secret shame

"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 attach 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 one - this was New York, after all - the 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 didn't 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. Hadn't been for the last eight months. And she couldn't imagine a time when it would ever be there again. As always, the hurt overpowered the anger, and what welled up into her throat came with tears that choked her."

I used to love the Sweet Valley High series. No shame in that: I was very young, and I wanted to work at a student newspaper just like Elizabeth. I eventually grew out of that phase, and gave all my books away because I thought they were so uncool...then many years later, began buying them again for 50 cents a piece at book fairs. No shame in that either: I love the cheesy but brilliant pastel hued cover art, by artist James L. Mathewuse*.
There is, however, some shame in the fact that I downloaded and read the first chapter of the upcoming book Sweet Valley Confidential, which catches up with Elizabeth and Jessica 10 years later. The writing is like a terrible creative writing project, and yet, I kept reading. You can download it and read it for yourself here.

* The New Yorker has a piece about the genius of the original cover art, which you can read here.