"Stephenie Meyer - Twikight 02 - New Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Meyer Stephanie)

"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 tightened 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 supposedтАж 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)тАж 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 himтАФthat 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 thingтАФnot 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 complained. "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
shifts. She said to tell you 'Happy Birthday.'"

"IтАФI still can't come over," I stammered, scrambling for an excuse. "I, well, I haven't watched Romeo
and Juliet yet for English."