Previously: Rosalie, ugh, am I right.
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Kirsti: When your uterus wakes you up at 6.15am during lockdown and you can’t get back to sleep because the painkillers haven’t kicked in and by the time they do, you’re too awake to get back to sleep, what else are you supposed to do with your life other than recap Midnight Sun?
Now that I’ve given you way too much information about my menstrual cycle (M: Edward Cullen would approve), let’s continue.
Edward steers clear of Jasper’s guests as much as possible and only goes home so Esme won’t lose her shit. What does he do instead? You’re right, he stalks Bella.
“I hovered, invisible in the shadows, where I could follow the object of my love and obsession – where I could see her and hear her in the minds of the lucky humans who could walk through the sunlight beside her, sometimes accidentally brushing the back of her hand with their own.”
So, like, it’s sunny. And Edward the Vampiric Disco Ball is just…slinking around town after Bella and NO ONE NOTICES??? Sure, Meyer. Whatever.
Marines: I wonder how many people randomly caught a glint of Edward and where like half-blinded, half wondering wtf it even was.
Catherine: That passage reads like it was scrawled in blood on the wall of a jail cell.
Annie: Love and obsession! Totes healthy! #RelationshipGoals
K: Excellent points all around.
Being away from school feels like a trial to him, but Bella seems thrilled to see sunlight so it’s whatever. On Monday, he eavesdrops on a conversation “that had the potential to destroy my confidence and make the time spent away from her truly torturous.” But instead, it makes his day. That’s right, pals! It’s time for Mike Newton to ask Bella out again! Edward respects him a little for trying again.
Bella gets to school early so she can sit in the sun, and we can all see that her hair has some red in it. Did you know that her hair has some red in it? I’m not sure if you remember from the seven million times SMeyer told us her hair has some red in it. But it does.
Mari: I imagine if you were ever near Stephenie Meyer, and you said something about her having brown hair, she would tell you that ACTUALLY, it has some red in it. And also that Rosalie is a blonde bitch.
K: Well obviously.
Mike shows up, and Bella smiles at him. Edward overhears his thoughts, which let us know that Mike thinks Bella wouldn’t smile if she didn’t like him. Men are just…the worst. Even the fictional ones.
Mike notices that Bella has some red in her hair (M: wait, she does?) (A: News to me.) and I literally cackled at Edward’s reaction:
“I accidentally uprooted the young spruce tree my hand was resting on when he pinched a strand of her hair between his fingers.”
I mean, a) don’t touch people’s hair what the fuck man, and b) the Cullens are an environmental disaster. Where’s Baby Groot when you need him??
Bella cringes away from Mike and his hair touching, and Edward is smug. After some chit chat about school work, Mike gets to the point and asks Bella out. By this point, Edward’s “teeth were clenched so hard they could have pulverized granite” and, like, you’re an immortal vampire, Eddie. Take better care of your chompers. It’s hard to fight mountain lions with dentures. Just saying.
Bella’s response is “oh“, and Mike can’t take a fucking hint in anyone’s perspective and thinks that maybe he wasn’t explicit enough. He suggests dinner. Edward wants to sprint over there and steal Bella away “from the boy I hated so much in this moment I could have killed him for no reason but to enjoy it.” So basically, Edward’s literally stalking Bella, getting insanely jealous of anyone who so much as glances at her, and is now planning to murder people for talking to her. Cool. Cool cool cool.
Catherine: The weirdest part about this is that he sees what he’s doing, he refers to it as “obsessive” and everything and yet…he doesn’t make any attempt to change his behavior. He just keeps going along with it and acting like there’s nothing he can do to stop himself. Edward, you are 107 YEARS OLD. ACT LIKE IT.
Annie: The number of times that Edward acknowledges that what he’s doing is wrong, obsessive, or abusive and continues to act that way anyway is upsetting. This is not the way. Why are there still people defending this as a romantic, ideal relationship?
K: Because it’s the series that got them into reading and therefore can do no wrong because NoStAlGiA?
Anyway, Bella says no and Edward relaxes. Mike thinks that this is all Edward’s fault. Bella tells him that it’s because it would hurt Jessica’s feelings. Mike’s all “????” and Bella’s all “DUDE.” Edward agrees, and Steph is really leaning into the “Bella’s a wonderful person who just wants to do GOOD” because he tells us that “She shouldn’t expect everyone to be as perceptive as she was.” EL OH EL bitch is hanging out with a murderous vampire on the daily and he hangs out in her room every night and she hasn’t spotted shit. But okay.
Mari: Also…. Jessica literally asked Mike out already? To a dance? Why are we treating this like a mystery?
Also, Bella threatens to beat Mike to death if he ever tells Jessica, and Edward thinks that’s hilarious. “I laughed out loud at the sound of a death threat coming through her lips. A jay shrieked, startled, and launched itself away from me.” So now, in addition to a disco ball in a tree, you can picture said disco ball laughing to himself and startling birds. In fact, any time you see a bunch of birds leaving a tree, imagine it’s because Edward Cullen is perched up there, laughing.
K: I mean, it’s no weirder than all the other places he’s laughed creepily to himself.
Mike’s brain is still in meltdown processing the fact that Jessica likes him, and Bella uses it as an excuse to escape. Problematically for our hero, this whole situation makes Mike “an unreliable viewpoint” through which to stalk Bella because all he thinks about now is Jessica and how her boobs are bigger than Bella’s. Yikes. Edward hangs out behind a tree and stalks Bella through the heads of various classmates. He’s always relieved when Angela’s around because she’s so NICE and he wishes there were a way to thank her.
Mari: I wonder how nice Angela would be if Edward told her “thanks for being a cozy mind to invade while I was stalking my girlfriend.”
K: She’d probably just walk away because she can magically sense that he’s a predator and it makes her uncomfortable but not uncomfortable enough to be like “Hey Bella? HE’S SKETCHY AND WEIRD, GIRL. RUN.”
He looks at Bella’s face through other people’s eyes and realises she’s upset. At lunch, she keeps glancing at the empty Cullen lunch table, and he’s thrilled to think that she misses him too. And then. THEN. We get this, and I legit had to stop and walk away for a minute:
“After school, she had plans to go out with the other girls – I automatically planned my own surveillance – but these were postponed when Mike invited Jessica out on the date he’d designed for Bella.”
There’s a lot to unpack there and I don’t have the energy right now, so let’s just move on and be done with it.
Catherine: Does he really not have anything else to do today? Can he not run to Seattle again or something?
K: IKR??
Instead, he goes straight to her house to make sure Peter and Charlotte are nowhere nearby. He knows he’s overdoing it, but he gives zero fucks. Bella comes outside to read a book and Edward climbs a tree so he can stalk her better. She’s reading Sense and Sensibility. I legit don’t remember Bella ever touching a book that wasn’t Wuthering Heights but whatever.
We’re then treated to an entire paragraph about how the sun affects her smell and how he can’t deal with it and he gets a throat boner. Bella keeps reading (Edward tells us that “I did not read along with her” because he knows the book????? You’re in a fucking tree staring at her face, buddy. How the hell can you read along with her???) until she freezes at the end of chapter 2 and flips through the book until she gets to Mansfield Park. She starts that but only makes it seven pages in and she slams the book shut. Edward’s baffled – he knows the books well enough to know exactly where she got up to and he can’t find anything offensive. Another mystery for him to stalk-solve, huzzah!
Catherine: OG Twilight readers will recall that Bella got upset because she remembered that one of the main male characters in Sense and Sensibility is named Edward and in Mansfield Park there is one called Edmund, which was too close to Edward for comfort. This judgement is coming from a woman who names her child Renesmee.
K: Excuse me while I roll my eyeballs out of their sockets.
Bella chucks her book aside, pushes her sleeves up and just lies there in the sun. She falls asleep. Edward feels slightly guilty because even though watching her from a tree isn’t as bad as sneaking into her room, he acknowledges that it’s “not precisely good.” Also, he wants to sneak into the yard so he can hear what she’s mumbling in her sleep and be close to her. LIKE A FUCKING PSYCHOTIC STALKER.
He tells us that he’s not technically trespassing because the tree he’s in isn’t in Bella’s yard, it’s in the yard next door (uh, still trespassing, dude. Just not on Swan property…), but that part of him wants to jump down and scootch in next to her to hear what she’s saying. But he won’t because he’ll sparkle and it would make him super sad to see the difference between Bella and himself in the sunlight.
Now, this next part? This next part made me do a full body cringe in secondhand embarrassment, so I’ll just let you have a moment to prepare yourselves. I’ll wait.
Alrighty. Bella moans in her sleep. Twice. And then she mutters “Edmund. Ahh.” Edward is bummed out to realise that she’s not dreaming of him after all (ick), she’s dreaming of Edmund Bertram from Mansfield Park. I feel fairly confident that she IS in fact dreaming of Edward, not because I’ve read Twilight but because no one in the history of the world ever has had a dream about the blandest of Austen’s heroes, who marries his cousin. Still. Ick.
Mari: I am torn between vehemently agreeing and also believing that the first person to have a dream about Edmund Bertram would probably be Bella Swan.
K: Valid point.
Edward keeps watching, but Bella doesn’t say anything else intelligible. The sun eventually goes down and he freaks out that her skin looks pale in the shadows. He’s relieved when Charlie gets home. Bella startles awake and heads inside. She tells Charlie about her plans to go to Port Angeles with Angela and Jessica the following night and “I refined my own plans as I listened.”
But it’s okay, guys. He’s not refining his stalkery plans because he’s a stalker. He’s refining them because Jasper didn’t tell Peter and Charlotte to stay away from Port Angeles so if he doesn’t stalk her there, she might get her face murdered off even though they’ve fed recently and have zero intentions of hunting anywhere near Forks.
Mari: Every time he acknowledges that he’s the worst, but then just keeps worsting anyway, I die a little more on the inside.
K: After however many pages we’ve read of the Twilight series, there’s nothing left inside me but dead.
He leaves her to Charlie’s care, knowing that he’ll return after she’s asleep.
And then we’re treated to this gem:
“But I certainly would not trespass on her privacy the way the peeping tom would have. I was here for her protection, not to leer at her in the way Mike Newton no doubt would, were he agile enough to move through the treetops. I would not treat her so crassly.”
Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude. Can you just…hurl yourself into Mount Doom already??
Mari: Maybe the only thing he’s good at throwing are stones from his damn glass house. Also, Meyer is so disgustingly unself-aware. You mean to tell me Edward is getting fang boners and venom jizzing all in his mouth, dying to get close enough to Bella to hear her wet dream moans, and he’s like “but I’m only doing this to protect her?” and “at least I’m not Mike?”
MOUNT DOOM.
Catherine: No, you don’t understand, Mike was only interested in her BOOBS. See, Edward is interested in her HEMOGLOBIN. It has nothing to do with the fact that Bella has so little personality that her boobs are really all that you can be interested in.
K: I read that as hemo-goblin and it created a fantastic mental image.
Anyway, Disco Ball Gollum leaves his precious (M: omg, 1430) and goes home to his empty house. There’s a note from Emmett asking him to come play football, but he scrawls “sorry” underneath it and goes hunting instead, reasoning that if he doesn’t go play football, the teams are even anyway. After he eats (and we’re thankfully spared a description of what’s for dinner), he changes his clothes and heads back to Bella’s to watch her sleep. TRESPASSING ON HER PRIVACY LIKE A PEEPING TOM.
Apparently, she doesn’t sleep well, and he wonders about what nightmares she’s having. Mostly she mutters about what a shithole Forks is, but when she sighs “Come back” and her hand twitches, he wonders if she’s dreaming about him.
The following day, it’s sunny again so no school for Disco Ball Gollum. But he watches over his precious nonetheless, and says she seems “even gloomier than yesterday.” He wonders if she’ll bail on the Port Angeles plans before realising that Bella’s such a good pure sweet wonderful person that she “would probably put her friends’ enjoyment above her own.” HAHAHAHAHA OH MY GOD. The romanticised version of Bella that Steph is creating through Edward’s perspective is a fucking riot.
Mari: She was legitimately ignoring everyone around her 97% of the time in Twilight. It took her like a week to remember the name Jessica.
Catherine: Everything’s different now that we know she thanked a teacher once. This book was totally worth it.
K: SHE’S SO GENEROUS.
School ends, he heads home to get his car. Peter and Charlotte are there, so he gives the humans an hour’s head start because the thought of driving the speed limit is just too much to even contemplate. Things descend into Edward overhearing everyone’s thoughts again. Peter and Charlotte mostly think he’s a fucking weirdo, which is fair. Rosalie sneers at him mentally because of course she does. Esme is concerned. Alice wishes him luck in Port Angeles and wants to know when she can actually talk to Bella. Emmett is pissed Edward bailed on football to be a stalker. (M: I mean, same, Emmett.)
He tunes out until it’s time for Peter and Charlotte to leave. Jasper warily tells Peter to wish Maria (his maker) well if they run into her. There’s some backstory about Maria that no one gives a shit about because she doesn’t show up until Eclipse blah blah blah. Peter says he doesn’t think it’s likely they’ll cross paths but sure. Goodbyes are said. Alice mentally assures Edward that they’re heading east to Seattle rather than anywhere near Port Angeles. I literally just looked it up on a map and the road from Forks to Seattle goes east THROUGH FUCKING PORT ANGELES but whatever. Maybe they’re going to run through the forest like the murderers they are rather than using a car.
I only have one paragraph left in this chapter though, so it’s whatever. He gets in his car and feels more relaxed because he knows he’s getting closer to Bella with every mile. And on that note, we’re done. Thanks, Steph, for that chapter. All it told us is that Edward is even more of a psychotic stalker than we thought with the original book. Fantastic. Love that for us.
Corresponding Twilight Chapter: Chapter 07 – Web Searching Like It’s 1999.
Next time on Midnight Sun: Duh, Port Angeles in Chapter 09.
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.
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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.