As the school year begins at Mystic Falls High, Elena and her friends are fascinated by a handsome and mysterious new student, Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley, Fallen). Stefan and Elena are immediately drawn to one another, although Elena is puzzled by Stefan's increasingly bizarre behavior when he appears suddenly at the cemetery where her parents are buried. What she doesn't realize is that Stefan is hiding a dark, deadly secret of his own - the fact that he's a vampire.