Chapters Fifteen and Sixteen: Meet the Cullens.

Ahh, Bella wakes up to find Edward stayed with her the whole night. Not in her bed, of course -- Edward is a gentleman vampire. He sat patiently in a rocking chair and waiting for her to wake up so he could make fun of her bed head.

On the agenda today: a visit to the Cullen household to meet Edward's family. I have to say, the preparations for this trip did lead to one of the funnier exchanges in the book so far. You see, Bella is scared of walking into a house of vampires, but not for the reasons you'd expect:

"Look, I'm trying really hard not to think about what I'm about to do, so can we go already?" [Bella] asked.

"And you're worried, not because you're headed to meet a houseful of vampires, but because you think those vampires won't approve of you, correct?"

"That's right."

But before this exchange, we get yet another look into just how amazingly perfect and godlike Edward really is. On their way out of Bella's house, Edward gives her -- from Bella's own description, since this whole book is in the first person -- a relatively tame kiss.

Which causes Bella to faint, because he's JUST THAT GOOD.

Moving along...they manage to make it to Edward's house without Bella tripping over anything, and she finally gets to greet the Cullen clan. Carlisle, Esme, Alice and Jasper all greet her with open arms. None of them try to eat her or anything! Okay, Jasper has to be careful not to get too close -- he's new at this vampire thing, and nobody wants to risk an accidental mutilation. Rosalie and Emmett don't join in the party; presumably, they're not cool with inter-species relationships.

Edward plays the piano for Bella. Try to guess, on a scale from 1-10, how good he is! The correct answer is "godlike."

But then, something happens. Something I refused to believe was possible in this novel, something that could spin this book right on its head.

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have the beginnings of a PLOT. It seems Alice has seen that some vampires -- the normal, human eating kind -- will be coming to town for a while in the near future. Meyer brushes over this, which I think is her way of trying to make it subtle, which means it's obviously going to be a major event before too long.

Bella gets the house tour. The Cullens live not too differently from most people, although not sleeping means there aren't many beds to be found. Edward's room has a lot of CDs. Okay.

We then spend a lot of time learning about Carlisle. It turns out that Carlisle is around 362 years old, born in London sometime in the 1640s. In his father's footsteps, he hunted for vampires and other evil creatures -- only, because he's a smart guy, he found some actual vampires. In one of the ensuing hunts, Carlisle was bitten, but the vampire ran from the rest of the angry mob before finishing him off.

He became a vampire, but one with a lot of angst. He didn't want to kill people, so when he figured out he could live on animals, he went on a no-human diet. He spent time in France, then in Italy hanging out with some really old vampires who made fun of him for being lame. They all got along well enough, but reading in between the lines, it sounds like Carlisle was like that kid who you let hang out with you in high school, but was the butt of all the jokes. After a couple decades of putting up with this, he struck out for the new world, found Edward a few centuries later, and that was that.

Okay, so that's all well and good, we all like a little backstory once in a while. But it's time for a little action. Alice informs the group that there's a storm coming in, and the thunder will allow them to play their favorite sport without anyone noticing. That's right: in our next installment, we'll be talking about VAMPIRE BASEBALL.