Like practically everyone at school, Chloe has read all four novels in the 'Twilight' series. She spotted Lautner when she saw the film last year and recognized him from a kids' movie she'd seen a few years earlier.

"Now he's hot," she says. "He's really hot." Besides his looks, Chloe loves the character he plays: A kid-next-door type who's sweet, funny and just a tad awkward.

'Might actually happen'

"I like him because I can feel like that might actually happen, like this guy could be real," she says.

Pattinson is really hot, too, but Chloe finds his character's infinite devotion to Bella "kind of unrealistic."

Fans of the series fall on two sides: Team Edward and Team Jacob. Chloe aligns firmly with the latter, but "it's pretty much half and half at my school," she says.

Each has his charms. On screen, Pattinson plays a dashing vampire. Off-screen, the British actor is shy and soft-spoken, humbled by all the 'Twilight' attention. He's 23, lanky and pale, with thick, tousled hair he constantly runs his fingers through.

Lautner is buff and bronzed, with a gregarious personality, dark eyes and an easy smile. To reprise his character in 'New Moon', he packed on more than 20 pounds (9 kilograms) of chiseled physique.

Unattainable

Pattinson and Lautner may be slightly sexier than teen idols past, but they're cut from the same teen-heartthrob cloth as their predecessors: Smooth-faced stars who seem wholesome ? and just a touch away from attainable.

Heidi Hurst, executive editor of teen pinup magazine Tiger Beat, notes that since the magazine was established in 1965, the guys on its pages have been "non-threatening, more on the boyish side of good looks." The November issue features Lautner and Pattinson on the cover.

Most Tiger Beat readers, who range in age from 8 to 16, "still aren't dating boys in real life and this is their first exposure to boys as in 'They're cute. I like them'," Hurst says.

Chloe buys Tiger Beat when it has a good Lautner spread. She'll also Google him from time to time and, until recently, kept a "very hot, shirtless picture" of him as her computer screen-saver. But she's not as obsessive as some of her friends, who check YouTube for him daily and follow various 'Twilight' fan sites.

She and a dozen of her friends are planning to make their own Team Jacob T-shirts and see 'New Moon' when it opens Friday.

Chloe's mom, Jill Mullikin-Bates, approves of her daughter's love for Lautner, calling the young actor "a wholesome, realistic role model."

"He's the right age and super cute," says the 47-year-old mother of two. "It totally brings me back to when I was that age and having those fantasies."

On page three: Movie star crushes in the modern age.