Point By Numbers: The Boyfriend

It's time for our next look at the Point series of books, and this time let's cover the guy who already has a lot of stuff on this blog at this point, R.L. Stine. Much of Stine's early works came from the Point series. Mostly around the time he was already working on Fear Street. And case in point with today's blog, it'll be interesting to see how this one differs from much of his other Y/A horror works. Let's see for ourselves with The Boyfriend.

This isn't the most dynamic cover ever, but it's still effective for what it needs to do. Sell you on a romantic relationship turned dark and sinister. And as the tagline suggests, possibly macabre. I like the little touch of the blood dripping on the pin. Great stuff.

Joanna Collier is dealing with some commitment issues. A lot of this has to do with the recent divorce of her parents, her father leaving with his new girlfriend off to Tucson. But despite being "Daddy's girl", she doesn't miss him all that much. But this is convenient as at the same time, Joanna is getting ready to break up with her boyfriend Dex so she can hook up with Shep. So the infidelity certainly runs in the family. In fact, to show we got a real great protagonist on our hands, she's excited to get it over with and move on to Shep. She says that it's a cruel world and I guess since she's used to what her dad did, it's turned her jaded and self absorbed. 

We learn that Dex loves acting and even invited Joanna to watch him perform Julius Caesar in town, which we learn just how rich and white Joanna is by talking about how everything was run down and tacky. Gated community kid, huh? The kind concerned that anyone that isn't ivory white would "drop property value"? Oh my favorite kind of protagonist. We learn that Dex doesn't even go to private school like her due to her guardian aunt both not having that much money, or that much interest in helping Dex. All this time by the way, Joanna's just been watching from afar as Dex waits at the bookstore for her, eventually realizing she isn't coming, and she leaves, happy about what she did.. Okay, 8 pages in and Stine has given the reader every reason to despise this character. Reading another 157 with her as the protagonist is going to be a chore.

Her friend Mary is shocked when Joanna tells her about this. This hasn't been the Joanna she knew. She was snobby, but never this cruel. Mary chalks a lot of it up to her going to private school. Joanna talks about how Shep is amazing in that he's going to Yale. Mary brings up Dex, but Joanna says that "ew, he's poor. I'm doing him a favor by no longer having him driven in a BMW he could never afford. But Shep has a Corvette so I chose him." Although with all the talk of cars, I think Joanna would rather break off with both of them and sleep with the cars. She gets a call from Dex who is STILL AT THE MALL and she says she forgot and hangs up. So, she hasn't actually broken up with him, she's just going to make him suffer. Because he's poor and likes Shakespeare. 

Joanna calls Shep to set up a date and tries to sleep. Suddenly Dex shows up at her window. He does that sometimes, and I'll admit, for as much as I've been Team Dex so far, that is legitimately creepy. He's there with his friend Pete, who has spiky hair and an earring, but worst of all for Joanna is he's poor too. He asks her to come with him for a drive and she ultimately decides to go with him. He takes her to Promontory, the hot make-out spot. Particularly by a cliffside. Meaning that when he decides to goof around to get her to notice him at all, he of course slips over the edge. 

This is our chapter end stinger, so he actually didn't fall to his doom and he gets back up. When Pete shows up, he does it again and falls for real. Okay, Joanna's been awful, but Dex is a dumbass. A dead dumbass at that as he's stone cold dead. And Joanna, our hero, drives away because.., I shit you not... she's more worried about losing her car and her charge cards than, you know, someone's death. Like, even for Rich and White that is some bullshit. She says he'll call 911 from home before she ends up driving into a truck. She has a dream about Dex being alive and chasing her to the Promontory before she's awakened at the site of her accident. She has a broken arm and leg, but otherwise is fine. That night, Pete shows up at the hospital to tell her, "oh yeah, in case you forgot, Dex is dead!"

Mary visits Joanna in the hospital and Joanna relays the previous night's events. She also says that now that Dex is dead at least she doesn't have to break up with him proper. Even Mary is shocked that Joanna's acting this numb and awful, but Joanna just blames the painkillers. Mary leaves and six weeks pass. Joanna never told anyone about Dex's death, not even her mother. But when she mentions she's dating Shepherd Forrest, her mother perks up because he's so much better for her. So, you know, apple doesn't fall far from the tree and whatnot. 

Shep and Joanna head to the school dance where she acts catty some more to everyone and even Shep thinks she's going too far. When she gets home, she gets a phone call. When Joanna picks it up, she hears Dex's voice. She thinks it's Pete trying to scare her for what she did and she hangs up. The next day, she thinks she sees Dex at a bus stop, but when she gets closer he disappears. That night however, Dex shows up at her window again and enters her room. He's surprised when Joanna says that he should be dead. He wasn't aware of that. Pete must have thought he was dead. He tells her that he's been in bad shape for a while and that's why he hasn't been around for a while. He tells her that on Friday, he'll prove he isn't dead. But this is also the day that Joanna's supposed to be with Shep, so oh no, conflict!

She meets Dex at the book store. The same one Joanna bailed on him before. She notices that he looks pale, almost ghostly. The two head to the movie theater and watch a film. It's there that Joanna notices that Dex smells different. Almost like rotting flesh. She tells Mary who is surprised that Dex is still alive, but more bothered that, of course, Joanna is going to string both Dex and Shep along for a while. But we do get the first glimmers of guilt truly pour out of Joanna for leaving him for dead on that night, so progress? After tennis practice where she of course makes fatphobic thoughts about him because why make her likable now, she decides that she'll go with Shep to the Promontory. But she also notices that her skin seems to be turning an odd shade of green, but she blames the lighting for now. She leaves with Shep, but notices Dex in the parking lot. His eyes glowing red.

Joanna goes with Dex to a dance club where he still smells like death. But stranger, he grabs his mouth and runs off. When she catches up with him he says it's loose teeth, which she chalks up to as a result of his fall. As he walks off, Joanna thinks that she sees flesh fall of his face. We then cut to a party at an armory being held by her mother for the Ladies Club. She sees Pete working as a valet and tells him about Dex. Pete freaks out, saying that Dex died, but Joanna still thinks he's lying. But he swears to her that Dex is 100% absolutely and for certain dead as a doornail. She starts to believe Pete, especially given everything so far. So she drives to Dex's house to be certain. She enters his house but doesn't initially find Dex until he finds her. He looks worse than before, and Joanna thinks she sees his exposed skull from the part where his skin fell off.

The next day Joana calls Mary to come over. She thinks she sees Dex at the balcony, but it's just a pigeon. Mary arrives and Joanna brings up the whole "flesh stuff" and that Pete even mentioned going to Dex's funeral, so he's definitely not lying to her. Suddenly Pete calls Joana. He's in a frantic state as he's now seen Dex, who even told him that he indeed came back from the dead. He warns her to get out as soon as possible. As Joanna tries to relay this to Mary, they hear a knock at the door. But it's just Shep. She tries to tell the two of them about everything, but neither believe her. That's when the shambling corpse of Dex arrives at her house with Pete in tow who tells them that he tried to stop him Dex tells Joanna that she shouldn't have just left him to die. As he goes to attack her with a knife, she grabs it off him and stabs Dex, who falls and stops moving. Pete panics because this was all a joke. All of it. Dex wasn't actually dead, the two of them staged all this to get revenge. But now Dex really is dead, so yeah. Good thing you're Rich and White Joanna.

As Joanna claims self defense, Pete reveals that at first the prank was only going to go as far as when she was in the hospital and he revealed the news about Dex. But when he saw that she had no remorse for what she did, that's when they escalated it. As payback for everything she did. And given that we established that Dex is an actor, he put on makeup and pretended to be a zombie. As Helen, the maid, arrives, Joanna gets Mary and Pete to dispose of Dex's body. She then realizes there's still a puddle of blood. So she grabs the knife and stabs Shep's hand, claiming it was all an accident. That's all Shep needs to finally dump her, saying that she's cold and inhuman. And suddenly I like Shep a lot more.

A week passes and Joanna's guilt continues to build. She's lost Shep, and has to deal with going from thinking she left Dex for dead to actually murdering him. She soon gets another phone call. It's from Dex who is still alive. She panics and drives to Mary's. She ends up running into Dex who is now even more of a corpse and still has that gaping knife wound. But Joanna soon sees it's once again all makeup and the knife that Dex had that night was a prop, so again it was escalating the prank. But Dex tackles her and grabs a real knife. He tells Joanna that he's doing this because she never cared if he lived or died. She makes excuses like being on the painkillers and the accident, but he doesn't buy it. 

Dex tries to stab Joanna, but hits a rock, causing the knife to bounce out of his hand and Joanna grabs it in time. Mary shows up and sees the scene, thinking that Joanna is trying to hurt Dex again. She then reveals that she was the mastermind behind everything. When Joanna bragged about wanting to break up with Dex, it broke her heart, so she told Dex and Pete about everything. They set her up to go to the Promontory that night and faked the death. When they learned how she acted about Dex's death, the three continued to mess with her more and more. And all of this just made Mary fall in love with Dex more. She wants to kill Joanna, but Dex tells her that Joanna isn't worth it and the two walk off. Joanna grabs the knife and sees that it too was a prop. She returns home and cries for the first time about everything. She calls Shep and then tells him that she's back from the grave. 

The Boyfriend is an interesting book. It's very much a book about emotional manipulation and how it can effect people. For Joanna it turned people against her with how she tried to hurt Dex. For Dex, Mary and Pete, Joanna's cruelty bonded them closer together to the point that they felt the only way they could get past this is to destroy what's left of Joanna's already fractured mental state. And Shep is the poor (not figuratively) schmo caught up in all of this. I railed on Joanna for her character, but you couldn't tell this kind of story without giving us an unlikable lead. One that acts snobby and highfalutin. One who in her own way is more troubled and broken than she lets on. The book doesn't go deeper than the first chapter with it, but it's clear that her parents' divorce turned her into the kind of person who looks at relationships as trivial, and other people as just pawns in her game for more power and influence. It doesn't absolve her, but it works in fleshing her character out. But she's still a terrible person, and it's why she deserved the "scared straight" experience she underwent. 

And I think that's what Joanna means by telling Shep that she's back from the grave. That maybe this whole affair was the wakeup call she needed to stop acting so horribly to people, and that maybe this time she'll be a better person, one who is deserving of that second chance. A sign of growth, no matter how minor that is. Again, it doesn't absolve her for all the horrid things she did and said, and at the end of the day, she's still a spoiled rich brat, so it's unclear if much of this will really change her, but if this accomplished anything, it may have shocked away much of that hubris that made her so horrible.

As for the book itself, it flows really well with very little in terms of filler. Some of the tennis practice stuff was definitely padding though. And yes, it's hard to follow this character, especially for some of the downright horrible things she says and does, but as far as Stine protagonists go, Joanna's one with the most actual character. Though she comes off as more your stereotypical Y/A novel villain than hero. I like the twists, particularly the first case of tricking Joanna into thinking Dex is dead. The second feels a bit like overkill, but it's also the only way to end this story, especially after, you know, Joanna tried to have Dex's body thrown out like common trash then stabs Shep to make more blood. Although, if it was just a prop knife, how did Shep get cut by it? And if they established that Dex's aunt isn't that interested in his life, and has little to no money, how could there have been a big enough funeral for Pete to have been there? Even Joanna should have known that part was a lie. Those questions aside, this is a book where Stine doesn't make things too obvious too soon, though by the end I had expected Mary to be the mastermind, which came later than other Stine Y/A books.

So in the end, even if it started rocky, I'll still give the book a recommend. It's far from a perfect book, but I think it tells its story well enough. Stine would later release The Girlfriend, and I'll likely cover that eventually, but from what I can tell there's no real connection to this one. But for now, I'll say this one's a good Point book. The Boyfriend gets an A-.