(It’s Twilight week here at One Size Fits All, wherein I’ve sold my soul, read all four books, and watched the first movie.  I’m under the assumption that I’m the last person on the planet to do this, so, if I’m wrong, and you need a spoiler warning, consider it this.)

“You know you have to read Twilight,” both Amy and Kristina said to me the last time I was in New Jersey.  “That’s total pop culture.”

The thought had crossed my mind.  Even among people I consider to be discerning, there seems to be no escaping this vampire-laden phenomenon.  Almost everyone admits to the books’ atrociousness, but they’ve all been bought, read, and reread until the cheap glue gives way on the spine.

So, fine, I give.  When Amy visited Pittsburgh a few weeks ago, she appeared with a paper bag stuffed with the books and the first DVD.

“You have to watch this with me while I’m here,” she said.

So I did.  But we aren’t talking about the movie until Friday.  First, books.

Background: I love teen fiction, especially teen girl fiction.  But, outside of the realm of Sweet Valley High, I tend to gravitate toward books about the crazy and books about the gay.  Nothing makes me happier than when shit hits the fan.  (Notable exception for a book that involves neither crazy nor gay that’s just phenomenal: So Yesterday by Scott Westerfeld.  Go ahead and skip this week’s blog entries and read that instead.)

Within the first half of the book, I talked to both Amanda and Matt on the phone.  “You know it’s not so bad,” I said.  “It’s not good, either, but it’s generico teen-girl.”  Which is true.  With a few bumps along the way in the first two hundred pages of Twilight, Bella is the protagonist du jour: smart, feministy, snarky, attracts attention from her peers without trying, but prefers being alone.  I’m with it.  She’s got a crush on Edward, our sparkly vampire.  Having been a teen girl, I get the need to mush over a boy.  I still have the note-notebook that Nikki and I shared in the ninth grade, which is crammed full of boy code names and doodles and all of that nonsense.

I got as far as the top of page 268:  “Yes, you are exactly my brand of heroin.”

After I finished cleaning the vom off my shirt, I called my seventeen-year-old sister, who read the first book out of curiosity when it came out, and read the other three out of obligation (we’re a family of complete-ists).

“My brand of heroin?” I asked.

“It gets worse,” she said.  Which is what everyone has said.  How could it possibly get worse?

I’m a pervert, so I asked, “When do they bone?”

“When they get married,” she said, which I would have guessed on my own.  I gave a little diatribe anyway on how it’s one thing for both parties to wait for marriage, but it’s quite another for a male to protect a female from her sexuality, patriarchy, patriarchy, blah, blah, blah.  (Hmm, feminist cheerleading – there’s a concept I should market…oh, wait, Jessie Spano already did.)

At the end of my sermon, I asked, “When do they get married?”

“Book four.”

“Son of a bitch.  This makes me want to die.”

Also, “If I see the word beautiful or perfect one more time, I’m going to tear the pages out of the book and use them to slit my wrists,” I said, which conjured great guffaws from my sister.

But I powered through the sappy crap, and picked up once again when the bad vampires rolled up to the baseball game.  I love a showdown, especially when it’s epic, which this wasn’t, but it could have been, and that kept me reading.  And all was well, until the climax passed, and, in dénouement territory, we went right back to sentiments so righteous, they make Elizabeth Wakefield and Todd Wilkins look like Dan and Roseanne Conner.

The book, of course, ends exactly where all teen girl books should end: the prom.

“‘You’re taking me to the prom!’ I yelled….Didn’t he know me at all?”

Yes, Bella, yes, he does.  Because while you offer up your clumsiness as a reason to loathe dances, you’re why high schools have prom in the first place.  You assume first love is true love, that you’ll be together forever, so much so that you’re willing to sacrifice your entire future over someone who’s a complete asswipe to you (AND WHO WATCHES YOU WHILE YOU SLEEP!), and, if you were a little more Brenda Walsh, you’d be upstairs in a hotel room totally nailing Dylan McKay.  (More to come about Dylan in Friday’s entry.)

Bella, you see, didn’t even think of prom, she thought she was all gussied up so that Edward would give her a big ol’ bite, she’d transform into a vampire, and they’d live happily ever after.  Which is about as likely as Dylan choosing Brenda over Kelly.  So there we end, with Edward’s teeth poised at Bella’s throat.  Will he or won’t he?  My guess?  Hells to the no.  Tune in tomorrow!