New Moon Chapter 03 – Break-Up Coma

Previously: Bella got stitches and Edward brooded.
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Catherine: Gosh, I just can’t seem to remember if anything important or significant happens in this chapter.

Annie: Does anything important or significant ever happen in SMeyer’s books until she remembers that they should have a plot in Chapter 22? My prediction is no.

Catherine: I guess we’ll have to read on and see.

It’s the beginning of any chapter, so it starts with Bella waking up having not slept well. This time it’s because her arm still hurts from where she got all frisky with that glass table last chapter.

“It didn’t help my outlook that Edward’s face was smooth and remote as he kissed my forehead quickly and ducked out my window. I was afraid of the time I’d spent unconscious, afraid that he might have been thinking about right and wrong while watching me sleep.”

Lol. She’s afraid he’s gonna suddenly remember what’s moral while creepily watching her sleep, you guys. I believe it. Most people would just read a book but Edward probably does stare at her all night without blinking.

Marines: I understand that she fears he might think, “being with Bella is wrong,” but I will never tire of reminding this fictional character that should he think, “mauling my girlfriend is wrong,” that would be an okay thing. Just imagine how much better (by which I mean shorter) this series would be if SOMEONE thought a little more about right and wrong and a little less about stalking and smelly blood.

Annie: We’d be done with this by now! How come none of the many, many people involved in getting this series published spoke up? How come no one was all ‘Romanticizing abusive relationships to teens? PAUSE. Maybe we should put a pin in this.’?!? 

Catherine: Because money? Definitely because money.

Amazingly, in the next sentence Bella is at school. Instead of detailing a boring drive over Steph, for once, learned how to just fucking transition into the next part. We can clap that up.

Bella notices that Edward’s face is ‘still wrong’ and she thinks he’s being really standoffish and quiet and it’s worrying her. If I didn’t know what happens in this chapter I’d say she was just being paranoid. He’s always standoffish and quiet. That’s, like, his whole thing. (M: That and being an occasional murderer.)

Bella thinks about how she has a million questions to ask but most of them are for Alice. She wants to know if Alice sees Edward breaking up with her, I guess. Or something. But Alice isn’t at school. At lunch, when Bella asks why, Edward says that Alice is with Jasper and that ‘He’s gone away for a while’.

He’s sleepin’ with the fishes.

Edward tells her that Alice is trying to get Jasper to go to Denali for a while and then exposition shows up to remind us that Denali is where the Cullen’s buddies, the other non-people-nomming vampires live.

Kirsti: Way to ruin everything for everyone, Bella. 

Catherine: At the end of the school day Bella asks Edward if he’s coming over to her house later and instead of it being a normal conversation between two dating teenagers it gets all weird and intense because it’s these two.

“So, you’ll come over when I’m home, though, right?” I hated that I felt suddenly unsure about this.
“If you want me to.”
“I always want you,” I reminded him, with perhaps a little more intensity than the conversation required.”

Edward’s just like, ‘Okay whatever’ and then he drives away. Bella has a straight up panic attack on her way to work over this conversation where, again, she’s really not sure anything even happened. I don’t even see how Edward is acting any differently. He’s always this depressing and constipated. He’s Heathcliff Cullen.

K: A+.

Catherine: In order to calm herself Bella swears that she will tell Edward that she’ll never go to the Cullen house again. She figures she can still see Edward and Alice at her house and:

“No doubt I would also run into Carlisle with regularity–in the emergency room”.

You know, all those planned emergency room visits she has. Also, Esme can apparently go fuck herself.

Eventually Bella calms down enough to go into work and Mike is panting and chasing his tail by the door. He has the nerve, the AUDACITY to interrupt her thoughts of Edward by asking her about her dumb birthday and she’s just like ugh, it was fine, whatever.

Nothing at all happens while Bella is at work for one paragraph (A: OFC. Edward’s not there.) and then she goes home and is relieved to see that Edward’s car is in her driveway. She mentions that seeing Edward’s car is overwhelming to her and heady and she’s bothered that it should feel that way. I guess it’s supposed to signal that she feels something has changed between them but she basically orgasms every time Edward touches her cheekbone so I think Meyer needs to think up some more descriptive words.

Inside the house Charlie and Edward are watching ESPN and Bella goes into a conniption when Edward doesn’t get up to breathe all over her the second she walks in the door. Uh-oh, guess the honeymoon is over, guys.

K: I call bullshit on Edward hanging out with Charlie by choice. It wastes valuable Bella-stalking time. I also call bullshit on Charlie tolerating Edward’s presence. 

Catherine: Also, can we just admit that him giving her the silent treatment like this, when it’s enough to send her into full blown anaphalaxis or whatever is kinda messed up? He doesn’t really seem to be doing it maliciously but he’s still doing it and he knows it’s hurting her.

Mari: I honestly do not understand why he’s going to her house to give her a silent treatment. This is like when Grey was sending Ana “stay away from me” gifts. YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.

Catherine: Bella sits in the kitchen waiting for Edward and going over all the worst case scenarios. She assumes that Edward is thinking of taking her away somewhere for a while and that she won’t even really have a choice? That’s kidnapping, bro.

She actually manages to work up half a shit that she wouldn’t get to see her mother or Charlie for a while but she seems oddly surprised to find out that she cares about them. So no points.

Suddenly she feels a weird compulsion to document everything in her life just in case she is gonna be kidnap–uh, taken away on a wonderful, romantic adventure.

K: She also says that she’s wigging out about things changing because “life was perfect the way it was.” Jesus, girl. Calm the fuck down. Cuddling a chunk of marble every night and attending high school is hella far from perfection.

Mari: She’s so sad she’s going to be kidnapped– not because she’s going to be kidnapped, you guys, but because she likes her life like it is, complete with her lack of will to live, boyfriend who will barely kiss her, depression, low self-esteem and the stupid-ass rain in Forks. Perfect.

Catherine: She goes around with her mom camera taking pics of her room. Then a pic of Charlie and Edward while they’re sitting in the living room watching TV.

Charlie questions what she’s doing and she lies that she just wants to use her camera before her dumbass mom gets her stupid feelings hurt.
Actually what she says is:

“You know mom will be calling soon to ask if I’m using my presents. I have to get to work before she can get her feelings hurt.”

I just realized how selfish it is to give someone a camera specifically so they will make a scrapbook for you. Clearly Bella came by her self obsession honest.

Charlie takes a pic of Edward and Bella standing together and Bella thinks about how ‘formal’ and ‘strange’ it feels. Then she freaks out a bit more about how Edward isn’t making eye contact with her and I’m honestly just starting to feel bad for this poor girl. If you’re gonna break up with someone, just fucking do it. He knows she’s a twitchy mess, for god’s sake.

After the picture Edward leaves and I’m confused because I thought this was the evening where he does the BIG THING that he does that starts of the ‘plot’ of this book. (M: MURDER? No, don’t spoil me.) (C:You’re warm!)  Apparently, he just came to her house to ignore her and sit on her couch. Okay.

K: It’s super weird. Like all of a sudden, Bella’s the stalker of the two of them.

Catherine: Bella asks him at the front door if he’ll come back and spend the night with her and he shoots her down. As a result of this she doesn’t sleep well and the next morning she rises early to take more pictures of her truck and house. Thrilling stuff! It’s a roller coaster of action, this chapter.

When Bella gets to school Edward is still acting like he’s on a bad Tinder date and she freaks out some more. I’m condensing this more than you may think. (M: Paragraphs and paragraphs of detail, all about how distant Edward is being. This lady is literally filling her story with an overly detailed explanation about how nothing is happening.)

At lunch she asks Jessica to take some pics of everyone (so she won’t forget them after she’s kidnapped, remember) and Bella gives us another glimpse of her old soul and le wrong generation stuff.

“I watched them hand the camera around the table, giggling and flirting and complaining about being on film. It seemed strangely childish.”

Yeah, right, now that she’s 18 she’s a grown up, you guys. She doesn’t need your childish ‘fun’ and ‘good times’.

K: She clearly gives zero fucks about the people she sarcastically calls her friends.

Mari: She handed them a camera and asked for pictures, JUST SO SHE COULD LOOK DOWN ON THEM WHILE THEY COMPLIED.

Catherine: Next in this endless purgatory chapter, Bella goes to work and then develops her film (A: What year is this again?) (C: It’s the 90’s. Mark your bingo cards, everyone!)  and compares the two pictures of Edward, (the one before the murder party and the one after) and thinks about how different his expression is from one to the next. She also looks at the pic of them together and thinks about how UGLY she is and how he’s a GOD. She calls herself ‘shamefully plain’, in case you were looking for your dose of the most overt body shaming ever. If you’re not incredibly beautiful you should be ASHAMED.

She also says that when she first sees the picture of Edward she ‘gasps aloud’ at his beauty. Just standing at her kitchen counter, gasping at a picture of a person she sees everyday. Oh, and that Edward is ‘cold and statue-like’ so mark your Bingo cards, everyone!

Mari: Meyer can’t even do her own BS right. She describes Edward “cold and sculpture-like” 100% of the time and now we’re supposed to believe that Bella is like, “omg something is definitely wrong because he’s so cold and sculpture-like.” AND IN A PICTURE? 

Catherine: She then starts working on her scrapbook and folds the pic of her and Edward in half so she’s not visible anymore. This girl needs a couple of those new Barbies.

The next morning Edward is STILL acting ‘remote’ and Bella thinks that after school she will confront him and asks WTF is going on and why he’s Blue Steeling more than usual. But before she can ask he asks if he can come over to talk to her. Whoa! Stuff is finally happening. Holy shit.

We get another ‘crooked smile’ here but it ‘doesn’t reach his eyes’.

Mari: I feel like this means that we get a shot, but we have to pretend we’re not happy about it.

Annie: I’ll play along with that if it means we get to drink to get us through this NEVER ENDING CHAPTER.

Catherine: Drink up. We’re all gonna die here.

Once they get to Bella’s house Edward asks her to take a walk with him in the spooky woods. Uh-oh. This is exactly what we did with a childhood dog of mine once. And then we had to throw out the rest of her kibble.

Edward leads her into the woods and rather than fearing he’s gonna break up with her this passage genuinely reads like she’s worried he’s about to kill her and bury her in the woods. (K: YUP.)

“He pulled me along toward the east side of the yard, where the forest encroached. I followed unwillingly, trying to think through the panic. It was what I wanted, I reminded myself. The chance to talk it all through. So why was the panic choking me?”

Because he’s gonna kill you, girl! Run!

K: Seriously. Everything about this screams murder. EVERYTHING. 

Annie: Yet she goes with him. She’s following him unwillingly, talking about how all her red flags are flying, warning bells going off, but off she goes, because this is what she wanted. To be MURDERED DEAD. Ooooookay. Bye, girl.

Catherine: He stops not far into the woods, though and then Bella has to actually prompt him to talk. He tells her that they’re leaving and Bella’s like ‘okay, we’re leaving’. And he’s like ‘Haha! No, we’re leaving. As in me and my family and not you. You stay. You good girl’. Bella’s still like, ‘Okay, I come to?’, bless her.

Edward finally tells her that she can’t come and he’s not good for her. Which is true but also something he could’ve figured out before promising to stay with her forever. Bella points this out, that he promised in Phoenix to stay with her and he’s like, ‘Yeah but *Kanye shrug*’.

Actually he says that he only promised to stay as long as it was best for her. Oh! Loophole! Lawyered! Gotta read that fine print, Bella.

Bella asks if this is about her soul and complains that she doesn’t want it and he can have it because he already has it and whatever. Edward finally throws down the gauntlet and does that Harry and the Hendersons thing where he pretends to not love her anymore to get her to leave. It’s very, very obviously a lie but we’re supposed to believe it because Bella does, I guess.

Also at this point his eyes are doing things.

“–his eyes were different, harder–like the liquid gold had frozen solid”.
“His eyes were like topaz–hard and clear and very deep. I felt like I could see into them for miles and miles, yet nowhere in their bottomless depths could I see a contradiction to the word he’d spoken”.

These two passages are, like, a sentence apart. The magic eyes are crazy tonight!

K: Way back in 2009, I stumbled across what is my second favourite piece of Twilight related snark (Snark Squad, obviously, is the first), and this passage reminded me of this delightful image:
You’re welcome, friends. 

Catherine: That is hypnotic. I can see where Bella is coming from.

Mari: GUYS. GUYS. GUYS. Why would it need to be liquid gold that was frozen solid…??? Wouldn’t that just be… solid… gold?

Catherine: Keep your devil’s logic out of this!  

He tells Bella that he doesn’t want her and he’s not human and he’s tired of pretending to be human. Then he tells her that she’s not good enough for him, actually and she believes him because her self esteem is garbage. Bella finally goes numb (although, she spends, like 80% percent of this series saying she’s numb so it’s not like that’s a change for her) and starts to shut down, bodily. Like her body is literally dying because this boy broke up with her just now.

Edward asks if he can have one favor from her if it’s not too much trouble. I think we’ve all been here. He’s gonna ask for breakup sex.

Oh, wait, no he just wants to ask her not to kill herself. Phew! (M: I want to puke right now because Edward is just like, “obviously she’s going to try and kill herself so I should make her pinky promise not to.) (C: *dusts off hands* That should do it!)

He asks that she take care of herself and not do anything ‘reckless or stupid’. Like date a vampire.

K: This whole thing can be summarised as “Don’t kill yourself, it would suck for Charlie.” Like…nothing about her stupid freaking soul or how, MAYBE JUST MAYBE, the assumption that he’s her sole reason for living is ick-tastic and she needs some actual self-confidence and agency. No. It’s all about Charlie. What a dreamboat. 

Catherine: Then he promises that she will never see him again. If only! He tells her that since she’s human, she’ll forget him soon anyway and that her ‘memory is no more than a sieve.’

Okay, bye! Bye, buddy! Leave.

Ugh, he’s still here.

K: I have to stop for some political commentary: that “you’ll forget soon enough” argument? Yeah, that’s the same one the Australian government used for over a hundred years to justify taking Aboriginal children away from their parents. Edward, bro, you’re showing your age in your antiquated bullshit statements.

Catherine: Holy shit, how is this getting more depressing?

Bella asks if he’ll remember her and he tells her that he will but vampires are easily distracted so…..maybe not. He’ll keep her nudes, I guess, is what he’s saying.

Edward tells her that ‘they’ won’t bother her again and Bella FINALLY realizes that Alice isn’t coming back either. He literally just said that his whole family was leaving and it will be as if he never existed but she’s just getting that this means she won’t be able to see his sister either.

“No. They’re all gone. I stayed behind to tell you goodbye”.
“Alice is gone?” my voice was blank with disbelief.

But you already kn—she’s been gone for day– Ugh! Whatever. Your voice can’t be ‘blank with disbelief’. That’s not a thing. Go die in the woods. (M: SHE CAN’T. Edward made her promise.)

He finally, for the love of god, tells her goodbye and pins her wrists to her sides so he can kiss her on the forehead. Then he zips off at full vamp speed. I guess he was worried about this 90 pound teenager physically stopping him.

Listen, friends, you may think that this means we’re going to go a while without seeing Edward or having any Bella and Edward scenes but…no. No, my sweet summer child. I just don’t want to lead you on, okay? I want you to be prepared.

Bella, dazed and confused, starts to try and follow after him, deeper into the woods. She can’t find his path or anything because I guess the vampires move so fast that they don’t make footprints? But she has to keep trying because otherwise:

“If I stopped looking for him, it was over. Love, live, meaning…over.”

What’s over? MEANING. MEANING IS OVER.

Of course, Bella gets lost in the woods and it gets dark.

K: I can’t believe that after having MET Bella, Edward would leave her in the fucking woods. I mean, she nearly caused a vampire feeding frenzy from a papercut. Leaving her in the woods? She’d probably get eaten by a fucking bear. In a bear-free environment. One would just appear out of nowhere, because that’s how Bella’s life goes. (And yes, it would be a Youth Mauling Bear.) 

Mari: I mean, it’s definitely the Youth Mauling Bear. And he doesn’t just appear out of nowhere; we sent him.

Catherine: At one point she trips over something (took her a while, considering how clumsy she’s supposed to be) and just stays down, laying on the forest floor, curled up in a Bella ball of sadness.

Annie: Sorry, but picturing this in my head just makes me laugh. She trips, falls, and lays there, in the dark, a pathetic ball of Bella:

Catherine: She looses track of time and starts fading in and out of consciousness? I guess? It sort of reads that way but I can’t imagine why that would happen just from breaking up with a boyfriend. But sure. (M: BREAK-UP COMA! Bella’s making it a thing.)

Then she starts weirdly thinking about how dark it is at night (she reads, remember) and why there’s no moon. All so Meyer can smack us over the head with this anvil:

“Tonight the sky was utterly black. Perhaps there was no moon tonight–a lunar eclipse, a new moon.”

No! Eclipse is the next book, stupid!

K: This is such a fucking heavy-handed metaphor. There’s no moon because EDWARD IS THE LIGHT IN HER LIFE, YOU GUYS. DID YOU GET THAT? DID YOU? IT’S SUPER DARK WITHOUT HIM. WAH. 

Mari: “Children of the world: I know you’ve heard break-ups hurt, but I’m here to tell you that they literally make you go into a coma and probably make the moon disappear but either way, just go into the woods and die.” — Stephenie Meyer

Catherine: She lays there like a sad ragdoll for so long that a search party is called for her, no joke. I guess since her dad is the sheriff and she’s an attractive white girl they were able to skip the 48 hour waiting period thing for over 18 year olds.

Bella hears the search party calling but doesn’t have the strength to call out to them since she just got dumped that time. So pretty soon she hears an animal snuffling near her but she also doesn’t have the strength to feel afraid of what it might be because she craves death now and stuff.

Someone finally finds her and we get another classic Bella is smart observation.

“I stared up–impossibly high it seemed–at the dark face that I could now see above me. I was vaguely aware that the stranger probably only looked so tall because my head was still on the ground.”

Meyer for real thought it was necessary to note that people look taller when you’re laying on the ground. She really goes in depth for her research.

She doesn’t recognize the guy who found her and he tells her that his name is Sam Uley. He also tells her that Charlie is looking for her and she finally perks up a bit and acknowledges that Charlie matters. FINALLY! Only took two books for her to admit she cares about her father.

Sam Uley picks her up and carries her back to somewhere with, “lights and the deep babble of many male voices.” Because girls can’t look for other girls who are missing, silly. We’re too naturally jealous. We’re just happy someone else was taken out of the competition, see.

Mari: Plus, girls only going to the woods when it’s time to die after a break-up. Or, I guess, for field trips but only if boys will be there.

Catherine: I love the idea that we go into the woods to die after a breakup like some kind of old, sick cat. Then someone find us the next day and tuts as they scrape us off the ground, burying us in the backyard with a rock as a headstone…..

Uh, anyway, Sam announces that he found her and says that he doesn’t think she’s hurt but he can’t tell because all she’ll say is ‘He’s gone’.

Charlie carries Bella back into the house and she notes that it feels like a ‘funeral procession’.

They lay Bella down on the couch and a doctor named Dr. Gerandy who we’ve never met before but Meyer is gonna pretend we have checks her over. Obviously this is supposed to be a glaring sign that Carlisle is gone, too. It’s also pointed out that Dr. Gerandy is OLD and GREY and OLD so we can remember that humans are super gross.

When Dr. Stand In asks if Bella is hurt she realizes that Sam asked her if she had been hurt when he found her in the woods. Not whether she was hurt. This is semi-significant so I’m noting it here.

Bella gets asked what happened to her by the search group that had come into the house with her. Namely, a couple of dudes from the nearby Native American reservation and literally all of her friends’ dads. I’m not making this up. Meyer was so desperate to not let ANY WOMEN search for her that she pulled Angela’s fucking dad into this and didn’t even tell us what he looks like. I just? Why? Why is this happening? She also notes that her friends’ fathers, who have never been mentioned before and never are again for the rest of the series, are looking at her ‘more surreptitiously’ than the strangers.

“Other deep voices rumbled from the kitchen and outside the front door. Half the town must have been looking for me.”

Half the town is middle-aged dudes. This is like a Twilight Zone episode.

Bella goes along with the lie that she got lost and Dr. Stand In seems appeased.

He and Charlie start whispering about the Cullens leaving and we find out that Carlisle told everyone in town that he got a sudden job offer and didn’t want to make a big deal out of leaving so they just took off in the night. Makes total sense. Not at all something obvious vampires (M: OR MURDERERS) would do.

All of the volunteers leave as Bella starts fading in and out of consciousness again because Meyer doesn’t know how to write transitions. Charlie covers her over with a blanket and settles down in the chair next to her to sleep ’cause he’s not nearly as bad as she makes him out to be.

A phone call comes through and Bella overhears that it’s about some fires that are apparently going on outside the reservation. Charlie calls up Billy Black and asks him about it, because I guess Billy is the arbiter of all reservation knowledge. We only get half of the conversation but Billy seems to tell Charlie that the people on the res are burning something and Charlie gets annoyed and tells him to make sure the flames don’t spread. He also thanks Billy for sending ‘Sam and the other boys up’ because they know the woods so much better.

Bella asks Charlie what the call was about and he tells her that some of the kids on the res are burning fires to celebrate because the Cullens left. HA! I wanna hang out with those motherfuckers. They roll hard and they don’t care at all. (K: SAME.)

If you remember from the last book they don’t like the Cullens out on La Push because they’re werewo–…..uh, because very well written, forshadow-ey reasons and not anything obvious at all.

Mari: I honestly forgot we didn’t know they were werewo– very well written, forshadow-y creatures yet. How painfully is she going to drag this out?

Catherine: Longer than you’d think or believe was technically legal. 

Bella asks how Charlie knew where to find her and he shows her a note that had been left that said she was going to talk to Edward in the woods and she’d be back soon. When she didn’t come back he got worried and started calling around and couldn’t find her.

Then Bella asks if he knows where the Cullens went and Charlie tells her that he heard they went to L.A. Bella knows this is a lie because the sparkly vamps couldn’t possibly live in L.A. and not be forcibly turned into disco balls. (M: THE HORROR.) (C: Solid goooollldddd.)

Charlie asks her if Edward left her out in the woods and Bella says that he didn’t, that Edward left her within sight of the house but she tried to follow him and got lost. Of course, this makes no sense to Charlie but she begs out of clarifying by saying she doesn’t want to talk about it anymore and running off to her room.

She realizes that since she didn’t leave the note for Charlie someone else must’ve been in the house to do it and rushes to her room to find that the CD Edward gave her is gone and the pictures of him in the scrapbook that she made are also missing.

When Edward said ‘It will be as if I never existed’ he meant, like full Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind shit. He literally got rid of everything he’d ever touched in her house. (M: What. a. creep.)

At this realization Bella falls to the floor and hopes she’ll pass out but she doesn’t. She says that the ‘waves of pain’ that she was keeping at bay by…not thinking about Edward while talking about him and wondering about him finally took her under.

‘I did not resurface’.

And this ENDLESS chapter finally ends.

K: Praise the Youth Mauling Bear.

Mari: As entertaining as I’m sure you found this recap, all that really happens between stitches and Edward leaving Bella is awkward silence. 30 MF pages of awkward silence.

Catherine: When I saw how many pages this chapter was I nearly got up, walked out into the woods, curled up in a ball and died. Nearly.

 

Next time on New Moon: The four most brilliant pages ever written in all of literature and Chapter 4.