Seventeen-year-old Bella Swan hugs her Mom goodbye in Phoenix. She boards the plane that will take her to the rainiest place in the U.S.: the tiny town of Forks, Washington, where Bella will live with her dad, Charlie. Bella knows she’s going to hate Forks, but things start to look up when Charlie picks her up and reveals that he already bought Bella an old Chevy truck from his friend Billy Black.
Bella’s first day at school is difficult. Two boys, Mike and Eric, go out of their way to show Bella around—but a gorgeous boy, Edward Cullen, seems to hate Bella instantly when she has to sit next to him in her biology class. Edward isn’t in school for the next few days, and Bella can’t shake the feeling that he’s absent because he hates her. Charlie shares that Edward’s adoptive father, Dr. Cullen, is an extremely talented doctor at the local hospital. He and his wife Esme have three adopted teenage children (Edward, Alice, and Emmett) and two foster twins (Jasper and Rosalie Hale).
Edward returns to school the following week and attempts to talk to Bella, but it’s awkward for both of them. They ignore each other until one icy morning, when a student named Tyler loses control of his van and nearly hits Bella. Edward miraculously saves Bella by pushing the van away, but when she confronts him about his superhuman strength, he insists she just hit her head. The next few weeks are awkward and difficult, as Edward sometimes ignores Bella and sometimes says cryptic things, such as they shouldn’t be friends. To make things worse, a girls’ choice spring dance is coming up. Eric, Mike, and Tyler all ask Bella to the dance. To avoid them, Bella decides to take a day trip to Seattle on the day of the dance. Edward asks to drive Bella to Seattle—but he also warns her to stay away from him. They start eating lunch together.
One day, Edward skips biology class. When Bella gets to class, she feels faint and nauseous immediately—the students are finding out their blood types. Mike drags Bella halfway to the nurse’s office, but Edward appears and takes Bella the rest of the way. He's amused that she faints at the sight of blood, but he gives her an “unfathomable expression” when she describes how horrible blood smells.
That weekend, Bella accompanies a group of kids to First Beach at La Push, which is located on the reservation of the Quileute tribe. There, Bella meets Jacob Black, Billy Black’s youngest son. When an older Quileute boy says in an odd tone that the Cullens don’t come to La Push, Bella flirts with Jacob and convinces him to tell her an old Quileute legend. The legend holds that the Quileutes are werewolves and that, a century ago, the Quileutes made a treaty with the Cullens to stay off Quileute land. The Cullens, Jacob says, are immortal vampires, though they’re less dangerous to humans than most vampires because they feed on animals instead of humans. Jacob clearly doesn’t believe the legend, but Bella has goosebumps. Jacob explains that this is why Charlie and Billy aren’t speaking; Billy and other Quileutes have stopped going to the hospital to protest Dr. Cullen getting a job there, Charlie defends Dr. Cullen. The next day, Bella researches vampires and walks in the woods. She decides that whatever Edward is, she wants to be with him.
In preparation for the dance, Bella’s friends Jessica and Angela invite Bella to come with them to Port Angeles to help them shop for dresses. Bella is grateful for the distraction—Bella feels desperate to see Edward and none of the Cullens are in school, though Angela shares that they often go camping when the weather is nice. After Angela and Jessica find dresses, Bella goes off on her own to find a bookshop—but four men try to assault her. Edward once again appears and saves Bella. Then he escorts her to meet up with Jessica and Angela, and asks to drive her home himself. Over dinner and on the drive home, Edward cagily reveals that he can read minds—except for Bella’s. He as much as confirms that he’s a vampire and wants to drink Bella’s blood. That night, Bella accepts as fact two things: that Edward is a vampire and that she’s in love with him.
Bella and Edward hang out as much as possible at school the next week. Edward drives Bella to and from school in his Volvo, and they decide to skip going to Seattle and hang out somewhere closer to home on Saturday. The only complication arises when, one afternoon, Billy and Jacob stop in to see Charlie and catch Bella and Edward sitting in Edward’s car. Billy seems terrified and warns Bella to be careful.
On Saturday, the day of the dance and of Bella and Edward’s date, Edward picks Bella up early in the morning. He’s annoyed that Bella hasn’t told anyone they’re going to be together and leads her on a five-mile hike through the woods. When they reach a beautiful meadow, Bella learns why Edward can’t go out in the sunlight in front of people: he glitters. They sit in the meadow for hours, talking about how dangerous their relationship is for Bella and how attracted they are to each other. Edward explains that Carlisle made him into a vampire in 1918, when Edward was dying of the Spanish flu. Carlisle believes healthy people should have a choice when it comes to becoming a vampire, so when he chose to change his family members, he made sure they weren’t going to survive as humans first.
When Bella and Edward get back to Charlie’s that night, Bella is on edge. Charlie can sense that something is up with Bella—he believes she’s going to sneak out. Instead, Bella dresses in ratty pajamas and Edward spends the night with her in her room. Bella and Edward talk about sex, Edward’s diet of animals, and whether vampires are evil or not. In the morning, Edward suggests that Bella come meet his family. Rather than being afraid of them because they’re vampires, Bella is afraid Edward’s family won’t like her.
When they arrive at Edward’s house, Rosalie and Emmett aren’t there because, Edward explains, Rosalie is jealous of Bella’s humanity and resents her for putting the Cullens in danger if things “end badly.” But Bella meets Alice, Jasper, Carlisle, and Esme, and they greet her warmly. Alice, who has visions of the future, explains that there’s going to be a thunderstorm later—it’d be a perfect night to play baseball, and Bella should come along. First, though, Bella and Edward head back to Charlie’s house, where they run into Billy and Jacob. Billy warns Bella to stay away from Edward. A bit later, Bella introduces Edward to Charlie as her boyfriend and then accompanies Edward to a remote mountain field for the vampire baseball game. They have to play during thunderstorms because the impact of the bat hitting the ball—or of the vampires hitting each other—is deafeningly loud.
The game comes to a sudden stop when three nomadic vampires, Laurent, James, and Victoria, hear the Cullens playing and come to join. These three feed on humans and they’re shocked to see Bella, a human, with the Cullens. James lunges at Bella, and Edward, reading James’s thoughts, learns that James is a tracker—he hunts humans for sport. He won’t rest until he’s killed Bella.
The Cullen family works together to try to throw James off of Bella’s scent and keep Charlie safe. Bella tells Charlie that she is going back to Phoenix so he won’t worry about her, and then she drives with Alice and Jasper to Phoenix while the other Cullens try to confuse and ambush James in Forks. After more than a day of tense waiting, Alice has a vision of James in a ballet studio in Phoenix. Alice then has a vision of James in Mom’s living room in Phoenix. Mom is currently in Florida but will be home soon, so Bella calls Mom’s house and leaves her a voicemail. James catches a flight to Phoenix and Edward, Carlisle, and Emmett follow a few hours later.
Mom calls Bella back—but when Bella takes the phone, it’s James on the line. He tells Bella he has Mom and, to keep her safe, Bella needs to meet him in the ballet studio, alone. Bella agrees. When Bella, Alice, and Jasper go to the airport to meet the rest of the Cullens, Bella evades Jasper and gets a taxi to the ballet studio. But when she gets to the studio, she realizes that James doesn’t have Mom at all—he went through all of Mom’s home movies and used old audio to make it seem like he did. Bella is relieved.
James begins taking video. He explains that killing Bella will be especially sweet for him, as the Cullens have bested him once before: 80 years ago he set his sights on Alice, who was human and undergoing shock treatments in an insane asylum, but her maker changed her into a vampire to keep her safe. James begins to attack Bella and as Bella bleeds, she loses consciousness. She comes to when she hears Edward and Carlisle’s voices. Edward and Carlisle realize that James bit Bella’s hand, and Edward manages to suck the venom out of Bella’s hand, saving her from becoming a vampire. Bella wakes up a few days later in the hospital. She sustained serious injuries. Edward, distraught, says that he should stay away from Bella so that she’ll be safe. But Bella begs Edward to stay with her and to make her a vampire one day—she’d rather be with him than be alive. He agrees to stay with her, but not to make her a vampire.
A month or so later, after a day-long makeover from Alice, Bella is enraged to discover that Edward is taking her to prom. It’s more fun than Bella expected, though Jacob shows up to deliver a warning message from Billy and the Quileutes. Once Jacob leaves, Bella admits to Edward that she’s upset about being forced to go to prom in part because she thought Alice was giving her a makeover in preparation for becoming a vampire. They realize their fight over whether Bella should become a vampire won’t end any time soon, but Edward promises to stay with Bella as long as he makes her happy.
