Twilight by Stephenie Meyer | Page 6

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 bronzehaired
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