Middle Aged Slumber Party #8
Christopher Pike's Slumber Party: Chapter Three, Part One
Hello, friends.
Welcome to the eighth installment of my deep dive into Christopher Pike’s Slumber Party, in which we begin Chapter Three and
Want to start from the beginning?
Chapter One: Part One. Part Two. Part Three. Part Four.
Chapter Two: Part One. Part Two. Part Three.
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The clouds had decided to give up their cargo. Stretching her head back and opening her mouth wide, Lara tried to catch snowflakes on her thirsty tongue. Despite a significant drop in temperature and a strengthening wind, she was hot and sweaty. Ages had elapsed since she had left the lodge and she was still nowhere near halfway home. Her knee no longer hurt so much as it refused to cooperate. The joint was mushy. Also, the grooves they had cut in the path on their way down were filling in. Whenever she skipped out of them, her cross-country skis sank an additional foot. All this work for a trifle of sensation; it was hardly worth the bother. If not for Percy, Lara decided, she would have given the day a failing grade.
—Slumber Party, Chapter Three
Scene One: Skiing back to the house
Lara is taking a breather when Mindy appears, headed AWAY from the house and TOWARDS the lodge—and it turns out that she’s maybe the nicest of the four, because she’s out looking for Lara. (Which, I dunno, man, I’m pretty sure that Lara wouldn’t have done the same for her. Discounting the injury, I mean.)
ANYWAY, Mindy exposits that Dana is further along the path, headed home, and that she has no idea where Rachael is. She wants to go back further looking for her and omg I guess I should slap MYSELF for assuming that Mindy wasn’t ALSO terrible, because:
“You were returning to the lodge to find Cal, right?”
“Nooo.”
“Get off it, Mindy.”
She was suddenly defensive. “What’s so wrong with wanting to talk to him? I don’t care what Dana says, I think he’s a gentleman.”
I’m gonna need to see Mindy’s definition of the word ‘gentleman,’ please. Good grief.
They squabble—Mindy wants to go to the lodge because she wants to make out with Cal, Lara tells her off for leaving Dana on her own—and eventually, Lara gets her way, and they head back to the house together.
They were three quarters of an hour farther along—it took a lot longer going up than going down—when they came across a most mysterious find. One of Dana’s skis lay half covered in the tracks. Scattered footsteps led away from it approximately ten yards up the path, disappearing in a concave impression that looked uncannily familiar. Beyond the impression, there were no footsteps.
—Slumber Party, Chapter Three
Scene Two: A possible crime scene???
IF THIS BOOK ENDS UP FEATURING AN AMBULATORY FIREBREATHING SNOWMAN, I WILL ABSOLUTELY DIE!!!
Anyway, once again, Lara goes Full Detective:
“What the hell,” Mindy muttered, sliding forward to investigate. Lara stopped her.
“Stay here.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t disturb the evidence.”
Lara checks the ski and finds it’s not broken; she considers the cost, and feels it’s unlikely that Dana would have simply left it behind. (Judging by Dana’s driving and general Dana-ness, I think that’s questionable logic, but what do I know?)
Lara checks out the concave impression and finds that under the recent snow, like the scene of the Snowman Murder, it’s solid ice, as if there’d been a brief surge of powerful heat. The ice is also “flaked with dirty gray,” which I assume is ash?
Unless “King of Magicians” David Copperfield swooped in… I admit to being somewhat flummoxed?? Is there paranormal nonsense afoot???:
Without two skis, Dana would have littered the path with footsteps. There were no footsteps. It was as though Dana had reached this spot and gone neither forward or backward. She had simply stopped and vanished. What had stopped her? Where could she have gone? The Bermuda Triangle didn’t reach this far west.
Lara shifts gears from Full Detective to Boss Girl Scout, marks the Scene of the Possible Crime, and collects what evidence she can:
Lara picked up the ski. It was cold, naturally. Yet the chill that caused her to shiver was from foreboding. “Let’s get out of this place,” she said suddenly.
Shortly afterward, they rounded a bend and saw the house with a warming scent and trail of smoke rising from the chimney. Nell was sitting on the porch steps, her head resting in her clapped hands on propped-up elbows. She did not notice them. Only when Mindy called, did she look up.
—Slumber Party, Chapter Three
Scene Three: Talking to Nell on the porch
Lara asks if Rachael has reappeared, and Nell says that she hasn’t seen her, which amps up Lara’s concern. Then she asks if Nell’s seen Dana:
“Yeah.”
Her flood of relief made her realize how worried she’d been. “How long ago did she get back?”
“Didn’t you see her on the way up? I mean, she’s not here. I saw her way down on the path about an hour ago before she went behind the trees. In fact, I was beginning to worry about her. I figured that she had stopped and was taking a rest, but then she was taking so long to reappear. I was about to ski down, when I saw you two coming up. Dana should know better than to ski off the path.”
I don’t know, man, I’m more than STARTING to think that Nell is screwing with everyone.
Lara explains about the ski, and Nell responds rationally—or, well, rationally for a person who doesn’t know that they’re in a horror novel:
“She couldn’t have just disappeared.”
And Lara responds like someone who is maybe STARTING TO SUSPECT that she’s in a horror novel:
“The snowman did,” Lara whispered, more to herself.
I’m not going to lie, the amount of significance she’s giving this disappearing snowman is vaguely hilarious. I mean, I THINK SHE’S RIGHT, but I can’t help but snicker every time it comes up.
Lara keeps trying to make it all make sense, asking Nell if there are other paths, etc., and Nell says that while there aren’t any official ones, people kind of create their own all the time, so probably Dana just went off in another direction… to which Mindy, showing a modicum of practicality for possibly the first time in fifty pages, is like… WHY WOULD SHE DO THAT?
And then Nell suggests that maybe Dana wanted to avoid everyone and secretly circle around back to the lodge. Which, like, if she knows about the Mindy/Dana/Cal drama—I don’t know how she would, but I also don’t know how Dana disappeared, or if someone’s running around with a snowman-murdering flamethrower, so maybe anything’s possible—seems like she’s DELIBERATELY TRYING to tick Mindy off? And if she is, it works:
Mindy came to life, in a foul mood. “That’s it! That’s what she did! She knew I was going back to see Cal and she wanted to get there first. She snuck off the path trying to find a shortcut.”
MINDY! YOU DOLT! CAL IS NOT THE ONLY DUDE ON THE PLANET! YOU COULD DO MUCH BETTER, YOU ABSOLUTE GOOBER!!!
Lara is just as annoyed with Mindy as I am, but for DIFFERENT reasons, also based in logic:
“And left one of her skis?” Lara asked, irritated. “Don’t be ridiculous. Besides, there were no tracks except the ski grooves.”
And then Nell suggests that maybe it’s not Dana’s ski at all, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me because if someone lost a ski, either Lara would have run into them or they’d have gone by the house or there’d be tracks, sooooo… back to square one, I guess???
OMG MINDY NEEDS TO GET A GRIP, SHE’S STILL GOING:
“She’s stealing him away from me!” Mindy complained. “Why can’t she find her own guys! Cal was supposed to be mine!”
Nell and Lara continue chatting about Dana’s disappearance and the upcoming party, while Mindy just continues ranting quietly to herself:
“That conniving bitch,” Mindy grumbled.
Lara finally gets around to asking how Nell is feeling—remember, she had a fever??--and she says she’s fine, and then Lara asks about Celeste, and I SWEAR ON SOME SORT OF HOLY TEXT that when I read this, I literally—NO, NOT FIGURATIVELY, THIS LITERALLY HAPPENED—turned into a side eye emoji:
“How’s Celeste?” Lara asked.
Nell paused. An unreadable emotion flicked across her face. “She’s in the shower.”
OKAY, NELL. WAY TO BE A DRAMA LLAMA, YEESH.
Lara left them on the porch. The house had so many rooms, she had to search for the bathroom where Celeste was taking her shower. Behind one door, the light was on. Knocking lightly, she went inside.
—Slumber Party, Chapter Three
Scene Four: Talking to Celeste in the bathroom
Slight digression, but related: I think there must be some regional/cultural stuff around this—I’m a life-long New Englander, and I am aware that we’re seen as private and standoffish and possibly prudish—so I’ve always wondered about the books and movies where teenagers are Very Comfortably Naked? I get it in certain contexts, like theater and sports, but beyond that? Is that really a thing? In my experience, everyone did a lot of quick-changing in the locker room, not a lot of naked swanning around and/or topless fights?
In other words: WHAT IS REGARDED AS NORMAL, OR DOES IT, LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE, DEPEND??
ANYWAY, Celeste reacts pretty much the way I’d react if some rando unexpectedly walked in on me in the bathroom, which is to say that she jumps back behind the shower curtain. And Lara, who is genuinely becoming my least favorite character in the book, CHUCKLES AT HER MODESTY, which, like: RUDE?? And then she’s all: I DIDN’T MEAN TO STARTLE YOU, but, again, like: WHO DOES THAT and also WHY COULDN’T THIS HAVE WAITED THE LIKE THREE MINUTES IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN HER TO DRY OFF AND GET DRESSED? LET THE GIRL HAVE HER SHOWER TIME, LARA, YOU TOOL!!
Okay, I guess a lot of that was My Stuff, and now you know not to walk in on me in the bathroom, I guess? Yeesh.
Lara blah blahs about skiing, asks what Celeste and Nell have been up to, and this is what we get:
“Nothing. We talked.”
“About what?”
“Things.”
The reaction was similar to Nell’s. If anything, Celeste sounded vaguely angry. She had never seen Celeste angry before. She wouldn’t have thought it possible.
And, like, while there’s clearly something going on BEYOND Celeste being irritated with Lara for barging in on her in the bathroom, it’s hilarious to me that it doesn’t even OCCUR to Lara that Celeste might be irritated for that reason, ESPECIALLY when she notes this:
Celeste had wrapped herself in a towel, still behind the curtain, obviously waiting for her to leave to continue drying.
On the way out—they make plans to meet up in the kitchen to cook for the boys, and Celeste expresses excitement about the upcoming party—Lara notices a jar of prescription skin cream on the counter, labeled N. Kutroff, which she assumes is to treat Nell’s skin grafts. She asks Celeste if Nell is using the adjoining bedroom and Celeste says that she doesn’t know.
Lara—clearly back in Detective Mode—also asks if Nell left the house at all while the rest of the crew was out skiing, and Celeste says that she hasn’t.
Sooooo, THEORY: Is Celeste the Supposedly Dead Sister? She’s constantly hiding the majority of her body, she’s socially awkward af which would track with not being around other kids for a long time as well as being, you know, burned up by her new “friends”, she and Nell are clearly hiding SOMETHING, and… I guess those are my main reasons for wondering this? Again, it’s a basic rule that people in horror stories don’t have reunions on the anniversary of a tragedy unless it’s a revenge thing. But if that’s true, how does Rachael’s insistence on the date factor in, and what the hell is up with the Mustachioed Ranger?? Red herrings???
Next Thursday: CELESTE BAKES A LEMON MERINGUE PIE!!
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
I'm putting in my vote early for spontaneous human combustion, mkay? That's what's going on - ice, flaked with ash. Somehow, the snowman also...burns? There's a ritual object and a curse involved. Teen girls routinely get their hands on that stuff.
Also, calling in from the West Coast where all the dumb shows featuring A Very Comfortable Group Nudity are filmed ... they're produced wistfully by the male of the species. People I have met who actually strip off unconcerned are mostly Scandinavian or Central European and in the U.S., relatives. I don't know anyone who would do that at the Frenemy Reunion unless they were humble-bragging on their body? I mean, yeah, I guess it depends, but...