Last week we ended on a relative high note as Jacob told off Bella, finally taking her advice to cease the torch carrying and move on with his life. I even praised him for it hoping that we finally had a real character doing something actual. I suppose one of the reasons that I like it so much is that it finally gives us what we've been told all along. Bella has repeatedly reminded us that she's not worth the affections of Edward, or anyone for that matter, yet every guy that comes along attaches himself to her so virulently that it doesn't match the words. We can forgive Jacob for him being so young which meant that last week's entry was well done because it not only finally matched Bella's opinion of herself but it also showed something that we haven't seen in this book yet, growth.
Unfortunately for every rise their must be a fall...
In her room Bella hears a scraping noise and immediately thinks of Victoria, curious that she doesn't think of Laurent given that she's actually seen him, but springing to life from bed she goes toward the noise. Suddenly she realizes that it's Jacob, which removes any sense of tension, plot, or growth that we read at the end of last chapter. How quickly everything disperses, negated to the democritean void. Before he is even in the room we know that he is here to apologize, and its utter bullshit. She might be mad but she is completely at fault. She was using him as a pseudo-rebound only to cast him away if even the most gossamer glimpse of Edward were to reappear.
Once in the room he actually does apologize. He's sorry he hurt her, but he had to because, "Sometimes loyalty gets in the way of what you want to do."
Bella's mistake was in looking for Jacob and finding him in front of his gang. Jacob's a straight gangsta now, and since the bitch be trippin,' makin him look like a buster in front of his homies he had to front. I tell ya, faithful readers, a gansta's life ain't fun.
Seriously that's his reason, although he says it a tad differently (but infinitely less amusing then the way I put it). Jacob has a secret, a new secret, but he can't tell anyone so this entire scene in Bella's bedroom makes no sense. He asks her to remember the stories he told her on the beach "the first day we met."
It actually wasn't the first time they met, they have both acknowledged that, but it's the first time we met them so I guess that counts? Great, now we have something new in this book: narrator/author confusion wherein Meyer as the author sometimes forgets that she's not the narrator. Ugh. Jacob gets frustrated because Bella can't remember the stories about the Quileutes, and frankly so am I. We know what Jacob's getting at, he's a damn werewolf, but Bella can't remember and Jacob won't tell her. Jacob's got that omerta code after all, but apparently dropping hints is somehow different that he won't fall under the "snitches get stitches" rule of gang life. I'm more impatient with Meyer on this one it's almost like she has to meet a page requirement or the editor will fail her. I'm kidding of course, because there is no way that an editor looked at this.
After deciding that Bella is too tired to listen to him, he exits the window. Bella is reminded of how nice it was when Edward creeped in to watch her sleep at night (seriously) but then Jacob is gone. Bella goes to sleep having her usual shitty dreams that are way too prescient to be real. Of course she wakes up screaming, and awaits her father to come in the room. He doesn't, he's probably fell asleep with his gun in his mouth again. More accurately he's probably getting sick of this happening every morning and has decided to ignore it. Finally Bella remembers the stories.
What follows is literally a page long flash back to the conversation from the last book. It doesn't need the entire context only the important bits about the wolves that turn into men.
"Werewolf,' I gasped."
Yeah, no shit. I'll give some credit where it's due because Bella really does question her world view. "What kind of a place was this? Could a world really exist where ancient legends went wandering around the borders of tiny insignificant towns, facing down mythical monsters? Did this mean every impossible fairy tale was grounded somewhere in absolute truth? Was there anything sane or normal at all, or was everything just magic and ghost stories?"
Well Bella, about those impossible fairy tales--you've already established you're an Intelligent Designer.* In all serious though, this is pretty good. It's curious that she doesn't go through this when she finds out about psychic vampires, or precognitive vampires. That's apparently normal, but werewolves? That's incredible.
WIth the knew knowledge of what Jacob is--eh, let's hold up here for a second. She doesn't actually know anything. Here belief that Edward was a vampire wasn't fixed in reality either. She just made up a bunch of assumptions and then concluded from that. Here she's doing even less than that, just going with a dream and then a story. That's not knowledge, although I guess it's a hypothesis since it can be tested.
She rushes out the door to see Jacob. Charlie stops her and in a situation totally ripped off of Jaws he warns Bella that a reward has been posted for the wolves' carcasses and that there's a lot of people with guns in the woods. Charlie leaves and Bella is conflicted. She wants to warn her father but she can't because...she never says. She does however know that Jacob is a werewolf, "I could feel it."
Feelings aren't evidence. Sorry folks but they simply aren't. Pseudo science feeds off of this notion that we are all experts because we think we are. As if reality changes because we think that crystals can heal cancer or whatever, but it doesn't. Just because Bella feels they are werewolves doesn't mean they are werewolves. That she happens to be right is immaterial to the message I'm trying to get across. She's worried because people will be shooting at her friend (legitimate concern). Then she goes off on this diatribe about how the werewolves had chosen a path of murder as opposed to the ones that didn't, i.e. the vampires. Yet, that doesn't match up with actual reality. In actual reality the werewolves didn't kill her, they chased off the one that was going to kill her. How much sense is this making?
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*Look, if she's going to soft ball me these insults I'm going to take them. At this point, it's really her fault.
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