Dallas (Time for Tammy #1) (12 page)

“How was break?” Jane asked as soon as she entered our room upon her return. She was still dragging her suitcase behind her.

“Dallas was in a car and I think he flipped me off,” I told her.

“What’s this now?” she asked, getting comfortable in my desk chair.

Despite the fact that Lizzie had spent the weekend convincing me it wasn’t Dallas in the car, I still felt it was him.

“Call and ask if it was him,” Jane commanded.

“No. What if it really was Dallas in that car and he thinks I’m like, stalking him or something?” I could hear the whine in my own voice.

“Were you roller-blading past his dorm?”

“No. I thought about doing that, but I didn’t. I was on the other side of campus.”

“So you’re telling me you’re afraid he thinks you’re stalking him when you have a right to go roller-blading wherever you want to?”

“Well, I am sort of stalking him. Truth be told.”

Jane rolled her eyes. “I hoped this weekend would have given you some balls. I guess it didn’t work.”

Someone knocked at the door. Jane looked over at me and mouthed, “Linda?”

I shook my head as I got up to answer. It was Dallas. Of course.

“We were just talking about you,” Jane confessed.

“Oh yeah? What about?”

“Were you in a Jeep this weekend?” Jane demanded.

His expression was only slightly more confused than usual. “No, why?”

“Tammy thinks she saw you drive by” .

“What was I wearing?”

“A fishermen’s hat and a T-shirt.” I boldly told him.

“Well, I don’t have a fishermen’s hat, and I never wear T-shirts, Tammy.” He gestured to the ever-present button-down he was wearing. “So no, it wasn’t me.”

I was satisfied with that answer, and we began talking about our weekends. Jane told us stories of back home, and Dallas admitted he didn’t really do anything except go to Volleyball practice.

“I didn’t do anything exciting either. Just a lot of sitting around and reading.” I said this pointedly, miffed because, if he just sat around all weekend too, he could have called me and we could have been bored together.

“What are you guys doing tonight?” Dallas asked.

“Writing my Heritage Paper,” Jane replied. “What are you doing?”

“There’s another Kennedy party tonight, but if you’re writing a paper,” Jane raised her eyebrows at me. I knew she wanted me to tell Dallas that my paper was done, but an unpleasant thought had suddenly crept into my mind. He couldn’t have cared less about hanging out with me all weekend, but now that Jane’s back…

“Well, maybe I’ll come over after the party and see what you guys are up to,” Dallas continued.

“Whatever,” I told him, managing to find my voice.

Dallas turned to look at me. “What’s up with you?”

“Absolutely nothing,” I replied.

“What was that all about?” Jane asked after Dallas had left. I just shook my head and grabbed my shaving stuff. I wanted to be alone, but I couldn’t tell Jane that. Luckily she took the hint and was gone by the time I had finished in the bathroom.

Chapter 9: There are Three Kinds of People

“I
think Dallas likes Jane!” I told Lizzie outside on the picnic tables. She had also been writing her Heritage paper, but finally paused for a smoke around midnight. I spent the time in anxious waiting halfway between becoming hysterical or bursting into tears.

Lizzie looked thoughtful. “D’you think? I mean, a lot of guys do have a thing for red hair. And she’s so tall,” she continued unhelpfully.

“She’s my best friend here,” I wailed.

“And you guys are always together… have you ever actually hung out with Dallas alone?”

“Not without Jane,” I said miserably. “And most of the time, Linda too. Do you think he likes Linda?”

Lizzie’s eyes open wide and she leaned to look over my shoulder at something.

“Linda
is
in his Heritage class,” I continued. “Although he can’t ever remember what her name is. You’d think if you’d like someone, you’d be able to remember their name. Dallas knew my name even before we met,” I said, laying my head down on the picnic table.

“Wassup, Dallas?” Lizzie called.

I picked my head up and looked behind me. Dallas was approaching Alpha. “Hey,” he said as he walked up to us. “Did you know there are three kinds of people in this world?” He managed to stick one long leg after the other through the picnic bench next to Lizzie.
See,
I told myself.
He doesn’t even want to sit next to you.

“Oh?” Lizzie asked, taking a drag on her cigarette.

You, me, and Jane?

“Yep. Those who can count and those who can’t.”

I tried my best not to smile. After all, I was still mad at him for possibly liking my best friend and/or roommate instead of me. But I couldn’t resist grinning back at him as he looked up through his eyelashes at me. I think it was his way of apologizing for earlier tonight.

“Do you know what the difference between snow men and snow women are?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Snow balls.” I felt as though a tiny little light had turned on inside me as he grinned that famous grin.

“Where’ve you been, Dallas?” Lizzie asked.

“I went over to the International Dorm. There was this girl from Brazil...” he trailed off as I grabbed a cigarette from Lizzie’s case. “You smoke, Tammy?”

I shrugged nonchalantly as I struggled with the lighter. Dallas took it from my hand and sparked the flame while simultaneously brightening my mysterious inner light. I stuck my cigarette into the flame and inhaled. My first instinct was to cough my lungs out, but that would have given me away, so I took a big gulp as the smoke tickled my gag reflex. I turned my head to let it out, trying to imitate the way Lizzie did it. Dallas remained silent while the three of us watched the cloud of smoke blow away. Lizzie’s eyebrows were stuck at the top of her forehead. I could tell she was trying not to laugh, but she tilted her head so her shoulder-length blonde hair covered the part of her face on Dallas’s side.

“So I hung out with her and her boyfriend—” Dallas continued.

I flicked the cigarette onto the ground and stubbed it out with my flip-flop.

“—checked out Kennedy, and then I came here. What have you guys been doing?”

Waiting for you.
“Nothing.”

Dallas looked around the complex. “Where’s Jane?”

I glanced at Lizzie as I replied, “I think she went to bed.” Lizzie gave me an exaggerated shrug in return.

Dallas ended up hanging out with the two of us for another hour. We talked about neutral things, and Dallas told us some more stories of home and of the various people on his Volleyball team. It was past one o’clock when I finally went to bed.
Was it me or Linda’s twinkling lights giving Mark Hamill that jealous look?

“Tammy, can I talk to you?” I was just about to leave Heritage the next day when my professor stopped me. He gestured toward his office. I followed him in, my heart pounding.

“Is something wrong?” I asked, sitting in the chair he proffered me.

“Well, yes.” He sat down behind the desk and then pulled at his shirt collar. “You see, now that we’re college students”—Alan always used the all-powerful ‘we’ instead of the commanding ‘you’—“we have to be careful to cite our sources.” He rifled through a pile of papers and pulled out my Machiavellian Hitler paper.

“I thought I did.”

“Well, yes, you cited AP style, but you should have had some in-text citations. When you direct quote someone, you need to cite it.”

“But I didn’t...oh.” The light began to dawn. The exact same thing had happened in high school. “Alan, I wrote that paper. Every piece of it. I only used my sources for facts. I can show you all of the books and internet sites I used.” That’s what I had done with my psych teacher. She ended up asking if she could keep it to use as a sample of an ‘A+’ paper for future classes.

Alan looked relieved. “I don’t think that’s necessary.” He flipped to my bibliography. “I’m familiar with all of these. I just thought that you... I mean, this is brilliant work, Tammy. Are you an English major?”

“No sir. Marine biology.”

He peered at me over the top of his glasses. “Really. Still?”

I shrugged.

“Well, maybe you consider a double-major. Just a thought.”

Truth was, I had considered it. Only briefly, when I was writing that damned paper in the first place. But I had wanted to be a marine biologist my whole life. Not to mention there was something to be said for wanting to stick with it while all the dolphin-trainer wanna-be’s were fleeing from the major like a seal being pursued by a Great White. I was never one to give up, especially not when I was being challenged.

“Thank-you sir,” I said, ready to depart.

“No, Tammy. Thank-
you.
” He handed me my paper and picked up a red pen. “Have a good one.”

“You too,” I called on my way out of the classroom.

We finally got our mid-terms back in Calculus the next morning. It had taken my professor a full month to grade them.

“What’d you get?” Glossy Hair turned around to ask.

I numbly showed him the giant D printed across the top. He proudly flashed his B at me. I sighed and put my feet up on his chair, pretending I was one of those cool girls who didn’t care about her grades. As if this wasn’t the first D I’d ever received on a test. That I was not secretly picturing my future career in biology flushing down the toilet, only to end up in the sewer to make Eckhart stink even more.

Glossy Hair gazed down at my sandals. I thought he was admiring my DIY pedicure when he said, rather loudly, “Did you know you have hair on your toes?”

“What?” I immediately set my feet on the ground. “What are you talking about?”

“Hairy toes!” he half-whispered before turning around. The girl sitting next to me glanced down at my feet and smirked as I tried to tuck my feet underneath the desk. I spent the rest of the class in that awkward position. As soon as I got back to my dorm room, I inspected my sandal-less feet in the dorm bathroom. Glossy Hair was right—there were a few inch-long hairs on my big toes. I pulled out my razor and shaved them off, in the process cutting a gash into my toe.

The next day, instead of staying in the lab and examining barnacles, we were going out to the field—as in the beach—for the lab session of Marine Inverts.
Take that, Business Majors
, I declared to myself.
We’re going to the beach… for class.
I didn’t really know many of my fellow marine bio majors to well enough to celebrate our beach-outing with, however. After Jane told me how they were trying to weed out the weak ones, I created an imaginary competition between my classmates and me. I was determined to be the exemplary student, but so far it wasn’t working. There’d been quite a few more blank quizzes since that first one in Marine Inverts, not to mention the D on my Calc mid-term. I wasn’t used to getting low scores, but it was a natural consequence of not being able to study at night because my thoughts were so focused on Dallas.

The salt water was painful on my newly hairless and nicked big toes, but I managed to borrow a bandage from Sarah, the girl who usually sat next to me in lab. I was knee-deep in salt-water and neuron-deep in thoughts of Dallas when I heard a snorting noise off to my left. I caught sight of a gray mass before it dove back under the water. I could feel the movement of the waves, indicating that whatever it was caused a lot of water displacement.

“A walrus!” I shouted involuntarily. “There’s a walrus!”

“What?” Sarah demanded from off to my right.

I pointed at the still-rippling water.

“Don’t you know that walruses don’t live in Tampa?” The very same freckled face boy from the bike incident waded over. “It’s probably a manatee.”

“Right.” I said. “Duh.” Not only were we standing in brackish water, it was as warm as bath water.
I can’t believe I just claimed there was a walrus swimming amongst us. So much for being an astute marine bio major.

The Eckhart College’s Student Life office occasionally hosted complex parties. Of course, alcohol was not sanctioned at these all-campus get-togethers, but that didn’t stop the co-eds from getting massively wasted before attending said parties. Delta Flashback was scheduled for the Saturday before Halloween.

“Are you going?” Lizzie asked Jane and I one afternoon as we sat outside while she smoked.

Jane looked at me. “Do you not remember ‘Alpha Tropics?’ I’m thinking all complex parties will be the same as that one was: full of drunken guys trying to get a one-night stand going with equally drunk but much more scantily clad girls.”

I tugged on my bottom lip. “Ibsen is in Delta, so I imagine Dallas will probably be there.”

Jane and Lizzie exchanged a knowing look. “I guess that means we’re going,” Jane told Lizzie.

“Do you know what you’re going to wear?” Lizzie asked. “It’s called ‘Flashback’ so I’m assuming we’re supposed to dress like past decades or something.”

Jane raised her eyebrow at me. I shrugged.

“If you want, we can go to the mall on Saturday before the party,” Lizzie added.

“How are we going to get there? I’m not going on the bus, and I can’t afford a taxi,” Jane said.

“I’ll drive you,” Lizzie replied.

“You have a car?” Jane looked over at me, blinking rapidly. “How did I not know this?”

I shrugged again. My thoughts were focused on how I could find the perfect outfit and finally, maybe, get Dallas to notice me.

“I suppose it might be worth putting up with Dallas again for a trip to the mall,” Jane concluded.

And so that Saturday found the four of us crammed into Lizzie’s small purple car. We searched the mall for inspiration. Lizzie finally bought some beads and a headband at Spencer’s. “I’m going to wear my tie-dyed T-shirt and go as a 1970s chick.”

Linda proclaimed she wasn’t going to buy anything new and therefore “stay in the 1990s.” I didn’t want to tell her that her usual attire would put her more in the 80s.