EPOV

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 back without breathing across the long room, into the eyes of the hunter, and she looked pleasantly back at me.
Surely it was a good way to die, in place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble,
even, very. That ought to count for something.
I knew that if my family had never gone to Forks and Emmett never suggested living in the dark, overcast and small, private town, 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 she sauntered forward to kill me.

BPOV

This was the time of day I wished I were able to sleep.

High school.

Or was purgatory the right word? If there was anyway to atone for my sins, this ought to count toward the tally in some measure. The tedium was not something I grew used to; everyday seemed more impossible monotonous than the last. I guess this was kinda my form of sleep -- if sleep was defined as the inert state between active periods.
I stared at the cracks running through the plaster in the far corner of the cafeteria, imagining patterns into them that were not there. It was one way to tune out the voices that babbled like the gush of a river inside my head.

Several hundred of these voices I ignored out of boredom.
When it came to human mind, I'd heard it all before and then some.

Today, all thoughts were consumed with the trival drama of the new additions to the small student body here. It took so little to work them up. I'd seen the new faces repeated in thought after thought from every angle. Just an ordinary human family of five. They were good-looking, I'd give them that. But the excitement over their arrival were tiresomely predictable -- like flashing a shiny object at a child. Half the sheep-like females and males were already imagining themselves in love with the new additions, just because they were something new ro look at. I tried harder to tune them out. At that moment a small girl paused at the end of the closest table to mine stopping to talk to a friend. My table because I was the only one ever sitting here.

Somehow but reassuringly, humans stood out of my way. They rarely talked, walked or lingered by me, their instincts told them what their conscious minds would never understand: I was dangerous.
The girl tossed her short, sandy hair, running her fingers through it. The heater blew her scent in my direction. I was used to the way that scent made me feel -- the dry ache in my throat, the hollow yearn in my stomach, the automatic tightening of my muscles, the excess flow of venom in my mouth.

Bella Swan.

Reflex reaction. I turned to the sound of my name being called, though it wasn't being called, just thought.
My eyes locked for a small portion of a second with a pair of wide butterscotch, golden toned, human eyes set in a pale, muscular face with a square chin. I knew the face, though I'd never seen it myself before this moment. It had been foremost in every human head today. The best-looking out of all of them, the new student, one of the fives, Edward Cullen. Adopted son of Carlisle Cullen, moved here from Arizona.
I looked away, bored. Then it only took me a second to realize that he had not been the one to think my name.

Of course he's already checking out Swan, I heard the first thought continue.
Now I recognized the 'voice.' Mike Newton -- It had been a while since he'd bothered me with his internal chatter. I never knew there were boys who talked that much, until I met Mike Newton. What a relief it had been when he'd gotten over his misplaced infatuation that I was interested even a bit in him.
It used to be nearly impossible to escape his constant, ridiculous daydreams. I'd wished, at the time, that I could explain to him exactly what would have happend if my lips, and the teeth behind them, had gotten anywhere near him. That would have silenced those annoying fantasies.

The thought of his reaction almost made me smile.