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.

61'

CHAPTER ONE: 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 14. 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."

91'