Fear Street #1: The New Girl

I’m reading every Fear Street novel from my childhood and summarizing them here. Instead of subjecting you to all of the teen angst and bad decision making that turns Shadyside into the #1 place to be if you want to be murdered, I’ve taken on the burden.

Who am I kidding? I love trash horror. Enjoy the spoilers.

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When I was a kid, I remember these books being the best thing to happen to me. They had twists, they had turns, they had lots of murders, and even more ghosts. I’m unhappy to say that childhood me was very, very wrong.

This book has exactly one murder, and it happens in the prologue. I feel like I was denied something wondrous, a promised utopia of scary shit happening to stupid people.

The New Girl is our introduction to the world of Shadyside and, more importantly, Fear Street. We’re introduced to the high school where one in three teens will be eaten by a ghost or stabbed by an otherwise “innocent” looking friend. On Fear Street, however, that rate increases to at least 1 in two, or maybe everybody. Lord knows I ain’t a statistician.

The point-of-view character for The New Girl is Cory Brooks. Cory is hot shit at Shadyside High because he is the gymnastic golden child of the school. Number 1 jock, or so we’re told. However, given all of that sports’ knowledge, the kid has no idea what a red flag means. They practically rain down on him like men in a Todrick Hall video, and he just…keeps…being…stupid.

Cory’s best friends are David Metcalf and Arnie… something. Neither was very memorable, and they were best friends by default because “dudes.” Their most vital role is to act as the Greek chorus to the absolute fucking tragedy that is Cory Brooks.

His actual best friend is Lisa Blume, his lifelong neighbor. If Cory is terrible at recognizing red flags, green ones might as well be non-existent. Lisa is thirsty for this idiot. She asks him out on a regular basis, and she drops hints big enough to sink the Titanic. She does everything short of stripping and telling Cory to take her in the halls of Shadyside.

Our villain is supposed to be Bradley Corwin. He’s creepy, controlling, and outrageously angry about this guy who keeps calling and asking about his dead sister. Cory thinks this makes Bradley a Bad Dude rather than asking some preliminary questions from the girl of dreams while they are at school, like “Why does your brother think you’re dead?” or “Are you a ghost?” Nevermind all of that when there is a willing body trying to make out with you, right? Shadyside ghosts, man, you just can’t resist them with things like logic and critical thinking.

Then there’s Anna. She’s so pretty Cory can’t take his eyes off her; he even loses a gymnastics meet when he sees her. She is as equally creepy as her brother Brad. Multiple people tell Cory this, but he ignores all of that because he’s just too infatuated with her. She doesn’t have much of a personality and pretty much acts like a cursed doll, but none of those cause Cory to hesitate more than one scene befores he’s back to fantasizing about being with her.

Now, to the plot. We know from the prologue that someone killed Anna, who was oh so perfect and beloved. The very first page tells us the girl is dead, so the fact that Anna is up and wandering around the high school looking for her first kill… I mean, boyfriend… should raise suspicion to the reader.

We meet Cory as he’s doing a headstand stunt to make the lunchroom laugh. While he is upside down, he sees this pretty, blonde girl and makes note of her eyes, for some bizarre reason. I guess it can be forgiven since all the blood was in his head, even if we’re not sure which one. He loses his balance and dumps food all over himself in response to just seeing her. He hardcore questions his friend about the new girl, so we know he’s really into her already.

His friend Lisa helps him clean up, and he sees the girl a second time. He interrupts Lisa’s macking on him several times to wax poetic about his Lenore. Her very first words to him are “Please don’t,” which means, of course, he will. He fucks up his life for a week or two while he tries to figure out if this girl is real. His classmates confirm her existence as Anna from Physics class who lives on Fear Street, which is almost 75% of her personality. However, he still falls into fits wondering if he has found true love or just another Fear Street ghost.

Fear Street, to those uninitiated to the terrors that form the basis of this entire series, is the worst street ever. The problem in Shadyside isn’t homelessness or poverty wages, it’s this one street with creepy houses, weird animals, and lots of murder. Just don’t live there, right? Everyone is in a competition to die first, and that definitely includes you too..

Look, there’s a lot of small things I simply can’t summarize. We’d be here half the day while Cory waffles on whether he wants to be a white knight to a girl he’s never certain is real. I lost count of all the concerning situations he gets into, ignores, or writes away as simply not possible while he watches them happen. At some point, he just forgoes reality entirely. There’s yelling at the protagonist that they shouldn’t run up the stairs; then there’s yelling at the protagonist to kindly not trip over the very obvious stairs they refuse to acknowledge exist.

• He calls Anna’s house multiple times. Every time her brother or mother pick up, they freak out and tell him that Anna is dead or doesn’t live there.

• Every time he sees Anna at practice, he falls off something. Bad luck charm, indeed.

• Anna calls him a few times to leave eerie messages that insinuate she needs help. One of the few things she tells him is how he’s all hers now. Obviously a sane girl only in need of a latte, amiright?

• He breaks into the principal’s office to find out Anna Corwin doesn’t exist and doesn’t even go to Shadyside. From his reaction, he thinks this only makes her hotter.

• He’s easily distracted by making out with her, but I’ll give that a pass because teenagers.

• He reads a newspaper article that talks about Anna Corwin dying the previous year, but fuck all of that.

• He receives several phone calls where he gets threatened. Not only that, but right after Lisa asks him to a school dance where Anna can overhear, Lisa finds a dead cat in her locker and gets her own creepy calls. Cory thinks it has to be Bradley since he’s the scary one.

• He has several close calls with almost acknowledging all of the neon signals Lisa is sending and reciprocating, but Anna is a great big ruiner with her creepy calls and dead cats.

At the dance, Lisa gets pushed down the stairs. She recalls seeing a tall figure; after some Scooby Doo madness, Cory gets them out of a locked room with his slick gymnastics moves. Thank god Anna wasn’t around, or he would have managed to fall through the open window twice and fallen on both of his heads. They see Brad flee the scene. This immediately invalidates all other evidence and means Brad is evil.

Anna supports this with her own story: her sister Willa died tragically, it broke the entire family apart, and Bradley refused to acknowledge the death. In his madness, he started to believe that Anna was the one that died and became possessive and crazy about her. The newspaper got it wrong. She is the real victim. Poor Anna.

After a frantic Anna call, Cory rushes to her house to find Bradley trying to restrain her. She screams about how Cory is there for her and wants her. Brad tries to warn Cory away, but since it looks like the story he’s spun up in his head about Anna is true, our hero instead attacks Bradley.

Cory tries to get her to call the cops, but she leads him upstairs with some sweet promises of action to distract him from the crime scene in the rooms below. She then comes at him with a knife and somehow, despite her presence, he actually manages to pull off a gymnastics move and not die.  Bradley gets his sister under control and tells the real story.

“Anna” is Willa, who killed her sister and took over her personality. Bradley was aware something was up when Anna started to go to school (like, how in the hell did the teachers miss that she wasn’t on the roster?), and Cory started calling the house asking for Anna. The reason that Bradley showed up to the dance was to get Willa back home before she killed someone. He made a mistake, thinking Lisa was Willa, and knocked her down the stairs by accident while trying to restrain her.

When it’s all said and done, Cory finally fucking recognizes that his girl Lisa has the hots for him. They watch a movie, kiss, and I assume become a couple with at least 50% more intelligence than Cory alone.

Death Count: 1, in the Prologue

Death Count on Fear Street: 0 (as far as I can tell, the sister died at their old house)

Actual Ghosts: 0

Rating: I don’t know… like 3/10?  I’m seriously wondering if these things are satires about stupid teens. We’ll see?

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