Previously: Bella hated her birthday and got a paper cut.
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Annie: We open this chapter right in the middle of action, because I’m that lucky! Carlisle is ordering the vamp family around, trying to make sure that Jasper doesn’t murderface Bella, who’s being all human and bleeding over everything.
Emmett, Rosalie and Esme haul a rabid Jasper outside while Carlisle and Alice set to work fixing up Bella after she refuses to go to the hospital. Bella doesn’t want to have to explain to Charlie that Edward was too rough with her after she accidentally cut herself, and ended up slicing up her whole arm on broken glass when he threw her into a table.
Kirsti: DUDE. NO. Especially when it’s only a few months after she “fell down a flight of stairs” and got totally mangled. Oof. Poor Charlie.
Marines: “I’ll save you from that paper cut, Bella!” *throws her into a glass table*
Annie: After some argument around whether or not Edward can control himself around Bella’s smelly blood, he eventually goes to help the rest of the crew with Jasper. Even Alice can’t take it and she has to leave.
Carlisle sets to work on digging the glass shards out of Bella’s arm, and she asks him how he can resist Bella’s beautiful blood bouquet. Because ew, thanks. Let’s do this about how lovely her damn blood smells again.
Carlisle tells her that it’s because he has many years of practice, and that he loves his work, so he sort of has to be immune to the scent of blood.
K: He also gets a little sanctimonious about how his super smelling powers have allowed him to save people who’d have otherwise died. Basically, he’s the bloodhound version of Gregory House.
Mari: Honestly, I’ll take the Vicodin addicted doctor, thanks.
Annie: As Carlisle cleans up, he and Bella talk about religion, because why not. Bella explains her family’s history of religious beliefs (Charlie’s a Lutheran, and her mother approaches it more like a trend or fad), and Carlisle tells Bella he hopes there is some point to life. Bella agrees with him, but internal monologues about how she could only appreciate a heaven that had Edward in it.
Mari: What is blissful, pain-free eternal life if your boyfriend isn’t around to throw you into glass, AM I RIGHT?
Annie: Carlisle tells Bella that Edward believes vampires have no souls, and that’s probably why he struggles with the idea of turning Bella into a vampire. I’m shocked, because I don’t believe this girl has a soul to begin with, so what’s there to loose?
K: Meanwhile, the post-it note I have stuck to the page says “Fuck, not souls again.” Because seriously. Wasn’t 12 seasons of Buffy and Angel enough?!?!
Catherine: No, not enough for Meyer. She wanted more.
Mari: Please, you guys. Stephenie Meyer has NEVER consumed another work of fiction ever in her life.
Annie: We get another walk down memory lane, with Carlisle telling Bella that he turned Edward into a vampire after his mother convinced him to. Carlisle explains how Edward’s dad had already died from the historically inaccurate Spanish Influenza, and that on her death bed, Edward’s mother begged Carlisle to save her son.
Now, although Carlisle claims Edwards mother seemed to ‘know’ that he was different, it could’ve just been the fever. I highly doubt Edward’s mother meant ‘turn my son into a soulless child of darkness’. She was probably just pleading with the doctor to make her son healthy again, but hey.
K: The Cullen family: justifying murder in weird ways since 1919.
Annie: Carlisle offers to take Bella home, but Edward shows up to say he’ll do it. Bella says that Carlisle can do it, like she actually has a choice in who will be driving her home. Edward leaves to find Alice, so they get Bella something else to wear. Coming home in bloody clothes just might tip off Charlie.
K: But bandages are fine. Actual quote: “Charlie was never surprised to see me bandaged.” Jesus H. Christ.
Catherine: For someone who is supposed to be so clumsy, she’s not shown being actually clumsy very often. Just thrown around by vampires.
Mari: Check the Abusive Boyfriend’s Handbook, Chapter 1. That’s actually its definition of “clumsy” so.
Annie: Bella worries that Edward is very upset, and Carlisle assures her that it isn’t her fault, but Bella can’t believe that, because Edward has been working that psychological abuse hard.
Back to the scene of the crime, Esme is bleaching Bella’s blood off the floor, and Alice helps Bella find a shirt the exact same colour as the one she was wearing. This way, Charlie, the world’s worst father (according to the world’s worst daughter), wouldn’t notice that anything was amiss. Apparently, Bella still has to be awful about Charlie. Cool.
Bella’s doing a lot of apologizing, and the vampires do a lot of ‘it’s not your fault’, and then they seem to have the same conversation, but this time with Jasper, telling him that it’s not his fault, either. And urrrrghhh, really?
In the car, Bella begs Edward to speak to her, then she begs him to forgive her. Are you asking ‘For what?’, too? (K: YUP) (C: Seconded.) Good. So I’m not alone in this.
Edward is confused. Bella blames herself for being so careless as to get a paper cut around his family. She seems whinier than usual so far this book, and we’re only on chapter two.
Catherine: OMG, it gets SO much worse.
Annie: Once they get to Bella’s house, she whines and complains and tells Edward she wants him to spend the night. It’s her birthday, after all. Edward isn’t into spending the night, now that he ‘s no longer sneaking into her room to watch her sleep on the down low, it’s kinda lost its appeal. Edward gives in, and says he’ll meet her in her room. She also gets a crooked smile from him, so we can all take a drink.
K: ABOUT TIME TOO.
Annie: Charlie calls out for Bella when he hears her enter the house, and for once, Bella doesn’t act like a psychopath for him doing so. They talk a bit about Bella’s night, and Charlie does notice that his daughter’s hurt herself. (M: So suck it, Bella.)
Bella heads upstairs, to the bathroom, to get ready for bed. She feels it important to internal monologue that she keeps a pair of pyjamas in the bathroom, for nights such as these.
Catherine: Thrilling details, Bella! I really feel like I’m in her world!
Annie: Bella finds Edward waiting for her in her room, sitting on her bed with her birthday gifts. She opens them– tickets for them to go see Bella’s mom from Bella’s vampy in-laws and a CD of Edward playing his piano for her, from Edward, of course.
K: She also tells us that she “snuggled into his stone chest“, which is just the sexiest thing of ever. I know that I love to cuddle lumps of rock on a regular basis. But also, she refers to Edward’s song as a lullaby. Because of course Edward is treating her like a child again. She’s eighteen years old, numbnuts. She doesn’t need a fucking lullaby.
Annie: Edward demands that Bella take some Tylenol for her injury, and then get into bed. Bella asks him what he’s thinking about and he says ‘Right and wrong’. And apparently, that frightens her, which is a super terrific feeling you should be having from your boyfriend that’s currently sharing a bed with you.
Or maybe, Stephenie just doesn’t understand how words work, and ‘shuddering chill’ is her description for feeling turned on?
Catherine: In the last book Meyer described Bella being turned on as an ‘electric current’. So I’m thinking that, like Bella before she met Edward, Meyer has just never been turned on before, ever. Or if she was she was immediately shocked with a cattle prod afterward.
Annie: Anyway. Edward gets kinda weird and starts kissing Bella. They reach, like, a PG13-level of kissing, as Bella describes it as ‘clearly beginning to cross his cautious lines’, but that Edward doesn’t stop her. In the middle of this makeout, Bella talks about how the kissing is reminding her of something? But she can’t remember what? Edward must not be as good at this as she seems to think he is…
Anyway. Bella describes ‘crushing‘ herself ‘against his cold body‘, which apparently is super hot, so hot that Edward has to push her away. Bella gets pouty and annoying about how he’s stopping things, and demands that he kiss her again. Edward tells her that she is overestimating his self-control and I’m like NOPE.
And just as I’m about to hop on the NOPE train, Stephenie gives us this beautiful gem:
“Which is tempting you more, my blood or my body?”
A WORLD OF NO. I just. I can’t. I….No. Just. NO. I can’t unread that.
K: Seriously. He was flat out on the verge of murdering her face off, and she’s turned on by it. NO. NOT OKAY. KEEP YOUR FUCKING KINKS TO YOURSELF, SMEYER, AND OUT OF YOUNG ADULT FICTION.
Annie: They go to sleep because we’re near the end of this chapter that seems incredibly long, considering not much happened. As Bella’s falling asleep, she remembers that the kiss reminded her of the kiss she and Edward shared when he left her to go chase after James the evil tracking vampire from the last book, and about how that was the worst thing ever and that she couldn’t take it if Edward were to leave her.
Proving once again that Stephenie is the worst at writing and doesn’t know what words mean, Bella ‘shudders into unconsciousness’ (M: Um, she gets so horny she slips into a coma? IDK what’s happening), and huzzah, this chapter is over.
Next time on New Moon: Edward is Mr. Pissy Pants for like, the entire thing in Chapter 03.
Fuchsia-haired, caffeine enthusiast, dog person, Raptors fan, sometimes blogger, music & social media geek, freelancer, human being. She/her.
I am a 30-something year-old human woman who lives in Maine. I'm a freelance writer who mostly spends time that I should be doing that, watching T.V. I also love reading and comic books way too much.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
