Sarah Cameron has a 14-year-old cousin in Ohio — an envious cousin.
“She hates me now,” 17-year-old Sarah said Tuesday. The Everett teen’s Ohio cousin doesn’t really hate her. “She’s just jealous that I live so close,” Sarah said.
Close? Yeah, you know, close to Forks.
If you don’t know what that means, where have you been?
As Herald reporter Michelle Dunlop wrote in Saturday’s paper, the Olympic Peninsula town of Forks is “the center of the ‘Twilight’ universe.”
Although it’s all fiction, spun from novelist Stephenie Meyer’s imagination, “Twilight” and other books in the sizzling series lure fans to Forks, where the supernatural stories are set. With this week’s opening of “The Twilight Saga: New Moon,” the second movie in the series, the fever is rising even higher over the teen-vampire-werewolf love triangle.
Just so you know, there’s Bella the small-town girl; Edward the dreamy vampire; and the werewolf Jacob, who’s also a Quileute tribal member. I haven’t read “Twilight,” and I’ll wait for the hype to die down before lining up for the latest movie.
Plenty of readers can’t wait to see “New Moon.” The film will be on some local theater screens starting at 12:01 a.m. Friday.
“You should definitely read the books,” Morgan Harrington, a 17-year-old student at Everett’s Sequoia High School, told me Tuesday.
“I read the first one in two days,” added Taylor Gilreath, also 17.
Morgan, Taylor, Sarah and several other Sequoia students gathered at lunchtime in the school library to chat about all things “Twilight.” They were all young women, but Sequoia librarian Diana Parks said the books have male fans, too.
Parks thinks teens prefer “Twilight” to J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series because “it’s more like real people, instead of characters going off to Hogwarts.”
“They have been really hard to keep on the shelves,” Parks said.
“I read them all in a month,” 18-year-old Zaineb Al-Mamory said of the four “Twilight Saga” books. That’s at least 2,000 pages.
“It’s both the romance and the vampire thing,” said Brittany Hathcock, 20, another Sequoia student.
“It’s so different from regular vampire stories,” 16-year-old Ciara Paschen said. Ciara called Meyer’s knack for breathing human qualities into the stuff of nightmares “ingenious.”
“It’s all about Edward. He’s a beautiful creature,” said Ciara, who took a “Twilight” tour to Forks last summer. “I’m more of a Jacob fan,” countered Zahraa Al-Salman, 17, who was disappointed in the young vampire’s appearance in the first “Twilight” movie. “He is way cuter,” Brittany said of Jacob the werewolf.
That rivalry between Bella’s suitors shows up in movie merchandise. Take your pick: Team Edward or Team Jacob. Online, you can find T-shirts and water bottles with both images.
Teens aren’t the only ones crazy for “Twilight.” Neelz Gharavi, an English teacher at Sequoia, is hooked. “I read all four books twice. She does a good job with the suspense,” Gharavi said.
A TwilightMOMS group for adult female fans has a Web site, plus a presence on Facebook and Twitter.
Jocelyn Redel, 27, is a teen services librarian at the Arlington Library, part of the Sno-Isle Regional Library System. Last Friday, the library hosted a “New Moon” release party, complete with a pin-the-tail-on-the-werewolf game.
“Twilight” is a hot topic with teens, Redel said. “Kids either love it or hate it, but they really like talking about it,” said Redel, who plans to see the movie with friends this weekend. She already has a ticket. “We like it,” she said.
If her cousin ever comes to visit, Sarah Cameron thinks a trip to the Olympia Peninsula would be fun.
“They have ‘Edward’ toilet paper in Forks,” she said.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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