twi saga

TWILIGHT By
Stephenie Meyer

Contents
PREFACE
1. FIRST SIGHT
2. OPEN BOOK
3. PHENOMENON
4. INVITATIONS
5. BLOOD TYPE
6. SCARY STORIES
7. NIGHTMARE
8. PORT ANGELES
9. THEORY
10. INTERROGATIONS
11. COMPLICATIONS
12. BALANCING
13. CONFESSIONS
14. MIND OVER MATTER
15. THE CULLENS
16. CARLISLE
17. THE GAME
18. THE HUNT
19. GOODBYES
20. IMPATIENCE
21. PHONE CALL
22. HIDE-AND-SEEK
23. THE ANGEL
24. AN IMPASSE
EPILOGUE: AN OCCASION

Twilight


STEPHENIE MEYER



LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY New York Boston


Text copyright © 2005 by Stephenie Meyer
All rights reserved.
Little, Brown and Company
Time Warner Book Group
1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 Visit our Web site at
www.lb-teens.com

First Edition: September 2005

The characters and events portrayed in this book ar e fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not
intended by the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Meyer, Stephanie, 1973—
Twilight : a novel / by Stephanie Meyer. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When seventeen-year-old Bella leaves Phoen ix to live with
her father in Forks, Washington, she meets an exqui sitely handsome
boy at school for whom she feels an overwhelming at traction and who
she comes to realize is not wholly human.

ISBN 0-316-16017-2
[1. Vampires — Fiction. 2. High schools — Fiction. 3. Schools — Fiction.
4. Washington (State) — Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M57188Tw2005
[Fic] —dc22 2004024730

Printed in the United States of America

For my big sister, Emily,
without whose enthusiasm this story might still be unfinished.


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 — th ough 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, in to 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 so meone else, someone
I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for somet hing.
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 y our 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 pa rka.

In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town
named Forks exists under a near-constant cover of c louds. It rains on
this inconsequential town more than any other place in the United
States of America. It was from this town and its gl oomy, omnipresent
shade that my mother escaped with me when I was onl y 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 fi nally put my foot
down; these past three summers, my dad, Charlie, va cationed 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 la ugh lines. I felt a
spasm of panic as I stared at her wide, childlike e yes. How could I leave
my loving, erratic, harebrained mother to fend for herself? Of course she
had Phil now,