Sweet Valley Twins #29: Jessica and the Brat Attack

Sweet Valley Middle School is hosting a fundraising carnival and all the kids want to run booths. The school decides to do a lottery and have everyone randomly draw the name of a different booth. Jessica is sure that she will get to run the Wheel of Fortune, but Caroline Pierce actually gets in on the first draw. Jess gets stuck with the water balloon booth, which is the worst booth.

Amy is devastated because she really wants to go to the fair, but she has to babysit for the Sampson family. She keeps moping around until Elizabeth offers to take the job from her. Amy warns her that the kids are monsters, but Liz agrees to take the job. She asks Jessica to take a message when Mrs. Sampson calls that night.

Jessica takes the message, but starts seeing dollar signs when she learns the job pays $70. She calls Mrs. Sampson back and takes the job for herself. Elizabeth is pissed, but just tells her not to ask for help. Then, since the fair needs someone to work that booth so bad, Jessica suggests Elizabeth. Elizabeth gets stuck at the worst booth and warns her sister yet again not to call her or ask her for help.

Jessica goes to the Sampson house and meets Susan and Dennis, the two youngest kids. The only rule really seems to be that she needs to keep the kids out of the locked all white living room. As soon as Mrs. Sampson leaves, the kids go wild. Jess dreams of reading her magazine and relaxing all day. The kids rip her magazine apart, fight over the television and keep screaming at each other.

Lila calls from her brand new mobile phone and lets her talk to Elizabeth. Liz basically tells her twin that she made her bed and now she needs to lie in it. Peter, the oldest boy comes home because he had a fight with his friend. Susan finds the key to the living room and they start ripping it apart. Gretchen comes home because her Brownie group had to leave a hike after a girl got hurt. Instead of helping Jessica, she starts ripping apart the living room too.

All day long, Jessica keeps asking Elizabeth for her and her twin keeps refusing. After all the kids come home, Liz feels bad. She asks her sister what she’s wearing and rushes home. The twins play a game with the kids where one will say she’s going to another room and the other twin rushes there. The kids show up and think that it’s Jessica, so they think she has magical powers. After 20 to 30 minutes, they think Jessica is a witch (ha!) and start listening to her.

The Sampsons are so happy that they give her a $10 tip and ask her to sit again. She goes home and wows the family with the story of her great sitting job. Elizabeth comes home, but Jessica acts like she did it all on her own. Later, she offers to split the money with her twin, but Elizabeth just takes $30 for helping…for 30 minutes. Jessica overhears her twin whispering on the phone, but doesn’t think anything of it.

When they go back to school, the kids announce that they want to throw a mini-fair for Jessica because they feel so bad that she missed it. She turns them down, but they keep pressing it so she meets with them after school. They all show up with water balloons. Lila misses with her balloon, but Elizabeth hits her dead on. They all have a good laugh and run off to the beach.

*Apparently there are only ten booths open at the fair. They keep saying that everyone wants to run a booth, but they have one booth for each student. So, only ten people show up to get a booth?

*Would you really go back and sit for a family after the kids tied you to a chair and tried to cut off your hair? That’s exactly what the Sampson kids did to Amy one day.

*There was a little moment that bothered me. Jessica makes a comment about the Girl Scouts and Gretchen gets snippy because she’s a Brownie. Um, so was I and that’s just part of the Girl Scouts.

*Jessica got $70 to sit for two kids for ten hours. The two other kids show up within a few hours, so she actually sits for four kids for at least 6-8 hours. Mrs. Sampson gives her $80 for the whole day. That sounds like a rip-off to me.

*Supposedly, they only have one kid to run each booth. Yet Elizabeth takes off for awhile and they let Lila take over her booth. Lila was running a different booth, so who takes over her booth?

*Jessica realizes that she could have just ducked to avoid the water balloons and no one could hit her. Of course, she realizes this long after she ducks out on the job.

*Elizabeth says that she has no choice except to take over the job after Jessica quits. You always have an option dear Liz, you just never choose it.