Chapter Seventeen: The Game
Better Title: Eleanor’s Jeep
This is a good Twilight chapter, one of the few that stands out as being not a miserable collection of poorly chosen words. It might even by my favorite. But that’s like picking a favorite headache — even the best ones hurt.
Here we watch the vampires play baseball during the thunderstorm. It might be the one shining moment in which the vampires have genuine fun. During the rest of the series, the vampires are glum chums who whine about perfection the same way an 80s comedian whined about airplane food. But here they’re actually having a good time. More of this please. Less of the glares and schmaltzy comments about life and love and shadows and pain and longing and consequences and desire and warmth, and you can lose the whole baby-dating thing too.
Before the game, Charlie meets Edythe. And before Charlie meets Edythe, Bonnie and Julie show up and Bonnie warns Beau about the Cullens. Beau tells Bonnie not to worry about it. All of this is good, and I’m not even raising a sarcasm hand. I like Charlie, Bonnie, and Jules because they seem the most realistic in this batch of cardboard characters. When Charlie meets Edythe, his actions and dialogue don’t seem forced or as if written by a high school student at a sleepover. It’s nice.
Edythe and Beau then head to the baseball game in Eleanor’s jeep. Hi Eleanor’s jeep! My name is Dan! I bet you have missiles and can fly!
But the highlight of the chapter is the baseball game. Here the vampires show off their super powers. While I could argue (and I think physics is on my side) that the ball and bat couldn’t withstand the amount of force the vampires are using, let’s not worry about the details because this is the most pleasant chapter of the book and I deserve a break from the unending murmurs of despair.
And Eleanor’s there! Hi Eleanor! I bet instead of a bat, you use a lightsaber. Can I have a try?
Beau doesn’t play with the vampires. Instead he sits on the sidelines with Earnest (boy Esme) who also sits out because he’d rather act as umpire, or vumpire. (Get it? Vampire umpires? Brought my A-Game today, folks. Can you believe I give this blog away for free!?) Within a single minute of talking with Beau, Earnest mentions the loss of his daughter and how he tried to kill himself. It literally happens within three sentences of casual conversation.
Let me paraphrase…
BEAU: You don’t play baseball?
EARNEST: No. I like to watch instead. I keep things honest. The kids can get rowdy.
BEAU: You sound like my dad.
EARNEST: My daughter died, so I jumped off a cliff.
BEAU: Neat.
Meanwhile, Eleanor can hit the ball the hardest, because of course she can. (Hey, if you got Eleanor’s name for Secret Santa, will you trade with me? I already made her a gift. It’s a pair of nunchucks that are also sticks of dynamite. I made a card and everything. So will you trade? Thanks!)
The rest of the vampires enjoy their game of Super Baseball until Archie gets a bad feeling in his brain. In a scene that’s surprisingly tense and well-paced (for a Twilight book) we learn that the other vampires, the ones who kill people, are coming to the baseball field.
The Cullens don’t know what to do. They can’t get Beau to safety in time, which is complete pig crap, because it took Edythe microseconds to get him to the field, and when she did so, she wasn’t motivated by protection. I’m sure if she knew Beau was in danger, Edythe could break the goddamn sound barrier and get Beau to safety with time to spare to build a steel cage around him and cover him in a suit of brick.
But she doesn’t rush Beau to safety because we’re nearing the end of a Twilight book, when the author gets tired of her own story and just farts out some obstacle for the protagonist.
Archie says it won’t be easy to hide Beau because he smells. This brings up a great point: Teen boys smell terrible.
Throughout this book Edythe compliments Beau’s odor. I understood this when the roles were reversed. Edward liked how Bella smelled because girls smell nice. Have you ever smelled a teenage boy? The aroma is like stale sandwiches rotting in the sun covered by a thick, slick coating of budget brand Axe Body spray.
Maybe girls like that smell. But I don’t think you need vampire senses to know when a 17 year old guy is near.
(And to all the young men reading this, know that it gets better. The wretched stench will deaden to a manly musk by the time you graduate college.)
With the evil vampires lurking close, we finally enter the third act of this story. It also shows us how broken this story is because the villains are not revealed until page 290. That might make sense if the book were 1,000 pages long, but this is a short book. The threat should have been announced by page 50 if not sooner. That’s just piss-poor storytelling. It’s cheap. It’s giving us new things because the writer needed to end the story and had nothing else in her brain. It’s like telling a joke wrong. For example:
Knock knock
Who’s there?
You glad I didn’t say “banana?”
What?
And my first name is Orange. You should know that about me, too.
The evil vampires should have always been in the background of the story. Maybe Edythe could have said something about them in the beginning, or Charlie could find strange reports of crimes in nearby towns. This would also make it seem more plausible that Edythe is scared to be in a relationship with Beau. She knows what’s coming. The clock is ticking. It would make the book a bit more interesting and would add some overall mystery to the story instead of Beau and Edythe nearly kissing for 200 pages and then suddenly saying, “Oh yeah, now there’s bad guys!”
Am I asking too much?
Forget it, Dan. It’s Twilighttown.
Murmurs/Mutters/Mumbles: 10
Total: 83
Prediction
EARNEST: I like your jacket.
BEAU: Thanks. Keeps me warm.
EARNEST: Did you know my dog died? Hit by a car.
BEAU: Oh. I’m sorry.
EARNEST: I was driving the car.
BEAU: Oh no.
EARNEST: I was driving to the pet store to buy my dog a present.
BEAU: Wow.
EARNEST: Yeah. It was his birthday.
BEAU: I don’t really know what to say.
EARNEST: I don’t get to talk to many outsiders.
BEAU: No, it’s okay. I get it.
EARNEST: One time I saw my parents making love.
BEAU: Can I stop listening now?
EARNEST: Plugging the ears won’t help. I can still hear their passionate moaning.
MARCUS: Whats a good name for a turtle? Leaning towards Amadeus. Or maybe Turdle. So excited!
STEPHENIE MEYER: I shall name your turtle and the turtle shall be named Vactovangustinthew Mermeral.
EDYTHE: Her vampire power is the ability to name things.
EARNEST: I had a turtle once. [cries]
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