In Which I Read Twilight: Chapter 20 -- Impatience · 2:55pm Feb 9th, 2018
Bella awakes in a hotel in Phoenix at three in the morning. Thinking back, her memories of the trip are a haze, and she vaguely remembers falling asleep. Alice and Jasper sit and watch TV, waiting for a call from Carlisle about an update, any update. Bella has some anxiety over the Cullens going against James (five against two isn’t bad odds!), but Alice says their only fear is losing Bella, because:
Alice interrupted this time, touching my cheek with her cold fingers. “It’s been almost a century that Edward’s been alone. Now he’s found you. You can’t see the changes that we see, we who have been with him for so long. Do you think any of us want to look into his eyes for the next hundred years if he loses you?”
I almost feel like I should start making reaction pictures every time it’s mentioned how terrible it’d be if Bella and Edward were separated. Or at least make a tally. I wish I’d started earlier.
After a few summarized paragraphs of waiting and nothing happening, Bella asks Alice how one becomes a vampire. Alice explains that vampires are venomous, and the venom causes severe pain in whoever it’s injected. Normally, this gives the vampire ample time to feed, but if the venom is left to spread, it moves throughout the body, changing it, until the heart stops beating. Kind of a strange type of venom, one that causes its victim to grow stronger if left alone rather than just paralyzing them or whatever. Also, bringing this up this late in the book means you might as well scream, “THIS IS GOING TO BE IMPORTANT LATER!”
A little more waiting, and Alice suddenly gets a vision of James. How convenient. He’s in a dark room watching TV. She doesn’t know where it is, but she does know that it means James won’t be caught by the other Cullens. As if on cue, the phone rings. James has indeed eluded the Cullens and gotten on a plane to somewhere. However, Victoria (who is still only referred to as “the female”) is still in Forks, sniffing around, trying to figure out where Bella may have gone.
Alice sketches out the room, trying to figure out where it might be. Bella recognizes it as her old ballet studio near her house. She admits it might be any similar-looking ballet studio, but hers is the one that came to mind. Bella quickly gets the idea to call Renee; if James is at the ballet studio, then if Renee arrives home, he might kidnap her to get to Bella. But Renee doesn’t have a permanent number except at the house, although-
Rant time. Why doesn’t she have a cell phone? That’d qualify as “permanent”, I think. She moves around a lot, jumping from state to state, because her husband’s job requires it. But no cell phone? Let’s say she doesn’t have one. Okay, no cell phone. Why doesn’t she keep up with Bella at all? Say, in her emails: “Bella, I’m staying at Such-and-Such Hotel. If you want to talk, you can call me at this number. But don’t forget the time difference.” Renee was established in the earlier chapters as a massive worrywart. That’s the sort of thing she’d definitely do. But apparently, she didn’t. Why not? Because it’d break the plot in two, I guess. Cell phones can kill so many plots. (One of the great things about writing pony horror? Equestria has no cell phones. You don’t need to worry about outside contact when locking a bunch of people in an out-of-the-way location.) End rant.
-permanent number except at the house, although she’s supposed to check her messages there regularly. (Side note: accessing the answering machine remotely really is a thing that can be done if set up, not just something the book pulled out of its ass.) Bella leaves a message on her home phone, telling Renee to call her at the hotel room’s number. That settled, and with nothing left to do but wait, Bella nervously sits back, with terrifying thoughts running through her head, and eventually falls asleep again.
You know, for the climax of the book approaching, not much is really happening. All of the above? Thirteen pages. I wish Meyer knew a thing or two about pacing (and a lot of other things, but right now, pacing is near the top).
When a book is so bad, reading about reading it becomes painful...
Can you put together a running total of the things you've learned from reading this steaming pile?
4793085
Once this particular book is done. Granted, a lot of the things I've learned are fairly basic, but they're still there, and expounding on them all in the comments section could get a little awkward.
Cell phones are just an expansion of how healthy communication can kill a lot of terrible plots. This becomes more and more true as the world shrinks.
I guess you and Meyer were both impatient for the book to end! :V