Previously: Edward decided to hang out with and warn Bella.
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Catherine: This chapter starts with Edward getting back to school after rescuing Bella against her will from blood last chapter. When he gets there, school still isn’t supposed to let out for another hour, so he rolls up the windows of his car and stews in Bella’s stank.
No, really.
“Her scent lingered in the car. I kept the windows up, letting it assault me, trying to get used to the feel of intentionally torching my throat.”
He says he’s doing it intentionally to get used to the smell, but I think we know why he’s really doing it. Edward is a panty sniffer: confirmed.
Catherine: He wonders if Bella might be *GASP!* attracted to him? But despite knowing for a fact that he is evolutionarily hot to draw in prey, and detailing all the women (and men) that have had crushes on him in the past, Edward thinks that she can’t possibly be attracted to little old him. I think you guys know what this means. Edward is the true Not Like Other Girls girl of this book. He doesn’t know what makes him beautiful oh-oh!
Marines: While not technically wrong, I really take issue with the way that Edward is comparing physical responses to attraction and to danger. It’s creepy. Sure, your heart rate increases with both, but there is something really nefarious about Edward being absolutely unable to tell if Bella is into him or scared for her life. So, 😬😬😬.
Catherine: Lots of cringe in this chapter. Keep those emojis handy.
He starts remembering some of Jessica’s dirty fantasies about him (which he saw in her head) (K: Gross) and imagines if Bella were in Jessica’s place. Because I guess he legitimately doesn’t know how to have sexual fantasies unless he’s plagiarizing them from someone else. Jessica should sue. Thinking about this makes “fire claw up” Edward’s throat. But he’s not thirsty, he’s thirsty, if you catch my meaning. Suddenly he’s imagining some still very PG images like pulling Bella against his chest and brushing her hair back. All of the sudden Mr. High And Mighty No Sex Before Marriage who has spent the last 100 years judging people for their private fantasies is getting a little mental peep show of his own. Oh, how the horny have fallen.
Annie: And let’s not forget that he’s having these romantic feelings about Bella. And Bella is a child. He is technically not.
This fantasy quickly turns to horror when Edward remembers that if he ever got that close to Bella and actually touched her, he would probably immediately stab a straw into her and drink her blood like Yoohoo. Edward shames himself for his dirty thoughts and thinks about how this is all so confusing because he literally never had a boner when he was a human despite being a teenage boy when he died. Apparently he was too focused on World War I to be horny. Before 2020, I might have made fun of that but honestly? The whole world in turmoil doing nothing for your dick? I kinda get it.
K: I’d prefer not to think of Edward Cullen’s horniness level at any time ever, thanks all the same.
Mari: Edward keeps thinking about it like eventuality: if I touch her, I will definitely kill her. Why? W h y??? I get that she smells like an entire buffet to him, and it’s difficult for him to be around her, but these lines he keeps drawing are ridiculous. Yes to a car ride, no to a dance. Yes to carrying her around school campus, no to fantasies about touching her. Yes he can control his thirst, no he can’t control his thirst. Make up your damn mind or kindly keep your nonsense to yourself.
Catherine: I’m trying to get into his mindset by picturing a person made out of my favorite food, macaroni and cheese, that I, for some reason, also want to fuck. It’s not working. But I am trying.
While Edward is chilling in his car, hating himself, Emmett sneaks up on him and surprises him for the first time in ever. Edward tells Emmett that he was out “doing good deeds,” and Emmett is confused until he takes a whiff and notices Bella’s stench in the car. Emmett thinks that she does smell sort of appealing (actually he thinks that she has a “flavor.” Which. Ew.) and Edward snarls at him. Emmett tells him to chillax and the others show up and get into the car. Alice puts her hand out for Bella’s truck key without asking and they drive off to drop of Wow. Free. Truck at Bella’s house after which the gang goes back home.
Mari: Bella doesn’t hear the truck, even though she assumes she would be able to despite the rain. Midnight Sun answers the question of why Bella didn’t hear the truck. Our best theory was that the vampires carried it in, but all these years later, we get the answer “no, yeah, it was just raining.” Which, uh, we already knew. What a treat having this book to fill in none holes.
Catherine: When the vampires get home, everyone goes off to their various pursuits while all seeming to stay in the same room. Jasper and Emmett are playing chess, Alice is working on a fashion design thing on her computer, and Rosalie lays on the couch and watches TV. It all sounds so incredibly boring that it almost almost makes it seem like taking high school classes all day would be preferable. I can’t imagine WTF these guys do to entertain themselves since they can’t sleep and don’t seem to ever want to be in separate rooms.
Contrary to whatever the fuck Edward normally does after school (he doesn’t tell us) (K: He runs half way to Seattle, duh) he goes over to the grand piano and starts playing a tune. This makes everyone in the house, including Esme, pause and stare. Apparently he hasn’t played in a while and everyone just sort of gravitates around him, coming out from their hiding places like those videos of mistreated cows seeing grass for the first time, except not adorable. Rosalie is so surprised by Edward playing again that she mentally slips and shows him why she’s been so upset about him losing his shit over Bella.
“With Rosalie it was always about vanity.”
He laughs at her and puts both of his hands over his mouth, and she realizes that he knows what she’s been hiding and storms off. So, we know from the first series that part of the reason that Rosalie doesn’t like Bella is because she’s gobsmacked that a normal, boring human could draw Edward’s attention when she couldn’t, because Carlisle was originally hoping that Edward and Rosalie would get together, but Edward didn’t get shame boners for her. Of course, Rosalie was always considered a beauty, even in life so this was her first rejection. So this is all sort of loaded and weird and a way to pit two female characters against each other for kind of no reason, since Rosalie doesn’t actually want to be with Edward she’s just confused about why he never wanted to be with her. Obviously, since her whole personality is ~~pretty girl~~ she doesn’t understand what Bella has that she doesn’t. I mean, none of us understand it either, but we’re not the ones in the driver’s seat here.
Mari: 1- Thank you for filling that in because Meyers does the thing where she dangles everyone’s reactions to SOMETHING in front of the reader, but doesn’t actually tell us what’s going on. Because she has no plot, remember, so this is the only tool she has to create suspense. 2- This is so stupid. Rosalie is supposed to be happy and getting it in like a million times a day with Emmett. The only reason she cares is because Meyer hates women and hates Rosalie and thinks Rosalie would definitely be jealous of Bella for absolutely no reason.
Catherine: After Rosalie storms off, everyone pretty much ignores her to fawn over Edward some more. He finishes the song and Esme asks him if he has a name for it. Since WAP has already been taken, he doesn’t. But he does tell her it’s a lullaby.
K: I’m now picturing a lullaby version of WAP and it’s kind of amazing? Definitely better than Edward’s shit.
Mari: Tiktok is on it.
Catherine: MUCH better.
Edward thinks:
“There was a story to this melody, and once I saw that, the pieces fell into place effortlessly. The story was a sleeping girl in a narrow bed, dark hair thick and wild and twisted like seaweed across the pillow…”
The story continues with him getting a restraining order and rap sheet. (M: We wish.) (A: IF ONLY.)
Alice helps Edward write more of the song and Edward thinks about how it has to finish and can’t change because the sleeping girl can’t change. Esme is just peeing her khakis that Edward has finally found love, since we all know that’s literally the only thing that can complete a person or whatever.
Annie: Even if that love is with a HUMAN CHILD that he spends 99.9% of his time thinking about how he’s going to kill her. #RelationshipGoals <3
Catherine: I guess Esme just isn’t that picky.
Alice asks what Rosalie was mad about, and Edward distracts her by playing a tune that he apparently wrote for the love that he watched grow between Carlisle and Esme. Gross. Edward says that he doesn’t have to think to play the song, and instead thinks of Rosalie “writhing in jealousy” in the garage and smiles to himself. She is living rent-free in his mind right now, and she would be happy to know it.
Of course, Edward is the best at being jealous now, since he was jealous of the guys hitting on Bella for 2 seconds until he decided that it was funny. But he says that Rosalie’s jealousy was a thousand-times more petty than his. Which. My dude. You’re jealous over a bunch of 17-year olds and you’re a billion years old with a bunch of masters degrees. You LITERALLY live in a glass house. Maybe save those stones.
Mari: I honestly don’t know what Rosalie the character did to earn this kind of ire from Meyers:
“I wondered how Rosalie’s life and personality would have been different if she had not always been the most beautiful. Would she have been a happier person– less egocentric? More compassionate?– if beauty hadn’t at all times been her strongest selling point?”
Well, I do know. She’s beautiful and she knows it and that’s what makes her unbeautiful oh-oh. 🙁
Annie: This just makes me 100000% angrier with Meyer because of how horrific Rosalie’s story is. Stephenie, get fuuuuuuuucked.
Catherine: Meyer, like E.L. James, probably just hates blondes.
Edward spends another page talking about how Rosalie is so vain and jealous and then wondering how she can possibly consider Bella plain even though he thought that at first when he met her, too. All of the sudden, Alice has a vision of some of Jasper’s vampire friends, Peter and Charlotte, coming to visit the following week. Even though everyone else is happy about this, Edward throws a bitch fit because Peter and Charlotte are regular, cool vampires that still eat humans.
Catherine: Edward starts hissing at people and demanding more information about their arrival. Everyone is as rightly weirded out as they should be by his reaction, reminding him that Peter and Charlotte have visited them before and friends don’t eat friends and all that. Alice is like, “dude, no one’s gonna hurt Bella, just relax.” Edward brushes her off and asks Emmett if he’s ready to leave to go hunting immediately because now he wants to get back before Peter and Charlotte arrive in the same zip code as his beloved seaweed girl. Emmett think tells Edward that he’s lost it but goes to tell Rosalie goodbye and Edward appeases Esme by playing the lullaby again, but he takes Bella’s bottle cap out of his pocket and puts it on the music rack first.
K: Um. Wasn’t it the lid from a cup? I’m thought it was the lid from a cup in the last chapter?
Catherine: You’re saying that like any of us have the strength to go back and look when we’re a million pages in and somehow only like 1/4 of the way through the book.
Mari: You guys forget, I’m constantly in and out of these posts to update “next time” links and fix typos. So, jokes on me. He calls it a lid in the last chapter but later says it’s a “lid” to her “lemonade bottle.” So, whatever the hell that means.
Catherine: After a section break, we cut to Emmett fist-fighting a bear in the woods. The bear scratches Emmett across the chest but only manages to ruin his shirt and not scratch his skin. Apparently the claws going across Emmett’s skin even make a noise that squeals like “knives across steel.” Not sure that I remember the vampires being quite this invincible in the original books but, it’s possible that I’m mis-remembering since Meyer never really gave us a good set of rules for their powers and weakness anyway and just kind of expected us to go along with whatever after dulling our senses with constant repetitious descriptions of Edward’s rainbow eyes.
Mari: Somehow, I only remember the number of times we read about them being like stone and ice. So, sure. Can’t be scratched by bear. Fine.
Catherine: Emmett stops messing with the bear and takes it down, rolling down a hill with it and killing it. A minute later he jogs back over to Edward with blood all over his shirt and Edward scolds him for eating like a savage. Emmett says that he has to fight his food because no one at home wants to fight him since they know they’ll lose. He tells Edward to turn off his mind-reading so they can have a good old-fashioned hetero bare-chested wrastle, but Edward reminds him that he can’t turn it off. Emmett wonders how Bella manages to keep him out of her head and whether she could give him pointers. Edward growls at him to stay away from her.
Edward continues to brood while Emmett apologizes and asks what’s wrong with him. Edward says that he’s suddenly realized how fragile humans are. Emmett remembers that when he was a human, he almost got killed by a bear, which is why he works out his weird aggression on them now. (M: What a backstory.) Edward is suddenly like, “oh fuck, yeah, Bella could get killed by a bear, too” and thinks about how he has to add it to his list of worries. Normally, I would think he was overreacting but if anyone could get killed by a bear it would be fucking Bella. Edward basically thinks the same thing, but without the fucking. Emmett points out that he sounds like a crazy person, and Edward asks him to imagine if Rosalie was human.
“..she could run into a bear…or get hit by a car…or lightning… or fall down stairs…or get sick–get a disease!’ The words burst from me stormily. It was a relief to let them out–they’d been festering inside of me all weekend. ‘Fires and earthquakes and tornadoes! Ugh! When’s the last time you watched the news? Have you seen the kinds of things that happen to them? Burglaries and homicides…’ My teeth clenched together, and I was abruptly so infuriated by the idea of another human hurting her that I couldn’t breath.”
Much to dissect here. First of all, why was lightning third? Also, fires and earthquakes and tornadoes? Isn’t he forgetting lions and tigers and bears? (K: Oh my!) Edward’s weird mom-of-a-newborn sudden worry about his precious light of his life damaging her soft spot comes across so, so weirdly, you guys. I can’t even begin to describe it.
Mari: Agreed. In theory, Edward realizing how fragile humans are because he loves one now is… whatever, I guess… but in practice, this is the basis for his stalker obsession so, you know, go get hit by a car and lighting and fall down some stairs, Edward.
Catherine: Emmett gets rational, reminding his brother that Bella lives in Forks, which is incredibly safe, except for all of the vampires. Edward reminds him about the vampires and how Bella has bad luck. Emmett says that since they’re the only vampires that don’t eat humans, that’s actually good luck. I’m not sure I’d go that far. Being in Twilight is not good luck. Ask Robert Pattinson.
They go back and forth a bit with Edward pointing out all the bad shit that’s happened to Bella in like, the past month and Emmett pointing out that she’s still here so that’s gotta count for something. Edward wonders if having a vampire fall in love with them is the worst luck a human could ever have. This vampire? Yeah, probably. Because he’s whiny as shit. (K: Preach. Where’s that meteorite he was so worried about? Surely that would smush him.) Emmett pictures Bella again and thinks again that he doesn’t get what Edward sees in her. Edward thinks that he doesn’t see the appeal in Rosalie and that she’s “more work than a pretty face is worth.” So I guess it’s shit on Rosalie day.
K: Every day is shit on Rosalie day when you’re Edward.
Mari: That’s a hell of a statement for Edward to make, too, since he has to babysit his love interest 24/7, in case of meteors. What the hell work does Rosalie require? Um, respect, common decency, and some guilt-free sex? lol.
Catherine: Emmett asks him what Rosalie was mad about before they left and, Edward doesn’t want to tell him so Emmett tries to shove him but Edward braces himself and the rock that they’re sitting on cracks. They have a guffaw and then Emmett starts picturing Bella as a vampire and Edward shuns the image away. Emmett points out that it would solve his problem about Bella being too fragile and too delicious. Emmett says that he didn’t mind being turned into a vampire but Edward says that Rosalie did and that they both knew that Rosalie would give up anything, even Emmett, if it meant that she got to be human again.
I wonder, at this point, if Meyer is trying to get us to actively hate Rosalie for some reason? She is really piling on her in this book. Even Bella didn’t think this badly about her and Edward is supposed to love her like a sister. It’s not making me think badly of Rose, it’s making me think badly of Edward.
Mari: I’M SAYING.
Catherine: It needs to be said as many times as possible.
Emmett think asks, in so many words how Edward and Bella are gonna get freaky deaky if he can’t even touch her. Since Emmett and Rosalie fuck constantly, apparently, Edward knows that Emmett can’t envision a good Christian promise ring style relationship where you can only do side hugs and only with a chaperone present. I’m sorry, I grew up in rural Kentucky and this is all very familiar to me. I keep wondering if we’re gonna get to a chapter where Charlie takes Bella to a purity ball.
Mari: Also, I was going to say something about leaving room for Jesus, but I’m pretty sure my man would not want to stand in between these two. He’s tapping out of this one.
K: Oh God. I just realised we’re going to have to read about their creepy closed mouth kisses from Edward’s perspective and he’ll talk about how his mouth is full of venom and I DON’T WANT TO PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.
Annie: Venom mouth boners, tasting her her nummy skin, fighting the urge to kill her dead. It’s gonna be greeaaaaaat.
Catherine: As well as not looking back, we cannot look ahead. We must wear horse blinders while reading this book.
Edward says that since he can’t fuck Bella without killing her, he’s trying to get it up to leave her forever, but he just can’t imagine staying away from her.
“Bella was sleeping peacefully when I climbed up to her bedroom window early Monday morning. I’d brought oil to grease the mechanism–entirely surrendering to that particular devil–and the window now moved silently out of my way.”
Ladies. When I tell you I SCREAMED.
Not only, NOT ONLY did he sneak into her window a second time but he BROUGHT WD-40 TO KEEP IT FROM SQUEAKING. This book is truly a nightmare from which we will never escape.
K: I tried to break the fourth wall in a Jim Halpert do-you-see-this-shit fashion but because I don’t live in a sitcom the fourth wall is a literal wall. Still, staring at the wall until the rage decreased was somewhat helpful…
Mari: The window moves out of his way, as if the window is where it’s not supposed to be…
Annie: No way, this is so considerate and romantic! I am #teamEdward now! He brought WD-40 so he could silently sneak into a human child’s room at night and watch her while she sleeps, without her knowledge or consent. Swoooooon.
Catherine: Further giving in to his inner Ted Bundy, Edward notices that Bella’s hair isn’t laying as smoothly across her pillow as it was the last time he sneaked into her room in the middle of the night to watch her sleep and assumes that means that she’s had a more restless night of sleep. God. I can’t put into words the adrenaline that is coursing through me right now. This is terrible, but it’s also so funny. I want to scream at Bella to run and throw popcorn at the screen. Can we call the cops on a fictional character?
Edward feels relieved being with Bella because only his constant vigilance keeps her safe. He is truly the lifeguard of the mid-western waterpark kiddie pool that is her entire life. To make things even creepier, he sits down in the rocking chair and takes a deep inhale of her scent.
“Her lips looked very soft and warm. I could imagine touching them with the tip of my finger. Just lightly…”
Guys? I’m scared. I’m calling my mom to come pick me up.
Annie: Yeah, sure. His finger.
K: Yesterday a friend sent me an excerpt of a literary fiction book she was reading where a dude’s erect penis was referred to as both “a ballerina in first position” and “a lighthouse alerting her to the presence of land, the presence of safety.” Reading Midnight Sun has been the more traumatic of the two, so you know I really mean it when I say READING MIDNIGHT SUN IS A WAKING NIGHTMARE.
Catherine: It’s like one of those nightmares where you keep running and running but you never get anywhere.
Edward realizes that he can’t fondle her mouth because it’s insane and also germy. Instead he studies her face for any changes since mortals change so much and thinks about how she looks tired even though she’s… sleeping? How can?? What???
Mari: Mortals change a lot compared to vampires, but you were punching bears for two days, Edward. Calm down.
Catherine: He wonders if she went out this weekend and then scoffs at himself because she has every right to since he doesn’t “own” her and she isn’t “mine.” Until he puts on a ring on it and then I guess, she is? He doesn’t think that, but we all know he does deep down. Her not being “his” to boss around makes him sad again. Bella starts talking to her mom in her sleep, and she seems stressed. Amazingly, Edward doesn’t start trying to beat up her dreams to further his hero complex. But he does notice that she has a scrape on her palm. Those of us that are eternally tortured by a deep knowledge of Twilight will remember this came from Bella’s trip to the beach at La Push and her falling down on the rocks. (K: Just in case you’d forgotten that Bella is a clumsy bitch.) Edward is disturbed by the scrape even though it’s small and healed anyway. Not because it’s bloody and makes him hungry, because he literally can’t even conscience her getting a scrape on the palm. I get it. He’s probably worried that her teachers are gonna think he’s a neglectful father.
He comforts himself by remembering that he won’t have to puzzle over her sleep talk for long because they’re friends now and he could just ask her what she was talking about in her sleep when he was standing over her in a totally chill way. He thinks about her in the sunlight on the beach but he can’t fully picture it because, of course, he’s forbidden by the Quileute treaty to ever go to First Beach. He briefly wonders if Bella might have bumped into anyone there who might know he and his family are vampires but then realizes that that’s a silly thought, because the only Quileutes that knew the Cullens’ secret are long dead and even if some of them aren’t, they aren’t allowed to say anything anyway. He thinks that the Quileutes are the one thing he doesn’t have to worry about. Boy, have I got some bad news for you, Eddie. (K: I wonder which part of “a Quileute imprints on your infant daughter” would be the most horrifying to him…)
The sun rises and Edward remembers that he can’t go back to school and speak to Bella for a few days. He ducks out the fully greased window and goes back into the forest behind her house, surprised to find Bella’s scent out there. He follows it to where she sat on a tree and wonders why she was out there. (M: Why do people go outside, Edward? Surely, you may have read about “outside” in books or something.) He gets frustrated, thinking about how he’ll probably never know because he can’t exactly find a way to ask her about this without revealing that he was creepily standing over her while she slept and then sniffing the woods around her house. Mostly, he’s frustrated because she actually had gone out into the woods randomly like he’d worried that she would. He worries that her scent will call to any vampires who happen by and thinks about how she courts bad luck and that he is her protector for as long as he can justify it. He suddenly wishes that Peter and Charlotte would stay for longer so he could go on being a creep and mentally excusing it.
And the chapter ends there. I can’t remember why it was that Bella went out into the woods at this part in the original novel, and I don’t care enough to go back and look. Wheeeeee!
Mari: Sigh, don’t worry everyone, I’ll link it in the next recap. 😬
Corresponding Twilight Chapter: Chapter 06 – Field Trips, Werewolves and cold ones, oh my!
Next time on Midnight Sun: Port Angeles in Chapter 08.
I am a 30-something year-old human woman who lives in Maine. I'm a freelance writer who mostly spends time that I should be doing that, watching T.V. I also love reading and comic books way too much.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
Fuchsia-haired, caffeine enthusiast, dog person, Raptors fan, sometimes blogger, music & social media geek, freelancer, human being. She/her.
