Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined

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Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined by Stephenie Meyer

Beaufort, Beau, Swan, wearing his favorite Monty Python t-shirt, moves from beautifully bright and sunny Phoenix, Arizona, to live in cold, drizzly Forks, Washington, with his father, Smokin' Hot Billy Burke, I mean Police Chief Charlie Swan, after his mother, Reneé, gets married to baseball player Phil. Blue-eyed Beau hasn't spent much time in Forks for several years, but now he's here to stay. Walking through the airport with Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie in his smokin’ hot police chief uniform, Clumsy Beau accidentally walks into a punk and apologizes, so we know immediately that he is clumsy and apologetic. 

Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie is trying to make things nice for his son and has bought him an old, old truck from his friend Bonnie Black who used to go fishing with Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie and her late husband because everyone knows ladies can't go fishing without their husbands. Even though the truck is old, it's still pretty cool, especially since Beau doesn't have to spend the money he'd been saving on a vehicle now. He's worried that its loud engine is going to make him stand out at school and knows he's not cool though to pull it off.

Beau drives himself to school the next day and finds that even though he's not cool and very tall, he's not very different looking than all the others around him. He's not super tanned and blond like he thinks everyone else from Phoenix should look, but is instead so pale he's see-through like every other sopping wet Washingtonian. He meets over-achieving Erica who takes him to his first class, then goes through more classes barely remembering anyone's name or paying attention to anything, until he gets to lunch. That's where he sees them.

They are the startlingly beautiful Hales and Cullens, the foster children of Dr. Carine Cullen and her stay-at-home husband Earnest Cullen. Twins Royal and Jessamine Hale are honey blonde, pale and gorgeous and are somehow related to Earnest. Royal has a non-douchy manbun and Jessamine has an intense stare and would be a believable female action hero. Eleanor, almost as tall and definitely more muscly than Beau but with legs for days, small-shaved-head Archie and bronzy, chestnut-haired, long-eyed, dimply Edith Cullen are not siblings, but they've all been adopted by Dr. and Mr. Cullen because they distastefully can't have children of their own. Beau's new friend Jeremy tells him not to waste his time with the Cullens and Hales because no one is good enough for them, except each other, because they're all dating, except Edith.

Beau goes on to his next class and finds the only empty seat is next to Edith, whose name is actually spelled Edythe, not Edith, like he originally thought, who stiffens up and sits rigidly when he joins her at her table. A discreet pit sniff tells him he smells just fine. Edythe sits literally unmoving for the entire class period and then dashes liquidly away when the bell rings. Another new friend, McKayla, accompanies Beau to his next class and comments on how weird Edythe is. That's very nice.

After the rest of his classes, Beau goes to the school office to turn in a slip signed by all his teachers. While he's in there, he finds Edythe, arguing velvety, trying to switch her class with him to any other one, but the balding, portly male secretary is unable to help. Before she leaves, someone else enters the office making Beau's hair whoosh around. Edythe angrily leaves the office. Beau thinks she's so angry that she will shoot him. With a gun. But then she is gone.

Beau goes grocery shopping after school because Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie doesn't know how to cook and he makes dinner for them after OCDily putting the groceries away. They have some small talk about how his first day went and about the other students. He mentions the Cullens and Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie immediately goes on the defensive. He really respects beautiful Dr. Cullen and her husband and that they're raising so many teenagers. He says that others in town treat them differently because they are different, but he likes them. 

The next week at school, McKayla follows Beau around like a dog and talks about an upcoming beach trip and Edythe is nowhere to be found. Beau thinks that she dropped out to avoid him, but then she comes back a week later and is perfectly cordial. In biology, their shared class, they quickly work through identifying cell phases and then Edythe asks Beau a million questions. They talk about his family and why he moved to Forks, and then he realizes suddenly that her eyes are a different color than they were the last time he saw her, gold instead of black, and she becomes rigid again. 

The next day is icy and Beau clumsily slips and slides to his truck, which has chains on the tires, thanks to Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie, and so he drives safely to school. When he arrives, standing by his truck, he stares at Edythe who is a few cars away in the parking lot, then all of the sudden, a van slides across the ice and right toward Beau. Before he knows what's happening, Edythe is there pushing him out of the way and stopping the van from hitting him with surprising force and strength, then lifts the van away from his legs. She pleads with him with her golden eyes and her words that she was standing next to him the entire time and that she did not physically move any vehicles to keep him safe. He doesn't believe her though.

Soon enough an ambulance arrives and takes Beau to the hospital. Immensely beautiful Dr. Cullen checks him out and decides that he's well enough to go home and that he was lucky that Edythe was standing with him. So she's in on Edythe's strong secret, too. Beau sees Edythe and asks her for the truth about what happened, but she, with beautiful anger, tells him that he just hit his head and is confused, though he knows he's not. She refuses to tell him the truth and tells him he's just going to have to be disappointed.

A month or so passes and Edythe frostily ignores Beau, except to tell him that they shouldn't be friends. A school dance is approaching wherein the girls have to ask the boys to attend because otherwise the narrative doesn't fit and all the girls want Beau to go with them, but he decides he's going to Seattle the day of the dance instead. Edythe overhears this excuse and asks him if he wants to go with her to Seattle that day because she doesn't think his truck can make it there safely or on one tank of gas. Beau is confused because Edythe with her golden eyes has ignored him for weeks, but now she wants to drive in a car with him for eight hours? He says she's confusing and that he thought she didn't want to be friends. She clarifies that they shouldn't be friends, not that she doesn't want to be. 

Edythe invites Beau to sit with her at lunch after that and says that she's going to hell anyway, so she might as well do it thoroughly, whatever that means. Edythe continues being cryptic about them not needing to be friends but that she wants to be but she doesn't and Beau doesn't get it, which is not at all shocking. Confused, he says he's trying to figure out what she is, so talk turns to radioactive spiders. This scene is still almost exactly like the movie but if more people were wearing bad wigs, even with the what if I'm not a superhero, what if I'm the villain, careful not to say bad guy because that's too gender specific,* except that Edythe doesn't dropkick an apple and hold it awkwardly. 

Beau realizes that they're the only ones left in the cafeteria and that they're going to be late for their biology class, but Edythe is skipping today. Beau goes to class and gets queasy when he realizes that they're learning their blood types which involves pricking fingers and blood all over the place. Beau nearly faints, so McKayla takes him to the nurse's office. As they're on their way, Edythe swoops in and escorts Beau the rest of the way. She convinces the nurse that he needs to go home for the rest of the day, and seems to hypnotically convince him of the same, so she takes him. Beau follows Edythe to her car, watching her roll her hips, which is as hypnotic as her eyes.

On their way to Beau's, they talk about family stuff, like his mom and Phil and how she and her siblings were adopted. Beau invites Edythe on the beach trip which is that weekend and she says he's going camping with Eleanor and that his friends wouldn't have invited her anyway. When the trip time comes, Beau meets up with McKayla and all the rest of their friends at the sporting goods store McKayla's family owns and they head to First Beach at La Push. While they're there, some teens from the Quileute reservation, which is where La Push is located. One of Beau's “friends,” Logan, snarkily says how sad it is that no one invited Edythe and one of the Quileute girls says the Cullens don't come here. Puzzling. Another of the girls seems to recognize Beau, so she comes over to chat with him and introduces herself as Julie Black, Jules, daughter of Bonnie Black, female, husbandless fisher and former owner of Beau's old old truck.

Beau and Jules go for a walk around the beach and Beau asks what the other girl meant when she said the Cullens don't come here. Jules tells an ancient Quileute tale about her tribe descending from wolves and how the Cold Ones are their natural enemies on account of how they always slaughter everyone. It just so happens that the Cullens are Cold Ones, aka VAMPIRES. Jules says that the Cullens, if you are to believe the tales, are different from other Cold Ones and so they have a semi-peaceful relationship with the Quileute tribe in that the Cullens don't come here. She says that her great great grandmother who made the treaty made it with these same Cullens, supposedly, though now there are more of them, and that she's definitely broken the treaty, but Beau will take this secret to the grave.

After Beau learns this story and the beach trip ends, he goes back home, turns on his early 2000s computer and dials up his internet to read about vampires. His search isn't very fruitful because, you know, vampires are creepy, can't come out in daylight and they sleep in coffins and stuff. He does find a few details from some unique types of vampires he's never heard of that kind of resemble the Cullens, though, like shifting eye color, cold skin, super strength and speed, but really... really? Are they vampires? Beau decides that he just doesn't care one way or the other, but at least he has another theory other than being bitten by a spider that he can maybe talk to Edythe about at school the next day. Except she's not there that day. Or the next day either.

Beau's pretty bummed about Edythe skipping school, but the weather is very nice and sunny, so at least there's that. Jeremy and Allen invite Beau to go with them to Port Angeles to pick out corsages for the dance that Beau is expertly avoiding and go to the video game store and the movies like guys do. While his friends are ordering flowers, Beau nervously asks Allen if the Cullens often miss school a lot, and he says yes, especially when it's nice outside, so at least Edythe's not like, avoiding him. That worry resolved and his friends' corsages bought, Beau decides to skip out on the video game store before the movie and goes to a bookstore by himself, but he doesn't like the look of the dream catchers, crystals or the hippie running the shop, so he wanders off. 

After not finding another book store, Beau tries to walk back to meet up with his friends, but, and this is vastly different, he comes across a drug deal instead. The drug dealers, both men and women, are very violent, and a couple of them are the ones that Beau clumsily ran into at the airport. They decide that Beau is a rookie cop since he was with Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie earlier and that they have to kill him because he witnessed their drug deal. Luckily, as he's planning to zigzag run away from bullets and hoping not to trip, Edythe power slides up in her car, forces Beau inside, and speeds away.

Edythe drives them to the theater where Beau was supposed to meet Jeremy and Allen, and they're outside heading away for some reason. Beau apologizes for getting lost and running into Edythe. Jeremy seems jealously mad at Beau but kind Allen invites her to join them at the movie even though it's already started. Edythe asks Beau if he wants to see the movie and he does not, so she says she's going to ask Beau to take her to dinner instead and that she will take him home.

Edythe drives them to an Italian restaurant and slips the overly flirty host some money to seat them privately. Other than that, Edythe doesn't pay any attention to the host or waiter as they constantly fling themselves at her, but instead hypnotically sends them away and they crash into stuff in the background. He accuses her of using her long eyes and her dimples to hypnotize people and she says she just hasn't smiled so much lately and didn't realize that she had that effect on people. Then she forces him to eat and drink, maybe hypnotically, maybe not, and to also wrap himself up in Archie’s scarf that she was wearing because he is cold but probably actually in shock on account of the near murder not too long ago.

Beau asks how Edythe knew where he was and what he was doing in Port Angeles, which is when she reveals to him that she can read minds, but not his for some reason. How did she know where he was, though? By listening to literally everyone's mind all the time to track him and also by following his scent. That's totally fine and not at all creepy. Talk then changes to her almost killing him that first day in biology which would have been bad. Beau insists that Edythe has saved his life several times now, and then she says that she made him go to dinner with her so she wouldn't go track down and kill the drug dealers. Then Edythe takes Beau home.

On the hour drive back to Forks which takes less than half that time because she literally drives 100 miles per hour, Edythe talks about how she can't read Beau's mind and Beau thinks it's because he's a freak, but like... Edythe is a super strong, ice cold, non-eating, sun-avoiding mind reader. Speaking of all that, Edythe finally gets Beau to tell her his new theory about what she is (a vampire), and how he came up with it, (Jules and dial-up Internet). He's right of course about Edythe being a vampire which makes her mad, not because he found out but because he's not at all afraid of her. 

Now that he knows the truth, Beau asks more questions that are all about vampire mythology but conveniently not about what Edythe eats, but she tells him anyway. Edythe and her family are vegetarian vampires which means they don't drink people blood, but like, she really wants to drink his but she definitely won't. They don't sleep in coffins or burn up in the sun, but something else happens that they avoid showing people. None of this matters to Beau though, which makes Edythe kind of mad again, and she tells him it's a bad idea for them to be friends because she's dangerous. They soon pull up to Beau's house and even though she literally was just again saying that all this is a bad idea, she says she'll save him a seat at lunch at school the next day. 

Beau stumbles inside, only just now feeling the shock of being accosted by the drug dealers. He tells Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie, who comments on the weird way he's wearing Archie's scarf, that he's tired so he shambles up to take a shaky shower and goes to bed. As he's drifting off to sleep, he thinks about a few things that he knows for sure. “For one, Edythe was an actual vampire. For another, there was a part of her that saw me as food. But in the end, none of that mattered. All that mattered was that [he] loved her, more than [he’d] ever imagined it was possible to love anything. She was everything [he] wanted, the only thing [he] would ever want.”

Edythe picks Beau up for school the next day and drives 1000 miles per hour so they are at school, which is approximately two miles away, in seven seconds. Since Edythe picked Beau up, the rest of her siblings rode to school in Royal's ostentatious red BMW and so everyone's paying more attention to that then they are to Edythe and Beau arriving together. Jeremy sees though and they can both tell he is dying to find out exactly what happened the night before, and because a Jeremy is a dudebro, he expects that unchaste things happened. Edythe tells Beau that Jeremy wants to know if they're dating and what Beau really thinks of her, and she's curious about that too, so she's definitely going to be mind-eavesdropping on their conversation.

When Beau gets to chat with Jeremy, he doesn't mention the drug dealers and attempted murder. Instead, he tells Jeremy in the most boring and dull way possible that he and Edythe had dinner, which, uh, he already knows. Rather than Jeremy asking if Beau likes-likes Edythe and if they're going out again and if they're going to kiss like Jessica and Bella’s conversation, Jeremy is worse and dudebroish about it. Beau tells him about Edythe offering to take him to Seattle and that he probably likes-likes her way more than she likes-likes him. That much really does stay the same.

At lunch, when Beau is back with Edythe, who eats one bite of pizza instead of buying lots of food and putting it directly into the trash, they talk about his conversation with Jeremy. Edythe doesn't agree with Beau's like-like thoughts, then he talks about how she always sounds like she's trying to say goodbye and she thinks this is perceptive but it's the reason why he's wrong. If she can stay, then she likes-likes him more. Talk changes to spending the weekend together but not in Seattle, and Beau agrees to do whatever Edythe with her liquid-topaz eyes and dimples and sweet smelling breath wants to do as long as he can drive. Talk changes again to her going hunting and Beau wanting to watch and she says no.

They watch a movie in biology, which ... what would that even be? Beau doesn't know because he's hyperfixated on Edythe. For some reason, being in the dark classroom makes them both feel super charged with hormones, but then class ends. Edythe gingerly strokes Beau's face and he goes off to gym class. He hits himself in the head with a badminton racket and McKayla tells him that she doesn't like that he's with Edythe because she just snaps her fingers and he heels, so I guess she thinks he's a dog?, but that is not any of McKayla's business. The badminton was pretty embarrassing, but Beau also stages a dramatic scene wherein he tells Taylor, who has been telling everyone that they are going to prom together, that she can't use him as a pawn in her game to make Logan jealous anymore. It's pretty wild. The next day is pretty much the same, minus the badminton racket to the face and the soap opera performance, except Edythe asks Beau a billion questions about his likes and dislikes.

When they get back to Beau's house after school, Edythe is upset to find out that Bonnie Black and Jules are coming for a visit. Bonnie looks murderous and Jules is oblivious until Beau mentions who it was that just dropped him off. It's obvious that Bonnie Black has some feelings about the Cullens, which Jules attributes to the old legends and not the fact that Edythe is actually a real vampire, but Bonnie knows. Beau hopes that Bonnie won't say anything to his dad, and luckily she doesn't. 

The next day, Edythe picks Beau up again and asks a billion more questions, but lets Beau know she won't be taking him home from school that day. She and Archie are going hunting so she won't want to eat him when they're together the next day, so they're going to break into his house and steal his keys and truck to bring it to him, but of course they don't say any of that. School goes well enough, though McKayla is kind of a bitch about Edythe, but then it's over. Beau tells Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie that he's not going to go to Seattle the next day by himself, but he doesn't tell him what he's doing or who he's doing it with. He offers to not go fishing with his pals, not Bonnie of course because she's not allowed to fish without a husband present, but that's just silly.

Edythe arrives early the next day and they are accidentally dressed as twinsies in tan sweaters with white t-shirts underneath, both specifically described as scoop and crew necks, NOT SLEEVELESS UNBUTTONED BUTTON DOWN SHIRTS. They hop in Beau's truck and drive, but he doesn't know where they're headed. Edythe directs him to the end of a road where they get out and hike for five miles. Beau isn't a fan, but they eventually make it to a clearing in the mountains where Edythe, having previously stripped out of her sweater revealing her white tank top, not her specifically-mentioned scoop neck t-shirt, steps into the sunlight. Beau thinks she erupted in flames, but no, the sun is reflecting off her skin and is so bright that he literally cannot look at her, so instead he falls to his knees in worship of her beauty, which is why vampires avoid the sun. Edythe makes Beau stay away from her for a long time while she stands blaringly in the sunlight. Finally, Edythe lounges sparklingly while Beau looks on. He gently strokes her arms and breathes in her breath, which makes her go bonkers.

Before Beau can blink, Edythe is across the clearing. Then she starts ripping up trees and throwing them and running around really fast to prove that she's powerful. Then she rushes right back, inches away from Beau's face. They talk about how terrifying she is and how Beau is afraid of losing her. She tries to explain how delicious his blood would be by comparing it to alcohol and heroin, which all seventeen year olds are intimately familiar with. She talked to Eleanor and Jessamine to see if they had any similar experiences and they did, but they ended with violent bloody deaths, so that's not great. Edythe vows to never hurt Beau, declares that he's her life now, and then they say their famous lines about the lion falling in love with the lamb. "What a stupid lamb... What a sick, masochistic lion."

After this heartfelt exchange, they gently stroke each other some more. There are many mentions of heartbeats throbbing and more stroking and having human desires and you can't tell me that Beau does not have a raging boner literally all the time because he is a teenage boy. Then, in what will be a very awkward situation if he does have a raging boner even though it will be very awkward anyway, Edythe puts Beau on her back and runs full-on vampire speed through the trees back to Beau's old old truck. It is indeed very awkward for Beau because he's very tall and Edythe is very short and what probably because of the boner because it has to be happening. Also it's weird for a girl to give a boy a piggyback ride just in general. When they arrive back at the truck, five mile hike completed in literal seconds, Edythe kisses Beau, very sweetly, and he tries to eat her face, which is less sweet. With every interaction, it seems Edythe gets stronger and is able to touch Beau more. He's not nearly as in control, but he tries. Edythe drives them back home. 

On the way back to his house, Edythe tells Beau her story, about how she was born in 1901 and her family died of the Spanish Flu in 1918. She was dying as well but Carine found her and turned her. Then she turned Earnest next after he "fell" off a cliff (he actually jumped from the cliff after his drunken wife killed herself and their baby daughter, but we don’t find that out at this exact moment), then Royal as a companion for Edythe but that didn't work out, then he found Eleanor, then Archie and Jessamine found each other and then found the rest. Edythe also explains that Archie can see the future and that's how he found their family. He and Jessamine had already decided not to eat people and then he had a vision of the Cullens also not eating people, so they got together and now they're a great big happy family, which is pretty rare for vampires.

When they get back to Beau's, they go inside and Edythe reveals that she's been coming to his house to watch him sleep pretty much every night and he's just... fine with that, but he is embarrassed because he talks in his sleep, and seriously, he can't not have raging boners. Soon Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie comes home and Edythe disappears just in time. Beau rushes off to bed, making his dad think he's up to something, which he definitely is because Edythe is definitely in his room. 

Beau asks why Edythe and her family don't eat people and about her mind reading and Archie's seeing the future, and she explains that Carine has a theory of humans taking their strongest traits with them when they become vampires. Most of the family is simple: Carine has compassion, Earnest has love, Eleanor has strength and Royal has tenacity, but Jessamine, like Edythe and Archie, has something a bit more special. She can control the mood of those around her because she was so charismatic in her human life. They talk for a long time and gently stroke each other and sometimes kind of kiss which leads Beau into hinting about sex since Edythe can hear his throbbing circulatory system, aka she can hear his boners, but sex is not going to be a thing because Edythe would literally shatter his boner and then probably eat him. While Edward said he's a man and that was that, Edythe goes on and on describing all the reasons why she likes Beau, describing his eyes and his arms and his hair and then she hums him a lullaby and he finally goes to sleep.

The next day, Edythe takes Beau to meet her family. He's terrified of course, but not because he thinks they're going to eat him, but instead because he thinks they won't like him. They drive out to her house and it's open and light and beautiful and not filled with coffins at all. Carine, Earnest, Archie and Jessamine are perfectly lovely but Royal and Eleanor are nowhere to be found, apparently because Royal is upset with Beau for being a human who likes a vampire. Archie, Edythe and Carine have a silent conversation about some wandering vampires that they might encounter in the future, and then Edythe plays some piano then shows Beau around the house. 

They stop outside Carine's study where she has a giant cross that her father carved in the 1600s. When Carine was a young human, her father was a vampire hunting priest and she was turned as punishment. They go into her office where Edythe tells Carine's life story, how she was changed, how she didn't want to eat people, how she tried to kill herself but couldn't, how she became a vegetarian, how she studied medicine and became the stunningly beautiful doctor she is today. They also briefly mention her time with a group of vampires in Italy, obviously the Volturi, and they are all gender-swapped too, or they are replaced with their spouses, and there is also one mention of an entirely different vampire called Mele who can steal powers, which would be very cool, but since the Volturi couldn't get with the vegetarian lifestyle, Carine left for America. 

As they continue the house tour and head to Edythe's room, they get back around to Carine turning her. She mentions that she ran off on her own for a little while and ate evil-doers and then she came back to Carine and her family and has been with them ever since. They talk about music in Edythe's room and then, while we do not get the "hang on tight, spider monkey" line from the movie, Edythe does pretend to attack and eat Beau, but then Archie and Jessamine come in and ask Edythe to play baseball.

Edythe takes Beau home and is angry to find Bonnie Black and Jules there again. Bonnie is very upset at Beau being with Edythe but can't exactly say that out loud, and Beau tells Bonnie in not so many words that he knows that the Cullens are vampires and to leave him alone about it. They drop off some fish and leave. Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie is excited about eating the fish for dinner, but he's not as excited when Beau tells him that his girlfriend Edythe Cullen is coming to pick him up and officially meet him. He is still excited though. The meeting is fine and Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie is briefly mesmerized by Edythe’s dimples and makes fun of Beau a little about not liking sports and then they leave in a monster jeep to drive up into the mountains to play Vampire Baseball.

Vampire Baseball is pretty much exactly like regular baseball except it's very spread out and very fast and Supermassive Black Hole by Muse is always playing in the background, even now with the gender-swapping. The game goes well until Archie sees that the wandering vampires' approach is imminent. They scramble to kind of conceal Beau's humanness, but it doesn't really work. The three vampires, Lauren, Joss and Victor, try to insert themselves into the baseball game and then immediately want to eat Beau after the wind blows his delicious human scent around the field. When Edythe growls and steps in to protect him, Joss gets angry. They manage to split up while Carine tries to smooth things over, but Edythe reads in Joss' mind that she's a tracker and she wants to kill Beau just for funsies.

Edythe, Beau, Eleanor and Archie leave and try to come up with a plan to get Beau as far away as possible so Joss can't get to him. He insists that he has to go home because that's exactly where Joss is going to track him and when she gets there, she's going to find Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie and eat him. He comes up with a plan that kind of makes sense to lure her away from his house, so that's what they do. Beau pretends that he doesn't want to live in Forks anymore so he yells at his dad and says he's going back home to Phoenix. He packs up a bag and storms out to his truck where Edythe is secretly waiting and they drive off.

They go immediately to the Cullens' house where Earnest switches clothes with Beau and he and Royal take his truck to trick Joss into following them anywhere but to Phoenix. Beau leaves with Archie and Jessamine to actually go to Phoenix because they think that Joss will think that was just a ruse. Edythe, Carine and Eleanor will follow behind Joss and try to kill her while Earnest and Royal will return to Forks to keep an eye on Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie. It all goes really well until it doesn't. Beau, Archie and Jessamine drive to Phoenix and plan to stay near the airport because Edythe will eventually be flying there to meet back up with them. Beau calls his mom's house to leave a message to call him as soon as possible because he knows that Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie is going to call Renée and he needs to keep her from coming back home to Phoenix. 

While they're in the hotel room, Archie tells Beau that they are best friends and that he's seen a lot of their life play out together because he sees the present and the infinite future at the same time. He already tells a little bit of his backstory, but not much because he can't really remember anything, but he does describe seeing Jessamine and waiting 28 years for her to enter his life. They also chat about the others in the family a little, and they discuss what happens during the change when one becomes a vampire. 

Suddenly Archie has a vision of Joss going to a ballet studio that Beau recognizes from his childhood because his mom worked there, he didn't take ballet lessons because he's a boy, and, you guessed it, it's right here in Phoenix. Uh oh. Beau soon gets a phone call from his frantic mother, but then Joss is on the line. While she was running around all over the place being chased by Edythe, Eleanor and Carine, Victor went to Forks High School to check Beau's record and learned where he lived in Phoenix with his mom and told Joss and now she's there with Renée, holding her hostage. Joss directs Beau to give Archie and Jessamine the slip. He's supposed to go home and call a number on the fridge and eventually it leads to him meeting her at, you guessed it, the ballet studio.

Edythe calls around this time, too, to tell Archie that Joss got away and that she's coming to Phoenix to get Beau and run, so they go to the airport to wait for her to arrive. This is the perfect opportunity for Beau to escape. He asks Jessamine to take him to the bathroom in the airport and sneaks out another entrance, hops on a hotel shuttle bus, catches a cab, and heads to the house and then to the ballet studio. When he gets there, he hears his mother shouting for him, but it turns out that Joss got out the VCR and the home movies and has just been playing recordings of Renée's voice. She's not there at all and in fact is still probably in Jacksonville with Phil watching a baseball game.

Joss must really love home movies because then she gets out a camcorder and starts filming her torture of Beau. She wants him to beg for Edythe to come save him and to avenge his imminent death, which she will find to be a good time, but he doesn't play along. Joss explains that the Cullens have thwarted him once before. She once chased Archie all over the place but then he was locked up in a mental institution in the 1920s for his visions. A vampire found him and cared for him, much like Edythe does for Beau, but when she realized Joss was after him, she changed him into a vampire. Joss was no longer interested in Archie after that, so she killed his maker and left him alone. If only Edythe had done the same with Beau, he wouldn't be in this predicament, nor would he be in nearly as much pain when Joss promptly kicks him across the room and into a mirror, then stomps on his leg to break it. 

As Beau is writhing in pain and about to give in to death, he sees an angel before him, but wait, that's not an angel ... that's Edythe! And Carine! And Archie! Jessamine and Eleanor are there, too and together, they kill Joss. Beau is still in huge amounts of pain, but Carine sets his broken leg and gives him some morphine. He screams through the blinding pain that his hand is burning. It seems that Joss has bitten Beau! Edythe tries to suck the venom out AND HERE IS WHERE IT GETS REALLY INTERESTING. Unfortunately, Archie sees that Beau is too far gone and if Edythe were to continue, she would kill him. They let Beau choose whether he will die or complete the change and of course he chooses to be with Edythe, so she bites him to help speed up the agonizing process.

The change is horrible and full of burning and it takes three days. Along the drive back to Forks and all throughout the change, Edythe explains being a vampire to Beau. She self-castigates a lot, but Archie keeps her on track. She tells him the rules and explains about the Volturi, giving them more story than we learned earlier, but it's essentially that, plus the murder of Aro who killed his sister who was Marcus's wife, and the vampire Mele who took Aro’s powers and gave them to his wife Sulpicia who now rules the Volturi with Marcus and another vampire called Athenodora. Edythe explains that Beau will never see his family again and that she wants him to choose his lifestyle, but Archie interjects that he knows he'll choose to be vegetarian too.

While Beau is still burning and changing, everyone tells their own histories, so here is where we actually learn about Earnest's drunken wife and daughter and also that Eleanor fought a bear and lost and Jessamine was somehow in the army and that Royal was beaten to death by a rival boyfriend and not assaulted and left to die in the streets. Since he already knows Carine’s story, she tells a different one about Jules’s great grandmother who really was a real werewolf. 

After the change is complete and the burning stops, well, except for the burning thirst which is not nearly as bad as the full body burning so he can handle it if he doesn't think about it which is shocking to Edythe, Edythe takes Beau out to hunt, but he requests that they go alone. She thinks he's going to yell at her for ruining his life, but he's actually just worried Royal will make fun of him for not hunting right. Edythe is astounded at Beau being so Beau and handling that change so well and not being furious at her for killing him. That's just ridiculous. Yeah, it sucks that he can't see Charlie or Renée again, but he can be with Edythe and love her for forever, which is all she wants, too.

Not long after this, there is a funeral for Beau that he and Edythe watch from 100 feet up in the air in a tree two miles away. They staged an accident in Nevada with his truck and the corpse of a random dude missing his teeth and his fingers and Police Chief Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie does not question or investigate. Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie and Renée and Phil and Bonnie Black and Jules and Jeremy and Allen and Allen's dad the reverend are pallbearers and nearly everyone from school is there. The Cullens and the Hales are there, too, except for Edythe because she's too sad and/or high up in a tree. The funeral is pretty sad and everyone is sad, but then Bonnie Black looks Beau’s way, two miles away, 100 feet up in the air in the tree.

Everyone eventually leaves the funeral and then Beau and Edythe talk about how Edythe would've liked things to go. She never wanted him to become a vampire and she would have been content for him to grow old with her by his side, but that would get real weird eventually. Now though, they have forever, so they might as well get married. Beau asks about a different path where he could’ve become a vampire but still remained in everyone's lives, or at least Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie's and like, maybe had a love triangle with a wolf and then they got married and had a baby and then had a terrifying fight with the Volturi and stuff, but yeah, like that would've worked. wink

Edythe gets a phone call that puts an end to that very implausible storyline that absolutely did not create a five-movie franchise, and it's pretty worrisome. They rush back to the Cullen house to find the family in a faceoff with… three horse-sized wolves. Uh oh. Archie is upset because he couldn't see any of this happening because it seems he can't see past the wolves, but it is happening. The wolves are the Quileute wolves, led by Sam. Unfortunately this has to be explained to Beau who should definitely have figured it out, but apparently his human memories have already faded that much. Anyway, the wolves think that the Cullens broke the treaty and turned Beau, so he has to explain to them everything that happened and that he was bitten and left by another vampire to punish the Cullens for previously thwarting her and the Cullens saved him. The wolves, who were sent to run the Cullens out of town don't know what to do, so they request that they tell their story to the true descendent of the original wolfpack … Bonnie Black.

This is going to be tough for Beau who has only been around only vampires for a month and hasn't smelled humans, but like, a month has passed? Did he not contact Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie or anyone between the baseball game and now? And they're recently pretending that they found his truck with his burned out corpse missing its teeth and fingers? Was he on a missing person's list? Anyway, Beau, Edythe and Carine go to meet Bonnie, Sam, Paula, who carries Bonnie, hopefully like a baby, and another unnamed wolf. Beau tells Bonnie the story of his change and after first not even thinking that Beau is actually Beau, she finally comes around. The wolves will allow the Cullens to graduate so they don't look like they're skipping town after murdering Beau, but they insist they must move on after that. The vampires and the wolves agree. Before Bonnie and the wolves leave, Beau asks her to take care of Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie, which she would've done anyway, and also, if she's able to, to tell Jules that he's a vampire and he's fine. Bonnie agrees that she can tell Jules soon enough, which implies that she will be joining the pack, too.

After the meeting, Carine expresses how impressed she is with Beau not eating Bonnie, but he knew he could refrain from doing it because they all believed in him. She heads home to give Beau and Edythe some alone time. Edythe shares how extraordinary Beau is and he says he can handle anything as long as they're together. Well, they’ll be together forever, and that forever is going to be amazing.