Twilight (Twilight, #1)

by Stephenie Meyer

When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it’s not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.

It was to Forks that I now exiled myself—an action that I took with great horror. I detested Forks. I loved Phoenix. I loved the sun and the blistering heat. I loved the vigorous, sprawling city.

interesting how zhe hatdes the cold and dark and loves fthe sun

I didn’t relate well to people my age. Maybe the truth was that I didn’t relate well to people, period.

lol

The nicest car here was a shiny Volvo, and it stood out.

nice easteregg

No one was going to bite me.

oh...

It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, trying to make conversation with seven curious strangers, that I first saw them. They were sitting in the corner of the cafeteria, as far away from where I sat as possible in the long room. There were five of them. They weren’t talking, and they weren’t eating, though they each had a tray of untouched food in front of them. They weren’t gawking at me, unlike most of the other students, so it was safe to stare at them without fear of meeting an excessively interested pair of eyes. But it was none of these things that caught, and held, my attention.

“That’s Edward and Emmett Cullen, and Rosalie and Jasper Hale. The one who left was Alice Cullen; they all live together with Dr. Cullen and his wife.”

Strange, unpopular names, I thought. The kinds of names grandparents had. But maybe that was in vogue here—small-town names?

I felt a surge of pity, and relief. Pity because, as beautiful as they were, they were outsiders, clearly not accepted. Relief that I wasn’t the only newcomer here, and certainly not the most interesting by any standard.

I’d noticed that his eyes were black—coal black.

At that moment, the bell rang loudly, making me jump, and Edward Cullen was out of his seat. Fluidly he rose—he was much taller than I’d thought—his back to me, and he was out the door before anyone else was out of their seat.

foreshadowinf vampspeed?

It wasn’t fair. I began gathering up my things slowly, trying to block the anger that filled me, for fear my eyes would tear up. For some reason, my temper was hardwired to my tear ducts. I usually cried when I was angry, a humiliating tendency.

relatable

“If I were lucky enough to sit by you, I would have talked to you.”

simp

His fingers were ice cold, like he’d been holding them in a snowdrift before class. But that wasn’t why I jerked my hand away so quickly. When he touched me, it stung my hand as if an electric current had passed through us.

In fact, I was sure there was something different. I vividly remembered the flat black color of his eyes the last time he’d glared at me—the color was striking against the background of his pale skin and his auburn hair. Today, his eyes were a completely different color: a strange ocher, darker than butterscotch, but with the same golden tone. I didn’t understand how that could be, unless he was lying for some reason about the contacts.

A low oath made me aware that someone was with me, and the voice was impossible not to recognize. Two long, white hands shot out protectively in front of me, and the van shuddered to a stop a foot from my face, the large hands fitting providentially into a deep dent in the side of the van’s body. Then his hands moved so fast they blurred. One was suddenly gripping under the body of the van, and something was dragging me, swinging my legs around like a rag doll’s, till they hit the tire of the tan car. A groaning metallic thud hurt my ears, and the van settled, glass popping, onto the asphalt—exactly where, a second ago, my legs had been.

iconic

“Bella, you hit your head, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

not the gaskighting

We drove in silence. I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I barely knew Charlie was there. I was positive that Edward’s defensive behavior in the hall was a confirmation of the bizarre things I still could hardly believe I’d witnessed.

I couldn’t believe the rush of emotion pulsing through me—just because he’d happened to look at me for the first time in a half-dozen weeks. I couldn’t allow him to have this level of influence over me. It was pathetic. More than pathetic, it was unhealthy.

His voice shouldn’t have been so familiar to me, as if I’d known the sound of it all my life rather than for just a few short weeks.

He was unquestionably shaking with laughter, as if he’d heard every word Tyler had said.

Of course he wasn’t interested in me, I thought angrily, my eyes stinging—a delayed reaction to the onions. I wasn’t interesting. And he was. Interesting… and brilliant… and mysterious… and perfect… and beautiful… and possibly able to lift full-sized vans with one hand.

“How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Appear out of thin air.”

“Bella, it’s not my fault if you are exceptionally unobservant.”

“You really should stay away from me,”

“I may not give you back, though,”

I didn’t feel like mentioning that my stomach was already full—of butterflies.

CRINGE

“What if I’m not a superhero? What if I’m the bad guy?”

“People can’t smell blood,”

“Well, I can—that’s what makes me sick. It smells like rust… and salt.”

“W...

“It’s not...

His voice was like melting honey. I could imagine how much more overwhelming his eyes would be.

“You know Debussy?”

LOL

“What happened to your parents?”

“They died many years ago.”

“The Cullens? Oh, they’re not supposed to come onto the reservation.”

“Do you know any of our old stories, about where we came from—the Quileutes, I mean?”

“Well, there are lots of legends, some of them claiming to date back to the Flood—supposedly, the ancient Quileutes tied their canoes to the tops of the tallest trees on the mountain to survive like Noah and the ark.”

“Another legend claims that we descended from wolves—and that the wolves are our brothers still. It’s ag...

“Then there are the stories about th...

“The cold...

“Yes. There are stories of the cold ones as old as the wolf legends, and some much more recent. According to legend, my own great-grandfather knew some of them. He was the one w...

“He was a tribal elder, like my father. You see, the cold ones are the natural enemies of the wolf—well, not the wolf, really, but the wolves that turn into men, like our ancestors. You would call them werewolves.”

“Werewolves have enemies?” “Only one.”

“the cold ones are traditionally our enemies. But this pack that came to our territory during my great-grandfather’s time was different. They didn’t hunt the way others of their kind did—they weren’t supposed to be dangerous to the tribe. So my great-grandfather made a truce with them. If they would promise to stay off our lands, we wouldn’t expose them to the pale-faces.”

“There’s always a risk for humans to be around the cold ones, even if they’re civilized like this clan was. You never know when they might get too hungry to resist.”

“So how does it fit in with the Cullens? Are they like the cold ones your great-grandfather met?”