Summary: When seventeen-year-old Bella leaves Phoenix to live with her father in Forks, Washington, she meets an exquisitely handsome boy at school for whom she feels an overwhelming attraction and who she comes to realize is not wholly human.

"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
Genesis 2:17

PREFACE

I'd never given much thought to how I would die ­ though I'd had reason enough in the last
few months ­ but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.

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 expectations, it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.

The hunter smiled in a friendly way as he sauntered forward to kill me.



1. FIRST SIGHT

My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees
in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was wearing my favorite shirt ­ sleeveless,
white eyelet lace; I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka.

In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town named Forks exists
under a near-constant cover of clouds. It rains on this inconsequential town more than any
other place in the United States of America. It was from this town and its gloomy,
omnipresent shade that my mother escaped with me when I was only a few months old. It was
in this town that I'd been compelled to spend a month every summer until I was fourteen. That
was the year I finally put my foot down; these past three summers, my dad, Charlie, vacationed
with me in California for two weeks instead.

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.

"Bella," my mom said to me ­ the last of a thousand times ­ before I got on the plane. "You
don't have to do this."

My mom looks like me, except with short hair and laugh lines. I felt a spasm of panic as I
stared at her wide, childlike eyes. How could I leave my loving, erratic, harebrained mother to
fend for herself? Of course she had Phil now, so the bills would probably get paid, there would
be food in the refrigerator, gas in her car, and someone to call when she got lost, but still...

"I want to go," I lied. I'd always been a bad liar, but I'd been saying this lie so frequentl...

Show full text: 694,416 characters