House of Night, Chosen: Chapter 18

Zoey and Heath continue to discuss what he remembers of the night Zoey rescued him. Matt and I had a long discussion about how Heath just sounds like such a fucking idiot. We’re told he’s a bad boy, but he comes across as this very innocent shmuck. Like a toddler stoner who was written by Adam Sandler.

“Oh, yeah.” He grinned his cute, bad-boy smile. “I really don’t remember much, that’s why I was asking you about it. Just teeth and claws and eyes and such, and then you. It’s all kinda like a bad dream. Well, except for the part about you. That part’s cool. Hey, Z, did you rescue me?”

Translation: Derp. Derp-de-dee-derp derp, and such, Z.

Just picture Heath as Billy Madison from now on. You’re welcome.

I chewed my lip while my mind raced. He didn’t remember hardly anything about Stevie Rae and her pack of undead dead thingies. Neferet’s mind block was obviously still firmly in place with him. And, I suddenly realized, it needed to stay that way. The less Heath knew about what had happened,the less chance that Neferet would give him a second thought and what would amount to a third mindscrewing, which couldn’t be good for him. Plus, the kid needed to get on with his life. His human life. And stop obsessing about me and vamp stuff.

Is the implication here that Neferet’s mind meddling is partly to blame for Heath’s stupidity? I honestly can’t remember if he’s being written any differently than before, but yeah, it sounds like a third mind meddle would make him dumber than Billy fucking Madison.

Smooth as ever, Zoey weaves a beautiful tale:

“There wasn’t much more than the papers said. I dunno who the guy was, just some crazed streetperson.”

THE PREFERRED TERM IS STREET RAT, Z.

Zoey and Heath go to sit on a nearby bench. In a very public area. That is still, I repeat, public despite being under a “big tree.” Try as she might, Zoey can’t seem to break up with Heath because he is so. Fucking. Stupid. Like unbelievably so.

“Heath, you and I can’t see each other again.”

His forehead wrinkled. He looked like he was trying to figure out a complex math word problem.“Why would you say something like that, Zo? Of course we can see each other again.”

Did anyone else think he was about to be like, “Of course we can see each other again. We’re not blind.”? I really thought that’s where this was headed. Also, why did Zoey need to specify that it wasn’t just a math problem but a “math word problem” as though it makes Heath seem like slightly less of a doofus.

Suddenly it becomes canon that Zoey and Heath have been in love forever and always (footage not found.)

“I won’t forget about you. Not even after I’m dead. And this is normal for me. Loving you is my normal.”

“You don’t love me. You’re just Imprinted with me,” I said.

“Bullshit!” he shouted. “Don’t tell me I don’t love you. I’ve loved you since I was nine years old.This Imprint thing is just another part of what’s been going on between us since we were kids.”

[…]

He was right about so much. [Ariel says: WAS HE RIGHT? Like in what sense of the word?] It had been the two of us for so long—and if I hadn’t been Marked, we probably would have gone to college together and then gotten married after we graduated. We would have had kids and lived in the suburbs and gotten a dog. We would have had fights once in a while, mostly over him being too obsessed with sports, and then we would have made up when he brought me flowers and teddy bears, like he’d been doing since we were teenagers.

I’ve never had the slightest inclination that this was how Zoey saw her life going if she hadn’t been marked. This isn’t Boy Meets World, you don’t get to just rewrite the past and use black magic on us to be like, “These two have been in love since they were babies! Even though when we first started the show this wasn’t the case at all.”

Zoey tells Heath she has a real boyfriend now, but this doesn’t deter him.

“If I have to share you, I will.” His voice had dropped almost to a whisper, and he looked away from me like he was too embarrassed to meet my eyes. “I’ll do whatever it takes not to lose you.”

It made something inside me break, but I laughed at Heath. “Listen to you! You sound pathetic. Do you know what vampyre men are like?”

“No.” His voice had gotten stronger and he met my eyes again. “No, I don’t know what they’re like. I’m sure they can do all sorts of cool stuff. They’re probably big and bad and all that. But I know one thing they can’t do that I can. They can’t do this.”

One thing before I tell you what Heath has done: I thought there were droves of famous vampyre men? Wouldn’t Heath have a pretty good idea of what they do and what they look like? This scene makes me want a male vampyre to come out and start juggling for Heath because I feel like it would blow his mind.

Right. Okay. So Heath pulls out a razor and slashes his neck to drive the ladies wild. Zoey explains that vampyre science dictates that Heath is basically like an unmilked cow right now, and if she doesn’t drink from him, it’ll actually cause him pain.

Zoey climbs on top of Heath – remember, still in a public place – and starts humping him/drinking his blood.

“Yeah, bitch! Ride him! Make him hurt so gooood!”

“That little white boy don’t have nothin’ for you. I’ll give ya somethin’ you can really feel!”

Heath’s grip on my hips changed and he was in the middle of trying to turn my body away from the jeering voices so he could shield me, but the anger that spiked through me was blinding. My fury was impossible to ignore and my response was immediate. I lifted my face from his neck. Two black guys were just a few feet away and getting closer to us. They were wearing the stereotypical ridiculous sagging pants and stupid, oversized down coats and when I bared my teeth at them and hissed, their expressions changed from sneers to shocked disbelief.

My general feeling is that if something makes me feel this uncomfortable and angry, it is pretty fucking racist. What on Earth did it achieve or add to the scene to write that paragraph? I believe 100% that there are gross dudes out there that say gross things. I encounter them a lot! But 1) Zoey and Heath were being REALLY FUCKING GROSS IN A PUBLIC SPACE AND HAVE NO MORAL HIGH GROUND HERE 2) You can write a gross dude without being so lazy you have to explicitly fall back on stereotypes. 3) It feels like the Casts are like, “LOOK. These guys are terrible. Just imagine this specific stereotype and don’t think too deeply about this at all! Relax, we’ve got this.” No, fuck you, Casts.

“Get away from us or I will kill you.” I snarled at them in a voice so powerful I didn’t recognize it as my own.

“She’s a fucking bloodsucker bitch!” the shorter of the two said.

The other guy snorted. “Nah, bitch got no tattoo. But if she wants somethin’ to suck, I’ll give it to her.”

“Yeah, first you and then me. Her little punk boyfriend can watch and see how it’s done.” With a mean laugh, they started walking toward us again.

[…]

“Wind come to me,” I commanded. My hair began lifting in the breeze that swirled restlessly around me. “Blow them the hell outta here!” I flung my hands out toward the two men, letting my anger explode with my words. The wind obeyed instantly, crashing into them with such force that they were swept, yelling and cussing, off their feet and hurled away from me. I watched with a kind of detached fascination as the wind dropped the two men down in the middle of Twenty-first Street.

I didn’t even flinch when the truck hit them.

We’ve been talking a lot about what happens when police officers kill unarmed black men, but we’re not talking enough about what happens when unlikable vampyre idiots kill unarmed black men with the power of wind and bad puns. I don’t mean this to sound flippant, I’m genuinely alarmed and pissed off by this. It might be fiction, but representation is still important. Even though I don’t like to use the word “important” in regards to House of Night. 

You guys, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read this scene. This unbelievable scene that was gifted to me by Nyx herself. It’s not every day bloggers who specifically write about bad books chapter by chapter get this kind of scene that is so fucking awful you just gape. It’s so funny you can barely laugh. SHE BLOWS THEM WITH THE POWER OF WIND INTO A ROAD AND A FUCKING TRUCK JUST LIKE HITS THEM.

And then. I shit you not. Heath lectures Zoey on how that was mean and she should be nice. She probably just killed two guys, and Heath is like, “That was mean!”

“You’re changing, Zoey. And I’m not sure what you’re changing into.”

My eyes filled with tears. “I’m becoming a vampyre, Heath. That’s what I’m Changing into.”

He touched my cheek, and then he used his thumb to wipe away the rest of the concealer so that my Mark was completely visible. Heath bent to kiss the crescent moon in the middle of my forehead. “I’m okay with you being a vampyre, Zo. But I want you to remember that you’re still Zoey, too. My Zoey. And my Zoey isn’t mean.”

I feel like “mean” should be swapped out for “murderous psycho.” I get that these two dudes were advancing on them with the implication that they would do something nefarious? But Zoey and Heath were in literally no danger whatsoever. They should have been embarrassed that they were humping and blood sucking on a park bench and just fucked off elsewhere in the park. Like maybe punching one of the guys if the situation escalated more, but using wind for such mean purposes! I mean, I never.

Heath reminds Zoey that they were never in any danger and that “You shouldn’t be mean, Zo. No matter what.” I don’t think Heath quite understands what qualifies as being mean, but I suppose those are fine words to live by.

Zoey can’t breakup with Heath, and they part ways declaring their love and agreeing to meet up in the near future.  I can’t see this coming to bite Zoey in the ass at all!

We have literally no idea if those guys lived or died, but at least two teenagers can continue to love and hump without fear of persecution.

Heath also kind of reminds me of Fry from Futurama. I love Fry, though, so I didn’t want to go down that route. How would you describe Heath? Is there anyone else he reminds you of?