Twilight - New Moon | Page 3

tint, with the same deep, bruise-like shadows beneath
them. Her face, like his, was also startlingly beautiful. To someone in the know—
someone like me—these similarities marked them for what they were.

The sight of Alice waiting there—her tawny eyes brilliant with excitement, and a small
silver-wrapped square in her hands—made me frown. I'd told Alice I didn't want
anything, anything, not gifts or even attention, for my birthday. Obviously, my wishes
were being ignored.
I slammed the door of my '53 Chevy truck—a shower of rust specks fluttered down to the
wet blacktop—and walked slowly toward where they waited. Alice skipped forward to
meet me, her pixie face glowing under her spiky black hair.
"Happy birthday, Bella!"
"Shh!" I hissed, glancing around the lot to make sure no one had heard her. The last thing
I wanted was some kind of celebration of the black event.
She ignored me. "Do you want to open your present now or later?" she asked eagerly as
we made our way to where Edward still waited.
"No presents," I protested in a mumble.
She finally seemed to process my mood. "Okay… later, then. Did you like the scrapbook
your mom sent you? And the camera from Charlie?"
I sighed. Of course she would know what my birthday presents were. Edward wasn't the
only member of his family with unusual skills. Alice would have "seen" what my parents
were planning as soon as they'd decided that themselves.
"Yeah. They're great."
"I think it's a nice idea. You're only a senior once. Might as well document the
experience."
"How many times have you been a senior?"
"That's different."
We reached Edward then, and he held out his hand for mine. I took it eagerly, forgetting,
for a moment, my glum mood. His skin was, as always, smooth, hard, and very cold. He
gave my fingers a gentle squeeze. I looked into his liquid topa2 eyes, and my heart gave a
not-quite-so-gentle squeeze of its own. Hearing the stutter in my heartbeats, he smiled
again.
He lifted his free hand and traced one cool fingertip around the outside of my lips as he
spoke. "So, as discussed, I am not allowed to wish you a happy birthday, is that correct?"
"Yes. That is correct." I could never quite mimic the flow of his perfect, formal
articulation. It was something that could only be picked up in an earlier century.
"Just checking." He ran his hand through his tousled bronze hair. "You might have
changed your mind. Most people seem to enjoy things like birthdays and gifts."
Alice laughed, and the sound was all silver, a wind chime. "Of course you'll enjoy it.
Everyone is supposed to be nice to you today and give you your way, Bella. What's the
worst that could happen?" She meant it as a rhetorical question.

"Getting older," I answered anyway, and my voice was not as steady as I wanted it to be.
Beside me, Edward's smile t ightened into a hard line.
"Eighteen isn't very old," Alice said. "Don't women usually wait till they're twenty-nine
to get upset over birthdays?"
"It's older than Edward," I mumbled.
He sighed.
"Technically," she said, keeping her tone light. "Just by one little year, though."
And I supposed… if I could be sure of the future I wanted, sure that I would get to spend
forever with Edward, and Alice and the rest of the Cullens (preferably not as a wrinkled
little old lady)… then a year or two one direction or the other wouldn't matter to me so
much. But Edward was dead set against any future that changed me. Any future that
made me like him—that made me immortal, too.
An impasse, he called it.
I couldn't really see Edward's point, to be honest. What was so great about mortality?
Being a vampire didn't look like such a terrible thing—not the way the Cullens did it,
anyway.
"What time will you be at the house?" Alice continued, changing the subject. From her
expression, she was up to exactly the kind of thing I'd been hoping to avoid.
"I didn't know I had plans to be there."
"Oh, be fair, Bella!" she co mplained. "You aren't going to ruin all our fun like that, are
you?"
"I thought my birthday was about what I want."
"I'll get her from Charlie's right after school," Edward told her, ignoring me altogether.
"I have to work," I protested.
"You don't, actually," Alice told me smugly. "I already spoke to Mrs. Newton about it.
She's trading your shift s. She said to tell you 'Happy Birthday.'"
"I—I still can't come over," I stammered, scrambling for an excuse. "I, well, I haven't
watched Romeo and Juliet yet for English."
Alice snorted. "You have Romeo and Juliet me mo r ized."
"But