Point by Numbers: Call Waiting

It's time for another trip into the world of Point Horror. We are reaching the end of the Stine era of the series. And this is one I can already predict. I can almost smell the tropes here. This book involves phone calls, so we're definitely in line for some ominous phone calls from someone creepy. Part of me just expects there to also be some sort of mental health issue be the culprit, because this is an R.L. Stine book after all. Let's see what's on the other line with Call Waiting.

This cover is good. Not amazing, but still does what it sets out to do. Give us lipstick, a phone and a note with the names of Karen and Ethan on it. That this even caller is likely out for love-focused revenge. I also like the little drop of blood on the phone which is actually dripping from the title. That's actually a fresh use of the title as well, I like it a lot. It's a cover I like. That usually bodes very bad for me.

Karen Masters is not taking things well. She had a fight with her boyfriend Ethan Parker and now thinks he might be lying to her about their relationship. She drives to Ethan's house to spy on him with her friend Micah Davis, who tries to tell her not to, and also adds that Karen is acting "positively anorexic". Stine, deadass STAYINYOURFUCKINGLANE. Karen notes her family is just naturally thin before noting that Micah likes to eat her fair share of Kit-Kats. Oh god, it's going to be one of these fucking books isn't it? Three pages into this 167 page book and I'm already feeling it, dude. Karen thinks that Ethan may be cheating on her with known flirt Wendy Talbot. Micah tries to say that Wendy does that with all the boys and it certainly doesn't confirm that she's with Ethan, though Karen thinks Micah must be hiding something from her, but Micah deflects. They calm down and then go check Karen's trunk where she finds a DEAD BODY-oh wait, it's a ventriloquist department store mannequin. Her brother Chris found it, kept it, and I guess likes to use it as a prank. Gotta do something before YouTube's invented.

We learn that Karen's family has been divorced for a few years and she hasn't heard from her father much. She's been friends with Micah for about a year and she's also had a good relationship with Ethan up until recently. Suddenly Karen sees Ethan arrive home and instantly thinks he's with Wendy. She floors it, but loses control and seems to crash. However, it turns out it was another car that coveniently crashed into a telephone pole. The man is fine and leaves as the girls head home, Karen still blaming all of this on Ethan. That night, she gets a phone call from someone on the other line with a raspy voice, saying he's her worst nightmare. This would be her cousin Adam who just moved to town and starts school on Monday. We learn that Adam is a bit of a shy loner who loves horror stuff and creepy Halloween costumes. Karen then meets with Ethan who tries to tell her that he was totally at the Sizzler the other night for his job and not with Wendy or anything, when Ethan's friend Jake shows up and more or less kills his excuse. Ethan wants to tell Karen something, but gets interrupted when Chris brings everyone to his room so he can play a prank call on a girl, because we need as many red herrings as we can as early as possible.

Ethan leaves with Jake before he can tell Karen what he wanted to tell her. Micah comes over just as Karen tells her that if she finds out Ethan is cheating on her with Wendy, she'll kill Wendy because she wants Ethan and ONLY Ethan. Quite the healthy uhhhh relationship you got there. And sure enough, the next day at school, she sees Ethan with Wendy, which leaves her both stun locked and ready to commit that murder she said she was going to do. By which she sees Wendy with a papier mache head of herself and shoves her down the stairs. It doesn't kill Wendy, just gives her a concussion. And Karen tries to justify it as "she fell, that's all. They wouldn't arrest someone over a fall, right?" That night, Mrs. Masters tries to talk with Karen about the incident, as Micah called and pretty much NARCed on Karen about the anger and the active threats of murder followed by the stairs incident. So now Karen is pissed at Micah over all of this, so she calls Micah, screams at her and says they aren't friends anymore. So she almost killed a girl, wants to kill her former best friend, but at least she has Ethan, right? Oh, and the next night Ethan tells her he wants to se other people. So yeah. She freaks out, rushes off, and says that she can't lose Ethan, so maybe she should kill him first. Our protagonist. Yay? 

Karen returns home and gets a call from Ethan. In the middle of the talk, she gets a call on the other line. She answers it, returns to Ethan and says that a voice on the other line said he was going to kill her. Don't fucking tell me this is the plot. Ohhhhhh Bob. Ohhhhh I have another 100 pages to go. Fuuuuuuck. Ethan rushes over to comfort her as she says the man on the other line said horrible, evil things to her. Of course we never get a moment where it happened, but it TOTALLY happened. She talks with Adam at school the next day as Wendy is trying to get witnesses and people to testify that she was pushed while Karen says it was just a fall that she didn't do. The next night Karen and Ethan go out, but not before Chris scares her again. But Ethan cancels the date to go with Jake and totally not someone else. At school, she again gets turned down by Ethan who is still hiding something, but says he's just REALLY busy at the Sizzler. She rushes off, only to run into Wendy. AND SHE HAS A GUN... prop for the upcoming Guys & Dolls performance. Look, I hate me some bad Stine stingers but that one was so dumb it made me laugh. Bravo. You popped me once. 

Wendy says that she doesn't think Karen pushed her, but she sure didn't help her out and ran like a guilty person would. Karen snaps and says to stay away from Ethan, to which Wendy is confused. That night, Karen heads to the Sizzler to see if Ethan's working there. Did Stine just really want to go to the Sizzler while writing this one? But when she arrives, she finds out that Ethan quit two weeks ago. She talks with him later, to which he confirms, but still seems to not want to answer her when she asks to go out. Adam then shows up, pretending to be Bela Lugosi's Dracula because he loves horror, get it? He also is really into the French Revolution and the beheadings because you know, blood can make those herrings extra red. Micah shows up, but Karen still won't talk to her, but when she thinks Micah knows something about Ethan and Wendy, she tries to get an answer, but Micah leaves, frustrated. I can relate. Ethan calls, says he can't come over, but will go out with her on Saturday. Then Karen finds Chris on the ground, dead, except it's another prank. We have like 50 fucking pages left, this book better turn the fuck around because I am already prepared to lose my shit in the conclusion. Ethan arrives for the date and talks to Chris about the caller and the call waiting. And here it fucking is. You knew it was coming. Let's peel the fuckin' band-aid. Say it with me now: "But Chris is confused. They don't have a call waiting."

Now caught in her lie, Karen tries to apologize and move on, but Mrs. Masters thinks she needs to see a shrink. Much like Adam did before he moved out of town. But she insists she's just fine and still goes out with Ethan, who is miffed, but I guess realizes how desperate she's getting and if he just broke up with her, that would be the last things he'd say. He leaves for a bit and returns, to which she now thinks he was calling Wendy. She returns home and before everyone leaves, she picks up the phone and now hears a real voice saying they're inside her brain and are coming to kill her. But when Ethan picks up, it's just a dial tone. Of course, given she's the girl who dialed wolf, nobody believes her, but she's certain she heard a voice on the other line. She has a nightmare of Chris, Adam and Jake wanting to kill her, then at school the next day gets a call in the principal's office, again of a voice saying they're in her mind. But she soon finds out the phone's broken, later to find out it was actually working because hey, look at that, another Stine stinger. She returns home with Adam who doesn't seem to believe her. She then gets a call from Ethan, who also doesn't believe her, but can you blame him? 

Eventually she gets another call and realizes who the other voice on the line is. She heads to Micah's who reveals it was her because she was the one who was going out with Ethan this whole time. And I literally threw the book on the floor in disgust. You almost steered the ship Bob. YOU HAD SOMETHING WITH IT BEING IN HER HEAD! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!??! I'll get to it in the conclusion, there's eight pages left. I am so ready to check out. Micah had been with Ethan for a while. He was never with Wendy. The trips to see Jake were to see Micah. When Karen did the fake call, she never saw Ethan anymore, so she made the phone calls to scare her away. Karen goes to attack her, but Micah, holding a hot fire poker, tries to stab her. But the two wrestle until Ethan shows up, having heard everything. Micah is subdued as Karen and Ethan are together I guess? I don't know I threw the book again. 

This book might be the strongest contender for worst book I've read for the blog. Or at the very least, the one that's made me the most angry, annoyed and frustrated. Nothing about this book was good. Not its horror, not its story, and certainly not its characters. When it comes to the story, this might be Stine's worst. Or at least his most poorly conceived. Which, given it's a Point book can I really be surprised? For every The Snowman or The Hitchhiker, we've gotten pounded with Halloween Night II, Hit and Run, The Babysitter III, and now I can add Call Waiting to the list of his worst side. Because we have a character who is annoying to follow throughout. Perhaps Stine's worst example of a love crazed teen girl character he's ever written, which given a lot of Fear Street, that's surprisingly a tough task to do, but it's here. And even her being so love starved that she'd literally kill isn't inherently a bad idea. It's the standard Yandere character. Not something I really care for, but I could see the concept working if Stine wrote it well. He did not. Because even when he could have committed to the idea of Karen being so crazed over Ethan that her sanity fell apart, he pivoted. He chickenshitted out and pivoted. Because I guess Karen, who clearly has poor mental health, needed a win and be validated to not need mental help... I guess? So we take the best friend character and make her the villain... for reasons?

I hate this twist so much. Because it makes no sense when you think about it. Yes, the twist of Micah with Ethan can work. Even the two not telling Karen because of her mental state makes sense. But why should I care if Micah was with Ethan when the main character is so unlikable and so horrible to both of them? Why would I want to root for her over Micah? It feels last minute. Like Stine had the idea for Karen's call waiting scam and realized he didn't have a way to 1. Make it interesting for the reader to follow because they know the big swerve from the get go, 2. Make it work in a horror setting because we don't get any actual horror involving the calls given they're fake, and 3. make it work to be a satisfying conclusion to the story. He had nothing else. So he tacked on real phone calls at the end. He turned Micah heel because she was the only character in the story that was left to turn evil I guess? I think he wanted to do something with Adam but he adds fuck all to the story. The book sets up that he left town and didn't take it well, and that he's so weird and creepy, only for none of that to matter. Might be the front runner for most Superfluous Clay character ever. Hell, I can't even give that to Jake, he at least matters to the end plot. 

Karen sucks. She might be my least favorite protagonist ever. Up there with the Brenda Morgans and Reva Dalbys. She sucks because she's frustrating. At no point do I want to root for her. Her desperation to keep Ethan eventually just blends into annoying. I don't even see this as a happy ending for either of them because I'd give it like a day and she'd again be paranoid that Ethan's cheating on her with someone else. I really wish the book hadn't pivoted to Micah. If the phone calls were in her head, her guilty conscience and her poor mental state finally collapsing in on themselves. I think it would have worked better to at least make her sympathetic. But by negating that swerve and just I guess moving on from it and not really dealing with it by the end, nothing will change and she'll continue to spiral into jealousy, murderous rage and more desperate acts to keep Ethan. Stine could have hit on the Yandere market so early on and yet he chickened out at the last minute. Ethan sucks though. I don't even feel all that bad for him, but I can also see, given how she reacts to everything, why he couldn't just up and admit his cheating. Chris exists for... I dunno, reasons? 

I said that when I eventually cover every R.L. Stine novel that I should make a list of how many books involve bad mental health. This is like the third bad mental health Stine book I've read this year (not counting The Stepbrother and counting Fear Hall as one story). He has never stuck the landing on it. Constantly feeling like a bad gimmick he can't manage to make work. This isn't the worst offender when it comes to how bad he is at it, but it still very much counts. You can write horror about bad mental health, about jilted romance, but Stine has never done it in a way where it doesn't feel gimmicky or tacked on, or like an out when he oh-so-often hits a wall. And boy oh boy did he hit himself some walls with this one. 

Overall, I hated this one a lot. Its characters are all unlikable with really nobody to root for. The main character wins when you really don't want her to. Its rife with some of his absolute shittiest chapter stingers, takes forever to really go anywhere and just dusts off the whole "did Karen push Wendy" mystery when it's clear Stine, shocker, had no idea how to make that work because Wendy as the villain makes no sense, feels like a book he had to tack a villain onto to give the frustrating main character a happy ending, and just isn't fun. I want fun trainwrecks to read. Ones that at least don't feel like I wasted time reading it and made my clearly arthritic fingers ache typing it out. Well, at least I know I have to talk about this for the worst list later this month, so thanks for that too, Bob. Thankfully we're down to a maybe one Point Stine book left so the ride will soon be over, but the nightmares never end. I'm going to have to do a Horrific Hindsight on Stine's Point stint soon too, aren't I? That'll be fun in a non-cathartic way, I'm sure. Anyway, fuck this book, no recommend. Stine you could make it up to me by taking me to Sizzler. I think we have one in my area. Call Waiting gets an F. 

Carolla

"Positively anorexic"

Kit Kats

Taurus

Trivial Pursuit

Sizzler

Bonneville

Saturday Night Live

Pop Tarts

Prank Calls

Doc Martens

Bela Lugosi Impressions