For the month of October, instead of Tordotcom novellas, Tuesdays will be devoted to the (equally short) works of Mr. R. L. Stine. Tinka’s stoked for the change-up, and she’s also excited about the weird, vintage smells my thrift-store copies have been emitting since I brought them in the house. So without further ado…
I started reading the Fear Street series when I was 9 years old, in the mid-90s, after I’d graduated from R. L. Stine’s younger Goosebumps series. My horror-addicted self wanted to be ‘cool,’ and Fear Street, with its mentions of ‘sexy’ teens and making out, seemed like the way to go. (My dad had already tried to get me interested in shorter Stephen King novels and H. P. Lovecraft to no avail, which was probably lucky for all of us at the time.) I think I only read a handful of them before deciding to ‘level up’ again to Christopher Pike a year later, but those not-quite-lurid covers, the embossed detail, that fucking FONT, left a lasting impression that still makes me instantly nostalgic.
I was stoked to no end when I learned Netflix was releasing a (truly amazing) film trilogy based on the series, and I was even more stoked when I stumbled on a pretty decent set of ‘90s Fear Street and Christopher Pike paperbacks at a local used bookstore (for half-off their vintage ‘90s cover prices no less–score!).
I’ve been gazing nostalgically at these volumes for a few months now, and I figured what better month than October to dive back into what scared me so bad as a kid. The actual process of reading these has been…what could generously be called a mixed bag, though they’re all short enough (and generally well-written enough) that even the worst offenders weren’t too bad. I will say that I don’t think I read most of these books in the ‘90, so I’m going into them with totally ‘fresh’ (i.e., middle-aged adult, pretty much the opposite of fresh) eyes and a contemporary sense of exactly how much fatphobia is really acceptable in any given YA book (the answer is none, goddammit). Today I’ll be focusing on one of the earlier entries.
Haunted
Summary [courtesy of Goodreads]: Melissa woke up screaming. The prowler was at her window…or was he? The recent headlines about a Fear Street prowler had everyone on edge. Her father now kept a loaded pistol in his bedroom. That made it even more frightening—and real. Then the haunting began: her new car driving as if someone else had taken control; her birthday presents ripped open by unseen hands; an invisible force trying to push her out the bedroom window. Out of the shadows of her bedroom came a menacing figure. Who was he? Did he really come from beyond the grave? And why had he come to kill her? If Melissa doesn’t solve the mystery fast, these questions will haunt her—to death!
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I started with this, the earliest Fear Street entry I could get my hands on. And it’s…interesting. There’s a weird focus on our protagonist Melissa’s skinniness (her dad calls her “Skinnybone,” which, what?, and everyone else comments on how skinny she is, but only in a slightly negative way). (I know I have to get used to this if I’m going to read ‘90s YA. So, hell yeah, toxic body image messaging!! Or something.) There’s a ‘neat’ twist that I’ll get into in spoiler territory, that had me legit cackling.
And then there’s the truly surprising: this book REALLY leaned hard into the threat of sexual assault, without ever explicitly naming it as such. Melissa’s initially scared of the Fear Street prowler because of theft, and possibly physical violence, but she never acknowledges any fear about rape or even the possibility of sexual harm. This is Fear Street, after all, aimed at a ‘teen’ audience but still firmly accessible for 9-year-old me. So I’d understand (and applaud) if sexual assault was firmly OFF the table in terms of horrors our protagonists might have to think about. HOWEVER, while the girls in this world seem constitutionally incapable of admitting any knowledge of nonconsensual sex, the boys are…not bound to the same code of conduct.
First, we have Buddy (UGH), Melissa’s meathead boyfriend who’s handsy and rapey AF (the guy’s fucking introduction in the book has him copping a feel of her breasts while she tries to stop him and “just talk,” so I guess there IS sexual assault in this world after all, it’s just not depicted in a particularly negative light–FUN!!). Later on, and almost unbelievably, he tries to make out with her AS SHE’S TRYING TO CONVINCE HIM A GHOST IS TRYING TO MURDER HER. And THIS is the boy who feels “safe” to Melissa, and who [spoiler alert] she reunites with happily in the end??!?!
In terms of implicit messaging, this is the worst in the novel, but in terms of overt threats, it gets much worse.
SPOILER TERRITORY
But more on that in a second. Turns out, the reason Melissa is “Haunted” is Ghost Paul, and Ghost Paul wants to KILL Melissa because he’s sure she murdered him. (In a truly iconic line, he screams “Rich liars have to die!” True eat the rich energy here, Ghost Paul. Keep it up.) But Melissa is confused as hell, since she knows she hasn’t murdered anyone lately.
Turns out, (this is the twist that had me cackling), Paul is a FUTURE ghost, which means he hasn’t died yet but will soon. (There’s another iconic passage where Melissa and Paul discuss the way it’s silly to have assumed he was a PAST ghost, and they literally say FUTURE ghost over and over. It’s great stuff.)
Turns out, Alive-Paul is a terrifying streetrat white boy who IS ALSO the Fear Street Prowler, and he encounters Melissa when she (thinking he’s FUTURE-ghost-Paul) runs up to him and berates him. This attracts his attention, obviously, and he and his terrifying cronies give off VERY rapey vibes until she manages to evade them. She keeps wondering “what else” they might do to her other than hit her, and…the answers are left up to the reader and the boys’ oogling sneers. The boys know full well what they might do (Hell, Alive-Paul even says: “What do I want? What does any red-blooded American boy want from a nice-looking girl?”), and the adult reader sure does too (along with most teen readers, I’d assume). Poor Melissa, though, is left in some gaslit Victorian victim’s hell, feeling profoundly disturbed but not having any real idea of how the world works.
Turns out, though, FUTURE-ghost-Paul and Melissa have caught feelings for each other, leading to all sorts of problematic, nonconsensual kink content, such as Melissa musing, “did he watch her undress? The idea was sort of exciting.” (The girl may not know what sexual assault IS, but she knows…she likes it in small doses??? Nooooooo.)
It also leads to a truly hilarious end, when FUTURE-ghost-Paul helps kill Alive-Paul when he tries to attack (COUGH rape and murder COUGH) Melissa. Not sure how this doesn’t disrupt the space-time continuum, but do you, ghost-Paul.
This all ENDS with Melissa and now-PAST-ghost-Paul sharing a kiss (because he’s temporarily corporeal or something, and despite the fact that now-murdered-Paul JUST tried to rape and murder her). Then Paul fades into the ether, and our old pal Buddy comes over to remind Melissa who her real boyfriend is. (At least his worthless, rapey ass didn’t save the day?)
Rating: Fucking what?!
