*by Stephenie Meyer*



NEW MOON - chapter 1 - PARTY


I was ninety-nine point none percent sure I was dreaming.
The reasons I was certain were that, first, I was standing in a bright shaft of sunlight - the kind of blinding clear sun that never shone on my drizzly new hometown in Forks, Washington - and second, I was looking at my Grandma Marie. Gran had been dead for six years now, so that was solid evidence toward the dream theory.
Gran hadn't changed much; her face looked just the same as I remembered it. The skin was soft and withered, bent into a thousand tiny creases that clung gently to the bone underneath. Like a dried apricot, but with a puff of thick white hair standing out in a মেঘ around it.
Our mouths - hers a wizened pucker - spread into the same surprised half-smile at just the same time. Apparently, she hadn't been expecting to see me, either.
I was about to ask her a question; I had so many - What was she doing here in my dream? What had she been up to in the past six years? Was Pop okay, and had they found each other, wherever they were? - but she opened her mouth when I did, so I stopped to let her go first. She paused, too, and then we both smiled at the little awkwardness.
"Bella?"
It wasn't Gran who called my name, and we both turned to see the addition to our small reunion. I didn't have to look to know who it was; this is a voice I would know anywhere - know, and respond to, whether I was awake অথবা asleep... অথবা even dead, I'd bet. The voice I'd walk through আগুন for - or, less dramatically, slosh ever দিন through the cold and endless rain for.
Edward.
Even though I was always thrilled to see him - conscious অথবা otherwise - and even though I was almost positive that I was dreaming, I panicked as Edward walked toward us through the glaring sunlight.
I panicked because Gran didn't know that I was in প্রণয় with a vampire - nobody knew that - so how was I suppose to explain the fact that the brilliant sunbeams were shattering off his skin into a thousand রামধনু shards like he was made of crystal অথবা diamond?
Well, Gran, youu might have noticed that my boyfriend glitters. It's just something he does in the sun. Don't worry about it...
What was he doing? The whole reasno he lived in Forks, the rainiest place in the world, was so that he could be outside in the daytime without exposing his family's secret. Yet here he was, strolling gracefully toward me - with the most beautiful smile on his angel's face - as if I were the only one here.
In that second, I wished that I was not the only exception to his mysterious talent; I usually felt grateful that I was the only person whose thoughts he couldn't hear just as clearly as if they were spoken aloud. But now I wished he cold hear me, too, so that he could hear the warning I was screaming in my head.
I shot a panicked glance back at Gran, and saw that it was too late. She was just turning to stare back at me, her eyes as alarmed as mine.
Edward, still smiling so beautifully that my হৃদয় felt like it was going to swell up and burst through my chest - put his arm around my shoulder and turned to face my grandmother.
Gran's expression surprised me. Instead of looking horrified, she was staring at me sheepishly, as if waiting for a scolding. And she was standing in such a strange position - one arm held awkwardly away from her body, stretched out and then curled around the air. Like she had her arm around someone I couldn't see, someone invisible...
Only then, as I looked at the bigger picture, did I notice the huge gilt frame that enclosed my grandmother's form. Uncomprehending, I raised the hand that was't wrapped around Edward's waist and reached out to touch her. She mimicked the movement exactly, mirrored it. But where our fingers should have met, there was nothing but cold glass...
With a dizzy jolt, my dream abruptly became a nightmare.
There was no Gran.
That was me. Me in a mirror. Me - ancient, creased, and withered.
Edward stood beside, me casting noe reflection, excruciatingly lovely and forever seventeen.
He pressed his icy, perfect lips against my wasted cheek.
"Happy birthday," he whispered.


I woke with a start - my eyelids popping open wide - and gasped. Dull gray light, the familiar light of an মেঘাচ্ছন্ন morning, took the place of the blinding sun in my dream.
Just a dream, I told myself. It was only a dream. I took a deep breath, and then jumped again when my alarm went off. The little calendar in the corner of the clock's display informed me that today was September thirteenth.
Only a dream, but prophetic enough in one way, at least. Today was my birthday. I was officially eighteen years old.
I'd been dreading this দিন for months.
All through the perfect summer - the happiest summer I had ever had, the happiest summer anyone anywhere had ever had, and the rainiest summer in the history of the Olympic Peninsula - this bleak তারিখ had lurked in ambush waiting to spring.
And now that it had hit, it was even worse that I'd feared it would be. I could feel it - I was older. Every দিন I got older, but this was different, worse, quantifiable. I was eighteen.
And Edward would never be.
When I went to brush my teeth, I was almost surprised that the face in the mirror hadn't changed. I stared at myself, looking for some sign of impending wrinkles in my ivory skin. The only creases were the ones on my forehead, though, and I knew that if I could manage to relax, they would disappear. I couldn't. My eyebrows stayed lodged in a worried line over my anxious brown eyes.
It was juts a dream, I reminded myself again. Just a dream... but also my worst nightmare.
I skipped breakfast, in a hurry to get out of the house as quickly as possible. I wasn't entirely able to avoid my dad, and so I had to spend a few মিনিট অভিনয় cheerful. I honestly tried to be excited about the gifts I'd asked him not to get me, but every time I had to smile, it felt like I might start crying.
I struggled to get a grip on myself as I drove to school. The vision of Gran - I would not think of it as me - was hard to get out of my head. I couldn't feel anything but despair until I pulled into the familiar parking lot behind Forks High School and spotted Edward leaning motionlessly against his polished Volvo, like a marble tribute to some forgotten pagan god of beauty. The dream had not done him justice. And he was waiting there for me, just the same as every other day.
Despair momentarily vanished; wonder took its place. Even after half a বছর with him, I still couldn't believe that I deserved this degree of good fortune.
His sister Alice was standing দ্বারা his side, waiting for me, too.
Of course Edward and Alice weren't really related (in Forks the story was that all the Cullen siblings were adopted দ্বারা Dr. Carlisle Cullen and his wife, Esme, both plainly too young to have teenage children), but their skin was precisely the same pale shade, their eyes had the same strange golden tint, with the same deep, bruise-like shadows beneath them. Her face, like his, was also startling beautiful. To someone in the know - someone like me - these similarities marked them for what they were.