Isabella “Bella” Swan, a seventeen-year-old girl, has just moved to Forks with her father. It's her first day at school. She is talking with her new friends at the cafeteria when, suddenly, a strange and mysterious group of teenagers arrives.

“It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, [...] that I first saw them. [...] There were five of them. They weren't talking, and they weren't eating [...]. They didn't look anything alike. Of the three boys, one was big – muscled like a serious weight lifter, with dark, curly hair. Another was taller, leaner, but still muscular, and honey blond. The last was lanky, less bulky, with untidy, bronze-colored hair. [...] 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. Paler than me, the albino. They all had very dark eyes [...]. They also had dark shadows under those eyes […]. As if they were all suffering from a sleepless night, or almost done recovering from a broken nose. [...] But all this is not why I couldn't look away.”