NO spoilers, I promise!!

My friends and I decide that Borders will be a madhouse with it's midnight release party.  That Wal-Mart would be a much tamer option to the crowds of 'Twihard' fans camped out at the major book stores.  

I call at 10:00pm to be sure they'd be putting it out at midnight.  

I speak to someone with a personality.  How refreshing.  She assures me that, yes, they'll have it out at midnight, no, there were no crowds yet, and, yes, I was the first one to call about it.  

By 11:15, there are only three of us sober enough to make the trip to Wal-Mart. 

Okay, FIRST of all...Friday nights are CRAZY around here (I warned you in earlier posts) and second, you KNOW this book has to be good for me to go to Wal-Mart...at midnight.

We arrive at around 11:30 to a very empty, very quiet superstore.  No crowds, no lines...just us three.  We find some poor woman stocking candy and aske her where we should set up camp to wait for the book.

She has NO idea what we are talking about.  

In retrospect, not all three of us were TOTALLY sober.  I don't drink very often, so I was the only totally sober one...with two not so sober friends in Wal-Mart...at midnight...trying to ask the candy stocker where the vampire book would be making it's appearance.  

She actually has the presence of mind to go PAGE someone to ask while my not so sober friends go to get camping chairs to set up before anyone else gets there...twenty minutes before the book goes on sale.  I kind of figure that if there isn't a crowd then, there probably isn't going to be one twenty minutes from then.  

I was right.

My friends wander back eventually without the chairs, but with tank tops instead (we're classy that way) and we peruse the hair magazines.

Now, I'm not SAYING there was any candy stolen from the candy lady's trolley while she had gotten lost paging someone in "books".    I'm just saying that being in Wal-Mart in the dead of night makes one...DO things she wouldn't normally do.  That, and a vehement hatred of the establishment.  I totally blame my not so sober friends.  Peer pressure never goes out of style.

Moving on.

At 11:54 a very mousy young lady wheels a dolly full of boxes over to the book section with big yellow stickers warning her not to sell the contents before midnight. 

She takes this warning VERY seriously.  

The three of us...alone...in Wal-Mart...with stolen candy...stand and watch her set up her flimsy little card table.  We ask her if we could just go ahead and take our books.  

"No."  She says with finality.  

We sport our best bewildered (and chocolate covered) faces.  "Why not?"  We ask.

"Because we can't ring up the book until midnight."

We look around at the Zamboni floor polisher, the oblivious candy stocker lady, the weird guy buying a crib mattress at 11:54, and at each other.  

"But there are only three of us here.  Can't we just take our books?  It's 11:54."  

"No."  She says again.  

Now me being sober is in NO WAY any guarantee that my behavior is ever normal.  The candy snatching should be a clear indicator of that, people.  So, in my famous dry wit I say, "We can take you down, sister."  

BIG mistake.

The mousy book lady wheels around and says to me, "I've got the police on my speed dial!" While she TAKES HER CELL PHONE OUT OF IT'S HOLSTER.

The three of us stand shocked.  It's now 11:56.  We can hear the buzz of the fluorescent lights above in the stunned silence.  

"I was kidding."  I say before taking a big, obnoxious bite out of my stolen Almond Snickers  bar.  

"Well, I'm not."  She says.  "They really are on speed dial on my phone."  

She carefully puts the phone back in it's holster in an 'I-told-her' sort of way, turns back to the little card table, and commences stacking the books.  

It takes her until 11:57 to finish stacking the books and then she turns around, crosses her arms and stands guard over the little table of books for the next. three. minutes.   With the three of us staring back at her, eating our candy that we now feel NO guilt in pilfering.  

At exactly 12:00 (because she's watching her digital Timex sports watch with the black plastic band) she moves aside and watches all three of us warily as we pick up our books and giggle to the check out where we have a sudden bout of remorse and end up paying for our stupid candy bars.  

Then we laugh our way out of Wal-Mart feeling very smug at outsmarting all the yahoos that waited in lines for two hours just to buy the book at Borders.  

PB told me this morning that there were still at least thirty books sitting on the little table in Wal-Mart.  

Figures.

How was it?  It was brilliant. It was moving. It gave me closure to the saga...I am complete.  It was everything I needed it to be.  I started reading on Saturday morning and finished on Sunday morning.  All 754 glorious pages.

I know that sounds a little over the top for a book, but the series has been that good for me.  I can't stress enough that if you haven't read the Twilight books, they are worth buying...in hardcover. I did.  I don't loan them out.