TWILIGHT

First sight III

Once I got around the cafeteria, building three was easy to spot. A large 

black "3" was painted on a white square on the east corner. I felt my 

breathing gradually creeping toward hyperventilation as I approached the 

door. I tried holding my breath as I followed two unisex raincoats 

through the door. 

The classroom was small. The people in front of me stopped just inside 

the door to hang up their coats on a long row of hooks. I copied them. 

They were two girls, one a porcelain-colored blonde, the other also pale, 

with light brown hair. At least my skin wouldn't be a standout here. 

I took the slip up to the teacher, a tall, balding man whose desk had a 

nameplate identifying him as Mr. Mason. He gawked at me when he saw my 

name — not an encouraging response — and of course I flushed tomato red. 

But at least he sent me to an empty desk at the back without introducing 

me to the class. It was harder for my new classmates to stare at me in 

the back, but somehow, they managed. I kept my eyes down on the reading 

list the teacher had given me. It was fairly basic: Bronte, Shakespeare, 

Chaucer, Faulkner. I'd already read everything. That was comforting… and 

boring. I wondered if my mom would send me my folder of old essays, or if 

she would think that was cheating. I went through different arguments 

with her in my head while the teacher droned on. 

When the bell rang, a nasal buzzing sound, a gangly boy with skin 

problems and hair black as an oil slick leaned across the aisle to talk 

to me. 

"You're Isabella Swan, aren't you?" He looked like the overly helpful, 

chess club type. 

"Bella," I corrected. Everyone within a three-seat radius turned to look 

at me. 

"Where's your next class?" he asked. 

I had to check in my bag. "Um, Government, with Jefferson, in building 

six." 

There was nowhere to look without meeting curious eyes. 

"I'm headed toward building four, I could show you the way…" Definitely 

over-helpful. "I'm Eric," he added. 

I smiled tentatively. "Thanks." 

We got our jackets and headed out into the rain, which had picked up. I 

could have sworn several people behind us were walking close enough to 

eavesdrop. I hoped I wasn't getting paranoid. 

"So, this is a lot different than Phoenix, huh?" he asked. 

"Very." 

"It doesn't rain much there, does it?" 

"Three or four times a year." 

"Wow, what must that be like?" he wondered. 

"Sunny," I told him. 

"You don't look very tan." 

"My mother is part albino." 

He studied my face apprehensively, and I sighed. It looked like clouds 

and a sense of humor didn't mix. A few months of this and I'd forget how 

to use sarcasm. 

We walked back around the cafeteria, to the south buildings by the gym. 

Eric walked me right to the door, though it was clearly marked. 

"Well, good luck," he said as I touched the handle. "Maybe we'll have 

some other classes together." He sounded hopeful. 

I smiled at him vaguely and went inside. 

The rest of the morning passed in about the same fashion. My Trigonometry 

teacher, Mr. Varner, who I would have hated anyway just because of the 

subject he taught, was the only one who made me stand in front of the 

class and introduce myself. I stammered, blushed, and tripped over my own 

boots on the way to my seat. 

After two classes, I started to recognize several of the faces in each 

class. There was always someone braver than the others who would 

introduce themselves and ask me questions about how I was liking Forks. I 

tried to be diplomatic, but mostly I just lied a lot. At least I never 

needed the map. 

One girl sat next to me in both Trig and Spanish, and she walked with me 

to the cafeteria for lunch. She was tiny, several inches shorter than my 

five feet four inches, but her wildly curly dark hair made up a lot of 

the difference between our heights. I couldn't remember her name, so I 

smiled and nodded as she prattled about teachers and classes. I didn't 

try to keep up. 

We sat at the end of a full table with several of her friends, who she 

introduced to me. I forgot all their names as soon as she spoke them. 

They seemed impressed by her bravery in speaking to me. The boy from 

English, Eric, waved at me from across the room. 

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. 

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 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.