BLOGGING TWILIGHT, part 4: Paging Dr. Acula

For the past two weeks or so I’ve been reading Twilight and reporting on my experience. This is part four. Part 1 is here, part 2 is here, and part 3 is here.

So over the holiday weekend it was twice pointed out to me that Wuthering Heights, Bella’s favorite book, has been re-issued for the Twilight set specifically re-branded as “Bella’s Favorite Book.”
Whoa. First of all, there is the nagging suggestion in my head that girls will read this book thinking it some kind of addition to the Twilight universe written by Stephanie Meyer. Like how JK Rowling released that thing about The Beetle and The Bard after the Harry Potter series concluded. I know that probably won’t happen. But what if it did?

Really I guess only good can come from this; a new generation of kids will be introduced to a book that is not always a standard in the high school curriculum. Even still, Emily Brontë rolled in her grave so hard she exhumed her own corpse. Her skeleton will be making a cameo in Breaking Dawn as one of Edward’s former lovers.

Chapter 3: Phenomenon

Bella wakes up to find Forks covered in a blanket of snow and her driveway coated in a sheet of ice. She debates about not even trying to go to school (maybe the absenteeism problem at Forks High is so great that administrators have given up; there is no other way to explain why their students seem to view going to school as completely optional) but she is excited to see Edward Cullen. She realizes this is “very, very stupid” (pg. 54).

“I was still frightened by the hostility I sometimes felt emanating from him, and I was still tongue-tied whenever I pictured his perfect face. (pg 54)

I feel like the emphasis ought to be on the former concern, but I doubt that it is. Bella has no problem with the icy roads, and in the parking lot at school she figures out why. Charlie has outfitted her tires with chains—an unexpectedly fatherly gesture that momentarily chokes Bella up. What a nice, real moment! Too bad it is interrupted a few lines later by a MOTHERFUCKING CAR CRASH!

A van comes careening at Bella when some idiot hits an ice patch (his father must not love him) and our heroine has one of those bullet-time slow-motion moments like The Matrix. She sees the car coming, recognizes that she doesn’t have time to move out of the way, sees shocked faces, including Edward, four cars away. Then SOMETHING hits her, but from the wrong direction. She slams against the pavement (smooth, Edward) but the van hits the corner of the truck and curls around it. Bella is in the path of destruction a second time. Then it gets a little weird.

A low oath made me aware that someone was with me…two long white hands shot out protectively in front of me, and the van shuddered to a stop a foot from my face. (pg. 56)

A low oath? What? Did Edward cast a SPELL? I read the next section a few times, because it’s pretty confusingly worded. It sounds like the van has popped into the air, because Edward’s hands are under the body and he swings Bella’s legs out of the way as it hits the ground. So basically the van almost managed to hit her three times. I think we have a new world record! Sorry, Brad Pitt:



It actually reminds me of a story the BU Head of Security told at Orientation. I was a transfer student and kind of pissed off that I had to be there (or at least, I was under the impression I had to be there) and even more pissed off that I had to stay in the dorms that night, when you know, I lived in the damn city, but I enjoyed this story.

You’ve got to understand that the BU campus is divided by Commonwealth Avenue, which is itself divided (two lanes on either side) by the green-line trolley with tracks leading in each direction. Students get hit by cars on Commonwealth Avenue all the time, because they dart across the street between classes; this is understandable. I stupidly took a bunch of geographically distant classes only ten minutes apart last semester and showed up late basically every day. I was late because I am not the kind of person who runs to catch anything. But I understand people who do.

If you’ve ever crossed Commonwealth Ave. without a walk signal you know that taxis speed up or change lanes to try and hit you when you do it. Or at least it seems like that’s what they’re doing. So the story goes that a BU student one day darted dangerously across the street, narrowly avoiding getting hit by a cab. As she jumped onto the sidewalk, she stumbled backward and was hit by a train, which bounced her onto the opposing tracks, where she was clipped by another train coming in the other direction. The momentum from the second train sent her into the street, where she was finally hit by another taxi. The moral: wait for the fucking signal (I’m paraphrasing). “She was fine by the way,” he added with a smile. “She was from Jersey.”

So anyway, Bella’s bullet-time Matrix senses abandon her, and on the ground post-crash she tries to sort out what happened. At some point Edward dents the car parked next to Bella’s truck, bracing himself against it or something. The insurance company is going to have a field day with this shit. “In the abrupt bedlam I could hear more than one person shouting my name,” she says (pg. 57). Abrupt bedlam indeed! Abrupt Bedlam is my new band name.

On the ground, Edward instructs Bella to stay put; she complains that it’s cold. His mood swings have apparently reached such a velocity that they occur between sentences now: “It surprised me when he chuckled under his breath. There was an edge to the sound” (pg. 58). I’m getting whiplash with this guy. Bella starts to recover her senses and demands Edward explains what the fuck happened (paraphrasing again). As always he gets defensive and angry, but not before he REALLY rolls out the old Cullen charm:

“Bella, I was standing with you, and I pulled you out of the way.” He unleashed the full, devastating power of his eyes on me, as if trying to communicate something crucial.
“No.” I set my jaw.
The gold in his eyes blazed. “Please, Bella.” (pg. 58)

Sex eyes, ACTIVATE!

But it doesn’t work, so he gets “abruptly exasperated” (pg. 58).

They go to the hospital in an ambulance, Bella in a neck-brace on a stretcher, Edward up front. What? Is that allowed? In movies there is always a scene where someone’s trying to get in an ambulance and the EMT won’t let them. Can Edward really just yell “shotgun!” and hop in? Maybe it’s his father’s pull at the hospital—speak of the (probably a) Vampire, Bella is examined by the dashing Dr. Cullen upon arrival.

Wouldn’t it be great if Dr. Cullen’s first name was Acula? Alas, it is not. Bella’s fine. The boy who nearly killed her is wheeled in all sliced up—they put him in a hospital bed adjacent to Bella’s. Putting car crash victims and perpetrators next to each other seems like bad hospital management to me.

Bella finally gets a spare moment alone with Edward and proceeds to interrogate him about the crash. He does his usual joking-mixed-with-brink-of-violence-rage routine. Bella asserts that Edward stopped the van and lifted it off the ground. He deflects.

“You think I lifted a van off of you?” His tone questioned my sanity, but it only made me more suspicious. It was like a line delivered by a perfectly skilled actor. (pg. 65)

I laughed at that line because of, you know, perfectly skilled actor Robert Pattinson.

The argument reaches a climax when Bella gets abruptly exasperated and asks him why he even bothered and Edward gets equally abruptly exasperated and says he doesn’t know. Bella takes that to mean he doesn’t know why he bothered saving her life. I’m pretty sure that’s not what he means. Ask more questions, Edward. Ask her to clarify It saves everybody a lot of trouble

Bella leaves the hospital—ridiculously, most of the school has started an impromptu vigil in the lobby, even though they all saw her getting into an ambulance alive all of ten minutes ago. Why aren’t these kids in class? Forks High has the worst fucking administrators! Maybe something good will come out of No Child Left Behind when Forks High inevitably doesn’t make Adequate Yearly Progress and these assholes get tossed out on the curb.

Charlie brings Bella home and confesses en route that he told Bella’s mom about the accident. Bella is “appalled.” Never mind that thoughtful gesture with the tires, dad! I hate you again!