New Moon Chapter 09 – Be your own planet.

Previously: Bella crashes her motorcycle a lot because hallucinations are COOL.
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Marines: We start the chapter with Bella telling us that her life isn’t so bad now with school, work and Jacob. EXCEPT PSYCHE. Her life is still the worst and she’s only pretending.

“I was like a lost moon— my planet destroyed in some cataclysmic, disaster-movie scenario of desolation— that continued, nevertheless, to circle in a tight little orbit around the empty space left behind, ignoring the laws of gravity.”

This. is. not. healthy. Stop being a moon, homegirl, and go be your own planet.

Kirsti: SERIOUSLY. There is SO MUCH wrong with all of that. You were with Edward for like 6 months. Slow your fucking roll.

Catherine: Also, you’re a baby. You came outta the womb like, 5 minutes ago. Please take this time to find out who you are on your own. No? Not a snowballs chance in hell of that happening, you say? Cool. 

Annie: We all know that women can’t be whole and complete on their own, come on now! We have men to show us our place, so we don’t need to figure out who we are on our own.

Mari: A lesson from Bella for the ages.

We’ve reached the point where Bella is getting better with her bike. You’d think she’d be happy that she’s no longer crashing into trees and spending hours in the ER but actually she’s sad that she’s no longer hearing Angry Curtain Edward in her head. So, Bella’s desperately seeking out her meadow and racking her brain for other adrenaline-producing activities.

Bella’s so concentrated on inducing hallucinations that she doesn’t even know what day it is until Jacob gives her some conversation hearts for Valentine’s Day. Jacob half-jokingly asks Bella to be his Valentine and she gets uncomfortable. She asks what that entails and he jokes “slave for life.” Is this where EL James found inspiration?

K: Gross, Jacob. GROSS.

Mari: Bella takes the candy and starts thinking about how to make boundaries clear again since they seem to get blurred a lot with Jacob. Look. This is putting me in an awkward position because Jacob 100% needs to respect Bella’s boundaries. There is no friend zone and all that. However, we’re privy to Bella’s thoughts and she’s all, “JACOB’S MY NEW ADDICTION. NEED HIM ALWAYS ALL THE TIME.” But then she’s like, “omg he gave me candy hearts and ASKED ME to be his Valentine. HE NEEDS BOUNDARIES.”

Catherine: I get kinda easily ragey about the ‘friendzone’ trope in situations like this, (Hello, fucking Winn) so one of the most difficult parts of reading this book for me so far has been deciding who to hate more. Bella for using Jacob as an emotional crutch or Jacob for constantly trying to push past Bella’s boundaries and nagging her to start dating him when she’s so obviously not in a good place emotionally and he knows this. At the moment I hate them both very much and I can’t remember why I agreed to do this? 

Mari: Because you love us, so much.

Jacob asks if they are going hiking or going to ER the next day. Bella says hiking because she wants to find the dang meadow. Jake asks if they’ll ride their bikes on Friday, but Bella says no because she’s got the movie with Mike. Jacob seems bummed so Bella invites him along because she does want him there, but she doesn’t want him to be there…? IDK. All I know is that the movie thing on Friday just became a group thing.

K: It’s kind of like when you invite a friend to the movies and then they bring their boyfriend unexpectedly. In other words, SUPER AWKWARD FOR EVERYONE. Good work, Bella.

Mari: We cut to English class. Bella asks Mike if he’s free on Friday because she wants to get a group together to go see a movie with absolutely no romantic subplots. Mike agrees, but he’s not enthused by the idea of this not being a date. Mike tries to invite other couples to make it a group date, but Bella basically keeps inviting every named teenager in this series. Jessica and Lauren beg out on the grounds that Bella is awful. (K: Good life choice, ladies.) In the end, it’s just Jacob, Ben, Angela and Mike.

When Bella gets home that day, Jacob is waiting for her because he’s done fixing his car. They get excited about that.

Mike arrives and Jacob gets annoyed by his presence because there is only room for one boy blindly pursuing Bella on this date. Don’t make me hate you, Jacob. (C: Oh, he’s gonna.) Mike sizes super tall, wolfy Jacob and they shake hands really hard. The phone rings and Bella runs inside to answer it. Turns out that Angela is sick, either with contrivance or with bellaintolerance, and she can’t make it. Ben won’t come without her. So, that leaves Jacob, Mike and Bella on a non-date.

In the car, Mike is sulking. Then he tries to put his face real close to Bella. Then he suggests playing some music, but Jacob says that Bella doesn’t like music. She doesn’t like music, because it irritates her. She can’t listen to music because Edward…. owned a piano? And broke up with her?

K: Literally nothing about this makes sense, considering how much she gushed about Totally Not Muse in the first book.

Catherine: I’m still impressed that she can avoid music. All music. Everywhere. Even cat food commercials remind her of Edward. 

Mari: Mike sulks through the super violent movie, but Jake is laughing at how fake it is. Soon, Bella is laughing too, but she’s worried about how she’s going to convince Jacob she doesn’t like him when she really likes him. Bella tells us that both boys have their arms on the armrest, palms up, waiting for her hand, I guess. Like jerks.

K: I may have snort laughed when she said that their hands are “Like steel bear traps, open and ready.” 

Mari: Halfway through the movie, Mike starts groaning because he feels sick. He runs from the theater and Bella and Jake go after him. Jake looks for him in the bathroom and he’s in there vomiting. Jacob makes fun of him for vomit and not being a man and honestly, Jacob, I cannot hate every single character in this book. Please stop this behavior immediately.

Catherine: No, ssh, he gets worse. 

Mari: Aaaand he’s going to make it worse: he puts his arm around Bella and then grabs her by the wrists and refuses to let her go. He asks if Bella likes him. She says yes. She likes him better than anyone she knows and thinks he’s attractive it’s just that she’s a moon with no planet, remember? She doesn’t bring that up again; I just like reminding you that she’s a moon with no planet. Jacob says that he’s okay with being the person she currently likes the best and he’s going to be “annoyingly persistent,” which of course means that our reading experience is going to be… annoying. And persistent.

Catherine: Told you. 

Mari: It’s my own fault for thinking anything about this would be okay.

Anyway, Jacob insists that he’s got loads of time to wait around for Bella to get over her missing planet. Bella tells him not to expect more and tries to grab her hand back from him, but Jacob holds onto it. (K: She also says that she’s “damaged goods” as a result of that whole missing planet thing, and uuuuuuuuuuuuugh)(A: I hate the whole ‘I’m damaged goods, I don’t deserve a functional relationship’ device that is used to death everywhere. Writers, STOP IT.) He asks if she likes holding her his hand. Bella says yes. It’s nice and… warm. (A: LOL, the opposite of Edward, thanks, Steph.) Jacob asks if she cares what Mike thinks. Bella says no. Jacob asks what the problem is then. Bella says that hand-holding means something different to Jacob than it does to her. Jake calls that his problem and Bella gives in, saying that he shouldn’t forget it though.

Jacob sees the scar where The Plot That Walked Out of the Forest bit her. He notices that the scar is cold. Before we delve into that memory, Mike stumbles out of the bathroom and asks if they can leave early. Jacob is a jerk to Mike. (C: Oooh, swoon.) He grabs an empty popcorn bucket for Mike to use as a barf bucket. They help Mike into the back seat and on the drive, we get another mention of how Jacob is never cold. In fact, Jacob’s skin feels hot with fever.

K: Actual quote? “‘You must have a fever or something,’ I grumbled.” SHE GRUMBLED. Like it’s his fault?! I mean, don’t get me wrong – it drives me nuts when I say that I’m cold and people (*cough* my mother * cough*) are all “Don’t be ridiculous! It’s shorts weather!” and I’m wearing jeans and a hoodie. But I don’t grumble about them not feeling the cold the same way I do.

Mari: Jacob’s got his hot, hot arm around Bella and she thinks (YET AGAIN) that she really likes this but doesn’t want Jacob to get the wrong impression. I think besides a random bear mention, this is going to be the plot of the rest of the book? Just tell me now.

Catherine: Lol. Yes. This one book. That’s the plot of just this one book. Not also the other 2. Nope. 

Mari: I kind of hate you.

“How could I explain so that he would understand? I was an empty shell. Like a vacant house— condemned—for months I’d been utterly uninhabitable. Now I was a little improved. The front room was in better repair. But that was all—just the one small piece. He deserved better than that—better than a one-room, falling-down fixer-upper.”

I just meant to quote yet another creative explanation of how useless Bella is without a boyfriend, but I kept going for the em dashes.

K: So clunky. So awkwardly interrupted. Just terrible, terrible writing.

Mari: They get Mike home. At Bella’s house, Jacob says that he would invite himself in, but he is feeling a little strange. Bella is worried and makes him promise to call once he makes it home alright. Before Bella gets out of his car, though, Jacob tells her that she can always count on him and he would never hurt her. Bella know this and admits that she counts on him. This makes Jacob happy so it makes Bella sad.

We spend another godforsaken page with Bella explaining to us (yet again) that she doesn’t LOVE Jacob and she doesn’t mean to USE Jacob, but also, she needs him like a drug and a crutch. Jacob is her cocaine cane.

K: She also wishes that he were her brother so that they could be the way they are without him having romantic feelings for her because it’s just the worst ever. Ugh.

Mari: Bella goes inside to wait by the phone for Jacob’s call. After he doesn’t call in 20 minutes, Bella phones the Black residence. Billy answers and says that Jacob got there alright, but he was too sick to call. Bella offers to come over and help, but Billy (almost) tells her to stay at her own damn house. Bella plans to go check up on Jake the next day anyway, but she catches the stomach flu too.

Charlie goes to work and comes back; Bella spends the whole day in the bathroom.

K: Charlie goes to work for the entire day and leaves her with ONE GLASS OF WATER to keep her hydrated through her stomach flu. Dude. I don’t even think you tried to parent. (Yes, I know she could refill it from the sink, but that’s not the point.)

Catherine: Yeah, this bugged me, too. We could argue that Charlie hasn’t really ever had to learn to be a parent but taking care of someone when they’re sick is just common sense. 

Annie: Maybe Charlie’s just a germaphobic? I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt with the whole parenting thing, but he’s probably just going to disappoint like every other character in this damn book.

Mari: We can’t like anyone, guys. It’s impossible.

Charlie eventually moves her into her bedroom and Bella wakes up the next morning feeling better. She calls Jake, who sounds terrible. He says he has something different than the stomach flu. Bella wants to come over, but he tells her to stay away. He’ll call her when he’s better. We end the chapter with Jacob whispering Bella’s name.

Seriously, he just whispers “Bella…” and the call is over. Instead of saying goodbye, we should all just end phone calls by whispering the person’s name and hanging up. It’ll be great.

Em dash count: 33

 

Next time on New Moon: Something is super wrong with Jacob but perhaps even more wrong with Bella in Chapter 10.