Midnight Sun Chapter 09 – The ole razzle dazzle.

Previously: Disco Ball hanging in trees, more a stalker than we originally knew.
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Marines: Hello! Extended breaks are a thing around Snark Squad, but things went especially south in the year of Satan, 2020. We have been slowly and quietly working on things around here, though, and even though not much has changed in 2021, we’ll get back to posting here and there for the time being.

And what a place to start. REMEMBER MIDNIGHT SUN?

K: Given that I haven’t read any of it since…July? August???…no, I’m not sure I do.

Annie: Oh, man, Midnight Sun is real? I thought this was just a part of a 2020 fever nightmare.

Catherine: This is a good way to check to make sure we’re all still alive though. Roll call! Everyone still here? 

Mari: Fortunately and unfortunately: yes.

Edward has just made it into Port Angeles, but it’s still too sunny outside for him to go into town. He makes sure we know that his windows are super tinted, but it’s still a risk. I suppose driving behind Edward is also a risk, because not only is he going a million miles per hour, he might BLIND YOU with his disco ball skin.

Ed has a moment of self-awareness as he realizes he’s always been super condescending to Emmett for being thoughtless and to Jasper for lacking discipline and now look at him! Endangering drivers everywhere, sparkling up and down the state, startling birds en masse. He sighs a deep sigh, remembering how he used to be the responsible one.

K: I’m not honestly convinced that he WAS the responsible one, so much as the incel one who spent all his time sulking. Like… no one else seems particularly keen on hanging out with humans, so???

Mari: Definitely the incel one.

Edward doesn’t actually do anything about being terrible. Just sighs and moves on to thinking about how he’ll definitely be able to hear Jessica’s thoughts from a distance and in a town of 20,000 people because her thoughts are so LoUd and much louder than Angela’s. Ugh, Jessica, am I right?

Annie: It’s great to see the Jessica hate continues in this book, too. Makes sense to hate on her for just existing.

C: Also when you are MEAN your thoughts are LOUD, I guess?? Raise your hand if you have the ability to think at different volumes. Anyone? 

Mari:

So, Edward does his thought-stalker thing, finding Jessica after not too long because there aren’t too many places to shop for dresses in Port Angeles. Can we all just pause to appreciate that Edward was just thought stalking a bunch of women’s clothing shops? Everyone good and gaggy now?

K: Sure am! 

Annie: Yep! This boy belongs in jail.

Mari: Jessica is spinning in front of a three way mirror, and Bella is trying on a black dress, unhappily. Jessica thinks about how unhappy Bella looks with a “ha ha” and goes off on a mental tangent about how maybe Mike won’t have fun at the dance and won’t ask her out again and maybe he thinks Bella is prettier. Bella tells Jessica that she likes another dress on her better. Jessica smiles warmly, but in her head, wonders if this is true or if Bella is trying to sabotage her chances with Mike.

Edward is tired of Jessica already, because imagine being this obsessed and self-centered. IMAGINE, EDWARD. CAN YOU? He wants to hop into Angela’s brain, but she’s changing right now and “I skipped quickly out of her head to give her some privacy.” 

Are we supposed to be impressed that you gave Angela some privacy and will just THOUGHT STALK HER LATER? (K: Apparently yes, because he didn’t thought stalk her while she was in her underwear.) He’s so generous, that he decides that Bella can’t get into much trouble inside of a department store, so he’ll just leave them alone while they shop and stalk them later.

Edward gets all horny for the clouds in the sky, thinking about how much he’s missed cloudy days and how he can’t wait to monopolize all of Bella’s time at school the next day. Next, he laughs at the memory of Bella being pissed at Tyler for asking her out. (K: Yikes.)

Time moves slowly. (A: FUCKING TELL ME ABOUT IT.) Edward keeps checking in with Jessica and finds out where they are planning to eat dinner. Edward briefly considers inviting Alice to dinner with him “coincidentally” at that same restaurant. Edward thinks he better not, not for any of the reasons you or I might come up with, but because two vampires “coincidentally” at the same restaurant is one vampire too many.

“I check in routinely with Jessica again.”

I CHECK IN ROUTINELY WITH JESSICA AGAIN. “ROUTINELY AGAIN.” I know redundancy is the least of my anger worries, but my god.

K: I don’t know which is worse: that he’s popping in and out of her head like a micromanaging boss who checks on you every ten minutes or that Steph basically destroyed Jessica’s entire character for the sake of this shitshow of a book.

Mari: Yes.

Jessica is talking to Angela about a necklace she bought. She wants to go back and return it because she spent too much money. Angela is willing to go with her, but she wonders if Bella will think they left her. Jessica thinks “who cares about Bella?” but out loud says that Bella will be fine and they will get to the restaurant in plenty of time. Angela agrees, but think-hopes that Bella doesn’t think they ditched her. Angela does say that Bella was blue all day though, and of course thinks it must have to do with Edward Cullen and all of the questions Bella had about his family.

Edward is pissed! He should’ve been thought-stalking routinely even more again because now he’s missed something, and poor, useless Bella is WANDERING BY HERSELF. Edward figures the sun is almost down and he can just drive on the west side of the road. Sure, bro. Okay.

K: Wait, so he could drive to Port Angeles in FULL DAYLIGHT and his tinted windows were enough to prevent him from glitter-blinding every other driver on the road, but now he has to drive in the shade of the buildings?? Steph, girl. This makes zero sense. 

Catherine: How poorly tinted are these windows? Can’t he just get the celebrity tint on them or something? He has all that Civil War money.  

Mari: Edward drives to the book store he saw in Jessica’s head, cursing himself the whole way for not having considered that Bella could just go off on her own.

Annie: It’s almost like she’s an actual human being with legs that she can use to walk around with and not a bag of flour.

Mari: The book store is empty and Edward decides it’s a little too new age to be the kind of place Bella would like anyway.

He finds a shady patch to park in and after thinking about how he definitely shouldn’t do this, gets out of the car and darts around the shadows and into the store to get a good sniff and determine that Bella never went into the store. He darts back out and follows Bella’s scent trail as far as he can: to the end of the shadow he’s walking in. I’m not making this up.

Catherine: 

 

Mari: Correct.

Edward hops back into his car and follows the direction Bella was heading in. He hops out a few times to sniff the air while standing in a shadow, but only catches her scent one other time. It’s sending him in a particular direction, but for some reason, he’s confused, and ends up just driving back and forth between the book store and the restaurant. Jessica and Angela get to the restaurant and can’t decide whether or not to order without Bella. Obviously, Jessica thinks they should order now.

The sun still isn’t down. Edward is channel surfing through every single person in Port Angele’s thoughts until finally! Someone is thinking about Bella! Unfortunately, this is a bad mind. Edward knows exactly what kind of mind because “I had once haunted exactly such minds.” He roars and snarls and “shoves” the gas pedal, heading in the general direction of the bad mind, even though he doesn’t know exactly where Bad Mind is.

K: Actual sentence in this terrible book: “My foot shoved the gas pedal to the floor, but where was I going?” Also, I need y’all to know that my brain saw the words “pedal” and “floor” and turned it into “floor the pedal to the metal” because of course it did.

Mari: Edward sees other victims in Bad Mind’s mind and growls so loudly, his car starts shaking. (K: LOL WHUT.) Edward watches Bad Mind get closer to Bella and finally realizes that there are other men there too. He mind hops until one of the other men looks away from the alley, out to the street, and Edward finally knows where they are. He races there. Someone tries to call him, but he ignores it. He thinks about murdering the rapists, and the good old days when he did that on the reg. But even then, he never tortured his victims. He knows he’s going to torture Bad Mind, though.

K: Edward Cullen, romantic lead. This whole situation is fucking yikes, pals. Like, obviously he’s going to save Bella. We know he’s going to save Bella because he did it four books ago. But having to read the romantic (lol) lead of the series say “The others would merely die for their part, but this creature named Lanny would beg for death long before I would give him that gift.“?? Y.I.K.E.S. 

Mari: To put it mildly.

Finally, Edward spins into the alley, opens the door, and snarls at Bella to get in.

Catherine: FLOOR THE PEDAL TO THE METAL. 

Mari: Bella gets in the car and then looks at him with “the most trusting expression I had ever seen on a human face.” And just like that, Edward doesn’t want to do torture murder anymore. At first I thought it was Bella’s trust that rid him of his murder feels, but then one second later, he thinks about how ridiculous it would be to have Bella wait in the car while he murders. He can’t even hit Bad Mind with his car, because it would scare Bella. He really, really wants to kill Bad Mind, but he can’t, logistically. 

I just looked ahead to see how many pages chapter 9 is and I think I might be the one to die here.

K: You won’t be alone.

Annie: I usually do that 2 pages in to a chapter, so you’re winning! You can do it.

Mari: Edward tells Bella to put on her seatbelt, but his voice is rough, because that’s what happens when you really want to murder someone. Bella puts her seatbelt on and jumps at the sound it makes. WTF. Has she… never put on a seatbelt before…? Did she… not expect… the sound???? (K: She’s an easily startled baby deer, duh) Edward points out that the sound of the seatbelt makes her jump, and yet somehow, she isn’t scared of him driving like a maniac through Port Angeles. He’s eating red lights and she’s “oddly relaxed,” except when she has to put a seat belt on and then she’s jumpy. WTF is happening.

Bella asks if he’s okay, and he answers that he’s not. He parks under a very dark tree so he can have more daydreams about murder. He thinks about his vigilante days and all the bad men he killed and the worst man of all who he almost tortured but ended up killing swiftly. The point is that Edward can’t figure out why he wants to kill Bad Mind so badly when he’s encountered much worse men, like Really Bad Mind.

K: There’s a whole section in here about the much-worse-men he’s encountered over the years and I feel like it’s all just there in a sad attempt at reminding the audience that Edward isn’t a stalkery, murdery creep. He’s got a heart of gold because he only murders Really Bad Minds! He saves victims! He didn’t even drink Really Bad Mind’s blood that one time because he had to sAvE tHe ViCtImS!! And lemme tell you, friends, IT IS NOT WORKING ON ME.

Mari: Right, like I don’t know what SMeyer thought she was doing by having the romantic hero park in darkness to relieve his murder days, and dance around the conclusion that he wants to murder more violently now that he’s in love, but IT AIN’T GOOD.

Edward realizes he should ask Bella if she’s okay. She says she is, and Edward thinks long and hard about how much danger she always gets into and how he could never leave her alone in the dark. He can’t leave her, but also, he can’t stop thinking about murder and “radiating brutality.”

He figures the best solution is to ask Bella to distract him. He’s so mad he can barely talk, so he tells her to prattle away until he calms down. Bella is seemingly confused at first, but then tells Edward that she’s going to run over Tyler before school the next day. Edward thinks this is hilarious. He asks why and Bella explains that Tyler is telling everyone that he’s going to take Bella to prom. Bella thinks this has to do with Tyler making amends for almost killing her, so she thinks if she almost kills him they’ll be even. This, of course, gives Edward an opportunity to note that she doesn’t know she’s beautiful and that’s what makes her beautiful, or whatever. And he’s calming down now!

Annie: This guy is a rollercoaster and no fucking thank you. Girl, run. 

Mari: Out loud, Edward says that he heard about the prom thing, which makes Bella even more angry. She jokingly (?) threatens to paralyze Tyler so he can’t go to prom with anyone.

“I wished there was some way I could ask her to continue with the threats of death and bodily harm without sounding insane. She couldn’t have picked a better way to calm me.” 

A match made in hell.

Bella asks if he’s feeling better, and Edward says not really. He thinks about how he is calmer, but not better, because he just realized that the only thing he wants more than committing a highly justifiable murder is Bella. <3 So, no murder for him so he can try and be good enough for Bella. He says this in lots more words. (K: He says everything in a lot more words, tbh.) Bella asks him what’s wrong, and it makes his mouth water, which is a good reminder for him that even if he doesn’t actively murder people, he does constantly want to eat his girlfriend.

Edward tells her that he has a temper problem, and it wouldn’t be good for him to turn around and hunt down her would-be-attackers. Bella just says “oh” and looks blank. Edward thinks Bella is in total shock.

Bella says that Jessica and Angela will be worried about her. Edward silently starts the car and drives toward the restaurant. Bella asks how he knew where to go, but then decides to just smile about it and not press the point.

Edward starts to get out of the car, and Bella asks what he’s doing. Edward announces that he’s taking her to dinner, while thinking about how he’s never leaving her out of his sight again. They see Jessica and Angela walking away from the restaurant, now really worried about where Bella is. Edward orders Bella to go stop them before he has to track them down, too. “I don’t think I could restrain myself if I ran into your other friends again.” I’m having a hard time refraining myself now that you’ve called her would-be attackers her friends, asshole.

K: I just finished reading a book about domestic abuse in Australia (See What You Made Me Do by Jess Hill if anyone cares) and all of Edward’s behaviour in this chapter is a fucking ARMY of red flags for me. And Bella’s reactions to his behaviour aren’t much better… 

C: Seconded. His whole “I have a problem with my temper”  thing and hinting that she’s the only thing holding him back from murdering Jimmy the Rapist therefore putting the onus on her to stop him even though she was just attacked and he should be only thinking about her comfort is like a fire sale at the red flag store. It’s all bad, gang. 

Mari: Bella calls after Jessica and Angela, who are both relieved she’s safe and surprised to see Edward. Bella explains that she got lost and then ran into Edward. He asks if he can join them, and Jessica is excited because Edward is so hot. Angela admits that they ate already. Bella says she’s not hungry, anyway. Edward disagrees and says she should eat something.

“She needed sugar in her bloodstream– thought it smelled sweet enough as it was, I thought wryly.” 

K: Gross. No thank you.

Annie: Yeah, nope. No thank you, please.

Mari: Edward asks Jessica if it would be okay if he drove Bella home tonight, so they wouldn’t have to wait until she ate. Jessica says yes, but at least has the decency to look at Bella and see if this is at all what she wants. Bella winks at Jessica, which Edward sees through Jessica’s thought-eyes. Angela is like OKAY BYE and drags Jessica off, so Bella and Edward can be alone. They watch and make sure Jessica and Angela get in the car safely, and wave as they drive off.

As soon as they are gone, Bella tells Edward that she isn’t hungry. Edward is so surprised Bella wants to be alone with him after witnessing his “literal homicidal rage.” I’m surprised too, Edward. I never stop being surprised.

Edward insists that Bella eat something. Inside, the hostess thinks loudly about Edward’s hotness. Edward wonders if he’s noticing everyone noticing how hot he is more because he wishes Bella saw him that way. The hostess leads them to a table while thinking about how Bella definitely has to be his cousin because she couldn’t possibly be with him. Wow, thank you hostess, for that wonderful opportunity for Edward to tell us once again how beautiful Bella is, even though no one finds her beautiful and that’s what makes her beautiful.

K: I used to joke back in the day about being hit over the head with the Anvil of Obvious Storytelling. This isn’t so much obvious storytelling but it is definitely like being hit in the head with a fucking anvil over and over and OVER again.

Mari: The hostess takes them to a busy part of the restaurant in order to thwart Bella, but Edward offers her a $50 tip to give them a more private table. Now that the hostess knows that he’s rich too, she extra can’t believe Edward is here with Bella. (C: Damn, Bella must be really ugly.) Once they arrive at the perfect murder booth, Edward shows the hostess his fangs, to scare her, because he’s upset that she’s thinking mean thoughts about Bella. It doesn’t scare the hostess though, and Edward wonders if he’s losing his scary edge.

Once they are alone, Bella tells Edward he shouldn’t dazzle people like that because it isn’t fair. I’ve not checked but I’m like 97% sure we used this gif in the original post:

K: I am 97% sure that you’re 100% right.

Mari: Bella thinks he has to know the effect he has on people. Edward asks if he dazzles her, and she says he frequently does. Edward is in heaven. He stares at Bella and ignores the waitress when she arrives because all he wants to do is stare at Bella and watch her blush. Bella orders a Coke, and Edward tells the waitress to bring two Cokes because thirst was a sign of shock and apparently Bella needs two Cokes worth of sugar. Bella asks what Edward is staring at and he asks how she’s feeling. She says she’s fine and he admits that he’s expecting her to go into shock. Bella goes a little hazy and unfocused and says she’s always been good at repressing unpleasant things.

The waitress comes back and is thinking vulgar things. (K: Because every woman who encounters Edward is instantly thirsty af, apparently.) (C: Those TROLLOPS.) Bella orders food, Edward orders nothing, and Bella makes a face at this. Edward orders Bella to drink, and she downs the whole glass of Coke in one go. Bella starts shivering, blaming it on the Coke drinking marathon, and she left her jacket in Jessica’s car. Edward gives her his jacket, and is sad that he’s an ice cube and not warm. Bella puts on his jacket and shivers.

Edward continues to monitor her closely. He compliments her shirt, saying blue looks good on her. And then he pushes the bread basket toward her. Bella insists she’s not going into shock, but Edward thinks a normal human would be. Bella tells him that she feels very safe with him. Edward, who has been babying her, cannot fathom why Bella would feel that way at all. He murmurs that this is more complicated than he planned.

K: I need you all to know that I have been making disgusted faces throughout this entire chapter and my level of disgust is at the point where I’m starting to worry my face will get stuck that way.

Mari: Bella grabs a breadstick and tells him that usually he’s in a better mood when his eyes are light. He’s most crabby when his eyes are black. She’s got a theory about this. Edward is worried about her figuring it out, but says that he hopes her new theories are more creative than last time. The food comes out as Bella hesitates to answer him. Also, she drank a second Coke and is getting a third one. I hope these are small glasses.

Bella offers to tell Edward her theories, but she’s got some questions first. First: why is he in Port Angeles. Edward refuses to answer. Bella gets frustrated, considering that “why are you here” is the easiest question to answer. She eats quietly for a while, and Edward looks at her and imagines he sees her as Persephone holding a pomegranate. Deep. Bella looks up and offers a hypothetical situation where someone could read minds with a few exceptions. Edward is blown away and can’t believe someone has guessed his very well kept secret because he isn’t obvious at all, no sir! He’s freaking out but he does go with it and tells Bella there is only one exception.

She’s super excited Edward is going along with this and asks how hypothetically, those powers would work. And how someone with those powers could stalk her all the way to Port Angeles. Bella suggests they call his hypothetical man with these hypothetical powers Joe. Edward says that if Joe were paying attention, he wouldn’t need to get the timing exact on something like an attack. I think he means that if you generally stalk someone, you are likely to find something happening to them eventually. If that’s not what he means, I have no idea what’s happening.

Edward adds that only Bella could get into trouble in a town as small as Port Angeles, which is of course some victim blaming bullshit and also he just was telling us a few pages ago that Bad Mind had attacked other women. So maybe it’s not Bella who would’ve devastated the crime rate in Port Angeles. MAYBE IT’S THE RAPIST.

K: I literally yelled “GET FUCKED, YA FUCKIN’ DICKHEAD” at my Kindle when Edward said “You would have devastated their crime rate statistics for a decade, you know”, which is the most Australian I’ve been in quite a while. Thanks for that, Steph.

Catherine: Also, lets ignore the fact that he had no concern for the crime statistics when he was thinking about killing her attackers and putting their heads on spikes outside the Cullen house. What would THAT have done, Mr. Math? 

Mari: Amazing.

Bella is annoyed at this, but only because she’s not getting the answers she wants. She asks again how Edward knew where to find her. Bella insists that he can trust her. Edward is all broody about his secrets and his cold skin. He remembers that one time he called her exceptionally unobservant, and figures he can at least take that back. He also says he was wrong when he said she was an accident magnet because actually she’s a trouble magnet. Bella figures he counts himself among this trouble. Edward says he is for sure trouble. This inspires Bella to hold his hand and thank him for saving her life.

Edward realizes that he wants Bella to know him, so he finally admits that he followed her to Port Angeles. Bella smiles at him and even Edward is like “girl, I just admitted to stalking you and you are smiling.” Bella kind of jokes that maybe her number was up and she was meant to die under Tyler’s van and now Edward just keeps messing with fate. (K: Oh my God, someone PLEASE make Twilight: Final Destination because I would watch the shit out of that) Edward gets all serious because Bella’s number was up when she met him. The mood at this dinner has been so up and down. One minute we are smiling about murder and violence and stalking, and the next we are brooding about it!

I honestly lose the thread of the conversation for a bit, but somehow we’ve circled back around to the fact that Bella has known all along that Edward probably wants to murder her. And yet! She’s still here because even though Edward wants to murder her, he also sometimes saves her <3

Annie: Swoooon! That’s what I look for in a partner… Someone who wants to murder me but shows up to stop vans from squishing me or Bad Men ™ from attacking me. 

Mari: Edward stares some more (Jesus be the end of this chapter) at Bella’s pale skin, wondering if she’s okay. He realizes she hasn’t eaten anything besides the three Cokes and a breadstick, so he tells her that he’ll answer her questions if she eats. Bella “threw a bite into her mouth.” Yeah, I often throw raviolis into my pie hole.

K: I’m more impressed that she hasn’t had to make fifteen trips to pee after those three Cokes.

Catherine: Bella is far too dainty to have a bladder.

Mari: Bella plays basketball into her mouth, or whatever, while Edward explains that he was following Jessica, but not super closely because crime doesn’t exist in Port Angeles, ever. Then he figured out that Bella wandered off alone and drove all around the town looking for her, until he heard Bad Mind and knew where to find them. Edward needs to take a moment to breath through his murderous thoughts. He closes his eyes and pictures Bella, all vulnerable and in need of a protector. Edward tells Bella that it was super hard for him to not murder those men. Edward can hear Bella’s heartbeat all sped up, but then she just calms down and says nothing.

The waitress returns and is once again dazzled by Edward. And he realizes! That all the humans are extra turned on tonight because he’s been trying so hard to be safe and normal for Bella. Hottie no scary, see?

They walk to the car and we get a couple more pages of them silently brooding at each other. Edward tells Bella it’s her turn to answer questions and FINALLY, this chapter is done. It lasted about as long as March 2020, honestly.

 

Corresponding Twilight Chapter: Chapter 08 – My knight in shining Volvo

Next time on Midnight Sun: Actually, Bella has another question in Chapter 10.