Fear Street # 2: The Surprise Party

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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I want to apologize. While a Fear Street book takes me all of an hour to read, I’ve had some difficulties in sitting down and writing about all of the illicit secrets and tantalizing murderers. The sky fell, and it’s been a complete pain in the ass.

When I say the sky fell, what I mean is that the ceiling in my dining room collapsed. Our house is over 100 years old and has seen quite a few repairs in its time. When we moved in, there was a hairline crack in the ceiling that we figured was from an old house settling in nice and right over time. We were wrong.

What had actually happened is that the previous owner had repaired the ceiling at some point. They nailed the thin wooden shims (lathe) that hold the plaster in with finishing nails. Then, they installed a heavy chandelier onto the lathe. Hundreds of pounds of plaster and lighting was all held in place by those teeny-tiny nails, and they finally said fuck it. The past month has been a process of putting up drywall, mudding drywall, and texturing and painting drywall. Since our dining room was already a wreck, we also took the opportunity to paint, refinish a few furniture and decorative pieces, and put up crown molding to hide the fact that our walls (or our new drywall ceiling) weren’t even.

We’re close to the finish line, though. Thus, I bring you the fine classical stories we all know and love from Fear Street.

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After rereading three books (with one being very much out of order), I realized I’m going to run out of stuff to talk about. Every book is a simple premise that causes an inproportionate amount of teen drama, threatening phone calls, and sometimes murder and mutilation. I’m going to be shortening my recaps a little, unless a book is especially brilliant or bad.

Our main character is Meg Dalton. Meg has the habit of looking too young and being naive. Since naivety and gullibility are the traits of every protagonist in Shadyside so far, I’d say she’s cast perfectly. Her best friend, Shannon, looks like Molly Ringwald. Meg idealizes this beauty, which is just a reminder of how old I am as I get the reference and its sapphic vibes. Shannon once had a brother named Evan. Evan was murdered via shotgun the previous year in Shadyside and in the previous chapter in our world.

Meg has a moody, and frankly abusive, boyfriend named Tony. I’m not sure why she’s with this guy, beyond that fact that everyone in Shadyside has terrible judgement. He’s a condescending dickhead that has explosive anger issues, taking this all out on Meg. He also thinks he’s a murderer and almost becomes one— manifestation, baby!— just to cover his tracks. More on that later.

Dwayne is the town creeper, a rare feat in a town full of them. Brian is Meg’s cousin. The two of them play Wizards and Dungeons together in the woods, which practically means they are devil worshippers during this time period.

Our final two players are Ellen, who is Evan’s ex-girlfriend. She moved away after his death, and her return to Shadyside forms the premise of the book. What does she know? What secrets does Ellen hide within her heart? Is she a murderess? Nope. Just a plot device like Mke: Shannon’s half-brother who looks a lot like Evan.

There are several throwback moments to Lisa and Cory from the previous book. Apparently, not all is fair in their paradise. Cory is still a fucking moron, who knew?

Our story begins with a murder, supposedly over a girl who is very bad, and hoping to get away with it. I feel like wanting to get away with it is a given in the great majority of murders, and we should perhaps only mention cases where the murderer is just doing it to get caught and be treated to a fantastic trial and some jail time. Unless they’re a white dude, then they’ll just get job offers from Tucker Carlson.

We start our story with an introduction of the main players having a conversation while they ride their bikes, and Tony acts like an asshole. Meg reminisces or fantasizes about the past where he was nice, Evan was alive, and Ellen was around. Cory and Lisa interrupt her reverie, and Tony’s verbal abuse, to let them know that Ellen is coming back to town to visit a relative.

Meg decides with her friends that they should have a surprise party for Ellen so she knows they still love her. However, later that night, Meg receives a threatening phone call that she must not host a party. Apparently Ellen isn’t all that welcome. Also, can we talk about how in Fear Street phone calls are the modus operandi of all creepy people? Since the internet wasn’t around, I suppose every bully ever just needed to pick up the handset and make some vague threats. It’s just not Shadyside without 15 calls telling you that your current path is probably ill-advised.

Meg suspects it’s a joke, but Tony wants her to take it very seriously. He even advises her to call the police— how novel!— and wants her to not host the party. This doesn’t sound suspicious at all, especially from a guy who has temper tantrums every other second.

Along with more calls, Meg’s party invitations get torn up. She also receives a lunch bag full of red paint, almost gets run over, and gets a threatening message from the school secretary; however the woman doesn’t know who left it. Since the secretary also missed Cory hiding out in the principal’s office in the last book, I don’t think she should be responsible for children anymore.

Tony also gets some threatening messages and says he’s being followed, using those to support his efforts to have the party cancelled. When Meg doesn’t agree with him, he breaks up with her. A view into his thought processes reveals he wants to kill Meg because he’s afraid she might find out he was the one “killed” Evan. He tries to run her over, then contemplates pushing her off a cliff before he finds out she really has no clue he’s a complete dick.

Meg spends far too much time trying to figure out who the culprit might be. She recalls how Brian was in the woods the day Evan died and also changed from whatever happened there. Shannon, Brian, and Dwayne are also on her list. The last only gets there because he’s a creep who demeans dead Evan and lusts after Shannon, so at least she has some common sense. He also gropes Shannon a few times at a party, much to everyone’s gross-out factor.

She then makes the awful mistake of accusing Shannon, who rightly loses her shit on Meg about the accusation. Instead, Meg tries to justify her overreaction as guilt. Thankfully, she comes around on how it’s okay for her best friend to be pissed off at her for the accusation. Meg recalls a time the friends— Evan, Ellen, Tony, Meg, and Shannon— were all together. During a pool game, Evan goes batshit insane and smacks the hell out of Tony with a pool cue. After Evan knocks him out, Ellen starts screaming about how it wasn’t an accident, so there was some tension between the three.

Shit hits the fan when Tony and Brian go out to play Wizards and Dungeons together out in Fear Street woods. Tony pushes Brian down a gully because Brian witnessed Tony “kill” Evan. Both Brian and Meg are saved from Tony’s murderous intentions. This leads Meg to believe Brian has some sort of secret, so she then gives him the third degree. He responds with the kind of stuff you would expect a 10 year old to say about their video game adventure, so Meg’s just kind of pissed and low-key disturbed.

One awkward friend reunion later, the surprise party finally happens. Brian, despite his injuries, shows up to the party. Speaking like a drunken Gandalf, he tells everyone he’s brought Evan back to life. As I previously mentioned, Shannon’s other brother— Mike— looks a lot like Evan. They use this to freak Tony the fuck out, and he starts to brandish *the goddamned pistol* he brought to the party. He tells everyone he will confess to who killed Evan..

Only to freak the fuck out of the real killer, Dwayne, more. You see, Dwayne had a crush on Shannon, and Evan stood as the one obstacle to his adoration. You know, forgoing the fact that Shannon thinks he’s the worst. After shooting Tony, he takes the girls hostage, and the true story comes out.

A long time ago, in a land far away, Tony and Ellen were cheating on their respective partners. Ellen broke up with Evan, and he fled into the woods with a rifle. Tony and Ellen followed him, with Brian following after, and the gun went off in the middle of a fight. Tony assumed he killed his best friend. However, Evan was still alive. Dwayne finished him off because of his deep, abiding, and perfectly normal love for Shannon.

The girls distract him by screaming about a mouse, using the opportunity to knock Dwayne out. The final scene has Meg and Shannon discussing how Tony was responsible for threatening Meg. Brian, Mike, and Ellen made a plan to out Tony after he pushed Brian down the hill. Anyway, since Meg’s single now that Tony is no longer in the picture, Mike asks her out, and she agrees as long as there are no parties. I’d say she’s moving on a bit quickly, but I have a feeling the normal reaction to being almost dead in Fear Street  is to immediately hook up with anyone who hasn’t become a killer yet.

And now, on to book 3. Good Gods, save me.

Death Count: 1 (2 Fear Street deaths total)

Death Count on Fear Street: 1 (1 total)

Actual Ghosts: 0 (0 total)

Rating: 4/10 for the twist ending!