When Jacob arrives, he's shirtless. In fact, he's almost always shirtless, which "bothers" Bella a little bit. But you see, clothes don't magically turn into werewolf fur or anything, so whenever Jacob phases, his clothes die a painful death. He does carry a pair of sweats with him everywhere he goes, which makes things slightly less awkward. Shirtless is definitely better than pantless, at least around friends.
Jacob sniffs around in Bella's room a bit, and yes, that sentence does sound just a little creepy. But it's really for a good cause; he wants to be able to recognize Bella's visitor the next time he's around. After getting a good dose of vampire stink, Jacob comes back downstairs to help Bella do the dishes. Yes, another exciting dishwashing scene! That's exactly what this book needed! Thrill as Bella washes and Jacob dries!
As Jacob asks Bella all about the ins and outs of having a vampire boyfriend, he accidentally cuts himself with a big knife. Bella freaks out, having forgotten all about the super-healing werewolves have. Of course, within a minute or two, Jacob's hand has stopped bleeding entirely. This scene was important, because it told us something we've already known for a whole book or so. Afterwords, Bella is careful to drench the entire house in bleach, lest Edward have to deal with that new blood smell that's oh so tempting to a sparklepire.
Before Jacob leaves, he invites Bella down to La Push for a bonfire later that night. Bella says she'll ask Edward, which leads Jacob to say the most perceptive line in this series so far:
You know, I saw this story on the news last week about controlling, abusive teenage relationships...Good man, Jacob, good man. Of course, Bella doesn't find it quite as insightful as I did, and tells Jacob that's his cue to leave.
Edward hops into the scene as soon as Jacob leaves. He has an envelope from him -- a big giant envelope from Dartmouth, addressed to Bella. She got in, presumably due to the Cullens buying the school (though even they wanted to waitlist her). Bella still wants to head up to Alaska and hide from Charlie up there, prompting her to complain about just how hard all this deception stuff is. Edward responds by saying...
It gets easier. After a few decades, everyone you know is dead. Problem solved.What a nice, healthy thing to say!
Bella asks Alice to bring back her missing stuff...the stuff that she noticed was missing at the same time they realized a vampire had visited her room. Edward says that Alice didn't take anything, which means it was the visitor who stole everything.
Wait, they're just figuring this out NOW? It wasn't supposed to be obvious to us that the missing things and the visitor were connected? Really?? Are you kidding me?!?
Okay, Ed, calm down, you still have a long way to go. Just breathe...
Edward is concerned about the growing number of vampire murders in Seattle, and thinks the Cullens might have to get involved soon. See, if they don't, the Volturi will, and they might visit Bella while they're in the scenic Pacific Northwest. And since she's not sparkling yet, that would be an issue. But they're not going to deal with it quite yet, because that's not nearly dramatic enough, and we haven't made the inevitable connection between all of the things that are going on around Bella yet. Don't worry Steph, I'll pretend to be surprised.
As the chapter ends, Bella decides to head out to the bonfire, and Edward is okay with it -- as long as he can drive her to the border of werewolfland and meet Jacob there. All parties agree to this transaction, which reminds Bella of when her divorced parents would hand her off as a kid. Ah, pleasant memories. One wonders if Charlie was the vampire or the werewolf.
Next time on Eclipse: werewolf story time!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment