Twilight (Twilight, #1)

by Stephenie Meyer

whose enthusiasm this story might still be unfinished.

I’D NEVER GIVEN MUCH THOUGHT TO HOW I WOULD DIE—

I stared without breathing across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and he looked pleasantly back at me.

Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something.

I knew that if I’d never gone to Forks, I wouldn’t be facing death now. But, terrified as I was, I couldn’t bring myself to regret the decision. When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectation...

In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town named Forks exists under a near-constant cover of clouds.

But I could see the sacrifice in her eyes behind the promise.

Neither of us was what anyone would call verbose,

Charlie is Police Chief Swan to the good people of Forks.

La Push is the tiny Indian reservation on the coast.

Charlie wasn’t comfortable with expressing his emotions out loud. I inherited that from him.

It was beautiful, of course; I couldn’t deny that. Everything was green: the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with a canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Even the air filtered down greenly through the leaves.

It was nice to be alone, not to have to smile and look pleased; a relief to stare dejectedly out the window at the sheeting rain and let just a few tears escape.

Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs. Maybe there was a glitch in my brain.

You could never see the sky here; it was like a cage.

It was impossible, being in this house, not to realize that Charlie had never gotten over my mom.

“I’m Isabella Swan,”

No one was going to bite me.

“I’m Eric,”

It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, trying to make conversation with seven curious strangers, that I first saw them.

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 didn’t look anything alike. Of the three boys, one was big—muscled like a serious weight lifter, with dark, curly hair. Another was taller, leaner, but still muscular, and honey blond. The last was lanky, less bulky, with untidy, bronze-colored hair. He was more boyish than the others, who looked like they could be in college, or even teachers here rather than students.

The girls were opposites. The tall one was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the kind that made every girl around her take a hit on her self-esteem just by being in the same room. Her hair was golden, gently waving to the middle of her back. The short girl was pixielike, thin in the extreme, with small features. Her hair was a deep black, cropped short and pointing in every direction.

And yet, they were all exactly alike. Every one of them was chalky pale, the palest of all the student...

They all had very dark eyes despite the range...

Though their noses, all their features, were straight, perfect, angular.

I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful.

“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.”

Jessica,

“They’re all together though—Emmett and Rosalie, and Jasper and Alice, I mean. And they live together.”

Her voice held all the shock and condemnation of the small town, I thought critically.

The Hales are brother and sister, twins—the blondes—and they’re foster children.”

“They just moved down two years ago from somewhere in Alaska.”

“That’s Edward.

Angela,

In fact, all the tables were filled but one. Next to the center aisle, I recognized Edward Cullen by his unusual hair, sitting next to that single open seat.

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

He was leaning away from me, sitting on the extreme edge of his chair and averting his face like he smelled something bad.

For some reason, my temper was hardwired to my tear ducts. I usually cried when I was angry, a humiliating tendency.

“I’m Mike.”

Forks was literally my personal hell on Earth.

He was trying to trade from sixth-hour Biology to another time—any other time.

It seemed like a haven, already the closest thing to home I had in this damp green hole.

began to feel like I was treading water, instead of drowning in it.

While I was lying sleepless in my bed, I even imagined what I would say. But I knew myself too well to think I would really have the guts to do it. I made the Cowardly Lion look like the terminator.

Mike, who was taking on the qualities of a golden retriever, walked faithfully by my side to class.

Mike followed, talking about an upcoming trip to the beach.

The isolation must be their desire; I couldn’t imagine any door that wouldn’t be opened by that degree of beauty.

I guess he considered me old enough now not to shoot myself by accident, and not depressed enough to shoot myself on purpose.

Mostly it centered around a trip to the La Push Ocean Park in two weeks that Mike was putting together.