There Might Be Blood (Chapters 4 and 5)

Fitting I would have Lady Gaga's “Bad Romance” stuck in my head.

Bella's recurring dream of Edward cops out immediately in the beginning of Chapter 4 without ever once delving into the unconscious mind of a girl so enamored with her martyr complex that she breaks into mental hives at the sudden attention of not one, not two, but three different boys at school. (I haven't bothered to choose images for them yet, as personality traits seem to be in short supply as a rule in Meyer's book. My go-to placeholder for non-Edward male characters is Rupert Grint's Ron Weasley.) But the random doesn't end there. Oh ho, no! Edward spends the next two chapters vacillating between ignoring the fuck out of our preternaturally clumsy heroine and making bi-polar overtures of friendship and sarcasm.

Because even the most mysterious of men don't know what the shit they are doing.

Bella wraps herself in a shroud of lies to avoid attending the wholly anticipated school dance with any of the three boys of indeterminate characterization. Edward, tapping into the apparent hive mind of Forks, WA calls her on her bluff to ditch the dance for a day-trip to Seattle, and invites himself along as her chauffeur. He crooks a finger at lunch one day to summon her to his table, and then teeter-totters banal conversation that he might be dangerous, or maybe he's a bad guy, and that she would be better off avoiding his friendship. Not that its going to stop him, of course.

In response to this heady draught of crazy, our lady of the lame-ass constitution develops a second character trait and passes out at the sight of blood in biology class. One of her dutiful boys takes her to the nurse but is bullied away so Edward can swoop her up and gallantly force medical attention on her, mentally dominate the school administration into letting her leave early for the day, and then man-handle her through the pouring rain to his car with the threat that, even if she runs, he'll just drag her back. At one point he tells her she resembles a corpse. Judging by his seduction methods, he must think she's Courtney Love.

While I appreciate the attempt to inject vague horror themes and a sense of unease into overall storytelling atmosphere, Bella's narrative has been leadfooting the anxiety since page one. Thus, what could be a nuanced threat of the blood-sucking horrors to come is like watching the American version of “The Grudge.” No matter what scene you're in, something is going to jump out and scare the bejeezus out of you for no goddamn reason.

And because I can't have a post without openly mocking Meyer's prose, “Fainting spells always exhausted me.”

Yeah, well diarrhea gives me the runs.