idea of a joke and avoids getting hit. Randy feels a brief flicker of guilt until she sees Ted among the crowd of students looking at her suspiciously, then tells herself that ‘nothing had happened – NOTHING.’ [Jack: Sinclair Smith REALLY loves CAPITAL words] She finds it exhilarating and can’t wait to tell Julian all about it.
Suddenly, Randy hears a voice behind her say they know who’s responsible! It’s Alice, and she can’t believe Randy would do something so mean, especially involving their friends. Pulling Alice aside, Randy denies the whole thing but Alice is unconvinced, aware how good Randy is at forgery thanks to several fake notes in the past. Randy grows flustered as she explains she just hasn’t been herself since meeting Julian, and Alice is all, “Uh, who’s Julian?” Randy tells her all about him, and Alice has a lot of questions about this oh-so-fabulous guy, but Randy knows next to nothing about him and proper kicks off. Alice thinks Julian sounds shady, and it’s kind of implied that she believes it’s possible Randy has made him up.
At home later, Randy steps out onto her porch and immediately hears what else but Julian’s voice, and it’s so clear that it’s almost as if it’s in her head [Is that where he resides?]. He always appears silently and seemingly out of nowhere, after all [Girl, seriously, he’s clearly a creep creep weirdo]. On this particular occasion she observes the way his eyes are glittering in the moonlight like a werewolf’s and questions why this stuff hasn’t bothered her before [Good, we’re catching on] but then gets all angry with Alice for making her question things [Never mind I guess…].
They sit and talk, which involves Julian dodging questions about how work is going on the house – he doesn’t want to talk about that trivial matter when the note prank was so hilarious. Randy is becoming more wary and says it’s not really all that funny, considering someone could have been hurt. Mr Creep Creep Weirdo scoffs at this, calling the boys dim bulb boyfriends, because if they’d bothered to stop and think for even a second, then nothing would have happened. Then for good measure, he basically calls her friends dumb and princesses.
Randy is horrified by his behaviour [Finally!] and tells him as such, which makes him be all, “Hey, what’s up with you?” She notes that the way he talks about the stunt is like he was there, but he couldn’t have been since any old randomer can’t just wander into the school. He acts like a big old douche, being all like, “Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t.” [Ugh] Frustrated, Randy asks why he always just shows up, never calls or takes her on dates, and has never invited her to his grandparents’ house. She mentions Alice having pondered the same things and he says that there’s only one way to deal with a friend like that.
Julian was looking at her with the strangest expression.
“Alice? You must mean your friend Alice. Well, as everyone knows, a best friend can turn into a jealous friend. Especially if Alice has no boyfriend of her own right now. And she doesn’t, does she, Randy?”
“No.” Randy was crying softly now. Julian put his hand under her chin.
“Don’t cry. It’s not your fault. We both see what happened now — why there’s been a misunderstanding between us. It’s all Alice’s doing — because Alice is jealous.
“And we both know what to do with a jealous friend like Alice.
“GET RID OF HER.'”
[Jack: King of gaslighting!] He tells her that Alice is jealous and poisonous and interfering with their happiness, so Randy offers to ignore Alice, and that way she’ll go away. Big surprise, Julian doesn’t think that’s enough, but thankfully concedes [Yeah you’d better leave Alice alone!] [Jack: Alice is the best character in this book. Randy sucks]. But hey, Randy, maybe there’s someone else who needs to be knocked down off their perch?
Randy feels like she doesn’t have any enemies, yet when she’s with Julian she gets crazy thoughts and realises how angry she really is with the people around her. There’s this girl, Darlene, who’s really snippy and snobby, and she makes Randy ‘”MAD!”‘ because she’s always showing off and bragging about her rollerblading and all the races she wins [Is competitive rollerblading a thing?]. She also refuses to rollerblade with Randy anymore because Randy’s a cautious scaredy cat, and is always showing off.
Julian reckons they should set her up to slip on oil while she’s having her morning skate at the park, but Randy, quite rightly, says that’s horrible because Darlene could get really hurt. Julian laughs in an incredibly unhinged manner [Seriously, a dramatic reading of this part would make Mommie Dearest look tame and be on a par with The Room] and points out that she’s clearly already prepared for it, since she’s got a fresh can of oil in the garage. Then for good measure, he tells her better this than cutting the brakes on Darlene’s car or bike. He seems legitimately unhinged and Randy is scared about what he’ll do if she doesn’t play along [Jack: Oh, so now she’s scared of him lol].
The next morning Randy dons an old scarf, big coat and dark glasses to disguise herself and heads to the park to set an oil trap for Darlene, and then we cut to later at school. Randy decides that she can’t ignore Alice because she’s too good a friend [Yeah, she is! Smartest thing you’ve said so far, Randy]. Alice notices how high strung she is and asks if she’s okay and if she’s finally realised Julian isn’t all he’s cracked up to be, but Randy snaps at her to shut up when Darlene limps into the classroom [Alice, you deserve better than this]. When people start asking questions, Darlene recounts how she slipped in some spilt oil while rollerblading that morning and hurt her ankle. Alice looks at Randy suspiciously, which is heatedly questioned by our leading lady.
At the end of class, Alice lets Randy know that she actually saw Randy pouring oil in Darlene’s path when she walked by the park that morning . Randy is insistent that it must have been Julian because she chickened out and couldn’t go through with it. She spills that he is always watching her and just knows things, but Alice doesn’t believe her and can’t decide if her friend is lying, crazy, or both:
“Randy — it wasn’t any Julian who poured motor oil on the path in the park this morning. It was you. You poured the whole can of motor oil out, and then you dumped the can in a trash bin and hid behind a tree and watched… while Darlene nearly had a terrible accident.”
At home after school, Randy begins to seriously question herself and what happened that morning. She’s certain she backed out of the plan and remembers it all so clearly, yet Alice saw her. Is she losing her mind? She remembers that she put the oil can back on the shelf in the garage, so goes to check. She can’t find it, and naturally, Julian shows up out of nowhere, and it becomes clear he was responsible for Darlene’s accident. She demands to know what he’s done with the oil can and he begins playing some serious mind games, even going so far as to ask her if she ever wonders if he’s just a figment of her imagination. He has the gall to laugh at her for considering this then tells her that she is powerless to stop bowing to his demands, the latest of which is to tamper with the brakes on Darlene’s bikes.
Up in her bedroom later, Randy is feeling scared. Life feels scary and confusing. She misses her old life of cheerleading, friends, and Ted. On her dressing table she sees a stack of credit card receipts that she would never have put there. They all have her signature at the bottom but she doesn’t remember making any of these purchases, especially not the rat poison. Now she knows that she can’t possibly go to the police as she is going to look guilty [And that’s even if they weren’t the worst teen horror cops ever].
At school the next morning, she doesn’t want to tamper with Darlene’s brakes but is equally worried about what Julian will do if she doesn’t. Alice approaches her and apologises for accusing her of trying to hurt Darlene, and sweetly tries to ease the tension between them [I love her. She is too good for this juvenile nonsense]. As they head inside, Alice comments on how ramshackle Julian’s house still looks and that it would be great if he didn’t move in. Even better if he just disappeared into thin air [Very much like the way he appears. Hmm, interesting…].
Darlene doesn’t show up to school and Randy is terrified that Julian has done something to her. When she gets home, she charges next door and hammers on the door but there’s no sign of Julian being present. Back at her house, she lies zombified on the sofa for hours until she gets a call from one of Darlene’s friends, who reveals Darlene’s had a bad accident and is in hospital, but nobody knows any details. Frenzied, Randy goes outside calling for Julian with no luck. She’s unable to sleep that night, thinking over and over about how Julian has turned her life upside down.
The next morning, the principal announces over the PA system that Darlene is absent due to appendicitis [Really, over the PA? Someone being off sick? Wouldn’t that violate data protection? Guess Darlene’s a pretty big deal round these parts]. Flooded with relief, Randy exclaims to Alice how wonderful it is that Darlene isn’t in the hospital because of Julian. Alice is all, uh what? Randy explains the situation and Alice has had it. She tells Randy that the way she talks about Julian is crazy and she is out of there.
Some time passes and Randy stops talking about Mr Creep Creep Weirdo to Alice. There’s no need to really, because she hasn’t seen him for a while. Alice notices that she’s stopped bringing him up and Randy theorises that his family decided not to move in next door after all. Later, after arriving home from doing some food shopping, Randy is surprised to see Alice’s car parked next door. She feels a surge of panic and doesn’t know if she’s scared that Alice will find Julian, or if she’s scared that she won’t find anything. Going up to the house, she notices the door open and steps inside to find the home completely dilapidated, and clearly no one has been there in a long, long time [I hope there weren’t any frozen items in those grocery bags she abandoned. Food poisoning is the last thing she needs right now].
Noticing some small footprints in the dust she realises that Alice must be inside and quickly finds her, relieved that she’s okay. Alice confirms that the house is deserted and there’s no way anyone’s been working on it. Out of the corner of her eye, Randy catches a glimpse of Julian’s face right as he shoves Alice down the cellar stairs. After Alice tumbles all the way down, Randy can’t see Julian anywhere. Carefully, she makes her way down into the cellar to help Alice, but Alice starts screaming at her not to touch her as Randy gets closer:
“Julian’s someone you invented so you could do what you want. It was YOU! It was you all along. YOU PUSHED ME DOWN THE STAIRS!”
Alice then passes out, so Randy runs out of the house, desperate to get away from Julian but knowing that she can’t. She runs home to call an ambulance for Alice, deciding she should probably ask them to send someone for herself too. She’s in such a panic, however, that she can’t stop her hand from trembling enough to actually dial the phone. She hears the kitchen window opening but knows it’s just her fear because Julian doesn’t exist. Her fear makes her hear footsteps. Footsteps that keep coming closer and closer…
Terrified, she abandons the phone and runs upstairs, sensing him right behind her, knowing she’s running out of places to go. Thinking quickly, she grabs the ladder to the crawl space from its hooks, steadies it in place and hurries up to the loft hatch. Suddenly Julian appears with a ‘”Hi, there”‘ and starts shaking the ladder, trying to make her fall. She manages to open the hatch and pulls herself up into the loft as Julian grabs at her ankles, but she’s able to kick him away. She hears the ladder clattering down the stairs, and Julian promptly runs off to fetch it. Randy scrambles her way through the dark crawl space and finds her hand brushing against something soft.
Peering closer, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, she sees that it’s her scarf. And there’s more hidden away there with it – an old coat, a credit card in her name, and a message pad she couldn’t find. Downstairs, the phone starts ringing, but Randy continues exploring the crawl space, finding a wedge of cheese wrapped in cling film, a blanket, a pillow, and her missing cheerleading sweater:
Julian was no figment of a crazed imagination. He was real. The reason there was no evidence of him next door was the same as the reason he knew so much about her. He hadn’t been living in the house next door.
He was living in her house.
[Jack: This is terrifying] Julian pulls himself up into the loft and goes all Jack Nicholson with a ‘”HERE’S JOHNNY!”‘ She screams at him to get away but he tells her he just wants to get close enough to choke her until her eyes pop out [Yikes!]. Thinking quickly, Randy grabs the cheese and hurls it at Julian. It hits him right in the face and as he screams out in pain, Randy yells what surely must be one of the most iconic Point Horror lines – ‘”TOO MUCH CHEESE IS BAD FOR YOUR CHOLESTEROL.”‘
[Jack: OMFG hahahahahaha 100% one of the best lines ever!] Using knowledge garnered from her dad, Randy locates the roof access hatch and escapes onto the roof, a la Halloween IV and Scream 4. Julian’s in hot pursuit, so she has to move fast while trying to keep her balance, but he quickly closes the gap, grinning darkly at her. As Randy prepares for the end, a patch of the roof collapses [Turns out that while her dad is great at fixing up other people’s houses he’s not so on top of taking care of his own] and Julian plummets to the ground.
The police and an ambulance arrive [Our girl Alice is fine, phew!] and Julian ends up being taken back to the juvenile correctional facility he’d escaped from months ago. A week later, Randy, Alice, and Ted are hanging out at Randy’s house, reflecting on all that happened and how crazy it was. Randy can’t believe it’s actually over, but mentions feeling like Julian is still watching her. Ted reassures her that it’s over and that she’s safe. Her dad gets back from his work trip and Randy, relieved to have him home, tells him it’s a good thing he hadn’t fixed the roof sooner!
In an epilogue we learn that Randy’s dad fixed up their house but could never shake the strange feeling it gave him, so ended up selling it. The new owner also bought the house next door and ended up demolishing both, but never rebuilt, anything leaving the plots empty. It’s rare that anyone walks by the empty lots, too, because anyone who does feels terrified, like they’re being watched… [Ooh! A good spooky finish.]
Final Thoughts
This one was quite the ride! Pranks are definitely my least favourite type of plot in these books, but they didn’t take up too much of the book [And thankfully came nowhere close to Stine levels]. I was a little unclear about what Randy found quite so entrancing about Julian and felt that could have been expanded, but I get it that we gotta get these things moving quickly [Jack: it is very confusing because he was awful from the very start???].
I am an absolute sucker for trashy TV movies so the plot of this book was well-suited to my taste. I am all for the bonkers when it comes to these type of books and this one was bonkers banana pants! That cheese moment was sheer perfection as far as I’m concerned and elevated it to iconic Point Horror status. On a second, closer, more critical reading, I found that Sinclair Smith actually did a pretty solid job of depicting controlling mind games and how they mess with an individual, which is something you don’t often get with these kind of titles. It’s definitely not going to be for everyone, but if you’re a fan of the more bonkers PH entries then check it out.
Critical rating: 30 abandoned grocery bags out of 65.
General rating: 75 attic cheese projectile weapons out of 90.
You can follow Nerissa on Instagram at @ThatPointOnPikeStreet
