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 in a voice that implied it should be obvious, even to a new arrival like me. "They just moved down two years ago from somewhere in Alaska."

　　I felt a surge of pity, and relief. Pity because, as beautiful as they were, they were outsiders, clearly not accepted.Relief that I wasn't the only newcomer here, and certainly not the most interesting by any standard.

　　As I examined them, the youngest, one of the Cullens, looked up and met my gaze, this time with evident curiosity in his expression. As I looked swiftly away, it seemed to me that his glance held some kind of unmet expectation.