PROLOGUE :

They were sitting in the corner of the cafeteria, as far away from where I sat as possible in the long room. There were seven 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 me, unlike the other students, so it was safe to stare at them. But it was none of these things that held me attention.

It was their beauty.

They didn't look anything alike. Of the four boys – one was big – muscled like a serious weight lifter, with dark curly hair. Another was tall, leaner but still muscular, and honey blonde. The next was the shortest; with long legs and midnight hair was tucked behind his ears, his skin had a sort of olive color to it – and I wondered where he was originally from. Spain or the Middle East, I'd guess. He was more rugged to the others. The last was lanky, less balky with untidy bronze colored hair. He was more boyish that the others, who looked like they could be in college, or even teachers here rather than students.

There were three girls. The tall one was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the cover of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the kind that made every girl around her take a hit on her self esteem just be being in the same room. Her hair was golden, gently waving down her back. The shortest girl was pixie-like, thin to the extreme with small features. Her hair was deep black, cropped short and pointing in every direction. The other was small, maybe a little bigger than the last with very pale blonde hair- loosely curled, which was a little shorter than the other blondes. She was more angular than the others, jutting hips and a convex chest. She and the brunette could have been sisters – though the blonde's features were sweeter and less pixie-like.

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 (excluding the darker skinned boy). Paler than me, the albino. They all had 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 of 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 tall blonde girl, or the bronze-haired boy.

They were all looking away – away from each other, away from other students, away from anything in particular as far as I could tell. As I watched, the two small girls rose with their trays – unopened soda, unbitten apple on one and an unopened salad on the other – and walked away. The brunette walked with lithe steps that belonged on a runway. The blondes walk was more a glide, her hair bouncing behind her. My eyes darted back to the others, who sat unchanging.

"Who are they?" I asked a girl from my Spanish class.

My neighbour looked at me in embarrassment, looking at the table like I did.

"That's Edward and Emmett Cullen, Jasper and Rosalie Hale and the other boy is Nathaniel Platt– and he's like, Mexican or whatever. The two that left are Alice and Angeline Cullen; they all live together with Dr. Cullen and his wife." She said this under her breath.

"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, Angeline and Jasper, Alice and Nathaniel, 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 Cullen's?" 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 blonde boy and the tall blonde – and their foster children. The two that already left, Angeline and Alice, are related too, they're sisters."

"Oh ..." I said, looking over at the table of beautiful people.

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