New Moon

Edward crouches near Bella protectively. Carlisle, whose centuries of experience as a surgeon keep him calm, orders Emmet and Rosalie to hustle Jasper out of the house. Esme apologizes to Bella and follows them out. Carlisle and Edward move Bella to the kitchen table, where Carlisle pulls several pieces of glass from her arm. Edward and Alice leave; only Carlisle is immune to the intense attraction of Bella’s blood.

As Carlisle sews up the wound, Bella asks why he deliberately helps humans. He says he wants his life to matter so that “some people’s lives are better because I exist” (34). The son of a preacher, he still believes in God; he hopes that, through his good works, he’ll receive credit from the Creator toward some sort of absolution. Bella realizes Edward doesn’t want her to become a vampire because she’ll lose her soul.

Carlisle only turned Edward because the boy was dying of influenza. His mother, also dying and somehow aware of Carlisle’s nature, commanded him to save her son using his unique powers. He never regretted doing it because Edward is a wonderful person.

Alice finds her a clean shirt, and Edward drives her home. He’s remote; she blames herself, but he says she’s not the guilty party. She goes inside; carrying her gifts, he sneaks up through the window to her room, as always, unbeknownst to Charlie. They open the remaining gifts. Carlisle and Esme got them tickets for a trip to Jacksonville, where Bella’s mom, Renée, lives with her new husband. Edward’s gift is a CD of his beautiful piano compositions. They play it; Bella’s eyes well up. It’s the best gift of all.

They kiss, and Edward does so with a sense of urgency that reminds Bella of when they kissed goodbye just before she went into hiding from James. She falls asleep in his arms but with a troubled heart.

Bella wakes up feeling “hideous.” She’s slept poorly; her arm throbs; her head aches. Edward gives her a quick kiss and departs; Bella worries that he spent the night pondering the wisdom of their relationship. At school, he’s polite but a bit distant. Bella wants to talk to Alice, who can foretell things about the future, but Edward says she’s away with Jasper for a while.

Struggling with guilt about causing so much trouble for the Cullen family, Bella distractedly works her late-afternoon shift at Newton’s sporting-goods store. Returning home, she finds Edward and her father watching TV sports; again, Edward seems distant. Bella wonders if she and Edward should go away together for a while to let things cool down and give the other Cullens some distance. Either way, she senses uneasily a big change coming to her life.

Wanting to make a record of her time in Forks, which might soon be ending, Bella takes pictures, first of Charlie and Edward; they, in turn, take snaps of her with each of them. When Edward leaves, Bella walks out with him and asks if he’ll spend the night as usual. He says, “Not tonight,” and drives away.

The next morning at school, Edward is even more aloof than before. At lunch, Bella asks her friends to take pictures of each other with her camera. After school, she has the film developed while she works her shift, then brings the pictures home, where she places them in the scrapbook her mother gave her for her birthday. She puts a second set of prints in an envelope for her mom.

Edward is still aloof, but at the end of the next school day, he surprises her by asking if he can come over. They go for a short walk into the nearby forest, where he announces that he and the other Cullens are leaving Forks and that she can’t come with them. Bella protests: He means everything to her. Edward says he no longer wants to pretend he’s not a vampire and, therefore, no longer wants to be with her.

Bella whispers, “Don’t do this” (70), but it’s too late. Edward makes her promise not to do anything rash out of respect for her father. He says she’s a human and will soon forget about him. He promises they’re all leaving forever, including Alice, who’s been close to her: “We won’t bother you again” (72).

Edward disappears into the forest. Desperate, she follows but quickly gets lost. Unwilling to give up, she keeps searching. It gets dark; she stumbles and falls, then lies there for hours. Briefly, voices call her name, but she doesn’t think to answer. Later, she hears more voices and the snuffling sound of a large animal but again feels unable to respond. Finally, a man with a lantern finds her. He gives his name as Sam Uley; he picks her up and carries her to a group of searchers.

The group walks back together. Sam transfers Bella to Charlie, who carries her to his house. It’s well past midnight. Dr. Gerandy from town checks her pulse and asks if she’s hurt. Many people are in the house, including Sam, two other men from the nearby Quileute reservation, and her friend Mike Newton. She overhears Dr. Gerandy telling her dad that the Cullens had to leave right away because of an important job offer elsewhere.

The volunteers depart. On the phone, Charlie learns from his Quileute friend Billy Black that some reservation kids have lit bonfires on the sea cliffs at their home in La Push. Apparently, they’re celebrating the departure of the Cullens, whom they believe to be evil. Jacob Black, Billy’s son, once told Bella stories about vampires raiding the reservation and the Native men turning into wolves to defeat the “cold ones.”

Bella asks how her father knew where to look for her. Charlie shows her a note saying where she went; she can tell it’s a forgery by Edward. Charlie asks Bella if Edward left her in the woods; Bella says he departed within sight of the house, but she followed him into the forest and got lost.

She goes to her room and finds that the CD of Edward’s piano music and her pictures of him are missing. As he told her, “It will be as if I’d never existed” (84).

Four un-numbered chapters lie between Chapters 3 and 4. Each consists of a single blank page. They’re titled:

“OCTOBER”

“NOVEMBER”

“DECEMBER”

“JANUARY” (86-92).