Previously: Jasper tells us a long story about baby vampire armies.
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Annie: It’s Wednesday afternoon. I know that, because Bella tells us so. Alice is planning on throwing the graduation party anyway, because the invitations have already been sent. They argue a bit about whether or not it’s appropriate to have a party with the impending doom hanging over them. Alice tells Bella that she will only graduate from high school for the first time once, so that’s cause to celebrate and do it right.
Kirsti: It causes me pain to say this, but I’m actually siding with Bella on this one.
Catherine: I mean, right? ‘For the first time once’ isn’t even a good incentive?
Annie: Edward is pissed that they’re talking about #vampirethings in the cafeteria where people might be able to hear them. Bella figures no one can really hear Alice over the noise of the cafeteria and I vote that Edward should get over himself. I doubt that these other kids give a shit about what they’re talking about.
Marines: Plus, they are mostly talking about a graduation party? And also, if I ever heard someone telling Bella Swan, “you don’t get to be a human again,” I wouldn’t bat an eyelash.
Annie: Bella asks Edward what they need to setup for the big vampire showdown and Edward tells her they’ve got to assemble the Avengers an army of vampires to help them. The sticking point is that their vampire helpers are the murdery, non-vegetarian type vampires, so we have to add innocent human lives to the list of people that are going to be at risk in order to save Bella.
Can we just shove her off a cliff and be done with this already?
Catherine: We tried that. She came back.
Mari:
Annie: Alice assures Bella that everything will be okay and then says they will need Jasper to teach them about ‘newborn elimination’. Killing baby vampires, everyone!
Edward perks up at the talk about killing newborn vampires, because he loves murdering things and has such a hard time having to not murder Bella, this will give him a chance to get those murdery urges out or something. IDK.
Bella’s stomach fills with splitters of ice. This girl really needs to see a doctor. (K: TRUTH.) (M: IDK. I think it would be an easy diagnosis if she says, “my boyfriend got happy about murdering things and it gave me a funny feeling in my stomach!”) She asks when they’re going to act and Edward tells her a week should give them enough time.
Bella is feeling sick at the possibility of Edward not coming home. Now it’s Edward’s turn to tell Bella that everything’s going to be okay. Bella decides that she could help and asks if they can turn her now. Edward morphs into a hissing statue and Alice tells Bella that it wouldn’t helpful, because newborn vampires are basically rabid mosquitos and that would make Bella an easy target, so Edward would get hurt trying to protect her. As Bella’s first priority is Edward’s safety, she gives in to Alice’s argument. Edward relaxes now that Bella isn’t pushing to be turned into a vampire and whispers to Bella that it’s not because she’s afraid, it just wouldn’t be helpful to turn her.
K: I don’t understand why Bella would think that she could help, given that she can barely walk in a straight line or get out of bed without injuring herself. Why would Vamp!Bella be any better??
Mari: MAGIC.
Annie: Alice’s power of contrivance turns up to change the subject. Bella’s mother has cancelled on coming to the party. Renee was going to surprise her daughter by showing up at the graduation, but something came up. Bella is almost gleeful that her mother can’t make it and says she is grateful for whatever went wrong that means her mother has to miss her only daughter’s graduation. Bella doesn’t seem at all concerned about what might’ve happened to cause this change of plans, because she is the worst human ever and only cares about Edward, then maybe her own well-being.
Bella goes home to listen to the voicemail her mother left her. Renee has to cancel because Bella’s stepfather had an accident on the baseball diamond and needs help, so she won’t be able to leave him.
Mari: This is the exact same thing that happens in Fifty Shades. Like, E.L. James didn’t even try to make the excuse a little different. WTF?
Annie: Bella tells Edward she’s glad that her mother will be one person that she doesn’t have to worry about getting killed. Edward rolls his eyes and she tells him that is is serious and she wishes Alice and Edward would take things more seriously.
Catherine: Especially since he acts like she’s made of rubber bands and bubblegum all the freaking time. And yet she’s not allowed to be worried about him? Fuck off, Eddie.
Annie: Bella returns her mother’s phone call, even though she knows it will be a long conversation. Bella puts up with Renee’s annoying apologies and she pretends to care about how her stepfather is doing. All the while, Bella is going on about how patient Edward is to put up with her taking time to call her mother. I can’t believe she needs to praise Edward about something so simple like ‘he let me call my mom’. Bella is trying really hard to convince herself that Edward is so great, when we already know he’s complete garbage.
K: I’m also baffled about the fact that this 18 year old girl is once again parenting her parents. Everything about her conversation with Renee is a mother not being disappointed or hurt by the actions of her slightly spacey teenage daughter and not a mother apologising to her daughter for missing graduation.
Annie: After Bella hangs up the phone, she closed-mouth kisses Edward and he lifts her up onto the counter and kisses her again, but he pulls away from her before their closed-mouth kissing gets too hot for him, because he doesn’t have perfect self-control.
Catherine: Not because he’ll fuck her, remember. But because he will murder her.
Mari: A good reminder. Just keeping everyone honest, here.
Annie: The makeout sesh must have Edward thinking about noms, because he tells Bella that he’ll be going hunting with half of the vampire family the next day after school and that Alice, Jasper and Emmett will be on baby-sitting duty. Baby isn’t happy with her Bella-sitters and instead asks if she could go to La Push instead. Remember when Bella didn’t have to ask Edward permission? Good times.
Edward isn’t thrilled, but he agrees that she would be safe there. Bella and Edward talk about drinking blood and hunting and he explains that human blood makes vampires stronger but Carlise won’t let them off their vegetarian diet. Something about not killing innocent humans or something. He’s such a fun-wrecker. (K: CARLISLE. You’re a fucking doctor. Raid the blood bank.) Bella is shocked that she is totally okay with killing innocent humans to increase Edward’s killing power. Edward tells Bella the problem with newborn vampires is that they’re still full of their own human blood and that’s why they’re so strong.
Ew and no thank you, please.
Bella asks how strong she will be and Edward tells her that she’ll be stronger than him, even strong than Emmett. He makes Bella promise to challenge Emmett to an arm-wrestle once she’s been turned. Glad we’re treating the vampire-turning thing so casually now. Cool.
Bella and Edward go to study and then she takes a break to call Jacob. Edward supervises the conversation and pets her hair. Jacob is thrilled that Bella is coming to visit and Bella is glad because going out to La Push is more dignified than being baby-sat. Then Edward insists on driving her out to La Push and handing her off to Jacob like he’s the non-custodial parent. Take that, dignity! (C: Accurate.)
All of a sudden without any real transition, it’s the next day? IDK. Anyway. Edward gets moody as they approach the hand-off point and Bella asks if Edward is reading Jacob’s mind. Bella asks Edward to tell her what Jacob is thinking and Edward says Jacob will undoubtedly tell her himself. Jacob honks his horn and Edward is mad that Jacob is being all impolite, but that’s just Jacob, according to Bella. She waves to Edward when she gets to Jacob’s car, and worries that Edward is really as mad as he seems to be, but she’s unsure because Edward is a manipulative, controlling, abusive asshole. Bella is sad that Edward and Jacob won’t just shake hands and play nice, but they’re vampire and werewolf. Meyer tries to be all poetic and arty, referring to magnets Bella was playing with earlier and how Edward and Jacob are similar. Whatever. Don’t got time or patience for that, Meyer.
Catherine: Stop trying to make that metaphor happen, Meyer. It’s not going to happen.
Mari: I get worried for Bella because she is clearly seeing that Edward is mad, but then she’s all, “IDK sometimes my eyes don’t work right.” Oh, honey. If you have to blame your eyes in order to excuse your boyfriend’s rages, that’s a problem.
Annie: Bella gets in Jacob’s car and he drives to La Push. Bella notices that Jacob is looking ‘different’ and for a change, that’s not direct code for racist descriptions. She thinks he looks ill. She asks Jacob is he’s okay and he tells her that he’s just tired. (K: Maybe don’t let the half asleep teenager drive, Steph…) He asks her what she wants to do and she says she just wants to hang out at his house for now.
They get to the Black residence and Bella is surprised that Billy isn’t there. Because his wheelchair means that he’s tethered to their house forever and ever or something. Ableist much, there, Bells? Billy is at the Clearwaters’, helping Sue out.
Jacob and Bella sit down to watch TV and Bella asks Jacob what’s wrong again. Jake tells her that he just hasn’t been sleeping. He tells her that Sam doesn’t trust the vampires so he has been doing double shifts. Bella is all ‘for meeeeeeee?!? No, you need sleep!’ and I want to punch her so hard in the face. With a chair.
This is all about you, Bella. All of this bullshit. This is your fault. Do not act coy. I will hunt you down and I will punch you.
Jacob tells her that he’ll be fine, because they have to sell us, as readers of this crap, on the plot that all these people have no qualms about risking their health, sanity and lives for this miserable person.
Jacob asks if they’ve figured out who was in Bella’s room and she tells him that they haven’t learned anything new. Jacob says he’ll come around, because he offered her eternal service and that he’s her slave.
Excuse me a moment.
Jacob is her slave? Really? Are we really going to go there, too, Stephenie? Are we playing some kind of racism bingo or something? Another awesome example of problematic themes. I just. I can’t. I literally cannot with this.
Okay. Bella tells him she doesn’t want a slave and Jacob asks her what she wants. Bella says she wants her friend safe and healthy and he interrupts her to joke that he just wants to track down a vampire that he’s actually permitted to kill.
Jacob asks Bella if she has any special plans for her graduation week and we get this:
His voice turned flat, and his face, already drawn, looked downright haggard as his eyes closed again — not in exhaustion this time, but in denial.
Bella, you fucking cheater. You know have no idea why his eyes are closing. Shut up. (M: If only.)
Bella tells him that she doesn’t have any special plans for graduation in a way that’s supposed to let Jacob know that her vampire plans are temporarily on hold. She doesn’t want to tell him and have to explain that she might be having some reservations about being turned into a vampire. And he doesn’t look up to having any ‘difficult’ conversations. She tells Jacob about Alice’s graduation party and Jacob makes a joke about not getting an invitation.
Bella tells Jacob that he’s invited, because it’s her party and she will invite who she wants to. She tells Jacob that she wishes he could come, because the party would be more fun for her if he were there.
Umm. Why is she with Edward again? She seems to have more fondness and affection for her friend Jacob than her stony boyfriend. But ooookay.
K: She seems to have more fondness and affection for her copy of Wuthering Heights than for her stony boyfriend, too.
Catherine: And at least she’s broken that in.
Mari: It’s probably more likely to kiss her back, too.
Annie: Jacob falls asleep, so Bella flips through tv channels and then starts to think. Great.
Bella thinks about how her high school education is over and how she connected it with her human life being over. Then she starts plotting about how she can get turned right after graduation as a way to avoid her graduation party, but that Edward is right, she isn’t ready to be turned yet. She goes on for half a page about how she wants Edward to be the one to turn her, but that she needs to be practical about the whole thing. Bella wants Edward to do it, to prove to Bella that he wants her enough to keep her. This is pathetic and gross.
That’s insecurity. Wrong reason to become a vampire, or make any life-changing decisions on commitments. This whole bit feels like an icky metaphor for virginity, though, so there’s the bright side there!
JK. There is no bright side to any of this. It’s all garbage.
But wait, there’s more. Bella reasons that she wants Edward’s venom inside her, ‘poisoning her system’ because:
…it would make me belong to him in a tangible, quantifiable way.
No, please, thank you.
K: Seriously.
Catherine: Blech.
Mari: GAG.
Annie: PSA time. Young women: you are more than your virginity, your worth is more than your virginity. You do not belong to anyone, you are not property. Just because you let a guy stick his dick in you does not change that fact. You belong to you. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Where is that brain bleach when you need it?
K: I *knew* we should have stocked up after we learnt about imprinting…
Annie: Anyway. Bella then goes on to think about how Edward will probably stick to his marriage clause, because he is trying to delay her vampirism and knows that while Bella has no problem being turned into an immortal monster, she is not ready to be married to him. (M: I want your POISON (penis) in my VEINS (vagina), not your ring on my finger!) Bella says she can’t imagine telling her parents and friends that she’s getting married. She says it would be easier to tell them she was becoming a vampire. That her mother would rather she become a vampire than a wife. Whoa, red flag.
Catherine: WTF? Why? Her mother is currently happily married. I’ve always been so confused about where this anti-marriage stuff comes from in Bella’s character. Is Meyer just trying to prove that she’s hip and down with the cool kids?
Annie: Or maybe she’s trying to show us that Bella is an evil heathen because she’s only interested in having sex, but without the whole marriage part?
I understand exactly 0.03% of the decisions Meyer makes, so.
Bella pictures a simpler time, being dressed in Little House on the Prairie-style clothes, and about how then people would’ve been totally cool with her getting married and that love was simpler. Ugh. Thankfully, Jacob stirs and almost crushes Bella with his big wolf body, so I don’t have to keep recapping Bella’s thoughts on marriage and virginity. Bella wakes Jacob trying to slide out from under him. He jumps up and is disoriented, then embarrassed for falling asleep. Bella tells him that it’s fine and she’s glad he got some sleep.
Jacob suggest they go for a walk, and that he’s upset he fell asleep on her, because he had things he wanted to talk to her about. They go outside and Jacob is still upset. Bella says that she thinks he’s blushing but it’s HARD TO TELL WITH HIS DARKER SKIN.
Mari: WHAT? NO. BROWN PEOPLE BLUSH, STEPHENIE.
Annie: Bella suddenly remembers how Edward was mad about reading Jacob’s thoughts at the hand-off point.
Jake tells Bella that he had planned on being a bit smoother when he did this, but he’s run out of time. Bella asks him what’s going on and he tells her that he wants to tell her something she already knows, but that he wants to be sure to say it so there is no confusion.
Bella stops walking and pulls her hand away from him. Apparently they were holding hands? I missed that somehow. (K: He pulled her off the couch and dragged her outside and then apparently never let go of her hand…) (C: Totally something platonic friends do. Totally.) Bella crosses her arms over her chest because she doesn’t want to hear what Jacob is about to say. He tells her that he’s in love with her and he wants her to pick him. Jacob knows that Bella doesn’t feel the same way, but he wants Bella to know what her options are.
Become a vampire and spend all eternity with controlling, abusive, dickface Edward or stay human and be with Jacob who can be manipulative and has a temper.
Those seem like shitty options. I almost feel sorry for Bella.
K: Personally, I’d take option 3 – leave town forever.
Catherine: Wholeheartedly seconded!
Mari:
Annie: If only.
Next time on Eclipse: Jacob anger kisses Bella as we hit the midway point in Chapter 15.
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.
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.
