Middle Aged Slumber Party #12
Christopher Pike's Slumber Party: Chapter Five, Part Two
Hello, friends.
Welcome to the twelfth installment of my deep dive into Christopher Pike’s Slumber Party, in which CHARADES. GOES. WRONG.
Want to start from the beginning?
Chapter One: Part One. Part Two. Part Three. Part Four.
Chapter Two: Part One. Part Two. Part Three.
Chapter Three: Part One. Part Two.
Chapter Four.
Chapter Five: Part One.
Subscribe to follow along, re-read the book if you’re feeling it, and for SURE, please tell me all about your memories of reading this way back when.
“We could play charades,” Celeste said, coming to life.
“Now, just what is that, young lady?” Cal asked.
“Where you tell someone a word or a phrase without saying it,” Celeste said. “You use your hands, gestures.”
“Can you write it down?” Cal asked, trying to concentrate.
“If you know how to write,” Percy said.
—Slumber Party, Chapter Five
Scene Four: Lara chats it up
“Young lady.” Ugh, gross, Cal.
Lara hits pause on charades so that she can go try calling the lodge again—but almost decides not to bother with the phone after Percy says he wants to be on her team. Celeste echoes him, so the teams end up being Rachael, Mindy, Cal, and Nell versus Lara, Celeste, and Percy.
She DOES go call Ole Roger from the Parks Department, though. And even though she goes all the way back up to the master bedroom, she DOESN’T LOOK IN THE CLOSET, UGHHHH. Dana not checked in at the lodge—at least under her own name—and Ranger Roger hasn’t had any luck tracking down the Colonel, either. And, of course, they haven’t started a search for Dana because they don’t know if she’s actually missing, and they don’t want to send people out into a blizzard without being sure that there’s someone out there to find.
He suggests that she may have just taken a bus home, and good lord, can you even believe we used to wander around the world without an immediate connection to, like, EVERYONE and EVERYTHING in our back pockets?
REMEMBER, LIKE, PAY PHONES??
OR, LIKE, THE DAYS BEFORE ATMs??
When did we get old? It’s very weird. I don’t FEEL like I’m in my mid-40s, but here I am, in my mid-40s.
Anyway, back to the book.
As she’s getting ready to hang up:
Lara did not want to give her head too much to worry about. “Look, I’ll call you later, Roger.”
Heh. Same here, Lara. Same here.
She tries calling Dana’s parents—again, at Roger’s suggestion—but no one picks up.
And then, as she’s about to head downstairs, THE PHONE RINGS.
And it’s… Celeste’s aunt???
Lara offers to go get her, but Celeste’s aunt says not to bother because she doesn’t want to embarrass her, and she asks how she’s doing… which prompts Lara’s Spidey Sense to start tingling again:
“Didn’t you talk to her earlier?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I haven’t spoken with her today, dear.”
Why had Celeste lied? Lara thought back to their conversation: “That wouldn’t change. . . . I did.”
Celeste had wanted to say something else. Maybe she wasn’t simply homesick.
And THAT, my friends—real and fictional—is why we shouldn’t A) assume that we know what’s going on in other peoples’ heads and/or B) cut them off when they’re halfway through a crucial sentence. LIKE EVERY TEEN DRAMA EVER WOULD BE NINE SEASONS SHORTER IF PEOPLE WOULD JUST. STOP. INTERRUPTING!!!
Celeste’s aunt asks after Nell, and Lara asks if she knows her, and she says NO, which… if she’s on the level and not part of it, that totally blows up my theory that Celeste is actually Nicole? RATS.
But she DOES get off the phone VERY quickly after that, so maybe she’s a hired actress or something, WHO KNOWS????
“I understand,” Lara said, not altogether sure that she did. Celeste’s aunt was in an awful hurry to get off the phone. The exchanged take-cares and good-byes. Rachael was standing in the doorway.
—Slumber Party, Chapter Five
Scene Five: WHY CAN’T LARA AND RACHAEL BE FRIENDS
I mean, I’m pretty sure I know the answer: In the ‘80s, girls basically were expected to adhere to the Queen Bee version of the Highlander principle, yes? That in any given friend group, there can be only one? And since Lara and Rachael are easily the brightest of the bunch, and even though I’d argue that they have an easier rapport with each other than they do with anyone else in the book, YES, EVEN DUMB PERCY, they are required to be rivals, rather than friends?
Ugh and also bah. Now I’m feeling GLAD to be old, because I have washed my hands of all that nonsense. (Not to mention all that Not Like Other Girls nonsense, which has also cropped up quite a bit in this book.)
ANYWAY. Lara and Rachael have a lengthy conversation about:
Celeste (Rachael thinks she’s spooky, and she’s not wrong)
Percy (Rachael’s not throwing in the towel)
Dana (Rachael thinks there’s a simple, logical explanation, though she doesn’t offer up any decent theories)
the missing cars (Rachael: “That’s why my daddy pays for insurance, so I don’t have to worry.”)
and finally, they touch on that night with the Ouija board:
Rachael went to snap a quick retort, when suddenly she stopped, her eyes slipping far away. “There was a reason,” she whispered.
“What?”
“The planchette, it . . . I can’t remember. It was nothing important.”
“Try harder.”
“We were kids! I can’t remember. To hell with it; it’s past. Let’s go play charades.”
Celeste and Percy had already printed words on cards to use against the others: ecclesiastical, Lyndon Baines Johnson, rhubarb, Zimbabwe. Lara figured they had the game in the bag until she accidentally overheard one of the words Rachael was suggesting: the Rosicucian Fellowship Ephermis 1950-1959. An uproar followed. All finally agree to stick with current phrases.
—Slumber Party, Chapter Five
Scene Six: FINALLY, THE CHARADES FIGHT
In re: their charades prompts: I can’t even with these jackasses. What nerds.
Even better, after all that, they start the game by giving Mindy Return of the Jedi, heh. And it only takes her forty seconds to get her team to guess it, which leads Our Narrator to proclaim, “…it was too easy even for bubble-gum brain.”
Rachael scores yet another Leila Point just because it’s such a massively immature middle school joke:
Lara was given milk, and suspected that Rachael was trying to embarrass her by subtly prodding her to squeeze her breasts, which she refused to do.
Oh, also, Percy is “a master of body language” because of course he is.
So, an hour later, Cal is totally loaded and Rachael wants to switch up the teams because her team is losing. And with Celeste and Nell on the same team, they start exhibiting what Lara thinks MUST be telepathy, as they keep guessing one another’s words pretty much immediately.
MEANWHILE, Drunken Cal is actively trying to cozy up to Celeste—she’s trying to put him off without making him mad, welcome to being a girl in the world, friend—and Mindy is pretending not to notice.
Lara is looking for an opening to put a stop to it when Cal reaches out and legit PINCHES Celeste, which leads to Nell TOTALLY laying into him and ordering him out of the house:
Nell leaped to her feet, exploding. “You fat slob! Who the hell do you think you are?! Get out of my house!”
“Nell,” Celeste began weakly.
“Huh?” Cal slurred, not yet caught up with the present.
Which, minus the absolutely unnecessary body shaming, fair.
But then Mindy TAKES CAL’S SIDE, because she STILL wants to make out with him???:
“You just hate everyone!” Mindy said stupidly. Poor Mindy, Lara thought. Nell was probably doing her a favor, though Nell was much angrier than made sense.
My thought process: Man, Christopher Pike really does seem to hate Mindy. Sigh, speaking of girls Christopher Pike hates, I wonder what happened to Dana.
Cal gets SUPER OFFENDED that Nell calls him—wait for it—A JERK, so he escalates and calls her a “tight-face bitch,” which is A Choice.
Percy tries to break things up but is too late: Nell kicks Cal in the shins—which, HA!!! THAT’S MY FAVORITE MOVE, my go-to threat is that I’m going to kick people in the shins!!! Which I never actually do because sadly I’m not cool enough to be a resident of Letterkenny, sighhhhhhhh)—but despite his clear pain, he does NOT drop his glass of rum, so Nell TAKES it and VERY DELIBERATELY THROWS it at Mindy.
And AGAIN with the comic relief from Mindy and Rachael:
“My new blouse!” Mindy whined.
“For Christ’s sake, it’s my blouse,” Rachael said, sounding incredibly bored.
Cal squares off to charge at Nell.
And then, Percy to the rescue, finally, sort of:
“Enough!” Percy said, positioning himself in front of Nell. Cal heaved forward anyway, his coordination a disaster. Percy grabbed him easily by the chest. When Cal struggled and spat in his face, Percy’s eyes darkened and he drew back his fist and went for his roommate’s jaw. Cal fell back like a dropped sack of potatoes. Mindy, of course, tried to catch him. Cal had to weigh a good two hundred pounds. Mindy fell backward also, close to the fire.
Too close to the fire.
I mean I know we have to deal with the whole FIRE thing, but I CAN’T BELIEVE that Cal SPIT IN PERCY’S FACE?? Gross.
But, yeah, the fire. Obviously Mindy’s arm lights up. Rachael—once AGAIN, the practical one—yells for her to drop and roll, but predictably, Mindy is not great in a crisis, so she just screams.
Celeste runs out of the room.
Lara, just like Rachael, is repeating her actions from the first time they all lived through something like this:
Spontaneously Lara reached for the bottle — because it was wet — of liquor next to the sprawled Cal. Her eyes met Nell’s, who was following her rather than Mindy. Nell shook her head faintly. Lara dropped the bottle.
Second crisis averted, Rachael steps in with a fire extinguisher, Percy tackles Mindy, Rachael unloads the extinguisher on them, Percy lifts Mindy onto the couch, checks her injury—describing it as “little worse than a bad sunburn”—and Mindy starts to calm down, stop screaming, and start weeping. Blisters are already forming.
Lara watches Doctor Percy, mesmerized by his radness, and thinks of how it could have been so much worse:
There would follow incredible pain, probably scarring, yet compared to Nicole, this had been but a —
Warning, Lara.
What was that? Lara thought that Celeste had whispered in her ear. But when she looked, Celeste was gone.
Next up: THE AFTERMATH
In the meantime, subscribe so that you don’t miss installments, let me know about your memories of reading (and watching!) horror as a tween and teen. I’m also always here if you’ve got recommendations.
Talk soon,
Leila
Today in This Is How We Know It's Fiction: See, we're like "Man, remember pay phones?" and Rachel is all, "Remember the Rosicucian Fellowship Ephermis 1950-1959," which... what? Bubble-gum brain my left foot. I think Pike's biggest issue is that he hated his teen years, hated himself AS a teen, and is spreading that hate around to all. All, of course, meaning mostly fat, unattractive or somehow underachieving people, but, like, you know, ALL.
Shins are my mean move, too, but spitting? Who would EVER!? That's so offensive someone is BOUND to knock you out; if you kick shins you're not spreading bodily fluids at least. Yuck.
Yes, I too am to the point where just standing on a chair and screaming, "WAIT, STOP EVERYTHING, YOU LITTLE PUNKS" seems like a viable plot device. Too many overheard/underheard/assumed bits going on. Did that really pass as Good Writing back in the day???
Though I *have* kicked shins (as a grown woman, but it was in Scotland, so it doesn't count; Scots are scrappers and I was just fitting in - though not gonna lie, I really aspire to Squirrely Dan now), I have NOT just busted down into a full-on brawl during charades. This is, like, #slumberpartygoals.