Chapter 1: Chapter One: First Sight

It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, Arizona as my sister, Isabella Swan, and I made our way to the airport with our mother.

In Washington State, under a near-constant cover of clouds, exists a small town named Forks. It was from this town that our mom escaped when we were a few months old. It was in this town that we spent a month every summer until Bella turned fourteen and decided she no longer wanted to spend time there. These past three years, I visited our father alone. My love for dad and the rain tethering a part of me to Forks.

It was to this town that we now traveled — an action that Bella took with great horror. She loved Phoenix: the sun and blistering heat, the vigorous and sprawling city.

"Girls," mom said before we boarded, "You don't have to do this."

"I want to go," I said, almost aggressively.

"Yeah," Bella quietly agreed, although her distaste was evident.

It's a four-hour flight from Phoenix to Seattle, another hour in a small plane up to Port Angeles, and then an hour drive back down to Forks. While Bella didn't mind the flying and worried for the drive with our dad, Charlie, I was the exact opposite⎼terrified of heights.

When we landed in Port Angeles, it was raining. While my elder sister looked upwards to the sky, saying her goodbyes to the sun, I tried hard to contain my glee, almost running through the puddles that had been created.

Dad was waiting for us with the cruiser, which was to be expected. Charlie is Chief Police Swan to the good people of Forks. As we descended the plane, we each received an awkward, one-armed hug from him.

"Good to see you girls," he said, smiling, "You haven't changed much, Bells." hesitating on his words.

We didn't have too many clothes to bring as it was made apparent that I was really the only one of us two with winter clothes. It all easily fit into the trunk of the cruiser.

"I found a good car for you guys, really cheap," he announced when we were all strapped in.

"What kind of car?" Bella asked suspiciously.

"Well, it's a truck actually, a Chevy."

"Where did you find it—" Bella started.

"Why does it matter? Dad found us a car!" I said, not bothering to hide my dislike of Bella's attitude.

Dad ignored our disagreement and continued, "Do you remember Billy Black down at La Push?" La Push was the tiny Native reservation on the coast.

"No."

"Yes."

"He's in a wheelchair now," Dad said, "so he can't drive anymore, and he offered to sell me his truck cheap."

"How cheap is cheap?" Bella asked.

"Well, I already bought it. As a homecoming gift." Dad peeked sideways at us with a hopeful expression.

We exchanged a few more comments on the weather, which was wet, and that was pretty much it for Conversation. We stared out the windows in silence.

It was beautiful, Forks was, of course; even Bella 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. I knew that she would think it was too green; an alien planet to her that I felt at home in.

Eventually we made it to the house. He still lived in the small, two-bedroom home that he'd bought with our mother, Renee, in the early days of their marriage. Those were the only kind of days their marriage had — the early ones. There, parked on the street in front of the house that never changed, was our truck. It was a faded red color, with big, rounded fenders and a bulbous cab. To Bella's intense surprise, she loved it. I could tell by the wide-eyed look she let slip past her stony distaste when she first saw it. I already knew I would love it as Dad and I seemed to have the same taste in most things. Neither of us knew if it could run, but we could both imagine ourselves in it. Plus, it was one of those solid iron affairs that never gets damaged — the kind you see at the scene of an accident, paint unscratched, surrounded by the pieces of the foreign car it had destroyed.

"Wow, Dad, I love it! Thanks!" Bella said as I nodded vigorously in agreement. Now the horrific day we had predicted for school tomorrow would be much less dreadful.

"I'm glad you like it," Dad said gruffly, embarrassed.

It only took one trip to get all of our stuff upstairs to the west bedroom that faced out over the front yard that we would be sharing. The room was familiar to Bella and like home to me. It had belonged to us since we were born. The wooden floor, the light blue walls, the peaked ceiling, the yellowed lace curtains around the window — these were all a part of our childhood. The only changes Dad had made were switching the cribs to beds and adding two desks as we grew. The desks now held secondhand laptops. This was a stipulation from our mother, so that we could stay in touch easily. The rocking chair from our baby days was still in the corner.

There was only one small bathroom at the top of the stairs, which we would have to share with Dad. I noticed my sister's displeased face when she remembered that fact.

One of the best things about Dad is he doesn't hover. He left us alone to unpack and get settled in, a feat that would have been altogether impossible for our mother. It was nice to be by ourselves, not to have to smile and look pleased; a relief to stare dejectedly out the window in Bella's case and anxiously in the mine. Both of us worried about the days to come.

Forks High School had a frightening total of only three hundred and fifty-seven — now fifty-nine — students; there were more than seven hundred people in our junior class alone in Phoenix. All of the kids here had grown up together — their grandparents had been toddlers together. We would be the new girls from the big city, the curiosities, the freaks. This is a fact that neither of us took pleasure in. Although I loved the weather in Forks and the presence of our father, I was even more introverted than my sister. In Phoenix, my friends were Bella's friends, only noticing me because they knew my sister. I rarely spoke to anyone, taking that trait from my father.

Maybe, if we looked like girls from Phoenix should, it could work to our advantage. But physically, we'd never fit in anywhere. We could've been tan, sporty, blonde — a volleyball player, or a cheerleader, perhaps — all the things that go with living in the valley of the sun.

Instead, Bella was ivory skinned despite the constant sunshine, with brown eyes. She had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete; she didn't have the necessary hand-eye coordination to play sports without humiliating herself or harming anyone who stands too close. I looked almost nothing like her, even though we were twins, but still not the typical valley girl. I was also ivory skinned, but had green eyes, with black hair like our fathers in contrast to Bella's brown hair. I wasn't as thin as my sister, more of an average-soft build, slightly rounder, but still considered slim. I was more of a reader than an athlete, also lacking hand-eye coordination like Bella.

When we finished putting our clothes in the matching pine dressers, we made our way to the communal bathroom to store our necessities and clean up after the day of travel. As we settled, I thought of how we didn't relate well to others our age. Maybe even to anyone at all, in Bella's case. As I could relate to our dad in most everything but sports, my sister couldn't even relate to our mother, completely. Renee was closest to Bella in the entire world, and yet, they were always slightly off-sync, never on the same page.

Neither of us slept well that night. Bella cried and the constant sound of rain wouldn't fade into the background of her mind, I could feel her misery. I worried for the day ahead, for both me and my elder sister. It was well past midnight when we both finally dozed off.

Thick fog was all we could see out of our window in the morning, and Bella started to feel claustrophobia creeping onto her, she informed me. I, on the other hand, was trying not to squeal in delight. The sky was impossible to see, almost like a cage. Whether it be a prison cell, or a beautiful roof of protection was up to the beholder.

Breakfast with Dad was a quiet event. He wished us good luck at school, and we thanked him, knowing his hope was wasted. Good luck tended to avoid us both. Our father left first, off to the police station that was his wife and family. After he was gone, we sat at the old square oak table in two of the four unmatching chairs and examined his small kitchen, with its dark paneled walls, bright yellow cabinets, and white linoleum floor.

Nothing has changed. Our mom had painted the cabinets eighteen years ago in an attempt to bring some sunshine into the house. Over the small fireplace in the adjoining handkerchief-sized family room was a row of pictures. First, a wedding picture of Charlie and Renee in Las Vegas, then one of the four of us in the hospital after we were born, taken by a helpful nurse, followed by a procession of school pictures up to last year's.

I didn't want to be too early to school, but Bella couldn't stay in the house anymore. We donned our jackets and headed out into the rain.

It was just drizzling still, not enough to soak us through immediately as I reached for the house key that was always hidden under the eaves by the door and locked up. The sloshing of new waterproof boots replacing the crunch of gravel as we walked.

Inside the truck, it was nice and dry. Either Billy or Dad had obviously cleaned it up, but the tan upholstered seats still smelled faintly of tobacco, gasoline, and peppermint. The engine started quickly, but loudly, roaring to life and then idling at top volume. The antique radio worked, a plus that we hadn't expected.

Finding the school wasn't difficult, though we'd never been there before. The school was, like most other things, just off the highway. It wasn't obvious that it was a school; only the sign, which declared it to be Forks High School, made Bella stop driving. It looked like a collection of matching houses, built with maroon-colored bricks. There were so many trees and shrubs that we couldn't see its size at first.

Bella parked in front of the first building, which has a small sign over the door reading front office. No one else was parked there, so I was sure it was off limits. We stepped out of the truck cab and walked down a little stone path lined with dark hedges, taking a deep breath together before opening the door. Inside, it was bright and warm. There was a red-haired woman at the reception desk as we walked forward.

The woman looked up, "Can I help you?"

"Isabella and Alexandra Swan," Bella said and I noticed the immediate awareness in the woman's eyes. Daughters of the Chief's flighty ex-wife, come home at last.

"Of course," she said. "I have your schedules right here, and a map of the school."

Looking at the papers as the desk lady excitedly rambled on about the best routes to each class, we showed each other our schedules and noticed that we have every single class together. Fine by me, and I know my sister agreed. As we were both new and anti-social, we preferred to stay together in most any situation. We were very close, bonded by not only being the same age, but parenting each other as our mother was too hair-brained to participate in that too terribly much.

After moving the truck to an appropriate parking spot, we made our way around the cafeteria, building three, to reach our class. I held Bella's arm for comfort and she grasped my hand as we approached the door.

The classroom was small. The people in front of us stopped just inside to hang up their coats and we followed suit. Taking the slips up to the teacher, a tall, balding man whose desk had a nameplate identifying him as Mr. Mason, he gawked at us when he read our names — not an encouraging response. He sent us to sit with each other at an empty desk in the back without introducing us to the class, thankfully. It was harder for our classmates to stare at us in the back, but somehow, they managed. Keeping our heads lowered, we studied the reading list given to us together. It was fairly basic: Bronte, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Faulkner. I'd already read everything on the list, which was comforting, and Bella had read most, the rest of which I could fill her in on.

When the bell rang, a nasal buzzing sound, a gangly boy with skin problems and hair as black as an oil slick leaned across the aisle, closest to me, to talk to us.

"You're the Swan twins, aren't you?" He kept his eyes locked on me, seeming to not really notice Bella, much to my dismay. He looked like the overly helpful, chess club type.

"Bella, and Alexandra." My sister spoke for me and everyone within a three-seat radius turned to look at us.

"Where's your next class?" Again, directing his question towards me, who hadn't spoken.

Bella checked in her bag. "Um, government, with Jefferson in building six. My sister's the same." She said curtly, knowing he would try to ask again.

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 gave him a small smile as a way of saying hello, but unfortunately, I think he took it as encouragement.

"Thanks," Bella added.

At the end of class, we got our jackets and headed out into the rain, which had picked up. Several people behind us seemed to be walking close enough to eavesdrop. Maybe I was paranoid.

"So, this is a lot different than Phoenix, huh?" Eric asked, keeping himself closer to me than Bella.

"Very." Bella said, trying to save me from squeezing out short replies; I was never good with talking to strangers.

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

"Three or four times a year."

"Wow, what must that be like?"

"Sunny." I could tell my sister was getting slightly annoyed with his chatter.

"You guys don't look very tan."

"Our mother is part albino." I blurted out, to Bella's surprise.

He studied my face apprehensively, and Bella sighed. It looked like clouds and a sense of humor didn't mix.

A few months of this and we would forget how to use sarcasm.

We walked back around the cafeteria, to the south buildings by the gym. Eric walked us right to the door, though it was clearly marked.

"Well, good luck," he said as Bella went to pull the handle. "Maybe we'll have some more classes together," he said, taking one last hopeful look at me before walking away.

The rest of the morning passed in about the same fashion. The trigonometry teacher, Mr. Varner, who we would've hated just because of the subject he taught, was the only one who made us stand up in front of the class and introduce ourselves.

After two classes, we started to recognize several faces. There was always someone braver than the others who would introduce themselves and ask questions about how we were liking Forks.

One girl, Jessica, sat near us in both trig and Spanish, and she walked with us to the cafeteria for lunch. She was tiny, several inches shorter than our five feet four inches, but her wildly curly dark hair made up a lot of the difference between our heights.

We sat at the end of a full table with several of her friends, who she introduced. Although the names were lost the minute they were spoken. They seemed impressed by her bravery in speaking to us. The boy from English, Eric, waved at us from across the room. It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, trying to make conversation with seven strangers, that we first saw them.

They were sitting in the corner of the cafeteria, as far away from where we sat as possible in the long room.

There were six 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 us either, 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 our attention.

Of the six, three of them looked similar, but at the same time, none of them looked alike. Of the four boys, one was big — muscled like a serious weightlifter, with dark, curly hair. Another was taller, leaner, but still muscular, and honey blond. The third was lanky, less bulky, with untidy, bronze-colored hair, more boyish than the others. The last was built similar to the second, muscular and lean, but taller than the others with sandy blond hair and a serious expression.

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 in this sunless town. Paler than us. They all had very dark eyes despite the range in hair tones. They also had dark shadows under those eyes ⎼ purplish, bruise-like 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.

"Who are they?" Bella spoke up, asking the question lingering in both of our minds.

"That's Dr. and Mrs. Cullen's adopted kids. The big, dark-haired boy is Emmett Cullen; the reddish-haired boy is Edward Cullen; the small, dark-haired girl is Alice Cullen; the two blondes that look alike are the Hale twins, Jasper and Rosalie; and the other blond is Christian Hale, their cousin who's staying with them while his parents are in Italy or something."

"They are... very nice-looking." I struggled with the conspicuous understatement.

"Yes!" Jessica agreed with a 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.

"They look a little old for foster children." Bella added.

"They are now. Jasper and Rosalie are eighteen, but they've been with Mrs. Cullen since they were eight. She's their aunt on their mother's side or something like that. Christian is the cousin on their father's side."

As we watched the strange family, Edward looked up and met our gaze, with evident curiosity which swiftly turned to slight frustration.

"What's his deal?" Bella asked. I could tell that this was the boy who piqued her interest the most. The cousin of the adopted siblings, Christian, seemed more on-edge than the rest of the group, and I couldn't help but wonder why.

"Oh, Edward? He's gorgeous, of course, but don't waste your time. He doesn't date. Apparently, none of the girls here are good enough for him." She sounded almost upset.

I wondered when she had been rejected.

After lunch it was time for Biology II, which we found easily. As we entered and approached the teacher with our slips, Bella nudged me and nodded her head once, showing me Edward Cullen sitting next to one of the only open seats. He immediately went rigid, with a hostile, furious expression on his face.

The teacher directed us to our seats. I was sat in the seat right in front of Edward and Bella was sat right next to him. Glad to be at least close to each other, I sat without complaint.

As class started, I looked back to check on my sister. Bella kept her head down, avoiding Edward's eyes, but snuck a couple glances through her hair. His fist was clenched and his stiff position never relaxed.

Edward didn't stare at Bella or even glance her way, unlike most everyone else in the room. He, instead, focused his attention on the new head in front of him. As I noticed he was staring almost right at me, I turned back around and didn't look back again. I stared forward, worrying over my sister, barely listening to the teacher when I started to feel a weird sensation on the back of my head. It felt as if someone was trying to move my hair, my scalp, my skull like a curtain. A soft tugging in either direction, but I was sure no one was touching me. This went on for a few minutes before, in an unsuspected rage, I turned around, looking Edward in the face and yelled, "If you have something to say, then just say it!"

This made the entire class freeze. Everyone was staring at me, including Mr. Banner, our teacher. Bella had jumped from the sudden shout of my voice and was staring at me like she'd never seen something so strange in her entire life. Edward looked completely stunned.

Within about two seconds, my face started to burn. I slowly turned to face the front of the room and quietly apologized to Mr. Banner, sinking in my seat, stating I had no idea why I blurted that out. The obviously displeased teacher said he'd give me this pass, because it was my first day and continued teaching after directing all the students to pay attention once again.

When the bell rang, Edward nearly jumped from his chair and left the classroom in an almost frenzied state, whether because of my shouting or not was unknown to me.

As Bella was rising from her seat, she gave me a look of confusion and concern, silently asking if I was feeling alright.

"Aren't you Isabella Swan?" a voice said.

Bella looked up to see a baby-faced, blond boy at her side as I came up on her other, completely ignored by the new person.

"Bella." She corrected, with a smile.

"I'm Mike."

"Hi, Mike. That's Alexandra." Bella said, pointing to me.

"Do you need help finding your next class?" He asked, ignoring me once again, which I was thankful for after the first brave boy we encountered paid a little too much attention.

"Headed to the gym, actually. I think we can find it."

"That's my next class, too!" He sounded thrilled, though it wasn't that big of a coincidence in a small school.

Mike walked us to class, chattering the whole way there, but only to Bella. He talked about how strange he thought Edward Cullen was to act so standoffish when given the blissful opportunity to sit next to her, completely ignoring what had happened between Edward and I. He was very nice, but that did little to calm my nerves.

When the final bell rang, I was relieved to make it back to our shared truck and I could tell Bella was, too. The whole way home, Bella fought tears at the horrible reaction from a certain peer and ranted to me about why Edward seemed so angry about her sitting by him. I thought of how I wished I could crawl in a hole and never come out, knowing that by tomorrow, everyone would be aware of what happened in biology.