New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
Bella Swan is walking through one of her most favorite places, a beautiful sunlit meadow in the middle of the trees in dreary, cloudy Forks, Washington, where she saw her boyfriend, vampire Edward Cullen, sparkle in a sleeveless white button down shirt for the first time. Across the meadow, Bella sees her grandma and waves, and her grandma waves back and walks closer. As they're getting closer to each other, Edward sparklingly comes to greet them, but no! Grandma will see him sparkling! Edward doesn't seem to mind and smiles as he reaches out to put his arm around Bella. As Bella introduces her grandma to her boyfriend, she notices her grandma is acting weird and mimicking every move Bella makes. Bella wakes from her nightmare when she realizes it's not her grandma she's seeing, but herself as an old old lady with a handsome sparkling young vampire boyfriend.
Bella wakes on her birthday and she's not at all happy about being a year older than Edward now. She rushes to avoid Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie and the presents he gives her and goes to school where she is greeted by Edward and his "sister," Alice. Alice tries to make a big deal about Bella's birthday, but she grumbles instead. Alice insists that Bella come over after school and Bella says she has to work, but Alice got her out of that, and then she says she has to watch Romeo and Juliet for class, so Edward says he'll bring her over around 7:00.
Edward and Bella go to class which they have all together now because Edward flirted with the old ladies in the office. They sit with Jessica, Mike, Angela and the other human friends at lunch because the rest of the Cullens, which are not called Hales anymore for whatever reason, have "graduated." School ends and Edward drives Bella home in her truck, complaining about its radio and how much he'd like to get her an Audi instead.
Bella and Edward watch Romeo and Juliet and he recites all the lines to her (aww!), but then after it's over, they talk about how easy suicide is, but not for vampires (eww). Edward tells Bella about the Volturi, the elegant, classic Italian vampires from Carlisle's painting that he lived with for a while but couldn't convince to turn vegetarian so he left. Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie comes home just before Edward takes Bella to the Cullen house for her birthday party and suggests Bella take the camera she got for her birthday to take pictures because Reneé will want to see them. Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie also says to say hi to Alice, who he's smitten with because she helped Bella shower after she nearly died.
The party at the Cullen house is extravagant with roses and a big cake and crystal plates and presents, one of which is a new sound system for Bella's truck that Emmett is excited about. As Bella opens a second gift, she gets an extremely bloody paper cut which causes Jasper to go bonkers. Edward throws Bella across the room into a pile of dishes and she gets even bloodier and then all the vampires, minus Carlisle, want to eat her. Everyone leaves while Carlisle doctors Bella, during which he talks about turning Edward at his dying mother's behest. Carlisle doesn't regret changing Edward but thinks Edward won't change Bella because he's worried about her mortal soul.
Edward takes Bella home and he's very awkward and stiff and Bella can tell he's different. She thinks he's just upset about Jasper nearly eating her and that he'll get over it, but he doesn't. School is weird the next couple of days because Edward is brooding and Alice isn't there because she's with Jasper. After school and work at Mike Newton's family sporting goods store, Edward comes over, stoically poses for photos and watches sports with Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie. Bella opens the rest of her birthday presents and gets a CD of Edward playing piano and tickets to see Reneé in Jacksonville. Edward goes home, which is odd because he usually stares at Bella all night. Everything is just really weird.
The next day, Bella thinks things are getting back to normal when Edward asks to come over after school, but she's exceptionally wrong. Edward takes her out into the woods behind her house and tells her his family is leaving Forks and he doesn't want to be with her anymore. Bella is relatively cool about this because she doesn't think she's good enough for Edward anyway. One of the last things Edward asks is for Bella to stay safe, for Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie's sake, and he tells her he's never coming back. Bella, dead inside, gets lost in the woods and is found hours later curled up in the fetal position by a very large guy she doesn't know named Sam. Sam takes her back to her house where she stays catatonic for months and has screaming nightmares every night.
October, November, December and January pass and Bella's basically been a zombie the entire time, so now Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie wants to send her to Florida. She refuses and fakes being human by asking Jessica to go to the movies with her in Port Angeles. Bella picked Jessica to hang out with because Jessica is really shallow and talks a lot about herself, so she probably won’t notice that Bella is a zombie and is only grunting in the appropriate pauses in Jessica’s talking. This doesn’t really work the way Bella planned though because Jessica obviously notices that Bella is not herself and hasn’t been since Edward disappeared. They watch the zombie movie and Bella finally realizes that she is a zombie, which is a step in the right direction. After the movie, the girls walk to a restaurant for dinner. Bella sees some bros outside a bar and thinks back to the night that Edward rescued her from the street toughs. Edward asked her to stay safe, but she’s tired of that. He didn’t keep his promise to stay with her forever, so why should she keep hers to stay safe? As Bella approaches the bro toughs, she suddenly hears Edward’s angry velvet voice telling her to stop and she relishes hearing him again. After she decides that these aren’t the street toughs she was looking for and they’re in fact just regular bros, she stops hearing the angry velvet, so she and Jessica leave. Jessica is clearly freaked out and drops Bella off at home without saying much to her at all.
The next day, Bella drives around aimlessly trying to find the angry velvet again. She goes by the Cullen house, but that doesn't help, and she decides that in order to hear it, she needs to do something reckless or stupid or dangerous or all of the above. She stops in a neighborhood and sees two broken down motorcycles for sale. Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie doesn't like motorcycles and has always told Bella that they're very dangerous, so she asks to buy them. Since they don't work at all, Bella gets to take them for free. She knows just the person to take them to to get them running again.
Bella takes the motorcycles to La Push and Jacob runs out to meet her shouting, "Bella! Where the hell have you been, loca?!" and then he spins her around in the air. Wait… no. Bella takes the motorcycles to La Push and sees Jacob again for the first time in approximately eight months and he has had even more growth spurts. When we last saw him, he was 6'5", but it is mentioned that he is taller still, so he's 6'7" at least. He is excited about helping Bella fix up the bikes, especially when she offers to let him keep one if he'll repair them and then teach her to ride. He gets started right away. Two of Jacob’s friends, Quil and Embry, come by, too, and Bella actually enjoys a day for the first time in four months, and that night she doesn’t even have a nightmare.
Time passes with Bella spending most of her time in La Push with Jacob or with Jacob at her house doing homework and their friendship grows. She even acts like a human again at work and school, which is shocking to her friends. One day, working with Mike at the sporting goods store, some hikers come in talking about seeing a giant bear in the woods, and then her friends talk about it at school, too. She shocks everyone when she chimes in on the discussion. Mike and Angela warm up to her again quickly, but Jessica is still put off by Bella trying to hang out with the bros from the bar.
Since things are going so well for Bella with Jacob, she begins to feel withdrawals from the angry velvet, so she tries to figure out a way to make it come back. She decides that she’s going to drive to the Cullen’s house, but instead of hearing Edward’s angry velvet voice, she just feels… nothing. She heads back to La Push and begins working with Jacob again, so the giant hole she feels in her chest whenever she thinks of the angry velvet or his family gets filled in with Jacob instead. At school, Mike asks Bella to go to the movies and they plan for a future group date since she’s not interested in going out with anyone and is currently busy with Jacob every moment she’s awake and not at school or work.
Finally the motorcycles are finished, so Bella and Jacob load them in the back of her truck and they drive off in search of a good secret place to ride them. Along the way, Bella completely freaks when she sees some guys leap from a cliff into the ocean, but Jacob assures her that everyone is fine and that that's what they do for fun in La Push. Bella thinks that might be stupidly dangerous enough to bring back the angry velvet, so she definitely wants to try it, but first, motorcycles.
As Jacob teaches Bella about riding, he seems annoyed by the guys jumping off the cliff and calls them a gang. Some of the guys used to be his friends, but then they started hanging out with Sam Uley, the leader of the gang, who is a few years older than Jacob and the rest. Jacob says they all stare at him like he's next, but he doesn't want anything to do with them. Bella gets worried about gang violence, but Jacob explains that they call themselves Protectors and that everyone loves them.
After this chat, it's time for Bella to try riding her motorcycle. As she zooms down the road, the angry velvet pretty much tells her she's being stupid which causes her to be stupid and crash into a tree. She doesn't care though because she heard the angry velvet again. Jacob rushes over, finds Bella with a huge gaping head wound, and takes off his shirt to stanch the bleeding, which Bella apologizes for and Jacob thinks is ridiculous. After going back to her house to get cleaned up, Jacob takes Bella to the emergency room for stitches. Sounding like a classic battered spouse, Bella tells her dad that she tripped and hit her head on a hammer. That night, after hearing the angry velvet again, Bella feels the hole in her chest return, but it's not as bad as it used to be.
The motorcycle riding and accidents keep happening so Bella keeps going to the ER and no one questions her weak excuses. The next time she gets home from the hospital, she tells Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie that she fell while hiking and Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie immediately tells her she can't go hiking anymore because there have been more sightings of the giant bear and hikers have started disappearing. Of course, Bella immediately suggests to Jacob that they go hiking instead of bike riding for their next adventure. She wants to find the sparkling unbuttoned sleeveless shirt grandma nightmare meadow, thinking it will bring back the angry velvet.
As they get ready for the hike and Jacob maps out a grid they'll use to find the meadow, they talk about seeing the bear, and Billy jokes that Jacob should take some honey with him, then they talk about outrunning the bear. Clearly Jacob and his dad aren't at all afraid of bears. After a drive, Jacob and Bella make it to the starting point they've mapped out, so they start hiking. Jacob talks a little about how Sam and his gang are looking at him again. After hours and miles of walking, they give up on finding the meadow for the day. Some time passes and Bella doesn't hear the angry velvet, so she becomes more determined to find the meadow.
Soon enough, it's Valentine's day and Jacob asks Bella to be his Valentine, but kind of in a jokey way because they're not a couple, even though, seriously, they pretty much are. Bella feels so comfortable with Jacob and he's genuinely nice and thoughtful, but she doesn't want to be in a relationship with anyone but Edward. She remembers talking to Mike a few weeks ago about going to the movies with all their friends, so she plans that and asks Jacob to come, too.
Unfortunately, everyone gets a stomach flu or just decides they don't want to go to the movies with Bella, so only Mike and Jacob end up going. It's really awkward because Mike is clearly jealous of Jacob and Jacob is either completely oblivious or exceptionally confident. Both the boys try to hold hands with Bella during the movie, but then Mike also comes down with the stomach flu and leaves the movie to barf. Bella and Jacob follow.
While Mike is puking, Jacob holds Bella's hand and she pulls away even though she likes him and likes holding hands with him. She doesn't like-like him though and tells him that the hands holding thing means something different to him than it does to her, but Jacob's not really deterred. As they drive a puking Mike home after the movie, Jacob keeps his arm around Bella's shoulder and Bella notices Jacob is really hot. He promises to never let Bella down or hurt her, but then he starts feeling weird, so he goes home with plans to call when he gets there. Unfortunately, Jacob doesn’t call, so Bella gets worried and calls him. Billy answers, saying that Jacob is too sick to talk to her and that she shouldn’t visit. That's fine because Bella wakes up a few hours after going to bed and she starts puking, too. She spends the next day sleeping in the bathroom. Luckily it's only a 24 hour flu, so when that passes for her, she calls to check on Jacob. He's still feeling bad and tells her that he'll call when he's better, but he doesn't call, so Bella thinks that he's realized he's wasting his time with her and is now avoiding her. She even drives out to his house, but that doesn't help. The giant hole in her chest opens back up and the nightmares come back.
Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie gets worried about Bella's screaming nightmares again, so he calls Billy to see what's up. Billy tells Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie that Jacob has mono, but Bella doesn't believe that, and then she gets really suspicious that Jacob is making stuff up so he doesn't have to see her anymore. Bella's chest hole and screaming nightmares get worse. After a week, even though mono can last a freaking month, Bella calls Jacob again. Billy tells her that he's out with his friends, which is devastating. She's creeping back into her zombie status and Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie gets even more worried.
Bella tells Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie that she's going to hang out with Jessica one day while he's out fishing, but instead of doing that, she goes hiking. By herself. With the giant bear on the loose. Bella gets the map she and Jacob worked on and finally, finally! finds the meadow. There is no sleeveless unbuttoned button down shirt and no angry velvet at all. Instead, there is Laurent. Laurent left at the end of book one when James went bonkers trying to kill Bella and tried out the vegetarian vampire thing for a little while with the Cullens' friends in Alaska. It didn't stick and now he's here to eat Bella. He said he's doing her a favor and that Victoria, James's widowed mate, was really looking forward to killing Edward's mate since he killed hers, even though he literally did not kill James at all.
As Bella faces Laurent, the angry velvet returns. Edward's voice tells Bella to lie about the Cullens moving away and to threaten Laurent, but that doesn't work. Before Laurent attacks, five giant wolves come out of the woods. Oh crap! Bella can't decide which would be worse… to get eaten by Laurent or to get eaten by the wolves, and she's also surprised because these wolves are giant and that they're not a bear. Laurent seems to be afraid of the wolves, which Bella thinks is ridiculous, and he turns to run. Before the wolves take off after him, one of them, a reddish-brown one, looks Bella in the eyes.
Bella runs away through the woods and, after a very long time, she makes it back to her truck and goes home. She tells Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie that she was out hiking and that she saw what has been attacking the hikers and that it's not a bear but five enormous wolves. Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie then tells Bella that he saw Jacob out with his friends but that he looked weird and also giant because apparently he had another growth spurt. If Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie is commenting on it, it has to be serious, so we can only assume that he is 7 feet tall now.
Alone in her room, Bella panics. Laurent probably immediately killed all the wolves and is probably out looking for her right now, or he told Victoria and they’re both looking for her. She doesn’t know what to do and is worried that Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie is going to get hurt before or after the vampires eat her. She also misses Jacob, but he’s avoiding her and if she goes to see him, then the vampires are going to eat him and everyone in La Push, too. Best to just stay alone forever…
Thinking more about Jacob later, Bella realizes that he has definitely joined Sam's cult. Why else would he ignore seeing Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie and avoid Bella? She decides she's going to La Push to confront him… or maybe rescue him. On the way, she sees Jacob’s friend Quil who confirms that Jacob has joined the cult. Bella confronts Jacob at his house and he’s indeed with the cult and he looks dead behind his eyes. He doesn’t want to see Bella at all and blames her being friends with vampires for why he is the way he is and why the cult exists in the first place. Bella doesn’t get it. The Cullens don’t even live in Forks anymore, so how can they possibly be responsible for Jacob joining a cult? Rejected, Bella goes home and tells Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie about Jacob joining the cult, so he calls Billy and pretty much threatens him that if any of the boys at La Push do anything to rezombiefy Bella, he’s going to come after them. Bella did hear the angry velvet again during her encounter with Jacob, so at least that was a good thing.
That night, Bella has a nightmare about Edward and Jacob, but then she’s startled awake when she hears a scraping outside her window. She’s terrified, thinking that it’s Laurent or Victoria, but instead, it’s Jacob, and he’s even larger than before. Probably 7’2” or 3.” Jacob apologizes for hurting Bella earlier in the day and tries to explain that he can’t tell her what’s happening to him and that the cult’s not so bad, but he’s literally bound from telling her anything about it. He asks her if she remembers the first chat they had on the beach when she and her friends came to La Push, and she does… he talked about the tribe’s history with wolves and cold ones, aka vampires, but she’s also very tired. He asks her to try to remember everything he told her because if she does, she’ll know his secret. He asks her to come see him after she remembers, or at least call if she doesn’t want to see him anymore, which she doesn’t understand. She goes back to sleep and dreams of Jacob coming out of the forest, but then he becomes the reddish-brown wolf. GASP! Jacob is a werewolf!
Bella leaves for La Push first thing the next morning, but Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie warns her that another hiker has disappeared and now he and some other officers and volunteers are going to go hunting for the wolves. Oh no! Jacob and his friends! But also… they’re clearly murdering and eating people… so should they be allowed to run free? Bella decides to warn Jacob, but also asks him if he can, you know, not be a werewolf and he’s like, no. He apologizes for not being the right kind of monster, and Bella tells him that she doesn’t care that he’s a werewolf, just that he and his pack are killing people. Ugh! Stupid Bella! Werewolves don’t kill people, they only kill vampires and they’re after a redhead now after killing the one in the meadow the other day. Wait… they killed Laurent?!
Bella explains about Laurent, Victoria and James and that Victoria is definitely in the area to kill her, but at least Laurent didn’t kill any of them or tell Victoria about Bella. Jacob decides to call a werewolf meeting to tell them this news. They also talk about werewolves being super strong and existing to kill vampires and also that they can hear each other’s thoughts in wolf form. Bella then tells Jacob about Edward’s mind-reading ability and Alice’s ability to see the future and Jasper’s mood altering power. She’s got so much good info for him about vampires, but she definitely feels like a traitor. But like… they left her and they’re not coming back, so what’s the big deal? Jacob asks if she feels like she’s better off without Edward and she says she is not. (But really? Really?!)
When they meet up with the other wolves, they’re mad because Bella is a vamplover and she now knows of the existence of wolves. They all have terrible tempers and shift into wolf form whenever they get mad, so that happens with one, Paul, and he explodes into a wolf. Jacob also explodes into wolf form to protect Bella. They fight, but they’re over it pretty much immediately afterward. They go to Sam’s house and Bella is warned not to stare at Sam’s fiancée, Emily, because he attacked her one time when he got mad and now she’s got hideous scars. Bella thinks she’s beautiful anyway, though she does call the scars a deformity, so that takes away from the wholesomeness a little bit. What bothers Bella about Emily is that she and Sam are so in love. It makes her sad about Edward.
The wolves and Bella make a plan to trap Victoria and, to make it easier, they ask Bella and Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie to spend all their spare time in La Push. Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie thinks it is weird that Bella wants to spend so much time there since she was literally just worried that Jacob was in a cult, but that was just a misunderstanding and now everything’s fine with him and his friends. It’s spring break now, but Bella doesn’t have much to do since Jacob is always off tracking Victoria. He tells her he’s going to take a break from tracking so they can spend a little bit of time together and promises that they’ll go cliff diving soon. They talk about him being probably the best werewolf because of his lineage even though Sam is older and the pack alpha. Jacob’s grandfather on one side was the last tribal elder and a werewolf and his grandfather on the other side was also a werewolf, so he’s double werewolf. He’s got more self control and can phase into a wolf faster than any of the others.
The day they plan to go cliff diving, Victoria shows up so all the wolves go off after her. Bella’s alone again and decides that she’s going to jump off the cliff by herself because she’s so lonely and she wants to hear the angry velvet again. It’s been a little while after all. Bad weather is rolling in, but Bella doesn’t even think twice about jumping into the ocean in the middle of a storm, so she does and immediately drowns. Plus side, she sees Edward this time in addition to hearing him. Her last thoughts are of him, so at least she’s going to drown happy?
Not long after Bella gives up, which took all of about eight seconds, she’s bashed into some rocks which turn out to be Jacob’s arms as he’s forcing water out of her lungs. His rock arms are strong and Bella is able to recover, and as Jacob carries her away, she sees a flash of red fire out on the water. Well, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Or does it? Jacob tells Bella that he was able to find her because he realized that Victoria would come looking for her at the beach because she spends so much time there. He was right. The flash of fire Bella saw on the water was Victoria’s hair. She was thisclose to catching and killing Bella! Luckily Jacob was there, and Sam, too.
Sam leaves them to go to the hospital where another member of the tribe, Harry Clearwater, is after having had a heart attack. Unfortunately, Harry doesn’t make it. He was one of Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie’s best friends, so Bella feels bad for doing all the reckless things she’s done in the past few months. What would Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie have done if she drowned today? Or died in a motorcycle accident? That would not have been good. Jacob takes Bella to his house so she can rest and while she sleeps on his couch, she dreams of Romeo and Juliet. She thinks about what Juliet would have done, you know, if none of the teenage suicides happened, and Romeo just left her. Would Juliet have been happy with Paris? Could she, Bella, be happy with Jacob?
Jacob takes Bella home later and she thinks more about just being content with him. Before anything can happen or she can decide, they arrive at her house and see Carlisle’s car waiting outside. Jacob freaks out and drives away because vampires, but Bella knows she’ll be safe with the Cullens and demands that he take her back. Instead, he jumps out of her truck and tells her he can’t help her because if the Cullens are back, the werewolves can’t be on their territory, so he hopes it’s not a trick and that she doesn’t die. Bella’s torn, but she loves vampires more than werewolves, so she goes inside her house to find Alice waiting on her.
Alice is very shocked to see that Bella is alive. Though apparently Edward asked Alice to leave Bella alone, she has still been keeping tabs on Bella’s future and she saw Bella jump off the cliff, but never saw her resurface. Bella explains that she wasn’t trying to kill herself, although she did immediately give up and resign herself to drowning, but Jacob pulled her from the water. Who is Jacob? Alice asks… Bella’s werewolf best friend. This explains why Alice couldn’t see Bella being rescued, evidently she cannot see any futures where werewolves are involved. Bella asks Alice to stay for a while, and she agrees.
The next day, Bella wakes up and hears Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie talking to Alice about what happened to her when the Cullens left and how completely miserable and zombiefied she was. He tells her that Bella finally started to come back to herself when she and Jacob began spending time together. Even though Bella’s doing better, Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie knows that she’s still not herself and that she’s probably never, ever going to recover from Edward leaving her. Later, Alice and Bella talk about what everyone has been up to since they all left and Alice tells Bella she did some research into her own history and found the asylum she was locked up in before being turned, and she found her grave. She didn’t find out much else though unfortunately.
The next day is Harry’s funeral, so Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie goes to that while Bella and Alice stay behind. Jacob and some of the pack come by for a few minutes, so Alice makes herself scarce to avoid Jacob wolfing out. Jacob tells Bella that if the Cullens are going to stay around, the wolves can’t protect her from Victoria until they leave, but he really wants to protect her and tells her that he’s always going to be her friend no matter who she loves. Bella begins to decide that maybe she should just be with Jacob, and he leans in for a kiss that she plans on not backing away from but then… the phone rings.
Jacob answers and his attitude immediately changes. The caller asks to speak to Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie and Jacob tells whoever it is that Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie isn't available and that he's at the funeral. The call abruptly ends. Bella asks who was on the other line and Jacob says it was Carlisle. Alice comes in shortly after and tells Bella that she's had a vision of Edward going to the Volturi to commit suicide by vampire. He found out from Rosalie that Bella killed herself, but she didn't, obviously, then, it turns out, that was Edward on the phone, so when he asked to speak to Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie and he's not there because he's at a funeral… well… it's not good.
Alice asks Bella to go with her to Italy to save Edward and she immediately agrees. Jacob is distraught and doesn't want her to go, but, as the saying goes, ALL VAMPIRES ALL THE TIME. Even though Alice warns Bella that they have a very slim chance of making it back home alive, it doesn't matter, so they rush to the airport. On the flight, Alice tells Bella about the Volturi, how they're thousands of years old, and how they are pretty much the only other large group of vampires living together peacefully other than the Cullen family. They also have special gifts, so they are definitely formidable.
Bella laments for part of the flight about how Edward probably still isn't going to want her even after she flies across the world to try to save his life, but she's going to try anyway. She tells Alice that she wishes her vision would have been true about her becoming a vampire, and Alice toys with the idea of changing Bella herself, but not right now because the change takes several days and is excruciating.
Alice spends the rest of the flight watching different versions of Edward's future. She finally relaxes when the Volturi decide not to kill Edward, but offer him a place with them instead. Obviously this is not what Edward wants, so he plans to walk out, shirtless, or perhaps wearing an unbuttoned sleeveless white button down shirt, into the sun at high noon in the middle of a festival in Volterra, the city where the Volturi rule. As soon as he exposes himself and/or sparkles in the sun, the Volturi will kill him.
When their flight lands in Italy, Alice steals a Porsche and they speed across the country to Volterra. Unfortunately there's a huge festival happening and it's going to be difficult for Alice to get Bella to Edward before he exposes himself. Alice drives as far into the city as she can, but Bella has to get out and run, which is definitely not the thing she is best at in life. Somehow Bella manages to find Edward just as the clock strikes noon and she's able to stop him from exposing himself, though a small child sees and points and giggles.
Edward doesn't believe that Bella is real and assumes that the Volturi have already killed him, but at least now that he's dead, he can be reunited with Bella. She convinces him that they're not dead, but they are in trouble, because soon a couple of the Volturi guards arrive to retrieve them. Alice shows up soon and they all retreat to the sewers and make their way to see Aro, Caius and Marcus, the leaders of the Volturi.
Aro greets Edward, Alice and Bella like old friends and he is immediately mesmerized by Edward's ability to not eat Bella and remain true to his old friend Carlisle's way of life. Aro can see every thought anyone has ever had just by touching them, so he knows how Bella's blood makes Edward feel. He also knows that Edward cannot read her mind, and he wonders if Bella is immune to his gift as well, so he asks to try. Aro grasps Bella's hand and gets … nothing. Aro is delighted by this and asks Jane, a tiny, menacing little vampire, to try her gifts out. Edward jumps in between them, and then falls to the floor, writhing in pain. That is Jane's gift, inflicting pain using only her thoughts, and, not surprisingly, it does not work on Bella at all.
Aro is delighted by this and asks Edward, Alice and even Bella to join the Volturi. Edward and Alice both have amazing gifts and it's entirely possible that Bella could, too, if she were changed, but Edward won't let that happen. When they all decline to join, the Volturi decide that Edward and Alice can leave, but since Bella is a human who knows about the existence of vampires, she has to be killed. Alice steps up to Aro then and lets him read her thoughts that include seeing the future where Bella is a vampire. That's good enough for Aro, so they're allowed to peacefully leave. The Volturi do slightly threaten to check on them soon, though.
Soon enough, they're on a flight back home. Bella refuses to sleep because she wants to spend as much time staring at Edward as she can because she's sure he's going to leave her again as soon as he can. When they arrive back in Washington, all the Cullens are waiting for them. Esme and Carlisle are especially thankful that Bella flew across the world to save Edward, and Rosalie actually apologizes for telling Edward that Bella killed herself before Alice could go and check for sure.
When they get back to Bella's house, Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie is furious. He hates Edward for what he did to Bella and tells him he's not allowed to step through his door. We all know that Edward uses the window, so when he's in Bella's room later, he's not technically breaking any rules. Bella is completely out of it since she didn't sleep for at least 36 hours, so when she wakes up in Edward's arms, she thinks she has died just like Edward did when she stopped him from exposing himself.
Once they realize they are both still alive, you know, more or less, Edward reveals that he wanted to kill himself after he thought Bella did because he didn't want to live in a world without her in it. It's literally Romeo and Juliet. He tells her that he didn't want to leave her, but he thought she would be better off without him. He was 1000% wrong. He tells her that while he was away, he tried his hand at vampire tracking, like what James could do before they killed him in book one. He also says he feels terrible about leaving Bella in Forks with Laurent and Victoria still lurking around. Well, Victoria anyway because the werewolves got Laurent. Edward's not pleased about Bella being friends with werewolves, but you know what… fuck off Edward. Jacob kept Bella alive.
Speaking of Bella's mortality, she thinks that Edward should be more concerned with the Volturi than he is with Victoria, but he's not and plans to keep Bella alive and human even though that's not at all what she wants. Surprisingly, she stands up for herself a little bit and decides to put her mortality to a vote with the rest of the Cullens, so they spider monkey over to his house. On the way, Bella tells Edward about all the dangerous stuff she did and why she did it, so she could hear his angry velvet, but then she realizes that she could hear him because he loves her, and it's convoluted and doesn't make any sense.
They arrive at the Cullen house and Bella asks them all to vote on her becoming a vampire. Everyone votes for her to be one of them except for Edward and Rosalie, Edward because he's selfish and Rosalie because she didn't want to become a vampire herself and wishes that someone had let her choose. Since the vote is in favor of Bella becoming a vampire and not at all because that's what she actually wants, Carlisle offers to change her after she graduates from high school if Edward won't do it. She really wants Edward to do it though. He tells her that he will, but she has to marry him first. Oof. She doesn't ever want to get married at all.
Later, back at home with Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie, he demands to know where Bella disappeared to for the three days she was gone. Instead of telling Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie that she flew to Italy, she says they went to LA, where the Cullens supposedly moved to, because Alice told Rosalie that Bella jumped off a cliff and Rosalie told Edward that Bella tried to kill herself and he wouldn't answer his phone so they could explain. Whoops, Bella forgot that Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie didn't know about her cliff diving, but everything gets wrapped up in a nice little package. The Cullens are back and she and Edward are together again, whether Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie likes it or not. Everything is back to normal, except that Bella is grounded for the rest of her life.
Edward and Bella go back to school and he helps her with college entrance essays and they make plans for her non-vampire future. One day after school and work, Bella comes home to find that Jacob is there with her motorcycle and some of his wolf buddies. He brought the motorcycle in hopes of getting Bella in trouble so she would be grounded and not able to see Edward anymore. Well, she's already grounded, which is why, she explains, that she hasn't been to La Push to see him. Obviously he thought Edward was responsible for that bit.
Before Bella can fight Jacob for getting her into even more trouble with Smokin' Hot Billy Burke/Charlie, Edward steps close, which makes Bella realize that Jacob is still growing so he's up to 7'6" now by our estimation, and he thanks Jacob for keeping Bella alive and safe when he didn't. This doesn't change how they feel about each other, though, and Jacob explains the treaty Carlisle set up with the elder werewolves, that they will live peacefully as long as no Cullen ever bites a human, bites, not kills, which puts a kink in Bella's life plan.
Bella's got some serious issues to deal with. She has to become a vampire or the Volturi will kill everyone, but if she does, her best werewolf friend will kill everyone, and Victoria is still out there, too, also planning to kill everyone. None of this matters to Bella though, not now that she has Edward back by her side.