Dallas (Time for Tammy #1) (11 page)

“Never mind.” I started to march away as Jane asked him, “Don’t you want your birthday present?”

“Wait, Tammy, don’t leave. I’m sorry.” He came outside. “What’d you guys get me?”

“It’s from
Tammy
. Alone. Not me.” Jane clarified.

I walked halfway up the path to Ibsen and threw the crab at him.

He picked it up and examined it. “Oooh!” he squealed loudly. He bent down and started “walking” the crab up the pavement. “Thanks guys!”

“Thank
Tammy,
” Jane admonished him.

He stood up and looked over at me. “Thanks, Tammy!” He bent down again and used to crab to scare off a small lizard. Jane shook her head at his idiocy, but I was secretly pleased. It suited his personality perfectly and he obviously loved it. Surely that signified we were meant to be together.

Chapter 8: Fall Break

“A
re you sure you’re going to be okay?” Jane asked. She was waiting for the airport taxi with Linda. Both were going home for Fall Break, like most everyone else. Except for me. And Dallas. Earlier in the week, Jane had tried to make sure that Dallas and I would hang out this weekend. “Don’t forget about Tammy, you have to keep her company.” I’m not sure if he heard her or not. Pity they decided to make Fall Break so soon after school starts, before people have time to really make friends with other people who don’t have the money to go back home.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I have a paper to write… on Hitler’s use of Machiavellian principles.”

“Who?”

“You know, were supposed to be reading
The Prince
for Heritage?” Every freshman, though in different classes, had the same reading list.

“Oh yeah. Maybe I should read it on the plane.” Jane made no move to go get it. For a pre-med major, she never seemed to study. “So you’re sure you’ll be alright.”

I nodded, pretending I was much more confident than I felt. “Duh.”

“It’s just that...”

I knew what Jane was thinking. Just that she and Linda were my only friends (Dallas didn’t count) and both were going to be gone for the span of four days, leaving me virtually alone on campus. My parents had just purchased my ticket to come home in December and didn’t want to pay for another plane ticket, not to mention I had seen them a week ago. They were going out of town anyway, and Mom had mentioned something about me visiting Corrie at school if I came home. Needless to say, I ended up staying on campus.

“I’ll be fine,” I told them.

“Okay,” Jane said and then turned to Linda. “Ready?”

I walked them down the hallway of Gandhi, waving good-bye enthusiastically. But the room was completely quiet when I returned.
Now what?

I flicked through the TV, hoping a stray Jerry Springer episode would be airing, but it was in vain. I decided to shave my legs in the bathroom. I hated shaving in the shower: the shaving cream always rinsed off my legs before I could get to it and there was not enough room in the tiny showers to fully stretch out. So I usually shaved in the bathroom once a week, using one of Linda’s bowls to rinse my razor off since the sinks didn’t have a stopper.

As I was mid-shave, another girl came in. She gave me the “we-should-be-friends-because-we-live-in-the-same-dorm” smile. I, of course, had seen her around and knew her name was Lizzie. I gave her a “I’d-be-more-friendly-but-I’m-right-in-the-middle-of-something” smile back, hoping she wouldn’t mind the water all over the floor.

I couldn’t bring myself to eat dinner in the cafeteria, so got a take-out tray and ate in my room while watching a rerun of
Friends.
The dorm was eerily silent. I suspected most of my dormmates had also left for home or else chosen something fun to do with their Fall Break. I put on my Third Eye Blind CD for inspiration and, finding a marker and some of Linda’s construction paper, wrote the words, “HELP, I’M A PRISONER OF BOREDOM.” I taped it to the window. Our room faced the main pathway to and from the quad, so I thought maybe someone’d see it and, also feeling bored, we might be able to be bored together. Maybe Dallas would see it on his way across the quad and stop by, and one thing would lead to another, and we’d end up making out. Things would progress throughout the weekend—after all, we were spending 24/7 together in my fantasy—and by Sunday, maybe I’d be ready to… go all the way. Isn’t that what college couples did when their roommates were out of town? Dallas would be really gentle, and would wrap those long arms around me afterward and hold me. Or maybe not.

After another hour of rerun sitcoms, I ventured out to the computer lab and e-mailed a few friends from home. There seemed to be a lot of people going in and out of Prasch, the dorm across from the computer lab. Fall Break had officially started, which meant we had tomorrow off from classes, which meant the people left on campus were probably getting drunk. I had gotten another an e-mail from Corrie, bragging about how great college life was and how she’d gotten accepted into her first-choice sorority. I didn’t have the heart to e-mail her back about my mediocre performance in my classes and the pursuit of a mysterious Horseboy who didn’t seem the least bit interested in me. I logged off the computer and headed back to Gandhi. Lizzie-from-the-bathroom’s door was the first one on the right, next door to mine. I glanced at the door. There was the usual whiteboard/dry erase marker combo and a couple of knick-knacks. I squinted my eyes upon catching sight of a picture, leaning forward to get a better look at the exact moment Lizzie burst out of the room.

“Oh, hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

“Is that guy’s name Eric?” I asked, pointing at the picture depicting a guy with devil’s horns and holes where his eyes had been gouged out.

“Yeah. The Duck.”

“The Who?”

“The Duck. The asshole duck. Do you know him?”

“Not really.”

“Well, have you ever seen the way he walks?” Lizzie spread her legs wide and waddled around the dorm entryway. “Like a duck.”

“Oh. I guess I never noticed.”

Lizzie shrugged.

“I take it you’re not a big fan?”

Lizzie glanced at her watch. “No. Hey, listen, I was just going to get some Mickey D’s. Do you want to grab some with me? I’ll tell you all about my Eric story.”

“Sure.” I went into my room and found my wallet, then met Lizzie in the dorm lounge to walk to the parking lot. She had a purple car, which she had named “Muffin.” It was sadly the first time I’d been off campus in someone’s car other than my parents’. Even though I’d already eaten dinner, I bought a combo meal. I guess this is where the dreaded “Freshmen Fifteen” must come from: people so desperate to make friends that they eat multiple meals. At least it wasn’t Super-Sized.

“So I met The Duck, uh, Eric, over the summer on AOL Instant Messenger,” Lizzie told me over a bite of French fry.

“Oh, right, AIM,” I said with a nod.

“Do you AIM?”

“A little,” I lied.

“Oh, we’ll have to exchange screen names. Anyway, Eric and I got really close, telling each other we couldn’t wait to meet each other and promising to connect at the Fun Olympics.”

“Hey, that’s where I met him. The Not-So-Fun-Olympics.” I could feel my face heat up as I thought about my Eric-encounter.

“Yeah, well, I saw him there too, but he didn’t have much to say to me. And afterward he wouldn’t answer my pages whenever I tried to meet up with him on AIM.”

“That’s it? He cut you off cold turkey?”

“Yeah. I guess he didn’t like the way I looked. I sent him pictures over the summer, but they were mostly of my face, with, you know, no full-body shots.”

I glanced over at Lizzie. She had a beautiful face, with bright blue eyes and shoulder-length blonde hair, but she didn’t exactly have the body type to pull of tank-tops with no undershirts either.

“Still, he could at least be friends with you. That’s really superficial.”

“Welcome to Eckhart,” Lizzie said, taking a long slug of her drink.

“Where are you from?” I asked Lizzie on the way back to campus.

“Illinois. You?”

“Michigan. Hey, let me ask you something. Do people from Illinois traditionally wear cowboy boots?”

Lizzie guffawed. “Not hardly. I’m from the suburbs.”

“Yeah. Do you know a guy named Sonof… I mean, Ian from Illinois?”

“Nope. Is he on AIM?”

I shrugged. “Never mind.”

After we got back, Lizzie headed to her room to call her parents while I decided to go roller-blading. I wasn’t the world’s-best roller-blader; I never learned how to brake and just stopped myself by rolling into grass. I had a tape of Nine Inch Nails blasting through my headphones (I don’t think there is any better work-out music than NIN) which helped to make me feel slightly less melancholy about the prospect of being alone all weekend. I skated through the practically vacant quad and kept going to the even more deserted scrub-pine back parts of campus where there weren’t any sidewalks. Suddenly I was nearly forced off the road by a convertible with its horn blaring. The person in the backseat glanced back at me. It was a guy wearing a gray T-shirt. He seemed to recognize me as he first flipped me off—thumb out—and then ducked down as the car went around a curve.

I slowed down and then bladed onto the grass.
I could swear that was Dallas. But why would he flip me off?

I was badly shaken and chose to blade back to my dorm through the academic buildings where there were sidewalks and no nameless convertibles with people giving you the middle finger for no apparent reason.

My heart was still racing when I bladed up the front ramp to Gandhi.
Was it Dallas?
The person was the right height and shape—bone-thin—to be Dallas. Whoever it was had been wearing a fishermen’s hat. I’d never seen Dallas wear one before, but they were ubiquitous on campus—my theory was you got drunk quicker if you were wearing one. And the person also gestured with a Blockhead Flip-off. But why would he flip me off?
Was he avoiding me? Does he think I’m coming on too strong?

As I punched in the dorm code and then stomped over the threshold still wearing my roller-blades, I realized I was going to be stuck in my room, with no one to talk to the entire weekend and nowhere to go—not that I could get there anyway, seeing as my only modes of transportation were a bike, which had a flat tire, and rollerblades, which may someday kill me. And now this. I knew Jane was probably still on the plane, and I didn’t have her home phone number. There was only one thing to do when feeling boy-angst: find anybody to listen. I slid off my roller-blades and deposited them in my room before knocking on Lizzie’s door.

“What’s up?”

“Do you have time to talk?” I wailed.

“Yeah. Let’s go outside. Do you mind if I smoke?”

I was allergic to cigarette smoke and didn’t usually like to be around it, but I told her, “Nah, that’s fine.”

After we were seated comfortably on the picnic bench and Lizzie had lit her cigarette, I poured out the whole story: Sonofabitch, Dallas, the cherries on the ice-cream, the crab. All of it. Lizzie had gone through two and a half cigarettes by the time I’d gotten it all out.

“Wow. You must really be into him.”

“But, if that was him, why would he flip me off?”

“It probably wasn’t him,” she replied, flicking cigarette ash onto the sidewalk.

“But what if it was?”

“Then you’re just going to have to ask him.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“What if it was him and he doesn’t want to be friends with me and he knows I like him and it annoys him to have someone like me have a crush on him?” I was nearing tears, not even embarrassed to be acting this low to someone I just met.

“Cheer up, Tammy. It wasn’t him, and you’re making a big deal out of nothing.”

“But if it wasn’t him, why would someone I don’t know flip me off?”

“Welcome to Eckhart,” Lizzie repeated, stabbing her third cigarette out in the ashtray.

I spent the remainder of my night staring at Linda’s multi-colored Christmas lights strung above my bed and wondering why I couldn’t get a boyfriend to save my life. When I woke up the next morning, I deigned to study myself in the mirror. Really study myself, not just a how-frizzy-is-my-hair-today glance over. The girl staring back at me was no Cindy Crawford, but she wasn’t a three-hundred pound gorilla either. In the right humidity, her hair could be passable. The nose might have been a little too straight, and though the lashes were long, they were too thin, but the lips had a good natural plump to them
. Wait a minute
. I peered closer. The girl, I mean,
I
had a few eyebrows floating over my nose. I ran my finger over the spot, feeling an unwelcome fuzziness.
A uni-brow? Was that what was making me unlovable? Eyebrows that met in between?

I dug through my make-up bag, panicking when I couldn’t find my tweezers
. No wonder Sonofabitch stood me up.
No tweezers. Great. I thought about asking Lizzie if she’d drive me to the drugstore, but thought better of it and got out my own bike. Its tires were half-deflated, but it was mercifully free of lubrication. I biked the mile to the drugstore, purchasing not only the purloined tweezers, but a new lipstick, mascara, and an eyeshadow quartet. I ended up spending way more money than I planned, but I figured it was all for good use.

I spent the rest of the weekend altering between hanging out with Lizzie during her cigarette breaks and writing my Heritage paper. To my surprise, I actually enjoyed writing that paper. There was something when I had my hands over the keyboard that made me feel content. Something about the voice ringing through my head that was never silent. Something about re-reading the words on the page, and knowing some people might find them clever, or profound, or at least worthy of reading. It gave me a lot more pleasure than memorizing how oxygen was converted to ATP and carbon dioxide in the Kreb’s cycle, the things I was being forced to learn in my lab classes. I stayed up late Sunday night reading a biography of Hitler, noting any particular phrases that fit in with Machiavelli’s depictions of a ruler. Always an avid reader, I hadn’t actually been able to read for my own enjoyment since I started college.