Synopsis (from shmoop.com)
Bella is still living in rainy Forks, Washington with her dad, Charlie. She just spent a dreamy summer with her vampire love, Edward, and now it’s time to go back to school. She also just turned eighteen – a painful reminder that her human clock is ticking while Edward will stay young and handsome forever. To Bella’s major distress, Edward still refuses to turn her into a vampire.
When the Cullens (Edward’s vampire family) throw a birthday party for Bella at their house, clumsy Bella gets a paper cut while unwrapping one of her presents, and spills a little blood. Jasper Cullen, still struggling with his family’s no-human diet, loses control and attacks Bella. Edward fights him off but, in the process, the boys wreck the house and leave Bella with a gushing wound on her arm. Everyone except for the head of the family, Carlisle Cullen, and Edward, hurries out with pinched noses to escape the tempting smell of Bella’s blood.
Thanks to Carlisle’s profession as a doctor for the past 300 some years, he’s immune to the lure of human blood. As he stays with Bella, she complains that if Edward had made her a vampire already, these accidents wouldn’t be happening. Carlisle reveals that the reason Edward refuses to change her is that he believes vampires don’t have a soul and therefore no chance for an afterlife.
While Bella dismisses the Jasper incident as a minor family quarrel, Edward is visibly shaken and withdraws emotionally from Bella. On a walk in the woods, he tells her he wants a safe, human life for her, which is why he and his family are leaving town – without her. “It will be as if I’d never existed” (3.193), he says, and takes off.
Are you guys excited??
