#72: High Tide (Super Chiller #12) (June 1997)
Packaging may not match contents. But, I mean, the jet ski murder book depicted above seems fun, too.
A lifeguard named Adam struggles with terrifying hallucinations of the girlfriend he killed in an accident the previous summer.
The apple’s skin kept changing. Wrinkling, sagging. Melting away, until I saw what was underneath it.
I was holding a green, rotting skull. I could smell it. Moldy and putrid, with vacant eye sockets and shreds of skin dangling from stumps of black, twisted flesh.
As i stared in horror, the wet apple jaws began to move. “Help me, Adam!” a hoarse voice inside the apple croaked. “Help me. Don’t let me drown!”
Probably! Aside from an out-of-place final showdown, it’s loads of fun. Promiscuous lifeguards, a clever shifting-first-person narrative, jealous bitchery, a disturbed young man receiving mysterious and experimental psychological treatment, and…
As I started to cross the street, someone called my name.
I spun around and saw Leslie Jordan standing in front of the coffee shop where she works.
Leslie is the girl I’ve been going out with this summer. She’s smart and good-looking…
Which, hold the phone. He’s dating Leslie Jordan?
What a thing! This is almost as good as when RuPaul played the magic judge on Sabrina the Teenage Witch:
For real, though, this book is actually well-written. Tons of balls in the air (Leslie!) and lots of ridiculous surprises.
(spoilers after the jump)
A short list of the book’s central assumptions and conceits:
There’s a strain of experimental psychology where you elaborately recreate traumatic events in order to help disturbed individuals retrieve suppressed memories. It is easy to find teenagers ready and willing to join in on the experiments, even if the experiments seem cruel and include a not-insubstantial risk of killing everyone involved.
Sometimes life’s just full of loose cannons. Like, sometimes there’s this rageaholic trying to kill your roommate, but also your roommate is trying to kill you, and you’re having weird hallucinations because your girlfriend died a very violent death the year before, and also you’re (unknowingly) participating in an risky psychological experiment where a girl pretends to drown on your watch in order to get you to retrieve suppressed memories of said girlfriend’s very violent death. Lordy!
Even if a death is accidental and would not likely result in any significant legal problems, sometimes a guy will nonetheless flip out and attempt to murder his best friend if he thinks he’s come too close to the truth.
Despite the aforementioned “kill anyone who comes too close to the truth” policy, this guy might nonetheless be a willing participant in the risky psychological experiment that facilitates said best friend getting too close to the truth—i.e. by recovering his suppressed memories. Or whatever.
Has anything in the history of time ever sounded more pleasant: “‘Want me to come over?’ [Leslie Jordan] asked. ‘I could rent a movie and bring some microwave popcorn. I can be there in twenty minutes.’” Yes, Leslie! Let’s get a bag of Pop Secret and a VHS tape of Sleeping With the Enemy—we’ll spend the whole night exchanging secrets and braiding each other’s hair.
So there are a lot of things going on here, and none of them really have to do with the flamboyant, drawling, Emmy-winning, Alyssa Edwards-loving, pocket-sized elephant in the room.
First, it turns out that a lot of the weird threats that Adam’s been receiving have nothing to do with anything—they were intended for his roommate, Ian, who’s been dating the girlfriend of this rageaholic behind the rageaholic’s back. It’s beside the point, but this twist is actually well concealed via the shifting first-person narration thing, and it’s a lot of fun.
Second, there’s this thing where this girl drowns on Adam’s watch, but it turns out that she didn’t really drown: it was a trick by Adam’s wacky, famous-on-tv psychiatrist to help Adam recover suppressed memories of his ex-girlfriend’s death—which he believes are at the root of the hallucinations Adam’s been having throughout the book.
Third, Adam does, in fact, recover his suppressed memories, leading him to discover that he wasn’t actually responsible for his ex-girlfriend death—that it was actually his roommate, Ian. Ian had sneaked out with her one night (classic Ian), and he ended up accidentally killing her with a water scooter. Adam, shocked, somehow repressed this. Having recovered his memory, though, he confronts Ian, and Ian attempts to violently murder him with a water scooter (?).
And this last part is actually the only part I didn’t love about this ridiculous ending. Like, the book came so close to not having a crazed-killer villain—which would’ve been so unusual for the series! Instead, though, the book has Ian flip out and attempt to murder his best friend. Which, even by Fear Street standards, seems kind of lacking in the motive department. I mean, he’d get in trouble for not being forthcoming about the details of the one girl’s accidental death, but not nearly so much trouble as he would for intentionally killing someone new (?). Whatever.
Or, well, no funerals actually. Aside from the girl at the beginning, the characters in this book do a remarkable job of averting death.
Here’s the final passage:
“I’m not imagining you, am I?”
Leslie didn’t speak. She stepped up to meet me and kissed me softly on the lips.
“What do you think?” she asked, tilting her head. “Was that a real kiss? Or did you imagine it?”
I slipped my arm around her waist and pulled her close. “I don’t really care,” I said. And I kissed her again.
Such a romantic ending! Although naturally Leslie’s only still dating the guy so she’ll have something to hold over her rival Karen Walker at the next morning’s tennis match:
Leslie, Leslie, you never change! Never change, Leslie. This is the beginning of the rest of your life.
