Twilight 4 - Breaking Dawn

Stephenie Meyer
Twilight 4 - Breaking Dawn

By

Stephenie Meyer





This book is dedicated to my ninja/agent, Jodi Reamer.

Thank you for keeping me off the ledge.

And thanks also to my favorite band,

the very aptly named Muse,

for providing a saga’s worth of inspiration.


BOOK ONE

bella

CONTENTS

PREFACE

1. ENGAGED

2. LONG NIGHT

3. BIG DAY

4. GESTURE

5. ISLE ESME

6. DISTRACTION

7. UNEXPECTED


Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age


The child is grown, and puts away childish things.


Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

PREFACE

I’d had more than my fair share of near-death experiences; it wasn’t something
you ever really got used to.

It seemed oddly inevitable, though, facing death again. Like I really was marked
for disaster. I’d escaped time and time again, but it kept coming back for me.

Still, this time was so different from the others.

You could run from someone you feared, you could try to fight someone you hated.
All my reactions were geared toward those kinds of killers—the monsters, the
enemies.

When you loved the one who was killing you, it left you no options. How could
you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt that beloved one? If your
life was all you had to give your beloved, how could you not give it?

If it was someone you truly loved?

1. ENGAGED

No one is staring at you, I promised myself. No one is staring at you. No one is
staring at you.

But, because I couldn’t lie convincingly even to myself, I had to check.

As I sat waiting for one of the three traffic lights in town to turn green, I
peeked to the right—in her minivan, Mrs. Weber had turned her whole torso in my
direction. Her eyes bored into mine, and I flinched back, wondering why she
didn’t drop her gaze or look ashamed. It was still considered rude to stare at
people, wasn’t it? Didn’t that apply to me anymore?

Then I remembered that these windows were so darkly tinted that she probably had
no idea if it was even me in here, let alone that I’d caught her looking. I
tried to take some comfort in the fact that she wasn’t really staring at me,
just the car.

My car. Sigh.

I glanced to the left and groaned. Two pedestrians were frozen on the sidewalk,
missing their chance to cross as they stared. Behind them, Mr. Marshall was
gawking through the plate-glass window of his little souvenir shop. At least he
didn’t have his nose pressed up against the glass. Yet.

The light turned green and, in my hurry to escape, I stomped on the gas pedal
without thinking—the normal way I would have punched it to get my ancient Chevy
truck moving.

Engine snarling like a hunting panther, the car jolted forward so fast that my
body slammed into the black leather seat and my stomach flattened against my
spine.

“Arg!” I gasped as I fumbled for the brake. Keeping my head, I merely tapped the
pedal. The car lurched to an absolute standstill anyway.

I couldn’t bear to look around at the reaction. If there had been any doubt as
to who was driving this car before, it was gone now. With the toe of my shoe, I

gently nudged the gas pedal down one half millimeter, and the car shot forward
again.

I managed to reach my goal, the gas station. If I hadn’t been running on vapors,
I wouldn’t have come into town at all. I was going without a lot of things these
days, like Pop-Tarts and shoelaces, to avoid spending time in public.

Moving as if I were in a race, I got the hatch open, the cap off, the card
scanned, and the nozzle in the tank within seconds. Of course, there was nothing
I could do to make the numbers on the gauge pick up the pace. They ticked by
sluggishly, almost as if they were doing it just to annoy me.

It wasn’t bright out—a typical drizzly day in Forks, Washington—but I still felt
like a spotlight was trained on me, drawing attention to the delicate ring on my
left hand. At times like this, sensing the eyes on my back, it felt as if the
ring were pulsing like a neon sign: Look at me, look at me.

It was
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