Chapter Three

Oh, God did I have a day at work. They’ve dropped me right in the middle of a Charlie Foxtrot and it’s driving me to drink Mike’s Hard Pink Lemonade, for crap’s sake.

But oh, look, a new chapter of Eclipse. Surely this will bolster my mood.

Edward creep-o-meter: 6

Edward and Bella are flying back from Florida.

Wait, huh? Hang on. Did I skip a chapter?

…No, yeah, there’s my end-of-chapter notes from the last chapter, screeching in all-caps about The Truck Incident. So I didn’t miss anything. Well, other than the obvious. Someone taught Stephenie to skip things.

Edward and Bella are flying back from Florida. It’s  convenient that Smeyer skipped all that unnecessary vampire-in-sunlight fodder, because then she’d have to explain how Edward was able to stay out of natural light all day while on vacation visiting his girlfriend’s mother.

My mom would have dragged that boy out with us. Well, and then, sparkling would happen, and my mom would probably say “Is this related to one of those Japanese cartoon things you keep watching?”

Anyway.

Bella’s mother catches on to the fact that Edward and Bella are “serious.” More serious than she thought. Serious is a good word for it. I also like “calamitous.” Or maybe “unpalatable.” Renée makes comments to how protective Edward is and how intense they are and how Bella moves around him like a satellite. No, really.

“The way you move–you orient yourself around him without even thinking about it. When he moves, even a little bit, you adjust your position at the same time. Like magnets… or gravity. You’re like a… satellite, or something. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Bella and Edward are special, okay? And apparently we only came to Florida so that Renée could remind us. Again. Just how special they are.

Again, if my mother saw that behavior in me? She’d start looking for other signs of control and abuse, too. But then, my mother and I don’t know what truest of true loves is like, on account of us thinking Twilight is a crock of cowplop. Frowny face.

Charlie is waiting up for Bella (and Edward, I guess) to return. Edward is stiff and standoffish before they even get in the door. Charlie soon reveals why–Jacob has been calling all night, looking for Bella. Oh, right, her other boyfriend. Before she can reminisce too long on her fond memories of using him as an emotional crutch, the phone rings.

Jacob demands to know if Bella is… going to school tomorrow.

K, bye. Click.

Okay then.

Bella obsesses and worries over why Jacob cares about her attendance for two and a half pages. She eventually comes to the conclusion that she was gone for three days, and becoming a vampire takes three days, so clearly Jacob thought she’d been bitten. Bella’s never ever been wrong so I’m sure that’s what it is.

Actually, I’m having a problem thinking of the last time Bella came to a conclusion that wasn’t wrong. The misogyny runs so deep in these novels it kills me.

So, anyway, the next day they go to school. Whoa, they jump right to the action here. Kudo’s to Smeyer’s editors, whoever they are. Jacob is waiting at school. Edward is pleased to point out to Bella how very wrong she was yet again. Jake and Ed glower at each other for a while. By the way, Jacob, at sixteen, is six foot seven inches tall, and tightly muscled–like, body-builder muscled. Right.

Edward confronts Jacob, after a short bit of pleading with Bella to stay in the car, which she for some reason doesn’t do. I was prepared to have her just follow his orders like always, but I guess it’s just really important to the plot that she hear this.

Edward is like “I can read your mind, and I know what you came here to say, so thanks for showing up to warn us, see you later.” Not suspicious in the least. Bella’s all “Teehee what?” which makes Jacob realize that Edward hasn’t told her anything at all about what’s going on.

It turns out that Emmett crossed the treaty line on Saturday. Paul and him came to words. Yeah, not blows, just words. Despite the fact that werewolves are here specifically to kill vampires, nobody fought, and nobody got hurt.

Bella tries to ask about what’s going on, only to have Edward shush her constantly. Jacob finds it in him to get righteously indignant on Bella’s behalf, which only makes Edward suddenly look all scary and stuff (he’s totes terrifying).

All at once, Bella puts together what we’ve all realized since Alice had that stupid vision.

1. Edward didn’t want her to know something.
2. Jacob wouldn’t have kept it from her.
3. Edward wanted her out of the city to keep her from knowing this something.
4. Alice had a vision about it and then
5. EDWARD FREAKING LIED TO HER
6. Also, vampires are dreamy.

This all adds up to, OH MY GOSH, YOU GUYS, VICTORIA IS BACK! Are you scared? Man, me too. There is nothing more terrifying than the vague threat of a redheaded hobopire who is not even important enough to have a single line in the novel she is the supposed villain of. A villain who does not actually accomplish anything except make a lot of grown men run around in the woods like silly pagans, and cause the female character to vomit and cry in turns.

And so, predictably, Bella starts crying.

Edward is all “Now look what you’ve done! She’ll never calm down in time for nappy-bye!” I mean, actually, he defends himself for lying to her and trying to keep something important to her from her.

He was… wait for it…

Protecting her.

Jacob, for his part, plays a total badass, and he’s not taking any of Edward’s crap.

“Do you really think hurting her is better than protecting her?” he murmured.

“She’s tougher than you think,” Jacob said. “And she’s been through worse.”

With that, Jacob begins to remember, as clearly as he can, how depressed and downright pitiful Bella was when Edward left. Specifically so Edward will pick through his mind and find it.

Poor poor Eddie is all pained and stuff as he is forced to invade Jacob’s privacy, read his mind, and find clear memories of Bella suffering. We all feel really bad for him. Jacob just laughs and grins.

Guys, I seriously love this new “asshole” Jacob. It’s about time somebody slapped Edward around.

“Overprotective, isn’t he?” Jacob said, talking just to me. “A little trouble makes life fun. Let me guess, you’re not allowed to have fun, are you?”

Edward glowered, and his lips pulled back from his teeth ever so slightly.

“Shut up, Jake,” I said.

Jacob laughed. “That sounds like a no. […]”

SERIOUSLY guys I like Jacob more now.

A grown-up finally shows up to shoo everyone off to class. Edward and Bella pass notes in English, where Edward describes the whole “yeah your flavorless archenemy is back to kill you and also we argued with some werewolves” debacle. I wonder if it’s more that he’s too embarrassed to have Bella around to see that stuff. “We almost had her! Then we got in a fight with some dogs over who was better at Counter-Strike.”

Bella says that Florida was a bad idea–they wouldn’t have been near Victoria to hear if she was going to come after Charlie. Edward counters, not at all creepily, that he’s not sending her anywhere alone, because who knows what could happen.

You know, the way he keeps harping on her bad luck, it’s almost like he’s purposefully laying the foundation for later, when he actually does hurt her, and can just say “Oh, you know Bella’s luck. She made friends with another werewolf, and he beat the tar out of her.”

For some reason, they pass notes back and forth about the many ways in which Edward would save her from a crashing plane. Yeah, he’s just that perfect and strong. God, this is boring.

In Calculus, which is the only class Bella doesn’t share with Edward–

Wait, hold up. Edward can manipulate the faculty however he wants, and there manages to be one class he doesn’t share with Bella? I call BS.

Well, anyway, in Calculus, the guys are taking bets on either Jacob or Edward in a fight. Mike bets on Jacob.

Uh, the end.

Well, at least her truck still ended intact in this one.

Chapter Ten

I have a huge dent to make in my reading, and I’ve got some free time. What better way to spend the Friday of my Memorial Day weekend than re-reading parts of New Moon? Kills brain cells better and faster than Corona, I’ll tell you that.

So Jacob never calls back. Oh noooooo now Bella will have to learn how to be happy with herself all on her own! Bella calls so much that Billy stops answering. A few days later, she drives down to see them, and the house is empty. They must be at the hospital! She rushes there and the nurse says no, they weren’t in. Isn’t that a patient confidentiality thing? Why is the nurse telling this random, zombie-looking girl who has and hasn’t checked in? She makes Dad Charlie call his friend on the rez to ask about the Blacks, and all Charlie can get is “they’re having phone line problems which is why you can’t call. Also, Jacob has something called werewolf mono?”

Bella googles “werewolf mono” because apparently she doesn’t know anything about mono good Lord. Because she is as good as a doctor, she realizes (thanks to WebMD) that Jacob couldn’t possibly have mono, because he hasn’t been kissing anyone. That you know of, Bella. Maybe the Quilbry are more than “friends,” if you catch my drift.

Bella decides that she’s going to give them a week and then start getting “pushy.”

A week was long.

And like, so totally hard! So Bella goes back to screaming herself awake every night, and Charlie dutifully ignores her. The phantom pain in her chest is getting worse. Oh, yeah, that terrible “hole” description from earlier? Keeps coming up. I am getting really freaking tired of melodramatic descriptions of how Bella has to hold herself together. She literally will double over and clutch at her sides because her chest hurts. What the hell. This is so freaking stupid.

I wasn’t handling alone well.

No, really?

Saturday finally arrives and she calls Billy. Oh, Jacob is better now. He’s out. With friends. Yeah. Don’t come over. Click. Bella immediately assumes this is about her, and decides that Jacob has abandoned her because she’s just too broken and tragic for him. Charlie pretends to care about her for a few paragraphs, before leaving to go fishing, cautioning her against being outside, because, you know, bear, eating people now, that sort of thing.

Bella says, screw that, I love wandering aimlessly and alone through danger. She grabs her compass and map and decides she’s going to find her special meadow on her own.

Let’s see… three pages about her hiking and whining about how hard it is to be alone… Ah, here, she finds the stupid place. She falls down, curls into a ball, and pours out the melodrama. The meadow is empty, empty like her heart! God I wish she would just get into drugs or something. My eyes have been rolling so hard I’m afraid they’re going to pop out of my head.

But wait! A figure steps out of the woods and sees her. He’s totally a vampire? OMG IS IT EDWARD?!!!?!??!

No, it’s just Laurent.

Wait, it’s Laurent!

When we last left Laurent, he was playing turn-cloak and tattling on James to the Cullens. They sent him up to Alaska for reprogramming, so he could live a peaceful unlife eating cute bunnies and kitties instead of people.

Bella is incredibly happy to see him–stupidly so. Oh, look, a vampire, and she’s all alone! I’m just certain he’s not going to eat her and one of her boyfriends isn’t going to have to jump in and save her. This is what you get for making your own decisions, Bella!

“I did go to Alaska. Still, I didn’t expect… When I found the Cullen place empty, I thought they’d moved on.”

“Oh.” I bit my lip as the name set the raw edges of my wound throbbing.

She means the metaphorical and overdone hole in her chest. He hasn’t actually bitten her or anything yet, so don’t get too excited.

“They did move on,” I finally managed to tell him.

“Hmm,” he murmured.

What? As opposed to shouted? Has “hmm” ever not been murmured?

“I’m surprised they left you behind. Weren’t you sort of a pet of theirs?” His eyes were innocent of any intended offense.

Ha, I’d forgotten how much I liked Laurent. People don’t have feelings, they’re cattle!

So they make small talk, and Bella realizes that his eyes are still red, and not gold like good vampires. Late to the thinking party, she figures out that he’s still eating people. Like vampires are supposed to. Too bad! I hope you die.

A psychotic edisode starts up, and Edward not-so-helpfully orders Bella around through the encounter. They continue with smalltalk, bordering on monologue. I wish he would hurry up and kill her already. Bella stupidly asks if Laurent ever hooked up with Victoria again, and he’s all “Oh, yeah, you know, I’m here on a favor, but she’s going to be mad when she finds out I’ve eaten you.”

Okay, now we’re monologuing. Victoria was ever so upset when Edward killed James (even though… he didn’t. As I recall, Jasper and Emmett took him out). She reasons that she can just kill Bella, and that’ll make everything square. Laurent was here to spy on how well-protected she was, so Victoria could swoop in for the kill.

“Then why not wait for her?” I choked out.

A mischievous grin rearranged his features. “Well, you’ve caught me at a bad time, Bella. I didn’t come to this place on Victoria’s mission–I was hunting. I’m quite thirsty, and you do smell… simply mouthwatering.”

Wait, hunting what? I thought you were eating people? Why aren’t you anywhere near a hiking trail or camp site or something? Why am I still alarmed that I’ve found a plot hole?

Bella tries begging for her life, and arguing with him, and Laurent continues to not eat her. Uggh would something happen already, it’s been like five pages.

Oh wait, here’s some werewolves.

Yeah, these huge wolves just sort of stroll into the meadow. Laurent is all “oh snap” and makes a break for it. Bella is shocked, just shocked, that a vampire ran from three wolves the size of Volkswagens, because apparently she has never seen a movie.

The meadow is empty again, and, like a white woman in a horror flick, she runs screaming and crying back to her car, falling down every thirty seconds. I’m dismayed when her truck starts immediately. That is not part of the cliché, Stephenie!

Bella returns home, freaked out, and Charlie actually notices. She tells him the bear is not, in fact, a bear, but three enormous wolves. He comments that the ranger had said the tracks were all wrong for a bear, but wolves just don’t get that big. Right, which is more likely–a bear with wolf legs, or a really big wolf? Forks is populated by idiots.

By the way, Charlie saw Jacob down at the rez, and apparently he’s grown another half-foot. That’s not odd at all! Ho hum. Bella goes to bed terrified that a red-headed vampire is going to come kill her in the night.

Did Victoria even have any lines in Twilight?

Checking… ahh… nope. Not a single line. She hovers behind the two men and looks crazy a lot. That’s it. Wow.

I hope she’s more interesting than James was.

Chapter Eight

You didn’t think I was serious, did you?

Jacob begins the arduous process of teaching Bella how to ride a motorcycle. Or, rather, he would, if the author herself knew anything about riding a motorcycle.

They finally get the stupid thing started, and as Bella begins to accelerate forward, she, of course, hears Edward’s voice in her head.

“This is reckless and childish and idiotic, Bella,” the velvet voice fumed.

I love how she never imagines him apologizing for hurting her, or telling her how much he loves her. He just orders her around some more.

She’s so surprised to hear his voice in her head that she falls over, bike on top of her. Her psychotic Edisode is all “I told you so,” even though he was the one who made her fall, and Jacob helps her back up.  The more she tries the bike, the more she hallucinates Edward trying to control her some more, which, for some reason, makes her happy. When she finally starts zooming down the road, his voice distracts her to the point where she misses her turn, forgets how to turn, and slams on the brakes. She fishtails and ends up with her head in the ground.

Despite the fact that she was going so fast it was “blowing my skin against my skull and flinging my hair back behind me with enough force that it felt like someone was tugging on it,” and the fact that she wasn’t wearing a helmet, the stupid bitch is not dead. The bike lands on her, she takes a face dive, and she just sort of bleeds from her head a little. That’s it.

Jacob insists on driving her to the hospital. Bella resists, because the hospital, will, of course, ask questions. Good God. He takes off his shirt and wraps it around her head, puts the bikes in the back of the truck. The drop the bikes off at his garage, she goes home to change out of her bloody, muddy clothes, and then they go to the ER. Yes. She took a dive, head-first, from a motorcycle going at least 45 miles an hour, but she’s cool enough to make a couple of pitstops before moseying on down to the hospital. Jesus Christ. Is there any semblance of realism in these books?

Also, she hopes that the ER can stitch her up quickly, so she can try to kill herself again tonight. Edward, my love, I’m coming! ♥

She takes some time to stare at Jacob while he’s missing a shirt.

Jacob noticed my scrutiny.

“What?” he asked, suddenly self-conscious.

“Nothing. I just hadn’t realized before. Did you know, you’re sort of beautiful?”

Once the words slipped out, I worried that he might take my impulsive observation the wrong way.

Wow. Way to “break it off,” you little slut. I’m sure he won’t get the wrong idea now.

Anyway, she has seven stitches in her head, ho hum. Bella’s very clumsy so she’s used to this sort of thing by now. Remember, guys? Remember her one flaw? Remember how very clumsy she is? She tells her father that she fell and hit her head on a hammer in Jacob’s garage, which Charlie doesn’t really give a second thought to. I love how she can lie without a second thought.

She seems to be healing, at any rate. The pain of losing her ~*one true love*~ isn’t as intense now that she’s got delusions and Jacob the Wonder Rebound to keep her distracted.

We get a time-skip of about two weeks, and narrative is introduced by way of saying that Bella was in the ER again and this time Charlie doesn’t buy the “I fell” excuse.

“Maybe you should just stay out of the garage altogether, Bella,” he suggested that night during dinner.

I panicked, worried that Charlie was about to lay down some kind of edict that would prohibit La Push, and consequently my motorcycle. And I wasn’t giving it up–I’d had the most amazing hallucination today. My velvet-voiced delusion had yelled at me for almost five minute before I’d hit the brake too abruptly and launched myself into the tree.

Some people use drugs, or sex with strangers. Bella uses head injury.

“This didn’t happen in the garage,” I protested quickly. “We were hiking, and I tripped over a rock.”

“Since when do you hike?” Charlie asked skeptically.

You know, a good father would have gone “mysterious injuries, bizarre cover-up stories… what is that boy doing to you?” Charlie just sort of lets her convince him it’s because she was working at a sporting goods store and it “rubbed off” on her.

In all fairness, I like that Bella is actually, you know, doing things in life, even if her reasons are self-destructive and harmful on multiple levels. Now that Edward is gone, she seems to have some modicum of freedom, freedom that Jacob is keen to encourage in her. It’s too bad everyone keeps telling me that Smeyer later writes Jacob as a major flaming douche bag. I guess she realized that she’d made Jacob more likable than her supposed hero and had to fix it, fast.

Bella complains to Jacob that Charlie is getting nosy, and he suggests they cool the bikes. Bella tries to think of some other possible way she could encourage her mental trauma, and decides that they should try to find that one meadow where vampires transform from creepy, subtly malignant, abusive metrosexuals, into creepy, subtly malignant, abusive and sparkling metrosexuals.

Jacob, an injun, already knows everything there is to know about hiking. He plots out a course for their hike, joking about seeing the “super bear.” When they finally get to where they’re going, he’s surprised to see that Bella didn’t take the clearly marked trail. Yeah, so was I. But Bella felt ~*so safe*~ around Edward, so being dragged off into the woods never registered on her non-existent danger senses.

There’s some pretty riveting hiking going on here, but I’ll spare you the details. Bella eventually asks if Jacob’s heard from Embry since he joined Samentology. Jacob says he hasn’t, gets all bummed, and puts an arm around Bella. Her justification for not shaking it off and attempting to reestablish their boundaries is he just looked sooo sad. Good God, I hate this bitch.

Anyway, they don’t find the meadow, and agree to try tomorrow. I seriously feel like I just wasted 10 minutes of my life reading this chapter. Why won’t something happen. Is this honestly how Stephenie thinks a book should go? 19 chapters of absolutely nothing and then seven chapters of hastily cobbled-together contrivances that might pass for plot in an alternate reality where all of us have goatees, scars, or eye-patches? For Christ’s sake, she could have cut all this “character development” bull she’s so freaking proud of and condensed her whole hateful, virulent series into one God damn book.

Please, Stephenie, please, inflict your midlife crisis on someone else.

Chapter One

My excellent friend Lukas has lent me his copy of New Moon. I didn’t ask why he had a copy of New Moon, and he agreed to let me write all over it. It’s a fair trade, I think.

And so, we begin.

Chapter One is a recap chapter, and with it comes all the glories and hardships of trying to sum up Twilight in less than 30 pages. You were all there, you saw what happened, but I’m going to recap the recap anyway.

The chapter starts off with a dream Bella has about being a wrinkly gross old lady and Edward wishing her happy birthday. Old people are disgusting! Bella wakes up and we learn that it is, in fact, her birthday. We are treated to 30 pages of her waxing pathetic about how old she is now that she’s 18 and how unfair it is that Edward hasn’t bitten her yet.

Bella, it turns out, is one of those people who absolutely hates it when people celebrate their birthdays. I know that these people exist in real life–I am dating one, much to my chagrin, and not wanting a birthday is sort of analogous to not liking fun, in my opinion. But we make do. It took a few years for him to even start letting other people know when his birthday was, and it took me a few years to learn that he wasn’t going to want to party hard. Much like my boyfriend, Bella hates attention and people doting on her. Even though she likes that Edward is so super-obsessed with her. I’m sure.

Bella drives herself to school. My eyebrows quirk. She drove herself? What’s going on here? Edward and Alice are waiting for her there, Edward as boring and gorgeous as he was in the last book, and Alice her adorable self, holding a silver box. Bella is like so totally embarrassed. She doesn’t want any presents, you guys! Not to mention she’s in a terrible mood because 18 is like so old and she’s going to be wrinkly any day now. Bella drops the hint that this is what’s upsetting her so much, and Alice tries to lighten the mood.

“Eighteen isn’t very old,” Alice said. “Don’t women usually wait til they’re twenty-nine to get upset over their birthdays?”

“It’s older than Edward,” I mumbled.

ANYTHING NOT EDWARD IS UNGOOD.

But Edward was dead set against any future that changed me. Any future that made me like him–that made me immortal, too.

An impasse, he  called it.

I couldn’t really see Edward’s point, to be honest. What was so great about mortality? Being a vampire didn’t look like such a terrible thing–not the way the Cullens did it, anyway.

And, ever so casually, Bella addresses my single greatest complaint about Stephenie’s stupid “vampires.”

Oh well, anyway. Alice asks Bella when she’s going to be up at “the house,” to which Bella immediately gets angry. She didn’t want a party! No party! No birthdays! NO FUN. BELLA IS VARY GROWNUP. She tries to come up with a few excuses for why she can’t come over, finally settling on “I have to watch Romeo and Juliet for class.” Edward agrees, saying he’ll just drag her to Chez Cullen at seven, so Alice has more time to set up.

Bella tries to argue with Edward, but, as usual, he convinces her to shut up and he gets his way.

They go to class. Now they have every class together. Bella makes an offhand comment about how “it was amazing the favors Edward could get the female administrators to do for him.” Silly women, so easily manipulated. I guess none of them are lesbians.

Mike, by the way, has lost some weight, and is purposely trying to style his hair like Edward’s. I grabbed a pencil and wrote “UGH” right next to this sentence. Sorry, Lukas.

We are treated to some exposition about how Bella is not used to getting presents, because she grew up po’, on her mom’s kindergarten teacher salary. Hold up here. Mom has a job, suddenly? And wait, now Bella does too. I’m confused. Am I still reading a Twilight book?

Wait, kindergarten teacher is one of those pre-approved made-for-women jobs. I see through your ruse, Smeyer.

Anyway, you guys, Edward is like so rich. He and Alice play the stock market, cause she can like, see the future, you know? So he’s like totally loaded. But Bella refuses to let him spend money on her. That’s like, so unfair, you know? Because he’s so perfect already, she has so little to offer in return. Never mind that if he started buying everything for her, too, I would probably just start sobbing incoherently.

Edward and Alice and Bella sit at the same long table as her mortal “friends” at lunch. The mortals largely ignore the vampires, because they can sense poorly written characters their predators. The other vamps have, apparently, graduated. Again. Who knows how many times they’ve done this. You know, Forks is exactly one of those small towns someone would end up spending their whole life in. Do the Cullens only come back to Forks after the oldest possible high school classmate has died, to keep the façade?

Sigh.

All right, after being treated to Brief Reminders about how the Cullens are totally vampires and school is sooo boring, Bella attempts to drive herself home. GUESS WHAT HAPPENS.

I folded my arms, and made no move to get out of the rain. “It’s my birthday, don’t I get to drive?”

“I’m pretending it’s not your birthday, just as you wished.”

That’s right. Edward is only letting her drive because it’s her birthday. I laughed so hard I snorted. He bitches for a while about how much her radio sucks, and then tells her to perk the hell up because it’s her birthday, damn it. They kiss.

Edward had drawn many careful lines for our physical relationship, with the intent being to keep me alive. Though I respected the need for maintaining a safe distance between my skin and his razor-sharp, venom-coated teeth, I tended to forget about such trivial things like that when he was kissing me.

“Be good, please,” he breathed against my cheek.

Women are such base, thoughtless creatures, driven purely by their irrational emotions. It’s a good thing Edward is here to constantly urge her to “be good,” so he can continue to withhold sex as a means of controlling her.

They watch Romeo and Juliet. Edward bitches about what an idiot Romeo is. I find Smeyer’s attempts at irony rather pathetic. At the mutual suicide scene, Edward comments about how lucky Romeo has it, that he can just take some poison to kill himself. We are then treated to about two pages of Edward making light of his own suicidal thoughts. If Bella would have died in that last book (remember, guys? remember how “she fell down the stairs?”), he was planning to kill himself, most likely by going to Italy and pissing off the Volturi, the ruling class family of vampires. Bella is horrified at this, and reminds him that if he had died, he wouldn’t have wanted her to kill herself. Are we sure this is a Twilight book?

Dad Charlie comes home, with pizza. Bella asks, hopefully, if Charlie wants her to stay home for her birthday, and he replies that there’s a Mariners game today so he won’t be good company. Awesome, Dad. Your daughter is turning 18 and you’re all “can’t talk game on.” He tosses Bella her gift, a camera (she almost drops it because she’s very clumsy remember guys she’s clumsy), and tells her… you know what, I’m just going to quote it.

“Hey, say hi to Alice for me. She hasn’t been over in a while.” Charlie’s mouth pulled down at one corner.

“It’s been three days, Dad,” I reminded him. Charlie was crazy about Alice.

EWWWWWW EW EW EW EW EW

A teenage girl who brings her friend over and becomes aware that her parent, her dad, her father, has a thing for said friend, would be grossed. the hell. OUT. MUCH LIKE I AM.

Bella seems to think there’s not really anything wrong with this.

So we are reading a Twilight book, after all.

Edward drives Bella in her truck to Chez Cullen, bitching about her truck the whole way. My word, this man is a whiner. He tells her to try to lighten the hell up, since all the vamps in vamptown are super excited for her birthday (apparently they don’t celebrate them anymore.)

You know, I’m sorry to make this so quote-heavy, but you guys have to got to see this.

“So, if you won’t let me get you the Audi, isn’t there anything that you’d like for your birthday?”

The words came out in a whisper. “You know what I want.”

She’s talking about having a Bite Day, but I’m imagining that they’re talking about sex.

A deep frown carved creases into his marble forehead. […]

“Not tonight, Bella, please.”

“Well, maybe Alice will give me what I want.”

HEYO!!

Alice doesn’t give her what she wants (not in this chapter at least), but she does decorate one hell of a party. There are paper lanterns decorating the outside, every flat surface inside the house is covered in pink candles and bowls filled with roses. A table near the piano is draped with white, and covered in yet more  candles and roses, and topped with a pink cake and a pile of silver-wrapped presents. Alice is too freaking sweet for words and I think I love her more by the minute.

It was a hundred times worse than I’d imagined.

…God, Bella is an ungrateful bitch.

The first gift is a car stereo, which Emmett is installing at this very moment, so that Bella can’t attempt to take it back. Oh, you. Edward hands her his present, assuring her that he hasn’t spent any money on it. Bella, an idiot, cuts her finger on the wrapping paper.

And all freaking Hell breaks loose as the little twit starts bleeding ever so slightly.

Edward and Jasper slam into each other, knocking Bella into the table. Jasper goes into a blood frenzy. Emmett tries to wrestle with him. Bella realizes that since she fell into a table full of crystal bowls, there is now a huge gash on her arm from all the shattered glass.

So she’s bleeding even more. Oh Lord.

Dazed and disoriented, I looked up from the bright red blood pulsing out of my arm–into the fevered eyes of the six suddenly ravenous vampires.

All because the little bitch got a paper cut.

Before those of you who are, I don’t know, smart, start to bring up that obviously this means Jasper should be freaking out over any woman who’s on her blooming period, I have some things to enlighten you on.

Stephenie Meyer, it seems, was posed this question several times. If all it takes is a drop of blood from a papercut to send Jasper into a frenzy, how can he, or any of the vamps for that matter, attend a high school where, at best, one in every four girls is menstruating? Instead of just saying “That’s gross and I’m not writing that,” which I would have come to expect and would even have accepted from Stephenie, she said this:

Several girls wanted to know if Edward would have a more difficult time being around Bella when she’s having her period. Answer: Yes, a little bit, but he would never say anything about it–much too much of a gentleman. And Bella would be way to embarrassed to ask. (It’s not the same as a cut, though. It’s sort of “dead” blood, if you get my meaning).

I tried to find this on her website’s FAQ and it seems to have been taken down. Gee, I wonder why. It’s not like you just called nutrient-and-blood-rich uterine lining, the same stuff that is the fuel and fire for the Miracle of Life dead or anything. It’s not like you just proved what a colossal moron you are with that one simple sentence.

This series never fails to deliver.

Chapter Twenty-Four is the last chapter

ADVERB COUNT: 56

Oh God, can it be? The light at the end of the tunnel? The reassuring lack of pages on the right side of this book? Am I really almost done?

Bella wakes up in a hospital. Edward is there, having never left her side. She has a broken leg, four broken ribs, a cracked skull, bruises all over her body, a bite mark on her hand… and do you know what they’ve told her mother?

She fell down the stairs.

Oh. My. God.

Anyway, he fills her in. James is dead, Alice saw the tape, Mom is here somewhere, etc. Bella panics when she sees the IV in her arm, because she hates needles. Ummm they don’t… leave the needle in there. Chill out, sister. Edward makes some comment about how ridiculous it is for her to be afraid of needles when she so bravely stood up to a murderous undead minion of the night intent on draining her blood. That wasn’t exactly bravery, Ed. You didn’t have to read the hotel room chapters with her curled in a ball and staring at the ceiling for hours on end.

The story they’re feeding Mom is that Edward came to Phoenix with Carlisle and Alice to “talk some sense” into Bella. Of course he came with adult supervision, he makes a point of saying, “virtuously.” Bella, being herself, managed to fall down two flights of stairs and through a window.

I’m sure the cop father will totally freaking buy this after how freaking upset she was at Edward. Fell down the stairs MY ASS.

Then there’s this little number:

He leaned in slowly; the beeping noise accelerated wildly before his lips even touched me. But when they did, though with the most gentle of pressure, the beeping stopped altogether.

He pulled back abruptly, his anxious expression turning to relief as the monitor reported the restarting of my heart.

Her heart. Stops. When he kisses her.

I just. There. Her heart. What? I don’t think I have any words for how bleeding stupid this is.

Speaking of that, HOW THE CRAP ARE VAMPIRES IN A HOSPITAL RIGHT NOW WHEN THEY FREAK OUT AT THE SMELL OF BLOOD.

Oh God, my head.

Mom comes in, Edward pretends to be asleep. There’s the page of “you’re okay oh my sweet baby I’m so glad you’re okay,” and then Bella asks where Phil the Husband is. GUESS WHAT, Phil got signed to that baseball team he wanted in Florida and so now they’re moving to Florida oh and Bella you’re going to love it it’s so warm and sunny and the house is just darling and we’re right near the ocean and–

Bella interrupts Self-Centered Mom to inform her that she still has another parent she’s living with in Forks. Mom is aghast. She wants to stay in Forks? Mom may be egocentric, but she isn’t stupid, and soon zeroes in on the fact that it’s because of Edward.

“Well, he seems very nice, and, my goodness, he’s incredibly good-looking, but you’re so young, Bella…”

Wait, what? 17 is too young to have a boyfriend? What rock has she been living under?

Does everyone just automatically assume she’s going to marry him? I mean, she is, but c’mon. At least inject some semblance of reality into this.

Mom starts glancing at the clock. Bella asks if visiting hours are over, and Mom lets her know that Phil is going to be calling soon.

…Okay, so. Your daughter is broken all over, has been unconscious for days, and after talking to her for maybe 20 minutes you bail because Phil is calling soon.

Between Charlie’s inattentiveness and Mom’s extreme immaturity… I think I can see how Bella sprang into being.

It’s okay, Edward is here. After Mom leaves, he expresses surprise that Bella wouldn’t want to live in Florida. She says that’d be silly–he’d have to stay indoors all day! Bella, unfortunately, has missed the point, and Edward further suggests that perhaps he should live farther from her so he doesn’t, you know, draw more vampires to her and her delicious blood.

Bella has a panic attack, right then and there. So codependent is she, she can hardly imagine what it would be like to live without this marvelous creature. Despite the fact that she was doing great just fine okay for 17 years without him. She makes him swear that he won’t ever leave her, ever, ever.

Oh Godddd.

More “I’m dangerous and could hurt you,” because we certainly haven’t gotten enough of that. Bella wants to know why he didn’t just let the venom run its course and let her become a vampire. UH OH, WHO TOLD YOU. Edward gets pissed. Bella argues, in the clearest burst of logic she has displayed in 500 pages, that she should get to save him sometimes, too, to make things more equal. Edward is having none of that. If she were a vampire, he wouldn’t be able to control her as easily she would be throwing the rest of her life away.

Dude, what life? She has no friends, no hobbies, no goals, no family (her parents are both pretty sub-par so I’m not even counting them), and essentially she just exists to get married to you and have your abominable undead baby. Speed things up here. We could have wrapped this all up in two books. Even Alice has seen this coming.

Edward says no, and that means no. Bella points out that eventually she is going to get old, like 25 old. And then it’s going to be creepy that she’s hanging out with an extremely pretty 17 year old. That actually seems to drive it home for Edward, but he ends the conversation by calling the nurse in to drug Bella up some more. I wish I were joking.

And… done!

Wait. Crap, there’s an epilogue. CRAP.

Chapter Twenty, I think the plot was a lie

ADVERB COUNT: 36. Come to think of it, Edward wasn’t in this chapter…

This chapter is called “Impatience,” which I’d say is fairly fitting. I’m impatient with how stupid the main character is. I’m impatient that the entirety of this chapter is set in a hotel room where basically nothing happens. I’m impatient that this book isn’t already over.

Bella comes to in a hotel room. Did Edward finally slip her a roofie and–oh wait, no, that’s right, she came up with a stupid plan. Let’s flashback!

Team Get-the-Crazy-Bitch-the-Hell-Out-Of-Town drives like maniacs. I’m not sure how they can pull off going twice the speed limit when neither of the drivers are psychic. Scratch that, I’m fairly certain Jasper is driving since Bella is sitting next to Alice. Women don’t drive in House Cullen.

In the midst of Bella’s angsting, she observes that with how freaking fast they were going, she shouldn’t be surprised that they made a three-day trip in just one. Stephenie, Google maps. Google maps, Stephenie. A vampire driving twice the speed limit, never stopping to eat, sleep, or fill up the car, would make it there in 12 hours. Otherwise, making this trip in three days would require driving for only eight hours a day, like some kind of sissy. And you’re not a sissy, are you?

So they’re in a hotel room. Alice and Jasper stare at the TV without watching it. Bella takes turns angsting, moping, eating, and sleeping. We’re all waiting with bated breath for Carlisle’s “ok we killed him lol” call.

During all of this incredibly interesting hotel room action, Bella asks Alice what it takes to become a vampire. Alice hrms about that, saying that Edward wanted her not to say. Edward probably knew that Bella would jump on the first bus to Vampiretown as soon as she could guess how to buy a ticket. Alice relents, because Bella asserts that she has a right to know (I’m not really sure how she figured that), and we are treated to a short dissertation on how vampires are venomous.

“The venom doesn’t kill–it’s merely incapacitating. It works slowly, spreading through the bloodstream, so that, once bitten, our prey is in too much physical pain to escape us.”

1. The venom doesn’t kill… except to make you a FRIGGING VAMPIRE of course.

2. Right, because the only response anything ever has to pain is to lie there and let something eat them. Pain isn’t a motivator or anything.

“It takes a few days for the transformation to be complete, depending on how much venom is in the  bloodstream, how close the venom enters to the heart. As long as the heart keeps beating, the poison spreads, healing, changing the body as it moves through it. Eventually the heart stops, and the conversion is finished. But all that time, every minute of it, a victim would be wishing for death.”

But Carlisle SAAVVEED THEEMMMM!!!1

So Edward, and then Esme, were in the hospital, not dying of an intensely painful poison… for three days. And nobody noticed? Nobody caught on? Or are you going to tell me Carlisle dragged them home for the transformation, and nobody noticed him dragging that pretty dead woman with the dead baby out of the morgue?

Alice suddenly has a vision of Bella’s childhood ballet studio. Oh wow! Something less boring happened to break the already intensely boring narrative! Who had the bright idea of enrolling Bella in a dance class as a child? Is this where she suffered the head injury that led to her crippling inner-ear disorder?

Alice says this means the tracker’s plans have changed, and he’s going to end up eluding Team Kill-Jerkoff. JUST THEN, the phone rings. Carlisle confirms everything Alice just said. So she’s not really handy so much as repetitive.

Anyway, Carlisle gives the phone to Edward and Alice gives the phone to Bella. They manage to keep from gushing all over each other long enough for Edward to mention that the red-haired woman (Victoria) was trolling around Forks, at Bella’s house, the airport, and her school, trying to dig up dirt. Nobody’s hurt though, because that would cause tension. Edward finally hangs up and Bella gets all stupid depressed again.

The ballet studio Bella went to is just down the street from her mom’s house, and suddenly she’s all concerned that the vampire-woman was able to get a hold of her school records. Because Forks is a singularly stupid small town and would certainly give Bella’s records to a crazy red-headed hippy with leaves in her hair. So Bella calls Mom from Alice’s cell, leaving a message to call her back. And uh.. then the vampires stare at the TV some more, and Bella falls asleep, because apparently not even she can take much more of this.

Something had better start actually happening here soon. James, I’m counting on you to kill this little twit.

Chapter Six has indians!

ADVERB COUNT: 62

BELLA LIKE-O-METER: one one one one one one one one >_<

Bella asks her dad Charlie if the place near Goat Rocks, south of Rainier, is good for camping (since Edward said that’s where he’d be today and she’s going to be spending all day thinking about him.) Charlie says it’s a terrible place to camp, on account of the bears.

I hope he doesn’t mean grizzlies. Oh god.

She also doesn’t intend to tell Charlie that Edward will be going with her on her trip to Seattle. It’ll be great when she disappears and nobody knows why.

It’s the beach trip!

Yawn. Mikes fawns over her, Jessica gets mad at her, etc., etc., I so could not care less about Bella and her unintentional love triangles at this point.

I am also fed up with how clumsy Bella is. She cannot sit by a tide pool without worrying she’s going to fall in. She cannot sit without worrying about falling. This is not a simple flaw anymore so much as a physical condition. Has it always been this bad? Why hasn’t anyone gotten her inner ear checked? CAT scans? MRIs? Anyone?

Some native kids show up from the nearby reservation. The youngest is Jacob, described as looking 14 or 15. I know this is going to be important and incredibly creepy later.

One of the girls asks, scorn in her voice, why no one thought to invite the Cullens, which is the perfect time for the oldest res. kid to say “The Cullens don’t come here.” Oh, so ominous. Bella is desperate to know more, so she does what any woman would do–pretends to flirt with the 15 year old to pump him for information.

I AM NOT KIDDING. She takes the 15 year old on a long walk, flutters her eyes at him, asks him if he comes up to Forks much, and at one point even narrates that this is what Edward has done to her so it’s probably going to work. So full of hate. Of course Jacob falls for it and of course he tells her all about why the Cullens can’t come to the beach.

The Quileutes of Stephenie’s world believe they descended from wolves. A brief jaunt to wiki tells me this is true–a traveling shapeshifter found a wolf and transformed him into a man, thus creating the first Quileute. Jacob also tells a story about the flood, saying that the Quileute tied their canoes to the tops of trees to survive which.. is also true! Did this woman actually research something?

For some reason she felt the need to make a vampire story for them. Oh, I’m sorry, “cold ones.” Jacob says his great-grandfather encountered a tribe of cold ones that didn’t eat people, and told them if they stay off their land, they’ll leave them alone. Bella’s all “oh so the cold ones are like the Cullens rite,” and Jacob says no, they’re the same cold ones.

Ooooooh. I’m so shocked.

Chapter Five, getting steadily creepier

ADVERB COUNT: 57. Does she have a quota per chapter or something?

BELLA LIKE-O-METER was, for two paragraphs, an 8, but currently hovers around a clueless 4.

Dear Lord.

At lunch, Bella is understandably nervous and frightened that Edward is going to switch back to hating her for no good God damn reason. This doesn’t stop her from going to his table for lunch where he is sitting, alone, and beckoning to her. Her girl friends go “ooh la la” and the Bella Fan Club glares daggers at the newest stalker.

What follows is some of the more painful dialogue in the “novel” so far. Bella questions why Edward is so friendly towards her again, and he says, quote, “I decided as long as I was going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly.”

What.

Okay, so–I’m new to this, as this is the first I’ve actually seen it mentioned in regards to “Twilight.” Does Stephenie Meyer actually hold to the bit of vampire lore that states they are the children of the Devil and are doomed to eternal damnation after the shuffle off the charade of their un-life?

And why isn’t Bella creeped the hell out by this startling admission on his part? What exactly is Edward planning to do to her?

Oh, but his face is so angelic, he couldn’t possibly be a bad person.

Edward warns her again that he is not a good friend and they shouldn’t be near each other, all the while smiling and telling her how he’s “giving up” on staying away from her. He even goes so far as to insult her intelligence for continuing to associate with him. This also doesn’t seem to bother Bella in the least.

Edward has the gall to complain that Bella is hard to read. Bella finally finds her nerve, spine, brain, and righteous female anger, and lays into him for being a confusing, manipulative, self-absorbed jerk, who has been playing her like a violin for near seven months now.

GOOD GIRL

Edward changes the subject to how the guys at her table hate him. Oh, wait, what? Distraction ego-stroking. Bella forgets she was angry at him for very valid reasons and continues marveling over how pretty he is. Edward urges her (read: manipulates her) to guess at what he is, and Bella gives a weak guess of “radioactive spiders.” Edward counters with “What if I’m not a superhero? What if I’m the bad guy?” Smiling the whole time, because he knows full and well this wouldn’t deter a single high school girl from pursuing someone. Bella insists he’s not bad (how she thinks she knows this is anybody’s guess) and Edward keeps it up by brooding over how wrong she is.

I would yawn if I didn’t feel my outrage beginning to stir. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m an adult and I was over this years ago, but Edward is pulling such an obviously manipulative plot that I can hardly stand recapping this. This only goes to prove the point further: girls like being treated like garbage.

Bella remembers that she’s at school and is going to be late for class. Edward declares he’s going to skip, because “ditching is healthy every now and then.” Oh, what ever could his reasons be?

In Biology, today’s assignment is blood-typing! Oh Lord.

Even better: Bella faints at the sight of blood! I’m dying over here.

Nothing Wrong With Mike volunteers to take Bella to the nurse. Edward, who was supposed to be ditching, magically and heroically swoops in to save Bella from Nothing Wrong With Mike. In reality, I know this is because Edward feels he is the only man qualified to “take care of her.” They go to the nurse’s office, where Edward confides that he was seriously worried that Mike was dragging her dead body off into the woods to hide it. “Your male friends are all terrible people, you only need me, after all.”

I’m paraphrasing.

Edward makes fun of her and patronizes her at length for fainting at the sight of blood. She complains that she can smell it, which Edward counters isn’t true, which I counter-counter is so too, because I know exactly what blood smells like. Do people not have bloody noses anymore and I never got the memo? Edward is a bit of a moron, it seems.

Bella recovers. Another kid comes into the office from Biology, and Edward orders Bella outside. She dutifully obeys, much to his surprise. I guess he figured it would take a few more months to program her to following his commands.

Nothing Wrong With Mike meets them out there. He must realize there is something terribly wrong with Edward, and, with a wisdom despite his age, is monitoring Bella for any signs of abuse. Mike reminds Bella of their beach trip (oh right, that), struggling to only give a few details while Edward is present. He probably suspects that Edward would follow them there to stare at Bella more. I am liking Mike more and more.

Bella doesn’t want to go to gym, so Edward chivalrously tells the nurse that Bella needs to be taken home.

Bella attempts to get into her truck to drive herself home and EDWARD THROWS A FIT.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked, outraged. He was gripping a fistful of my jacket in one hand.

I was confused. “I’m going home.”

“Didn’t you hear me promise to take you safely home? Do you think I’m going to let you drive in your condition?” His voice was still indignant.

“What condition? And what about my truck?” I complained.

I guess this is supposed to be sweet and thoughtful, but all I see is “YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO DRIVE, I’M THE DRIVER NOW, YOU NEED TO BE TAKEN CARE OF BECAUSE YOU ARE A WEAK AND HELPLESS WOMAN.” When she realizes that resistance is literally futile, because he would just drag her into the car (NOT. AT ALL. CREEPY) she accuses him of being “pushy.” Ooookay.

They continue to talk, much to my chagrin. Bella is told that she seems older than her tender age of seventeen. This is absolutely not true in any regard, so I’m positive this is another ploy of Edward’s to get her further in love with him. Bella agrees with him, saying her mom had said she was “born thirty-five years old, and that I get more middle-aged every year.” Her mom is obviously mentally retarded.

Edward reminds Bella how scary and dangerous he is. I resist barfing. Bella asks if Edward is going to go the beach with them–something she knows is just not going to happen. He declines, and the parting line of the chapter is him telling her not to hurt herself at the beach while he’s not there to save and protect her. Because she is not at all capable of taking care of herself, and has failed to do so for the 17 years she lived before she met this stunning, beautiful, dazzling display of manhood.

He’s so romantic.

Chapter Four, when does Bella get likeable?

ADVERB COUNT: 55. I’ve noticed the presence of adverbs seems to increase when Edward shows up in the narrative.

BELLA LIKE-O-METER is a slightly-improved 2.5. She is showing signs of reason and seems to recognize that she is insane… for however briefly.

For the next week, Bella is the center of attention and SO TOTALLY HATES IT. The Tyler kid who almost hit her with his van is still trying to make amends, HOW IRRITATING. He even sits at her table at lunch now, joining Sweet-Polite-Mike and Chess-Club-Eric in the Bella Fan Club. SHE TOTALLY HATES IT.

Man, if three cute guys I knew liked me were constantly showering me with attention, that would be the worst.

…is Bella a lesbian? She doesn’t seem to have any problem with the girls who moon over her.

Edward ignores Bella for six weeks. Yep. He sits next to her in Biology and just doesn’t look at her. She begins to think that he regrets saving her life–I’d make some comment about what a stupid twit she is for considering this, but this is honestly possible since Edward seems to have massive psychological problems.

Unfortunately for Bella and her man-hating ways, the “Girl’s Choice” dance is coming up. Her friend Jessica wants to ask Mike! Aw wait it looks like Mike turned her down, so he could ask Bella to ask him. Bella deftly manipulates him into feeling bad for giving Jessica a “maybe,” and then, despite the fact that there is Nothing Wrong With Mike, she makes up some bogus excuse about going to Seattle that day. Also, apparently Bella is SO CLUMSY that she will cause herself and others bodily harm by going to a high school dance.

An aside, the only dance I ever went to was prom, but I have reason to believe that if someone had asked me to any other dance, I might have gone. Except for I’m a bit of a man-hater myself. I digress.

After Mike asks her, Edwards takes this moment to stare at her for a few minutes. Not at all creepy. Bella has a moment where she realizes that all this time she’s spent obsessing over a guy who is clearly sociopathic is unhealthy–good girl!

Edward then decides to talk to her, for reasons unknown, but only to tell her that they shouldn’t be friends. “Forget how friendly I was to you before and during saving your life, I’ve decided to cause you emotional pain by now ignoring you for no good reason. I know this will only make you want me more.”

I’m paraphrasing.

Bella accuses him out loud of regretting saving her life, which seems to make him angry. Well, all right, there’s no “seems” about it, since Stephenie loves to just up and tell me how people are feeling. It saves me a lot of brainpower. Observe–

“He was astonished. He stared at me in disbelief.”
“He was definitely mad.”

What, no “his eyes flashed as the muscles in his jaw clenched, fists balling under the desk as he regarded me with a cold and baleful stare?” Think of all the adverbs you could fit into that, sweet author! On second thought, your readers are 15 year olds who just want to get to all the not-sex scenes, so the effort would just be wasted.

Bella can’t believe that Edward wouldn’t want to be friends with her. This totally ruins her day… again. Even worse, Chess-Club Eric is waiting by her truck to ask her to the dance. I thought this was Girl’s Choice? Incredibly, Bella echoes my thoughts. This girl has brief flashes of clarity that make me wonder if she doesn’t know she’s in a terribly written vampire novel. Eric is shunned with the same stupid Seattle excuse, and he “slouches off.” Poor guy, being a nerd is apparently a physical ailment.

Edward happens to be nearby enough to be creepy, and then pulls his car (“a shiny Volvo”) out in front of Bella’s truck so she can’t pull out–which gives Tyler enough time to come up to her window and ask her to the dance. Bella snaps at the poor guy (“I HATE IT WHEN BOYS LIKE ME”) and considers rear-ending the Volvopire.

Bella’s friend Jessica calls her while she’s making dinner, excited to tell her that Mike agreed to go to the dance with her. Bella continues her newfound love of manipulation by suggesting the other two girls at their table ask Eric and Tyler to the dance as well, so she doesn’t have to deal with her awkward and confusing lack of attraction towards anything with male genitalia, I’m sure.

Yes, I’m implying Edward doesn’t have any balls.

Speaking of that freak, he’s hovering around Bella the next morning as she gets out of her car, and catches her keys with inhuman swiftness when she drops them. Bella asks how he can appear out of thin air like that, and he says “It’s not my fault if you’re exceptionally unobservant,” because he clearly loves making his women feel helpless, confused, and crazy. P.S. his eyes have been changing color from black to “warm honey” all chapter, and it’s making me feel helpless, confused, and crazy.

Edward insists that they still shouldn’t be friends, because it’s for the best. Then he asks if Bella needs a ride to Seattle. NOT. AT ALL. CREEPY. No, it’s that he wants to be near her, but they still shouldn’t be near each other. Essentially, he’s artificially created a need for secrecy and inflated the forbidden nature of their relationship.

Bella, being a teenage girl, is hooked.

His last line in the chapter, I swear to God, is

“You really should stay away from me. I’ll see you in class.”

This kid needs medication.