BLOGGING NEW MOON, pt. 10: I Am A Fugitive From A Werewolf Gang

I've been reading New Moon, by S. Meyer. Previous entries can be found in the directory.

Chapter 7: Repetition

After school, Bella gets a stupid idea and drives to the Cullen house. She says even she doesn’t know “what the hell” she’s doing there (Bella is almost swearing!? We’re approaching a level of believability with this fucking dialogue!) but at least she gets to channel Tom Waits again for a second:

The nothingness of my dream gnawed on my nerves, a dog worrying a bone.

And she’s full of rag water and bitters and Blue Ruin, and she spills out over the side to anyone who will listen, and she’s seen it all through the yellow windows of the evening train.

Bella’s trying to suss out what could have triggered Edward’s disembodied father-spirit back in Port Rape, and her working theory is déjà-vu. Plus, she’s a little worried about the cyclical feeling she got in school today and she kind of wants to verify that Chez Cullen ever existed in the first place. It does, although the vegetation surrounding it has over-grown to a ridiculous-sounding extent—it’s been four months and Bella has to hack her way through the growth like she’s uncovering Inca ruins in the rainforest. The sight alone freaks her out enough that she doesn’t linger—she flees back to La Push and Jacob. Bella is aware of the fact that Jacob is her new numbness, her new form of distraction, but she doesn’t care—she needs her “fix.” I’m glad we at least have continuity of misguided drug metaphors in this series. Maybe Bella should just try actual drugs, huh? At least that way she won’t bring Jacob down with her. Not that I am necessarily opposed to Jacob getting blue balls.

When Bella gets to La Push she and Jacob have this weird thing where they check to make sure they still like each other. Bella, wet blanket that she is, fears that she’s no fun to be around. Jacob is worried she’s just using him to get her bikes fixed. I had a friend named Tyler who was like this—he always told me I didn’t have to hang out with him like I was doing it out of pity. Tyler came from a kind of strange family—he and his mother moved away eventually to run away from his father—but probably more importantly we were about six years old. Bella and Jacob seem REALLY YOUNG in these chapters, so much so that I feel weird about making sex jokes every 200 words (not that I am going to stop). In a few pages Jacob pulls some sodas out of a paper bag in his shed and it made me feel a thousand years old. So young, these two!

(The night Christi and I went to see The Runaways we were at a bar beforehand and this couple next to us was having a meal and drinking sodas, and I was really confused and disturbed by that. Two late-twenty-somethings drinking soda? Were they alcoholics or am I?)

They both reaffirm that they like each other as friends. To prove her dedication, Bella proposes that next time they hang out they should do something “nonmechanical.”

“Like what?” Jacob said.
“Like practice blowjobs,” I replied.

Whoops, we just entered Jacob’s imagination for a second. She actually says they should do homework at her place.

“We’ll have to start being responsible occasionally, or Billy and Charlie aren’t going to be so easy going about this.” I made a gesture indicating the two of us as a single entity. He liked that—he beamed.

Hmm, what gesture, do you think?

They make a deal to be responsible and do homework twice a week, and then there is a weird break on pages 164-165 with three stars (* * *) separating the paragraphs. It’s weird because we only jump ahead to Bella getting home that night, so there’s no huge gap in time. Furthermore, on page 168 there is another break, one paragraph is double-spaced apart from the next, and there are no stars. I don’t know why the formatting is inconsistent; that sort of thing really bugs me. If I had to guess I would say it’s because the transition on page 164-165 occurs, obviously, between pages, so without the stars you wouldn't necessarily see the break. The one on 168 happens in the middle of the page; it’s much more visually conspicuous. Why not have the stars there anyway, for the sake of consistency, though? Plus, pages 164 through 168 blow through an entire week without any breaks at all! So why bother? Maybe we’ll change fonts for no reason in a few pages.

Bella goes to work, and Mike makes an awkward pass at her.

“It’s too bad that you had to leave the movie early last week.”
I was a little confused by his train of thought. I shrugged. “I’m just a wimp, I guess.”
“What I mean is, you should go to a better movie, something you’d enjoy,” he explained.
“Oh,” I muttered, still confused.
“Like maybe this Friday. With me. We could go see something that isn’t scary at all.”
I bit my lip.

Smooth, Mike. Bella puts it off because she has plans with Jacob already, but notably she doesn’t heartlessly shut him down, which would have been awesome.

“Mike, I wouldn't fuck you with Jacob’s dick.”-Bella Swan

Bella also manages to get Mike to rhetorically downgrade this (still hypothetical) movie trip from “date” to “date as friends,” which is an impressive little interpersonal communication moment. The whole situation reminds Bella of her first few weeks in Forks, when every swinging dick in town was hitting her in the face, but now everything feels like an echo—“an empty echo devoid of the interest it used to have.” Um, you said it.

Jacob and Bella hang out for a few days, sometimes fixing bikes, sometimes doing homework, sometimes banging on the hood of Jacob’s car. Except not so much on that last one. Sunday morning Jacob calls and announces that the bikes are finished, and Bella rushes over. She’s excited enough to disturb Charlie a little—as she jumps in her car he yells something Bella interprets as “Where’s the fire?” though she’s not completely sure. Is that supposed to be what he really said, or was it “What the fuck?”

Jacob is pumped up and mischievous about the bikes, and they load them into Bella’s truck and drive out of town—apparently Jacob knows the perfect back-road.

“I figured you guys were the back-road type.”-Quil Ateara

On the edge of the reservation, as they drive along the coast, Bella spots four dudes standing on the edge of a precipice (are we counting thematic echoes yet?) and, to her horror, one of them jumps off.

Somewhat irrationally, she slams on the brakes and tries to get out of the car. Jacob is like, “what?” and Bella is like “What the fucking fuck is wrong with you?” because he starts laughing.

How could he be so calloused, so cold-blooded?

Calloused? Not callous? I’m not really sure which one is right, but it turns out the guys are just cliff diving for fun. Bella immediately veers from horror to begging Jacob to go cliff diving with her right now. He tells her to wait for a warmer day, but I feel like Jacob should have at least pretended to entertain the notion for a while. It’s not like she has a bathing suit on under her clothes, so… hey, why am I trying to give Jacob advice? We all know nothing is going to come of this, and no one is going to come because of this.

Turns out the jumpers are Sam Uley and his friends—Jacob seems wary of them and Bella picks up on it. Sam et al. are kind of a gang, but like a gang in a musical or something. They go around enforcing the rules, probably while wearing denim jackets, and Jacob doesn’t like their self-righteous attitude. They call themselves “protectors.” Okay, that would piss me off too. Apparently they have recently received a lot of praise for running a meth dealer off the Rez. Meth dealer? Whoa, shit just got real.

“Mommy, what is meth?”—someone’s kid, because of this
“Just say ‘No’ to drugs.”—Sam Uley
“Everything in moderation.”—Alice Cullen

The La Push tribal council apparently meets with Sam & The Gang on the reg, and that is part of why Jacob is angry, too. I realize that I have no idea how governing on a Native American Reservation works; it sounds like they have ditched the chief system for a council, which seems like a good idea—decentralized power and all that. Is that a normal, modern innovation among Native American communities? Jacob explains that if there was a chief, blood-line-wise it would be his father, but it doesn't sound like he wants that; it's just a vague tributary to the river of his discontent. This information comes after a lot of prodding on Bella’s part, by the way. For a long time Jacob only seems able to say that Sam’s and the Protectors are a bunch of “tough guys.” I’m not saying Jacob is inarticulate, but at the Black’s house the Algonquin Roundtable is more like a TV dinner tray.

Eventually Jacob admits that it seems like Sam Uley is trying to recruit him for the gang—Embry disappeared mysteriously from school for a week and now he rolls with Uley and the La Push Kidz and is distant from Jacob and Quil. Jacob likens it to a cult, and he seems genuinely scared that he will be next. Where is Elena Kagan when you need her, huh?

Even Billy is no help to Jacob, and Bella thinks he’s about to cry. Aw, poor kid! Bella hugs him, which even I might have done in the same situation. Bella expresses disbelief that she could have this kind of connection with Jacob, physical and emotional. “I didn’t normally relate to people so easily,” she says. “Not human beings.” Wow, maybe you’re normal after all, Bella! Or, maybe Jacob is not human either, and maybe you will eat your words and it will turn out that you are just a maladjusted, antisocial monsterfucker! It could go either way!

Jacob cheers up at Bella’s embrace and starts touching her hair. Of course, he has to fuck up this moment. Keep digging that hole, Jacob.