Meet a Teen from Forks, Washington, Home of the Twilight Saga!

I caught Twilight fever this summer, when bookstores everywhere celebrated the release of Breaking Dawn, the final book of the vampire saga. Are you as excited as I am for the premiere of the Twilight movie on December 12? I confess my excitement is mainly for the prom scene (MyPromStyle.com is my day job after all), though I'm way excited to see Bella's vampire lover, the hotter-than-humanly-possible Edward, come to life in the form of Robert Pattinson.

Can you imagine if you lived in Forks, Washington, the small town where Twilight takes place? Last week, I read an article about how Twilight has made Forks an unexpected tourist trap. Author Stephenie Meyer describes it as an "inconsequential town," where it rains more than anywhere else in the U.S., that is cursed with "gloomy, omnipresent shade." (The vampires live there because their skin turns iridescent in the sunshine). I wanted to find a real teen from Forks to break down Twilight for me, fact versus fiction. Through Facebook, I met 18-year-old Maegan, who just graduated from Forks High this spring and is as pretty as I picture Bella Swan to be. She was happy to tell us the real deal:

Is Forks really all gloom-and-doom?

Maegan: "I love Forks and we get a lot of rain -- we average about 13 feet a year -- but it's not gloomy. All of us live in Forks for a reason: We have the best summer days. We get beautiful days of sunshine."

Are there really myths of vampires and werewolves in Forks?

"No, I never heard of anything with vampires or werewolves until Stephenie created it. We have the myth of Big Foot."

Is the prom really in the high school gym?

"My sister, who graduated in 2006, had her prom in the lunch room but my high school prom was upstairs in The Rack, an art center downtown.Our theme was 'above city lights' because it overlooked our one flashing-yellow stoplight in town."

What do teens do for fun?

"They drive around town, cruising, or you go to the Subway and Thriftway, back-and-forth. The closest McDonald's is an hour away. The closest movie theatre is an hour away. We all play sports. A lot of us have gotten involved in high school [activities]. My senior year I was student body president."

Are there hot guys like Edward at school?

"My MySpace page says 'just graduated from the ever-so-famous Forks High School, where I failed to meet Edward.' I always dated from outside of Forks, so no! There were 58 people [in my graduating class]."

Maegan is now a college freshman in Oregon, majoring in business, so she's very perceptive on how Twilight has boosted Forks' economy. There are "Twilight Tours" that take people around town on a bus. Tourists buy t-shirts that say, "I was bitten in Forks, WA." My favorite, of course, is the t-shirt that Maegan's aunt sells in her flower shop: "Bella Swan for Prom Queen," with Maegan and her sister's names as her rivals on the ballot. But if Bella is prom queen, my question of the year for you is...Edward or Jacob for Prom King?

Fashionably yours,

Tammy

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