Francine Pascal - Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later

For my darling daughter,

Jamie Stewart

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The first thank-you goes to my agent of twenty-nine years, Amy Berkower, the best agent, manager, and friend any writer could have. And to Dan Weiss, who goes back to the beginning of Sweet Valley, a partner and a friend as well. I am grateful to my excellent editor, Hilary Rubin Teeman, and to my copyeditor, Frances Sayers. And especially to Genevieve Gagne-Hawes for knowing everything there is to know about Sweet Valley and saving me from any number of memory lapses and doing it so kindly and so fast. Im always grateful to Hilary Bloom, who for twenty-three years has run every part of my office and from time to time, my life.

And thanks to Ken Gross for the title and Molly Wenk for the pieces of current technospeak I would never have known. Thanks to Judy Adler for her wedding contribution.

My gratitude and love go out to my family, who always support me in my work: Laurie Wenk and Susan Johansson. And to Anders Johansson and all the rest of my remarkable family: the Bigs, the Middles, and the Little. You know who you are. Thank you.

And a special thanks to Justin Timberlake and his coauthors, Nate Danja Hills and T.I., for quotes from My Love. And to Beyonc Giselle Knowles, Kenneth Brian Edmonds, Mikkel S. Eriksen, and Tor Erik Hermansen for their beautiful song, Broken-Hearted Girl.

CONTENTS

New York

Elizabeth had turned the key in the Fox lock, releasing a heavy metal bar that scraped across the inside of the front door with an impressive prison-gate sound, and was about to attack the Segal lock when the phone in the apartment started to ring. By the time she had opened the second lock and was sliding the key into the last onethis was New York, after allthe phone was on its fourth ring.

At almost midnight, it had to be the West Coast calling.

She could still grab it in time, but Elizabeth didnt hurry. Slow, with purpose. Slow, giving the internal anger and hurt time to shoot from zero to a hundred. It needed only seconds, like the start-up speed of a Maserati. Except it was never at zero. Not anymore. Hadnt been for the last eight months. And she couldnt imagine a time when it would ever be there again.

As always, the hurt overpowered the anger, and what welled up in her throat came with tears that choked her.

You going to get that? David Stephenson, the young man standing next to her, asked as he stretched his arm over her head to hold the door open. David was six-three and at her five-six it was way over her head.

Thats okay, she managed, quickly ducking her face away from him, stealing a sliver of extra time as she put the doggie-bagged pork chop she was carrying carefully and more precisely than necessary down on the hall table. It gave her enough time to catch her breath and let the tears slide back down her throat.

And with that momentary respite came an irresistible, nasty need to satisfy the anger physically. All she had was her purse. It would do. She flung it as hard as she could into the hall chair and watched as the Prada knockoff hit the upholstered back, bounced off, and came to rest on the edge of the chair. A little dumb, but it was a surprisingly good release.

Like that embarrassing time a month ago on Broadway, when the fury escaped her mind into her mouth and she said, out loud, really loudly, I hate you! People turned, shocked and then interested; she quickly put her hand to her ear as if she were on a cell phone, and it became ordinary and they lost interest.

David had already walked into the living room, missing all the action behind him. You have a landline? And an answering machine?

My mother. A going-away gift. She said it made her feel that I was safer. How, I dont know. I think it made her feel safer.

Elizabeth could hear her own calm message playing in the background: Please leave your name and number, and Ill return your call as soon as possible. Thank you.

Im just going to throw this in the fridge, she said, scooping up the doggie bag, back in control. Would you like a glass of wine?

By now she was halfway through the narrow, sparsely furnished living room, heading into the safety of the very small jerry-built kitchen, with its squeezed-in mini refrigerator, two-burner stove, tiny oven, and an outsized, badly chipped, probably prewar like the rest of the building, porcelain sink deep enough to wash babies as well as dishes.

Sure. Okay. With a couple of ice cubes, please.

Lizzie. Pick up. The womans voice on the machine was plaintive. Please. I really need to talk to you.

Of course, Elizabeth could hear it from the kitchen. Could she ever miss that voice? Now so sweet, so seductive, pleading softly, spreading out the vowels, almost songlike. Liz zie

That voice, so heavy with love. Love me, it said, forgive me, so I can put you out of the way and get back to my own life.

I forgot to fill the ice tray, but the wines really cold.

Elizabeths voice was so calm David thought maybe she hadnt heard the message.

It sounds important. Dont you want to get it?

Now Elizabeth was back in the room carrying two glasses of chilled white wine. David was sitting on the small low couch, so low his knees almost obscured his face.

She answered him completely composed, as if she were reciting dialogue in a play. Actually, no.

It had everything but the English accent.

Davids cheeks creased in a slightly embarrassed smile that pulled in his breath with a little hiss; he was politely uncomfortable, knowing he had stumbled into something too personal. Sorry.

Thats okay. Forget it. She brushed it off, but there was no way to hide her flushed face.

I have to tell you. Its really weird, he said.

Because I didnt take the call?

No, because the voice it sounded just like you.

No wonder. How many times over the years had she herself been fooled by a recording? For just a flash she would think, Was that me? Or worse, when she had to pick herself out of a family picture. How pathetic is it not to recognize yourself?

Elizabeth handed David his wine without comment, put hers down on the low table next to her least favorite chair, comfortable but covered in a scratchy plaid fabric.

Normally, she never sat there, but the choice was either next to David on the loveseat, which would surely be more intimate than she felt right now, or the scratchy chair. She wasnt in the scratchy chair two seconds before she bobbed up and reached for the stereo which, because the room was so small, was within arms distance.

You like Beyonc?

Really, he said. I mean, you could have fooled me. It was identical. He wasnt going to let it go so easily.

Instead of the scratchy chair, Elizabeth sat back down next to David on the loveseat, making the only move that could detour the direction of the conversation. A direction she seriously didnt want. Certainly not with this semistranger, a guy shed barely spoken to before tonight. Her boss.

It worked. He turned to her, delighted, a little surprised at the possible gift he was not expecting, all thoughts of the telephone message wiped out of his head.

They worked together at the online magazine Show Survey: Off Broadway in New York , a weekly struggling along with only a smattering of sponsors and even fewer paid advertisements. It was put out by a passionate staff of three dedicated theater lovers and the newcomer, Elizabeth Wakefield. The printed copy left at hotels was not much better than a throwaway, but Elizabeth was grateful to be part of the venture. Not having much experience in theater, shed lucked into the job eight months ago after two frantic days in New York, one of which, the worst, was her twenty-seventh birthday. She celebrated alone, then lied to her parents that shed spent the day with a couple of old friends from Sweet Valley who had moved to New York. Her mother asked who they were, but when Elizabeth sidestepped the question, she very kindly and wisely didnt pursue it. In fact, her parents had been very gentle and understanding. Never asking the wrong questions. Even the two times they came to see her in New York, they only talked about her work.