I told Charlie I had a lot of homework to do, and that I didn't want anything to eat.

There was a basketball game on that he was excited about, though of course I had no idea

what was special about it, so he wasn't aware of anything unusual in my face or tone.

Once in my room, I locked the door. I dug through my desk until I found my old

headphones, and I plugged them into my little CD player. I picked up a CD that Phil had

given to me for Christmas. It was one of his favorite bands, but they used a little too

much bass and shrieking for my tastes. I popped it into place and lay down on my bed. I

put on the headphones, hit Play, and turned up the volume until it hurt my ears. I closed

my eyes, but the light still intruded, so I added a pillow over the top half of my face.

I concentrated very carefully on the music, trying to understand the lyrics, to unravel

the complicated drum patterns. By the third time I'd listened through the CD, I knew all

the words to the choruses, at least. I was surprised to find that I really did like the band

after all, once I got past the blaring noise. I'd have to thank Phil again.

And it worked. The shattering beats made it impossible for me to think — which was

the whole purpose of the exercise. I listened to the CD again and again, until I was

singing along with all the songs, until, finally, I fell asleep.

I opened my eyes to a familiar place. Aware in some corner of my consciousness that I

was dreaming, I recognized the green light of the forest. I could hear the waves crashing

against the rocks somewhere nearby. And I knew that if I found the ocean, I'd be able to

see the sun. I was trying to follow the sound, but then Jacob Black was there, tugging on

my hand, pulling me back toward the blackest part of the forest.

"Jacob? What's wrong?" I asked. His face was frightened as he yanked with all his

strength against my resistance; I didn't want to go into the dark.

"Run, Bella, you have to run!" he whispered, terrified.

"This way, Bella!" I recognized Mike's voice calling out of the gloomy heart of the

trees, but I couldn't see him.

"Why?" I asked, still pulling against Jacob's grasp, desperate now to find the sun.

But Jacob let go of my hand and yelped, suddenly shaking, falling to the dim forest

floor. He twitched on the ground as I watched in horror.

"Jacob!" I screamed. But he was gone. In his place was a large red-brown wolf with

black eyes. The wolf faced away from me, pointing toward the shore, the hair on the back

of his shoulders bristling, low growls issuing from between his exposed fangs.

"Bella, run!" Mike cried out again from behind me. But I didn't turn. I was watching a

light coming toward me from the beach.

And then Edward stepped out from the trees, his skin faintly glowing, his eyes black

and dangerous. He held up one hand and beckoned me to come to him. The wolf growled

at my feet.

I took a step forward, toward Edward. He smiled then, and his teeth were sharp,

pointed.

"Trust me," he purred.

I took another step.

The wolf launched himself across the space between me and the vampire, fangs aiming

for the jugular.

"No!" I screamed, wrenching upright out of my bed.

My sudden movement caused the headphones to pull the CD player off the bedside

table, and it clattered to the wooden floor.

My light was still on, and I was sitting fully dressed on the bed, with my shoes on. I

glanced, disoriented, at the clock on my dresser. It was five-thirty in the morning.

I groaned, fell back, and rolled over onto my face, kicking off my boots. I was too

uncomfortable to get anywhere near sleep, though. I rolled back over and unbuttoned my

jeans, yanking them off awkwardly as I tried to stay horizontal. I could feel the braid in

my hair, an uncomfortable ridge along the back of my skull. I turned onto my side and

ripped the rubber band out, quickly combing through the plaits with my fingers. I pulled

the pillow back over my eyes.

It was all no use, of course. My subconscious had dredged up exactly the images I'd

been trying so desperately to avoid. I was going to have to face them now.

I sat up, and my head spun for a minute as the blood flowed downward. First things

first, I thought to myself, happy to put it off as long as possible. I grabbed my bathroom

bag.

The shower didn't last nearly as long as I hoped it would, though. Even taking the time

to blow-dry my hair, I was soon out of things to do in the bathroom. Wrapped in a towel,

I crossed back to my room. I couldn't tell if Charlie was still asleep, or if he had already

left. I went to look out my window, and the cruiser was gone. Fishing again.

I dressed slowly in my most comfy sweats and then made my bed — something I never

did. I couldn't put it off any longer. I went to my desk and switched on my old computer.

I hated using the Internet here. My modem was sadly outdated, my free service

substandard; just dialing up took so long that I decided to go get myself a bowl of cereal

while I waited.

I ate slowly, chewing each bite with care. When I was done, I washed the bowl and

spoon, dried them, and put them away. My feet dragged as I climbed the stairs. I went to

my CD player first, picking it up off the floor and placing it precisely in the center of the

table. I pulled out the headphones, and put them away in the desk drawer. Then I turned

the same CD on, turning it down to the point where it was background noise.

With another sigh, I turned to my computer. Naturally, the screen was covered in popup

ads. I sat in my hard folding chair and began closing all the little windows. Eventually

I made it to my favorite search engine. I shot down a few more pop-ups and then typed in

one word.

Vampire.

It took an infuriatingly long time, of course. When the results came up, there was a lot

to sift through — everything from movies and TV shows to role-playing games,

underground metal, and gothic cosmetic companies.

Then I found a promising site — Vampires A—Z. I waited impatiently for it to load,

quickly clicking closed each ad that flashed across the screen. Finally the screen was

finished — simple white background with black text, academic-looking. Two quotes

greeted me on the home page:

Throughout the vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible,

no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet dight with such fearful fascination, as the

vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures

and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both. —Rev. Montague Summers

If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of the vampires. Nothing is

lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of

magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who

believes in vampires? —Rousseau

The rest of the site was an alphabetized listing of all the different myths of vampires

held throughout the world. The first I clicked on, the Danag, was a Filipino vampire

supposedly responsible for planting taro on the islands long ago. The myth continued that

the Danag worked with humans for many years, but the partnership ended one day when

a woman cut her finger and a Danag sucked her wound, enjoying the taste so much that it

drained her body completely of blood.

I read carefully through the descriptions, looking for anything that sounded familiar, let

alone plausible. It seemed that most vampire myths centered around beautiful women as

demons and children as victims; they also seemed like constructs created to explain away

the high mortality rates for young children, and to give men an excuse for infidelity.

Many of the stories involved bodiless spirits and warnings against improper burials.

There wasn't much that sounded like the movies I'd seen, and only a very few, like the

Hebrew Estrie and the Polish Upier, who were even preoccupied with drinking blood.

Only three entries really caught my attention: the Romanian Varacolaci, a powerful

undead being who could appear as a beautiful, pale-skinned human, the Slovak Nelapsi, a

creature so strong and fast it could massacre an entire village in the single hour after

midnight, and one other, the Stregoni benefici.

About this last there was only one brief sentence.

Stregoni benefici: An Italian vampire, said to be on the side of goodness, and a mortal

enemy of all evil vampires.

It was a relief, that one small entry, the one myth among hundreds that claimed the

existence of good vampires.

Overall, though, there was little that coincided with Jacob's stories or my own

observations. I'd made a little catalogue in my mind as I'd read and carefully compared it

with each myth. Speed, strength, beauty, pale skin, eyes that shift color; and then Jacob's

criteria: blood drinkers, enemies of the werewolf, cold-skinned, and immortal. There

were very few myths that matched even one factor.

And then another problem, one that I'd remembered from the small number of scary

movies that I'd seen and was backed up by today's reading — vampires couldn't come out

in the daytime, the sun would burn them to a cinder. They slept in coffins all day and

came out only at night.

Aggravated, I snapped off the computer's main power switch, not waiting to shut things

down properly. Through my irritation, I felt overwhelming embarrassment. It was all so

stupid. I was sitting in my room, researching vampires. What was wrong with me? I

decided that most of the blame belonged on the doorstep of the town of Forks — and the

entire sodden Olympic Peninsula, for that matter.

I had to get out of the house, but there was nowhere I wanted to go that didn't involve a

three-day drive. I pulled on my boots anyway, unclear where I was headed, and went

downstairs. I shrugged into my raincoat without checking the weather and stomped out

the door.

It was overcast, but not raining yet. I ignored my truck and started east on foot, angling

across Charlie's yard toward the ever-encroaching forest. It didn't take long till I was deep

enough for the house and the road to be invisible, for the only sound to be the squish of

the damp earth under my feet and the sudden cries of the jays.

There was a thin ribbon of a trail that led through the forest here, or I wouldn't risk

wandering on my own like this. My sense of direction was hopeless; I could get lost in

much less helpful surroundings. The trail wound deeper and deeper into the forest, mostly

east as far as I could tell. It snaked around the Sitka spruces and the hemlocks, the yews

and the maples. I only vaguely knew the names of the trees around me, and all I knew

was due to Charlie pointing them out to me from the cruiser window in earlier days.

There were many I didn't know, and others I couldn't be sure about because they were so

covered in green parasites.

I followed the trail as long as my anger at myself pushed me forward. As that started to

ebb, I slowed. A few drops of moisture trickled down from the canopy above me, but I

couldn't be certain if it was beginning to rain or if it was simply pools left over from

yesterday, held high in the leaves above me, slowly dripping their way back to the earth.

A recently fallen tree — I knew it was recent because it wasn't entirely carpeted in moss

— rested against the trunk of one of her sisters, creating a sheltered little bench just a few

safe feet off the trail. I stepped over the ferns and sat carefully, making sure my jacket

was between the damp seat and my clothes wherever they touched, and leaned my

hooded head back against the living tree.

This was the wrong place to have come. I should have known, but where else was there

to go? The forest was deep green and far too much like the scene in last night's dream to

allow for peace of mind. Now that there was no longer the sound of my soggy footsteps,

the silence was piercing. The birds were quiet, too, the drops increasing in frequency, so

it must be raining above. The ferns stood higher than my head, now that I was seated, and

I knew someone could walk by on the path, three feet away, and not see me.

Here in the trees it was much easier to believe the absurdities that embarrassed me

indoors. Nothing had changed in this forest for thousands of years, and all the myths and

legends of a hundred different lands seemed much more likely in this green haze than

they had in my clear-cut bedroom.

I forced myself to focus on the two most vital questions I had to answer, but I did so

unwillingly.

First, I had to decide if it was possible that what Jacob had said about the Cullens could

be true.

Immediately my mind responded with a resounding negative. It was silly and morbid to

entertain such ridiculous notions. But what, then? I asked myself. There was no rational

explanation for how I was alive at this moment. I listed again in my head the things I'd

observed myself: the impossible speed and strength, the eye color shifting from black to

gold and back again, the inhuman beauty, the pale, frigid skin. And more — small things

that registered slowly — how they never seemed to eat, the disturbing grace with which

they moved. And the way be

sometimes spoke, with unfamiliar cadences and phrases that better fit the style of a

turn-of-the-century novel than that of a twenty-first-century classroom. He had skipped

class the day we'd done blood typing. He hadn't said no to the beach trip till he heard

where we were going. He seemed to know what everyone around him was thinking…

except me. He had told me he was the villain, dangerous…

Could the Cullens be vampires?

Well, they were something. Something outside the possibility of rational justification

was taking place in front of my incredulous eyes. Whether it be Jacob's cold ones or my

own superhero theory, Edward Cullen was not… human. He was something more.

So then — maybe. That would have to be my answer for now.

And then the most important question of all. What was I going to do if it was true?

If Edward was a vampire — I could hardly make myself think the words — then what

should I do? Involving someone else was definitely out. I couldn't even believe myself;

anyone I told would have me committed.

Only two options seemed practical. The first was to take his advice: to be smart, to

avoid him as much as possible. To cancel our plans, to go back to ignoring him as far as I

was able. To pretend there was an impenetrably thick glass wall between us in the one

class where we were forced together. To tell him to leave me alone — and mean it this

time.

I was gripped in a sudden agony of despair as I considered that alternative. My mind

rejected the pain, quickly skipping on to the next option.

I could do nothing different. After all, if he was something… sinister, he'd done nothing

to hurt me so far. In fact, I would be a dent in Tyler's fender if he hadn't acted so quickly.

So quickly, I argued with myself, that it might have been sheer reflexes. But if it was a

reflex to save lives, how bad could he be? I retorted. My head spun around in answerless

circles.

There was one thing I was sure of, if I was sure of anything. The dark Edward in my

dream last night was a reflection only of my fear of the word Jacob had spoken, and not

Edward himself. Even so, when I'd screamed out in terror at the werewolf's lunge, it

wasn't fear for the wolf that brought the cry of "no" to my lips. It was fear that he would

be harmed — even as he called to me with sharp-edged fangs, I feared for him.

And I knew in that I had my answer. I didn't know if there ever was a choice, really. I

was already in too deep. Now that I knew —if I knew — I could do nothing about my

frightening secret. Because when I thought of him, of his voice, his hypnotic eyes, the

magnetic force of his personality, I wanted nothing more than to be with him right now.

Even if… but I couldn't think it. Not here, alone in the darkening forest. Not while the

rain made it dim as twilight under the canopy and pattered like footsteps across the

matted earthen floor. I shivered and rose quickly from my place of concealment, worried

that somehow the path would have disappeared with the rain.

But it was there, safe and clear, winding its way out of the dripping green maze. I

followed it hastily, my hood pulled close around my face, becoming surprised, as I nearly

ran through the trees, at how far I had come. I started to wonder if I was heading out at

all, or following the path farther into the confines of the forest. Before I could get too

panicky, though, I began to glimpse some open spaces through the webbed branches. And

then I could hear a car passing on the street, and I was free, Charlie's lawn stretched out

in front of me, the house beckoning me, promising warmth and dry socks.

It was just noon when I got back inside. I went upstairs and got dressed for the day,

jeans and a t-shirt, since I was staying indoors. It didn't take too much effort to

concentrate on my task for the day, a paper on Macbeth that was due Wednesday. I settled

into outlining a rough draft contentedly, more serene than I'd felt since… well, since

Thursday afternoon, if I was being honest.

That had always been my way, though. Making decisions was the painful part for me,

the part I agonized over. But once the decision was made, I simply followed through —

usually with relief that the choice was made. Sometimes the relief was tainted by despair,

like my decision to come to Forks. But it was still better than wrestling with the

alternatives.

This decision was ridiculously easy to live with. Dangerously easy.

And so the day was quiet, productive — I finished my paper before eight. Charlie came

home with a large catch, and I made a mental note to pick up a book of recipes for fish

while I was in Seattle next week. The chills that flashed up my spine whenever I thought

of that trip were no different than the ones I'd felt before I'd taken my walk with Jacob

Black. They should be different, I thought. I should be afraid — I knew I should be, but I

couldn't feel the right kind of fear.

I slept dreamlessly that night, exhausted from beginning my day so early, and sleeping

so poorly the night before. I woke, for the second time since arriving in Forks, to the

bright yellow light of a sunny day. I skipped to the window, stunned to see that there was

hardly a cloud in the sky, and those there were just fleecy little white puffs that couldn't

possibly be carrying any rain. I opened the window — surprised when it opened silently,

without sticking, not having opened it in who knows how many years — and sucked in

the relatively dry air. It was nearly warm and hardly windy at all. My blood was electric

in my veins.

Charlie was finishing breakfast when I came downstairs, and he picked up on my mood

immediately.

"Nice day out," he commented.

"Yes," I agreed with a grin.

He smiled back, his brown eyes crinkling around the edges. When Charlie smiled, it

was easier to see why he and my mother had jumped too quickly into an early marriage.

Most of the young romantic he'd been in those days had faded before I'd known him, as

the curly brown hair — the same color, if not the same texture, as mine — had dwindled,

slowly revealing more and more of the shiny skin of his forehead. But when he smiled I

could see a little of the man who had run away with Ren�e when she was just two years

older than I was now.

I ate breakfast cheerily, watching the dust moats stirring in the sunlight that streamed in

the back window. Charlie called out a goodbye, and I heard the cruiser pull away from

the house. I hesitated on my way out the door, hand on my rain jacket. It would be

tempting fate to leave it home. With a sigh, I folded it over my arm and stepped out into

the brightest light I'd seen in months.

By dint of much elbow grease, I was able to get both windows in the truck almost

completely rolled down. I was one of the first ones to school; I hadn't even checked the

clock in my hurry to get outside. I parked and headed toward the seldom-used picnic

benches on the south side of the cafeteria. The benches were still a little damp, so I sat on

my jacket, glad to have a use for it. My homework was done — the product of a slow

social life — but there were a few Trig problems I wasn't sure I had right. I took out my

book industriously, but halfway through rechecking the first problem I was daydreaming,

watching the sunlight play on the red-barked trees. I sketched inattentively along the

margins of my homework. After a few minutes, I suddenly realized I'd drawn five pairs of

dark eyes staring out of the page at me. I scrubbed them out with the eraser.

"Bella!" I heard someone call, and it sounded like Mike.

I looked around to realize that the school had become populated while I'd been sitting

there, absentminded. Everyone was in t-shirts, some even in shorts though the

temperature couldn't be over sixty. Mike was coming toward me in khaki shorts and a

striped Rugby shirt, waving.

"Hey, Mike," I called, waving back, unable to be halfhearted on a morning like this.

He came to sit by me, the tidy spikes of his hair shining golden in the light, his grin

stretching across his face. He was so delighted to see me, I couldn't help but feel

gratified.

"I never noticed before — your hair has red in it," he commented, catching between his

fingers a strand that was fluttering in the light breeze.

"Only in the sun."

I became just a little uncomfortable as he tucked the lock behind my ear.

"Great day, isn't it?"

"My kind of day," I agreed.

"What did you do yesterday?" His tone was just a bit too proprietary.

"I mostly worked on my essay." I didn't add that I was finished with it — no need to

sound smug.

He hit his forehead with the heel of his hand. "Oh yeah — that's due Thursday, right?"

"Um, Wednesday, I think."

"Wednesday?" He frowned. "That's not good… What are you writing yours on?"

"Whether Shakespeare's treatment of the female characters is misogynistic."

He stared at me like I'd just spoken in pig Latin.

"I guess I'll have to get to work on that tonight," he said, deflated. "I was going to ask if

you wanted to go out."

"Oh." I was taken off guard. Why couldn't I ever have a pleasant conversation with

Mike anymore without it getting awkward?

"Well, we could go to dinner or something… and I could work on it later." He smiled at

me hopefully.

"Mike…" I hated being put on the spot. "I don't think that would be the best idea."

His face fell. "Why?" he asked, his eyes guarded. My thoughts flickered to Edward,

wondering if that's where his thoughts were as well.

"I think… and if you ever repeat what I'm saying right now I will cheerfully beat you to

death," I threatened, "but I think that would hurt Jessica's feelings."

He was bewildered, obviously not thinking in that direction at all. "Jessica?"

"Really, Mike, are you blind ?"

"Oh," he exhaled — clearly dazed. I took advantage of that to make my escape.

"It's time for class, and I can't be late again." I gathered my books up and stuffed them

in my bag.

We walked in silence to building three, and his expression was distracted. I hoped

whatever thoughts he was immersed in were leading him in the right direction.

When I saw Jessica in Trig, she was bubbling with enthusiasm. She, Angela, and

Lauren were going to Port Angeles tonight to go dress