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 students living in this sunless town. Paler than
me, the albino. They all had very dark eyes despite the range in hair
tones. They also had dark shadows under those eyes — purplish, bruiselike
shadows. As if they were all suffering from a sleepless night, or almost
done recovering from a broken nose. Though their noses, all their
features, were straight, perfect, angular.
But all this is not why I couldn't look away.
I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all
devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to
see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or
painted by an old master as the face of an angel. It was hard to decide
who was the most beautiful — maybe the perfect blond girl, or the
bronze-haired boy.
They were all looking away — away from each other, away from the other
students, away from anything in particular as far as I could tell. As I
watched, the small girl rose with her tray — unopened soda, unbitten
apple — and walked away with a quick, graceful lope that belonged on a
runway. I watched, amazed at her lithe dancer's step, till she dumped her
tray and glided through the back door, faster than I would have thought
possible. My eyes darted back to the others, who sat unchanging.
"Who are they?" I asked the girl from my Spanish class, whose name I'd
forgotten.
As she looked up to see who I meant — though already knowing, probably,
from my tone — suddenly he looked at her, the thinner one, the boyish
one, the youngest, perhaps. He looked at my neighbor for just a fraction
of a second, and then his dark eyes flickered to mine.
He looked away quickly, more quickly than I could, though in a flush of
embarrassment I dropped my eyes at once. In that brief flash of a glance,
his face held nothing of interest — it was as if she had called his name,
and he'd looked up in involuntary response, already having decided not to
answer.
My neighbor giggled in embarrassment, looking at the table like I did.
"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." She said this under her breath.
I glanced sideways at the beautiful boy, who was looking at his tray now,
picking a bagel to pieces with long, pale fingers. His mouth was moving
very quickly, his perfect lips barely opening. The other three still
looked away, and yet I felt he was speaking quietly to them.
Strange, unpopular names, I thought. The kinds of names grandparents had.
But maybe that was in vogue here — small town names? I finally remembered
that my neighbor was called Jessica, a perfectly common name. There were
two girls named Jessica in my History class back home.
"They are… very nice-looking." I struggled with the conspicuous
understatement.
"Yes!" Jessica agreed with another giggle. "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. But, if I was being honest, I had to admit
that even in Phoenix, it would cause gossip.
"Which ones are the Cullens?" I asked. "They don't look related…"
"Oh, they're not. Dr. Cullen is really young, in his twenties or early
thirties. They're all adopted. The Hales are brother and sister, twins —
the blondes — and they're foster children."
"They look a little old for foster children."
"They are now, Jasper and Rosalie are both eighteen, but they've been
with Mrs. Cullen since they were eight. She's their aunt or something
like that."
"That's really kind of nice — for them to take care of all those kids
like that, when they're so young and everything."
"I guess so," Jessica admitted reluctantly, and I got the impression that
she didn't like the doctor and his wife for some reason. With the glances
she was throwing at their adopted children, I would presume the reason
was jealousy. "I think that Mrs. Cullen can't have any kids, though," she
added, as if that lessened their kindness.
Throughout all this conversation, my eyes flickered again and again to
the table where the strange family sat. They continued to look at the
walls and not eat.
"Have they always lived in Forks?" I asked. Surely I would have noticed
them on one of my summers here.
"No," she said in a voice that implied it should be obvious, even to a
new arrival like me. "They just moved down two years ago from somewhere
in Alaska."
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.
As I examined them, the youngest, one of the Cullens, looked up and met
my gaze, this time with evident curiosity in his expression. As I looked
swiftly away, it seemed to me that his glance held some kind of unmet
expectation.
"Which one is the boy with the reddish brown hair?" I asked. I peeked at
him from the corner of my eye, and he was still staring at me, but not
gawking like the other students had today — he had a slightly frustrated
expression. I looked down again.
"That's Edward. He's gorgeous, of course, but don't waste your time. He
doesn't date. Apparently none of the girls here are good-looking enough
for him." She sniffed, a clear case of sour grapes. I wondered when he'd
turned her down.
I bit my lip to hide my smile. Then I glanced at him again. His face was
turned away, but I thought his cheek appeared lifted, as if he were
smiling, too.
After a few more minutes, the four of them left the table together. They
all were noticeably graceful — even the big, brawny one. It was
unsettling to watch. The one named Edward didn't look at me again.
I sat at the table with Jessica and her friends longer than I would have
if I'd been sitting alone. I was anxious not to be late for class on my
first day. One of my new acquaintances, who considerately reminded me
that her name was Angela, had Biology II with me the next hour. We walked
to class together in silence. She was shy, too.
When we entered the classroom, Angela went to sit at a black-topped lab
table exactly like the ones I was used to. She already had a neighbor. 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.
As I walked down the aisle to introduce myself to the teacher and get my
slip signed, I was watching him surreptitiously. Just as I passed, he
suddenly went rigid in his seat. He stared at me again, meeting my eyes
with the strangest expression on his face — it was hostile, furious. I
looked away quickly, shocked, going red again. I stumbled over a book in
the walkway and had to catch myself on the edge of a table. The girl
sitting there giggled.
I'd noticed that his eyes were black — coal black.
Mr. Banner signed my slip and handed me a book with no nonsense about
introductions. I could tell we were going to get along. Of course, he had
no choice but to send me to the one open seat in the middle of the room.
I kept my eyes down as I went to sit by him, bewildered by the
antagonistic stare he'd given me.
I didn't look up as I set my book on the table and took my seat, but I
saw his posture change from the corner of my eye. He was leaning away
from me, sitting on the extreme edge of his chair and averting his face
like he smelled something bad. Inconspicuously, I sniffed my hair. It
smelled like strawberries, the scent of my favorite shampoo. It seemed an
innocent enough odor. I let my hair fall over my right shoulder, making a
dark curtain between us, and tried to pay attention to the teacher.
Unfortunately the lecture was on cellular anatomy, something I'd already
studied. I took notes carefully anyway, always looking down.
I couldn't stop myself from peeking occasionally through the screen of my
hair at the strange boy next to me. During the whole class, he never
relaxed his stiff position on the edge of his chair, sitting as far from
me as possible. I could see his hand on his left leg was clenched into a
fist, tendons standing out under his pale skin. This, too, he never
relaxed. He had the long sleeves of his white shirt pushed up to his
elbows, and his forearm was surprisingly hard and muscular beneath his
light skin. He wasn't nearly as slight as he'd looked next to his burly
brother.
The class seemed to drag on longer than the others. Was it because the
day was finally coming to a close, or because I was waiting for his tight
fist to loosen? It never did; he continued to sit so still it looked like
he wasn't breathing. What was wrong with him? Was this his normal
behavior? I questioned my judgment on Jessica's bitterness at lunch
today. Maybe she was not as resentful as I'd thought.
It couldn't have anything to do with me. He didn't know me from Eve.
I peeked up at him one more time, and regretted it. He was glaring down
at me again, his black eyes full of revulsion. As I flinched away from
him, shrinking against my chair, the phrase if looks could kill suddenly
ran through my mind.
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.
I sat frozen in my seat, staring blankly after him. He was so mean. 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.
"Aren't you Isabella Swan?" a male voice asked.
I looked up to see a cute, baby-faced boy, his pale blond hair carefully
gelled into orderly spikes, smiling at me in a friendly way. He obviously
didn't think I smelled bad.
"Bella," I corrected him, with a smile.
"I'm Mike."
"Hi, Mike."
"Do you need any help finding your next class?"
"I'm headed to the gym, actually. I think I can find it."
"That's my next class, too." He seemed thrilled, though it wasn't that
big of a coincidence in a school this small.
We walked to class together; he was a chatterer — he supplied most of the
conversation, which made it easy for me. He'd lived in California till he
was ten, so he knew how I felt about the sun. It turned out he was in my
English class also. He was the nicest person I'd met today.
But as we were entering the gym, he asked, "So, did you stab Edward
Cullen with a pencil or what? I've never seen him act like that."
I cringed. So I wasn't the only one who had noticed. And, apparently,
that wasn't Edward Cullen's usual behavior. I decided to play dumb.
"Was that the boy I sat next to in Biology?" I asked artlessly.
"Yes," he said. "He looked like he was in pain or something."
"I don't know," I responded. "I never spoke to him."
"He's a weird guy." Mike lingered by me instead of heading to the
dressing room. "If I were lucky enough to sit by you, I would have talked
to you."
I smiled at him before walking through the girls' locker room door. He
was friendly and clearly admiring. But it wasn't enough to ease my
irritation.
The Gym teacher, Coach Clapp, found me a uniform but didn't make me dress
down for today's class. At home, only two years of RE. were required.
Here, P.E. was mandatory all four years. Forks was literally my personal
hell on Earth.
I watched four volleyball games running simultaneously. Remembering how
many injuries I had sustained — and inflicted — playing volleyball, I
felt faintly nauseated.
The final bell rang at last. I walked slowly to the office to return my
paperwork. The rain had drifted away, but the wind was strong, and
colder. I wrapped my arms around myself.
When I walked into the warm office, I almost turned around and walked
back out.
Edward Cullen stood at the desk in front of me. I recognized again that
tousled bronze hair. He didn't appear to notice the sound of my entrance.
I stood pressed against the back wall, waiting for the receptionist to be
free.
He was arguing with her in a low, attractive voice. I quickly picked up
the gist of the argument. He was trying to trade from sixth-hour Biology
to another time — any other time.
I just couldn't believe that this was about me. It had to be something
else, something that happened before I entered the Biology room. The look
on his face must have been about another aggravation entirely. It was
impossible that this stranger could take such a sudden, intense dislike
to me.
The door opened again, and the cold wind suddenly gusted through the
room, rustling the papers on the desk, swirling my hair around my face.
