"Gimme A Kiss" by Christopher Pike
As a teenager growing up, I read so many Christopher Pike novels, you would think I could see what was going to happen next. Instead, he went from horror, to science fiction, to mystery, and then back to horror. He switched genres so much, you didn't know what was going to happen. In the end, I sold all my R.L. Stine books and kept the Christopher Pike ones.
In just one day, I sat down and read the 152-page "Gimme A Kiss" by Pike. The book opens with Alice at the police station who knows something about three other teenagers who are missing: Jane, Shanon and Kirk. While I was reading it, I couldn't believe some of the 80's scenes that tickled my funny bone, especially how Pike always describes his lovely heroines wearing silky blouses with their jeans.
While wearing pleated pants and acid wash jeans, a page from Jane's secret diary has made it's way around the school. It seems, this 18-year-old is so desperate, she makes up things in the diary. The entry that was Xeroxed and passed around the school was a made-up, page-long, sex description about she and her boyfriend, Kirk.
Sex. And the word bitch. Pike really tells it straight to his 80's teenage crowd. And to think I started reading him in eighth grade.
When the senior counselor gets his hands on the descriptive sex scene, he approaches Jane and tells her how great it is she is liberated enough to describe her sex life, but if she's going to be sleeping around with teenage boys, she needs protection and...hands her, not one, but two boxes of condoms.
But it's not a romance, and Jane sets out to seek revenge against cheerleader Patty Brane (great character name) and boyfriend Kirk, because they didn't help her when the page was passed around the school. While on the boat for a fun weekend trip (with 60 other seniors) Jane fakes her death, but it goes terribly wrong.
She doesn't die, don't worry, and I'm not spoiling anything.
In the end, there are deaths, boats, SCUBA diving, investigators, dentists, a Christiant-fanatic father, venerial disease, exploding houses and chloriphorm all in 152 pages.
Why not read it?