Previously: Edward saves Bella from a van and regrets it a lot.
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Marines: Edward starts by telling us that high school is no longer purgatory, but actual hell– torment, fire and all. I actually know the feeling because reading about how much he hates high school over and over again with no compelling reasons for why he’s even there is also hell. I want to make new jokes, truly, but all we have is Edward complaining about school again so… wow, vampires going to high school, inexplicable, am I right.
Kirsti: WHO COULD HAVE FORESEEN THIS.
Annie: If only there were someway he could not go to school, but he can’t break the all vampires must go to high school for all eternity law! Totally a thing, friends.
Mari: It must be.
Edward tells us that he’s being responsible so no one can complain that he was shirking his responsibilities. He’s staying in Forks, he’s returned to his old schedule, he’s hunting the usual amount, attending high school and playing human every day. He’s also keping an ear out (the mental kind) for any chatter about the Cullens, but there hasn’t been any. Bella has stuck to her promise and repeated the story that Edward was just standing next to her and pulled her out of the way. People soon got bored of that story and moved on, so no one got hurt because of his “hasty” decision to save a child. Tyler was actually physically injured but we don’t care about him here. The point is that Edward is the one who got hurt, on account of he’s either going to kill Bella or… kill Bella. Now, I know you think you know who is the loser in that equation, but no, Edward is here to tell you he’s the one who is hurt.
He’s determined to change the future, which given the nature of Alice’s visions, should be fairly easy? I thought that was the whole thing, that they reflect the current decision making process of whoever is featured. Yes, apparently, we are also just going to constantly point out that Alice’s powers are nonsensical garbage. She searched “will Edward be strong enough to stay away from Bella?” and Vision Google turned up “no.”
Catherine: One aspect of this book that I did not expect was the fact that it makes Alice’s powers more incomprehensible than ever. In Twilight, I felt like I had some idea of how they worked and that’s completely gone now because the Midnight Sun narration just has them all over the place.
Mari: I like that Meyer can still surprise us.
Edward thought the first day (of what….?) would be the hardest, but turns out that wasn’t the case. He thinks, “It had rankled, knowing that I would hurt the girl.” At this point I still think we are talking about how he’s going to kill her or kill her, so I was like, “yeah, how annoying that would be for you.” But apparently the annoying thing he’s thinking about is whatever he’s planning on doing next? Like, I have no idea where we are situated in time because Stephenie Meyer’s writing is about as clear as mud.
So let’s back this up and try again: at some point after the accident, Edward and Bella are back at school and he’s making the hard decision to reject her for her own good.
“I’d comforted myself with the fact that her pain would be nothing more than a pinprick– just a tiny sting of rejection– compared to mine.”
Every new chapter, I feel like I come across something else that we will have to endure for the next almost 600 pages. This chapter, I’m realizing that by being in Edward’s thoughts, we are going to have an all-consuming-love-dick measuring contest of sorts? We got to hear from Bella how painful loving Edward was, and so here comes Edward to be like “I’m going to reject this girl I met one hot second ago who I am not even in a relationship with and it will hurt her I guess BUT IT WILL DESTROY ME.” This is Edward’s one-up. We signed up for Love Makes You Miserable: The Sequel.
Mari: We finally get confirmation that this is indeed the first day Bella is back at school (so… like the next day?). She greets him pleasantly, a big difference from the last time they’d spoken. Edward wonders why and what this means. He’s dying to turn and look at Bella to see if he can gaze into her eyes and get some answers there, but instead he just tersely nods at her and turns to look straight ahead. They don’t talk for the rest of class.
Annie: If only there were some non-predatory way to find out what Bella was thinking besides invading her thoughts and reading her mind, or reading her thoughts by looking into her eyes. It’s not like he could… ask her what she was thinking. Or speak to her using words. I don’t know why this makes me extra ragey in this book. Because 2020? Because Edward’s perspective is just confirmation of how terrible and problematic this ‘love story’ is? Because Meyer could have really used an editor so that this book isn’t 600 pages long? Who knows.
Catherine: All of the above. The fact that he can’t figure out how to talk to a person without reading their mind is supposed to be…cute, I guess? But it just comes across as creepy. Also funny, because WE know that Bella’s thoughts are so breathtakingly dull that it makes you wonder, if he could read her mind, would he still think she was so interesting?
Mari: I don’t know if yes or no is the worse answer.
After school, Edward runs halfway to Seattle again to distract himself from how much ignoring Bella for her own good hurts him.
“Did I love her? I did not think so. Not yet. Alice’s glimpses of that future had stayed with me, though, and I could see how easy it would be to fall into loving Bella. It would be exactly like falling: effortless. Not letting myself love her was the opposite of falling– it was pulling myself up a cliff face, hand over hand, the task as grueling as if I had no more than mortal strength.”
Yes, I see that falling in love with Bella would be easy for Edward, primarily because we still have no damn idea why it’s happening. He smelled her spicy blood, wanted to kill her so bad he had to run away and sink into snow. And then he was like “wait, maybe I want to protect her? She IS very weak.” And then they exchanged like 27 words. And now he’s like “not falling in love with her is impossible.”
K: Also, he runs half way to Seattle every day. No one is as afraid of a boner as Edward Cullen.
Mari: Wow.
Anyway, Edward’s feelings make no sense to Edward, which yeah, welcome to the club buddy. He thinks this is what Alice must’ve meant when she predicted that he wouldn’t be able to stay away from Bella. She was visioning his pain.
“But I could handle pain.
I would not destroy Bella’s future. If I was destined to love her, then wasn’t avoiding her the very least I could do?”
- Suddenly it’s all “I could handle pain” when a few chapters ago it was “the aroma of her blood is so physically painful, I would like to murder at least 20 people.”
- Buckle up for this long, long ride of “I’m hurting her for her own good.”
Edward says that ignoring her for her own good is really decent of him, but he was definitely going to keep stalking her, obviously, specifically by watching her, but through the thoughts of others. Isn’t that really freaking creepy? I mean, “An undead once serial killer wants to murder a teenager so bad, he falls in love with her and stalks her through the minds of everyone around her. Every time she looks at someone, he is in that person’s head, looking out at her.” THAT’S A RIGHT HORROR. (C: ENJOY YOUR BOOK, TEENS!)
Because we haven’t repeated this enough, Edward tells us again that this was hell and really painful, and in fact helpfully categorizes his torments.
“The first two were familiar. Her scent and her silence. Or rather– to take responsibly on myself where it belonged– my thirst and my curiosity.”
Excuse me, did Edward Cullen just take responsibility for being the creep in this scenario? I’m actually shocked. I almost said pleasantly surprised, but the next page is just a repetition of describing Bella’s scent and how painful it is to smell her and how he doesn’t need to breathe, except when he does need to breathe, and then when he breathes, Bella’s bouquet assaults him, or whatever. And then after that we get how curious he is about her empty head, on account of how empty it is. I’m disappointed in myself for even thinking the word “pleasant” about anything in this book.
While Edward has been thought-stalking Bella, he’s noticed that she is really fake with everyone, like the Cullens are also fake when they are pretending to be human. He wonders why she’s faking being a human teenager, too, considering she is a human teenager. Only, Edward says that sometimes Bella doesn’t act like a teenager. For example, Mr. Banner assigned a group project and Bella chooses the stoner who is failing Biology as her partner. Edward and Mike, her other partner, both wonder why. Mr. Banner thinks that it’s nice of Bella to give Tara a chance, calling her kinder that the other “cannibals” in the class.
Can we make “Stephenie Meyer hates humans shots” a thing? Like, I get it. Some teens can be little shits, sure, but also some teens are nice? And all Edward can come up with to prove Bella’s 84 year old soul is “she was nice one time, which no teen ever is.” The way that Meyer writes about humans, from the perspective of any of her characters, proves to me that she actually hates us. So.
Annie: That was pretty much my plan for this book since page 3, so.
Mari: Edward shares another time at lunch when everyone is sharing their dream destinations, and Eric says his is Comic Con. Everyone starts laughing at him, and Bella jumps in to “save him” by saying that is hers, too. As Eric talks more about the logistics of attending, Edward realizes that Bella knows nothing about Comic Con and just said she wanted to go so people would stop laughing at Eric.
I can’t believe that we are in this place where Edward is trying to convince us that Bella was kind and cared about anything besides herself and Edward. Hilarious. (K: Yeah, she definitely never had this much personality the first time around.) Still, according to Eddie, it was always like this with Bella. She was quiet, except for when she was changing the subject to redirect her mean, mean friends. She thanked a teacher for their lesson if the teacher seemed down (K: Uh, is this not just common courtesy regardless of the teacher’s mood? Or are my students all polite freaks??) She gave up her locker for another so two best friends could be together. (A: Literally none of this was in the first book, right? Or have I blocked this all out?) Things that no one besides him seemed to see, but he means that figuratively I suppose, considering the only reason he was seeing these things is because he was hijacking other people’s thoughts and riding piggy back so he could spy on Bella. <3
Catherine: Um. Hi. LITERALLY NONE OF THIS was in the first book. Bella was helping stoners and thanking her local healthcare workers or whatever and somehow SOMEHOW despite reading about the constant inanities of her tiny mind, we didn’t see that? We know what she had for breakfast and what she ate for lunch and how Edward’s hair looked in a certain light, but her noticing that her teacher looked a little down and stopping the other kids from bullying Eric was completely left out? Things that, gee, I don’t know MIGHT HAVE MADE US LIKE BELLA AT ALL??
Something tells me that Meyer hit a roadblock when she tried to figure out what exactly drew Edward to Bella besides her stankblood and decided to rewrite history a little.
Mari: To that end, here is Edward’s description of Bella:
“Bella was good. All the other things added up to that whole: Kind and self-effacing and unselfish and brave– she was good through and through. And no one seemed to be aware of that besides me. Though Mike was certainly observing her nearly as often.”
- I cannot believe that this is how Meyer views Bella, as a good unselfish character.
- Maybe you are the only one noticing it, Ed, because you are actually making it up.
- Wait, Edward can’t hear Bella’s thoughts, but we heard every one of them. This is the only reason he can convince himself that Bella is good, when in fact we know that she is self-centered and mean-spirited.
- Throw in a F!@& MIKE in there for good measure, I guess.
Which! Speaking of Mike, he is torment number 3. Edward is kind of thankful to him because he gets Bella to talk, which is perfect for Edward’s stalking habits, you know?
“I learned so much about her through these conversations, but Mike’s assistance with this project only aggravated me. I didn’t want him to be the one who unlocked her secrets.”
“I learned so much through the conversations Bella was definitely not having with me.” <3
K: Swoon.
Annie: Hashtag relationship goals, am I right?
Mari: Edward is comforted by the fact that Mike still didn’t actually know anything about Bella, and didn’t notice the “abnormal maturity of her spoken thoughts.” I mean, the majority of what she’s said in this chapter so far is “Hello, Edward” and “No, that’s cool. That’s where I’d want to go too.” THE MATURITY. IT IS ABNORMAL!
Mike also doesn’t notice the way she talks about her mom, like a long-suffering parent and the way she barely tolerates his stupid stories.
“These helpful discoveries did not warm me to the boy, however. The possessive way he viewed Bella- as if she were an acquisition to be made- provoked me almost as much as his crude fantasies about her.”
EDWARD. YOUR FANTASIES ARE OF KILLING HER. GIVE MIKE A BREAK IF HE HAS HALF-FORMED THOUGHTS ABOUT TAKING HER TO A MOVIE OR SOMETHING.
OH MY GOD, AND HE FOLLOWS THAT JUDGEMENT OF MIKE’S FANTASIES WITH THIS:
“He would routinely sit on her side of our table before Biology began, chattering at her, encouraged by her smiles. Just polite smiles, I told myself. All the same, I frequently amused myself by imagining backhanding him across the room and into the far wall. It probably wouldn’t injure him fatally.”
What was he saying about the possessive way MIKE views Bella? As if she were an acquisition? RIGHT.
K: I keep seeing people on Goodreads talking about how amazing this book is and how great Edward’s voice is and I’m like “…….are we reading the same book?”
Annie: Yeah, made the mistake of doing the same thing. Goodreads readers, please send me this book you’re speaking of! All I’m reading is the manifesto of a serial killer. DO NOT WANT.
Catherine: If you’re reading this book in a snark-free environment, I don’t understand you. I’m gonna pray for you. But I do not understand you.
Mari: I’ve not yet visited Goodreads. I’m taking it slow.
The last of Edward’s torments is Bella’s indifference because she’s ignoring him back. Mostly ignoring him back, but sometimes she still stares at him. Edward doesn’t know she’s staring at him because he sees this, but because Alice has visions of whenever Bella is going to look at them. I’m serious. She warns all the Cullen-Hales so they can fidget and shift their weight whenever Bella is looking. This is so stupid, my God.
Alice is hopeful about how pleased Edward is when Bella looks their way, and she still wants to be besties with Bella, but Edward tells her to stay out of it. She says that her visions of his future are all messy again, so she hopes he’s happy. Edward is in fact not happy (have you heard?) and extra tense, which none of his siblings notice, except Jasper, because he’s got that mood-sensing power. But Jasper just ignores Edward since he’s always in a bad mood.
“Today would be a hard one. Harder than the day before.”
Awesome, I still have no idea what day it actually is.
K: I am happy to report that it is “one Tuesday in March.” And things are no clearer than they were before you knew that information.
Mari: Mike Newton is going to ask Bella out on a date as the girls’ choice dance is coming up. Jessica asked Mike, and he doesn’t want to say yes in case Bella asks and he doesn’t want to say no in case she doesn’t. Edward can’t believe he’s so fixated on the petty high school drama, but since this has been happening since page one, the rest of us can believe it.
Mike walks Bella to Biology and sits on their table before class starts. Edward imagines what it would sound like if he threw Mike across the room and against the wall, breaking all of his bones. That is a totally normal, non-murderer thought to have.
Mike tells Bella that Jessica asked him to the dance, and Bella thinks that’s amazing. They’ll have a lot of fun together. Mike says that he didn’t say yes, because he was wondering if Bella might be planning to ask him. Edward thinks about how even if Bella says no to Mike, one day she’ll say yes to someone else. He pictures her life– college, career, love, marriage. He pictures her wedding. He’s in agony and not just agony, he’s in a rage. He just made up a fake marriage for Bella and is mad this fake wedding is fake happening.
“Though this insignificant, underserving boy might not be the one Bella would say yes to, I yearned to pulverize his skull with my fist, to let him stand as a proxy for whoever it would be.”
In all sincerity, this is making me really uncomfortable. The repeated “pulverizing a human child” fantasies aren’t surprising coming from Edward, but still uncomfortable.
K: Yeah, this is really very deeply uncomfortable. Especially given that he’s just sitting there, acting like everything is normal. Like… 😬😬😬
Annie: The problem I’m coming up against is how Edward thinks of all these people as CHILDREN. He’s obsessed and possessive with a CHILD in his mind. Like. I just. No.
Catherine: That and his constant weird fantasies about Bella marrying someone else. I mean, Eddie, do you want to plan it or something? You’re imagining this a lot.
Mari: Edward can’t put a name to what he’s feeling because he’s never felt it before. Bella says no to Mike, and Edward realizes in that moment that he can’t actually ignore Bella for her own good. Reading Mike’s thoughts after the rejection makes Edward realize the name for what he’s feeling: jealousy. I get that Edward has never been ~in love~ before, but you would think that in a century he would have felt jealous of some sort. Or at least have the context not to be so damn lost that he has to pluck the word “jealous” from the brain of a boy whose intellect he’s spent an entire chapter shitting on.
Bella tells Mike she’s not going to the dance at all because she’s going to Seattle that weekend. Edward doesn’t feel as curious about this now that he’s determined to unignore her and stalk her even harder. He’s confident he will find out the answer to this and all of his questions. On account of said stalking.
Mike presses her, but Bella tells him to not keep Jessica waiting. Edward somehow knows that the Seattle trip is fake and he wonders at her motivations for lying.
Mike looks away from Bella so Edward can’t piggyback his thoughts and look at Bella’s face, so after a month, he has to finally turn her way and look at her with his own eyeballs. Bella meets his gaze and she doesn’t look away even though he’s staring “with inappropriate intensity.”
We get another page of Edward flip flopping between fantasies of killing her, telling himself he can’t, and then telling himself that he can’t stay away from her.
K: Please make it stop. How are we only 15% into this book. HOW???
Catherine: 15% at 100-something pages. Hope you guys brought snacks.
Mari: Something about reading about how a snack is ruining Edward’s life makes me supremely un-hungry, you know?
After class, Bella gets ready to leave but Edward calls her. She asks if he’s finally speaking to her and he says “not really.” She closes her eyes in annoyance and we get a great line where Edward is like “?!? why she do?!? Humans… do not talk this way… with their eyes CLOSED???” Every time he is confused by simple human reactions, it makes it more hilarious that he thinks he’s so good at cosplaying a human.
Edward apologizes for being very rude, but assures her that it’s better this way. Bella opens her eyes and says she doesn’t know what he means. He repeats that it’s better if they aren’t friends. Edward remembers that he said that to her before, and apparently Bella remembers too because she’s mad. She tells him that it’s too bad he didn’t figure this out before and save himself from the regret of saving her from the van. He can’t believe she thinks he regrets saving her! (Even though he pretty much did there, for a while?) He says that saving her was the best thing he ever did.
“I’d been fighting to keep her alive since the first moment I’d caught her scent.”
That’s a really loose and romanticized interpretation of what has been happening. The only reason she would be unalive, previous to the van, is because you murdered her. What I’m saying is that going from “I’m trying not to kill you” to “I’m fighting to keep you alive” is quite the accomplishment.
K: Yeah, if it was “I’d been fighting with myself to keep her alive,” that would be a vastly different thing. But it’s not.
Mari: That’s less heroic.
Edward asks if she really thinks he regrets saving her life. She says she knows he does.
“How confusing and incomprehensible the workings of her mind were! She must not think in the same way as other humans at all.”
How confusing and pretentious the structure of her sentences are! Nice try on the “Bella’s so special” thing, though. Bella collects her stuff and leaves in anger, and Edward thinks about how endearing her exasperation is. Aw, look, a foundational piece of their relationship appearing. <3
Bella trips on the way out and her books go flying everywhere. Edward super-runs over and collects them super fast. Bella thanks him, but her voice is “sharp” and his voice is “still rough with his former irritation” so the whole exchange is as weird as a “thank you” “you’re welcome” could ever be.
Catherine: These kids make every conversation so tense and weird. Remember when they were saying ‘goodbye’ in the hall like one of them was getting on a lifeboat on the Titanic?
Mari: It’s fine if you don’t. It’s coming.
In Spanish class, Edward thinks about if there is some middle ground between his choices of killing Bella or killing Bella. He hears in Emmett’s thoughts that he looks hopeful. He can’t think about that too much, though, because he hears Eric and Tyler both planning on inviting Bella to the dance now that Mike was rejected.
Edward rushes out of class, ordering Emmett to stay behind, so that he can go stalker watch Bella alone. He hides somewhere until he spots Bella and then follows behind her at an easy stalking pace. Eric finds her first, and Edward has a moment of doubt, wondering if this “gangly teen with his unhealthy skin was somehow pleasing” to Bella. Your mouth is full of venom half the day Edward, so kindly fuck all the way off.
Eric asks Bella to the girl’s choice dance, and she repeats the lie that she’s going to be in Seattle. He is disappointed and leaves. Edward passes Bella just as she sighs her relief, and he laughs out loud at her. When she turns to look at him, he just pretends that he wasn’t laughing at her on the go and keeps walking.
Next Tyler runs out, trying to catch Bella before she leaves. Edward measures him up as “competition” and decides he’s tediously average and unremarkable, but maybe that’s Bella’s type. Edward is sad because he could never be average. In fact, he’s the villain of the story and Bella is too good for a villain.
Mari: Edward is really curious about whether Bella likes her men bland, so he pulls Volvo Sparkle out of his parking spot and blocks her exit, giving Tyler enough time to catch Bella. He asks her to the girl’s choice dance, and she repeats that she’ll be in Seattle. Tyler knew that from Mike, but hoped it was a lie. He tells her they still have prom and runs off. Edward is so happy he blocked traffic for this. Now he knows that Bella has no feelings for any of the human, age appropriate males courting her. PHEW.
Catherine: Him going from murderous rage about Mike daring to talk to her to blocking her exit so that she can be hit on by another guy is… certainly a transition. Not sure the math adds up there.
Mari: Does it ever?
The other Cullen-Hales get to the car and are surprised to find Edward laughing, since he never does that anymore. The whole ride home, Edward is chuckling to himself, (A: He cHuCkLeD.) until Alice ruins it by asking if she gets to talk to Bella now. Edward says no, which Alice thinks is not fair. Edward says he hasn’t decided anything, but Vision Google: Maury Povich Edition has determined that is a lie. Bella is either dead or undead in Alice’s head again.
Edward wonders what’s the point of Alice getting to know Bella if he’s just going to kill her. Alice thinks that’s a fair point. They get home and Rosalie sarcastically tells him to enjoy his run to halfway-t0-Seattle. Eddie goes hunting instead, even though his family was going hunting the next day. He overdoes it on animal blood so you can have the disturbing imagery of your choice, as provided by the last recap and comments: mosquito, tick, engorged penis.
K: Or, worst of all, a combination of the three. You’re welcome.
Catherine: Thanks, I hate it.
Mari: And even though he snacked on elk and a black bear, it isn’t enough because it’s not Bella. He really wants to eat Bella! He thinks about how accident prone she is, and how she’s almost died a couple of times already. He thinks about how she’s probably out there in danger right now, about to get smashed by a meteor or something. This thought is so disturbing, that she might be sleeping and get crushed by a meteor, that he goes to her house in the middle of the night.
I am not joking. He goes from “god I want to eat her even though I just had a bear” to “she’s so accident prone” to “anything could happen to her!” to “METEOR?” and now, here he is, at Bella’s house at midnight.
K: And not only because there might be a meteor but so that “someone was in place to catch the meteorite before it could touch her.” Edward. Dude. You plan to… CATCH… a meteorite?? I Googled it for you all and even when they’re through the Earth’s atmosphere, they fall at 200-400mph. So. Uh. Good luck with that.
Annie: Can’t decide if I’m wishing more for him to just EAT HER and get this book over or for a meteorite to come crashing down and squish them both. I mean, it isn’t above Meyer to rewrite stuff so WE CAN HOPE.
Catherine: The transitions between him thinking one thing and then the complete opposite are so ridiculous. You can tell our good sis Meyer was stuh-ruggling with how to write his motivations to do any of this. So she just didn’t really bother? He just kinda has this weird new mom thought of ‘what if she’s in danger somehow’ and then he shows up at her house despite never considering it before that paragraph. Okay.
Mari: o k a y
Outside Bella’s house, Edward clocks that there seems to be no immediate danger “aside from myself.” He just stands outside to watch for any possible dangers and clarifies for us that the meteor is just a metaphor for all the unlikely things that could go wrong. For instance, say….. having a serial killer predator posted outside your house, hungry for your blood?
Bella is tossing and turning. Edward wonders if she could sense the danger he brought with him, and calls himself worse than a peeping Tom. He almost leaves, but then he doesn’t, because Bella is talking in her sleep. And Edward is so entitled because of his years of hearing thoughts, that he has to be here to listen to her sleep talk. It’s the only way. He justifies this to himself by thinking of all the human rules he breaks all the time, and the way his family has to forge documents in order to live. And he adds “and then there were all the murders.” So yeah, like once you murder a bunch of people, what’s it to you to break into a teen’s room and listen to her sleep talk? Barely anything! He’s a monster, he thinks, and he’s going to act like one.
K: Yikes. That’s… that’s all I have left.
Catherine: The forged documents? J. Jenks is q u a k i n g.
Mari: Edward describes the room like I give one single fuck about her CDs or jewelry box after he just told us that it’s fine that he’s doing this because he’s murdered a bunch before and he’s totally a monster. He thinks about how silly it was of him to think of her as average looking when she’s so obviously beautiful to him, now, asleep… prone… unsafe… stalked by him. Gorgeous. <3
Annie: #RelationshipGoals
K: Honestly, my favourite thing here is that he wants to go and look at her CDs and books but decides it’s too risky so he’ll sit in “an old rocking chair” instead, as though rocking chairs never make any sound at all.
Mari: Truly amazing.
We get treated to yet another round of “I can’t hurt her! I can’t leave her! I can’t stay!” when A SPIDER CRAWLS OUT FROM HER CLOSET OH MY GOD.
STEPHENIE. It doesn’t matter if you tell us this is wrong of Edward if you then show us it was the right thing to do!!! She goes on and on about how ridiculous it is for Edward to think Bella in danger. She has him think he could protect her from a spider almost as a joke, a nonsensical thing, and THEN WROTE IN A SPIDER. And then Edward gets to be like “nothing will hurt her” and I honestly have reached my limit for this chapter but I have like 10 more pages. (K: I’m so sorry, friend) (A: I love you and have faith in you. You’ve recapped really shitty things before. You’ve got this.) (C: You survived four endless books only to give up here? Unacceptable! ) (M: This quickly went from “you’ve got this” to “BUCK UP, BITCH.” I appreciate it.)
Edward thinks about how he could kill all the spiders and protect her from thorns on rosebushes (true and actual thing he thinks), but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a monster. He’s the villain. He’s the nightmare. If she knew the truth she would be scared of him. One day she would marry a human, and Edward laments that he couldn’t even let himself hunt that hypothetical guy down and kill him. Edward thinks that Bella deserves happiness and love with whomever she chooses, and I promise you Bella’s right to happiness and love is a thing he will forget and deny her for the next many books.
Catherine: THE FUCK is his deal with picturing her married to someone else? It’s making me feel like I’m taking crazy pills. It’s so lowkey possessive and misogynistic. This bitch never says “Bella might grow up to have an exciting career one day and forget about me” it’s always “another man will SULLY her proper vagina.” STOP.
Mari: It’s always wedding immediately followed by deep fantasies of killing anyone she loves.
Bella says Edward’s name in her sleep and tells him to stay and not to go. Edward says his dead heart felt as though it might beat. Good thing he broke in here to have this moment. <3
Oh, god, and here have this badly written melodrama to accompany this touching moment:
“My life was an unending, unchanging midnight. It must, by necessity, always be midnight for me. So how was it possible that the sun was rising now, in the middle of my midnight?”
Midnight <3
Annie: Sun… midnight… MIDNIGHT SUN! Does he get a gold star for kinda saying the title?!?
Mari: Absolutely not.
Catherine: Hey I just remembered that this quote and the quote about his dead heart breaking used to be pretty common on LiveJournal icons. Does anyone want to start drinking now, or…?
Mari: Edward talks about how his whole personality and likes and dislikes have been frozen in time since he was changed into a vampire. He calls himself stone a bunch, in case we aren’t catching on the the imagery of, you know, stone. And midnight. I don’t even know what point he’s trying to make with all this talk of stone, but it might be that my body is shutting down at this point.
Whatever, he brings it all back around to the vampire love cult he lives with, and how they are all eternally mated. Edward knows that he will always love this “fragile human.” He stares at her restless face and feels love settle into his stone body and suddenly Bella is sleeping peacefully. And even though if you had asked me, I would’ve said the whole point of this B&E scene to hear Bella ask him to stay was that he would want to stay, he tells us that he’s actually going to leave. Because he’s a monster. And stone. At midnight. Fuck, I don’t know, I’m making this up now, but I’m almost sure that’s what it says probably.
K: Edward’s entire perspective is basically just a Magic 8-Ball with murder.
Edward thinks that there is a third option between dead and undead and that would be to be with Bella, but leave her human. To test if he can do this, he starts taking deep breaths of Bella so he can get used to her tang. He literally does this for about six hours, so cool. (K: He also says that he’s “letting her scent rip through me” and all I can imagine is that he’s breathing in her farts.) (M: F-, hate that.)
Edward gets home after his siblings leave for school, so he changes quickly and runs there. He hides behind a car in the parking lot so he can also watch Bella unobserved in broad daylight. Edward thinks about how it’s so weird that she’s probably still mad at him. It’s only weird because he had this whole huge one-sided interaction with her. He killed a spider, fell in love, heard her thoughts. What a night.
Eddie’s like “dammit! There’s no point in trying not to kill her and love her instead if she doesn’t love me back.” Still, he’ll wait until she rejects him in so many words, and if she does, he’ll leave.
Bella gets out of of Wow. Free. Truck and drops her keys in a puddle. Edward super-runs over and picks them up for her. She asks how he’s always doing that, appearing out of thin air. Edward goes for a casual, gaslight-y joke and says it’s not his fault she is exceptionally unobservant.
“Did she hear how my voice wrapped around her name like a caress?”
I don’t know whether to roll my eyes or vomit. I mean, probably all she heard was you calling her exceptionally unobservant, you pompous goblin.
Bella asks what was up with the traffic jam from the previous day, especially since he was meant to be ignoring her, not irritating her to death. Edward laughs and laughs as he explains that he did that so Tyler could shoot his shot. Oh, and also, he’s not ignoring her. Bella replies that he must be trying to irritate her to death, then, finishing the job Tyler’s van started. Edward gets real mad at this, especially because she has no idea all the additional effort he’s expended trying to keep her alive, namely by not murdering her and by killing one (1) non-poisonous spider.
He calls her utterly absurd, so she walks away from him. He chases after her and apologizes for being rude, but clarifies that what he said wasn’t untrue– she is absurd– it was just rude to say it. Bella asks why he won’t leave her alone, and Edward is like “was my name in her dream truly meaningless?” Jesus, come again to save me from fictional characters who believe women talking in their sleep is a legally binding contract.
Also, like, Edward, maybe in her dream you didn’t call her unobservant and absurd in the span of a minute, which also happened to be the very first minute of her school day. Maybe that’s why her dream was so nice.
Edward wonders if this is Bella rejecting him, like if he just spent this minute making advances and not insulting her. If it is rejection, he’ll leave, but he wants to leave her with a good impression, so he’s nice to her again. Bella asks if he has multiple personality disorder.
Instead of answering, Edward blames her for sidetracking the conversation. Bella tells him fine, get on with it, and he asks if she needs a ride to Seattle on the night of the dance. She doesn’t understand why he wants to drive her, and especially doesn’t understand why this is all happening considering he just told her they shouldn’t be friends. I have a feeling most of this is lifted wholesale from Twilight, except that now, Edward gets to tell us how fast Bella’s heart is beating. It’s speeding up A LOT so if this scene goes on much longer, she will die.
K: WE CAN BUT HOPE!!
Mari: Edward “clarifies” for her that he didn’t mean that they couldn’t be friends, just that it would be more prudent if they weren’t friends. He asks again if she will go to Seattle with him, and she nods her head. He’s very happy, but then he thinks about killing her again, so he warns her to stay away from him. And then he lightly says he’ll see her in class. But then he remembers that he won’t see her in class. I have no idea why. It’s possible he told us at some point in this hellmouth of a chapter, but I feel like I must be forgiven for missing this detail.
I did enough.
Catherine: You are the real hero here, Mari. You deserve a nap and possibly some laughing gas.
Mari: I appreciate your support. We are all the heroes of our own chapter recaps.
Oh, and speaking of heroes, I’ll admit that I didn’t start this right away because I wasn’t sure how many people would be following along, but how about a favorite comment from last post? This one made me legit lol.
From BT Light:
I had no idea koala’s sounded like that. Don’t they eat eucalyptus all the time and isn’t it super poisonous which is why they have to sleep so much? Maybe the sound they make is born of hefty amounts of indigestion. And maybe that’s Edward’s problem? He’s bloated on deer blood and Bella stench and is having really bad indigestion? This is my new head canon, moving forward. Any unusual sounds he claims to make are from lack of sufficient quantities of Vampto Bismol. O:-)
Corresponding Twilight Recap: Chapter 04 – Premonitions of RAGE.
Next time on Midnight Sun: Biology lab, I’m sure in Chapter 06.
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.
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.