Dallas (Time for Tammy #1) (4 page)

“Hey,” Linda protested.

I stretched my arms over my head as if I had been woken by the light. “What’s going on?”

“I think we need to talk,” LaVerne said accusingly.

About why you are inviting a guy your roommate has a crush on—although unbeknownst to you—to your room?

“Good idea,” Linda declared.

“I don’t think this is working out. We obviously have different schedules and—how do I put this,” LaVerne peeled off her top, revealing a strapless leopard bra.

“Different agendas,” Linda filled in.

“Right. Anyway, there are two girls upstairs, Brooke and Tina. They have a double, and said they might consider moving in down here. As long as we get, like a portable closet or something for all their stuff.”

I finally piped up. “You mean, we would move out and they move in? Linda and I would have our own room? Upstairs?” Despite the fact that our dorm, in its entirety, consisted of only two floors and eighteen rooms, upstairs seemed like an entirely different world. With the exception of Jane’s room, it was unexplored territory.

“Yeah.” Laverne nodded.

I leaned over to peer at Linda. “You cool with that?”

Linda widened her eyes and, after glancing over to make sure LaVerne wasn’t watching, gave an exaggerated nod.

“Okay,” I told LaVerne.

“Alright, I’ll make sure Brooke and Tina are still up for it, and then we can complete the swap.” She walked back over to the light and switched it off.

Both Linda and LaVerne fell asleep right away, as evidenced by the light snoring that quickly ensued from beside and below me. But it took longer for me to sleep that night. A roommate was your key to worlds unknown. They were supposed to educate you on things you neglected to learn about in high school: what it was like to grow up in a rich town, or a foreign city, or what it was like to not have your sister overshadowing everything you did. They were supposed to have parties in your room where you could meet new and exciting people, anonymous males at midnight notwithstanding. Linda was very nice, but she wasn’t the most beloved of girls; she, like me, didn’t fit the mold of the girls at Eckhart. Yet LaVerne, with her long blonde hair and muscular body, did. In the few weeks since classes started, LaVerne had made enough friends that she was gone every night, and now had some guy that almost slept in her bed. Linda probably wasn’t my key to popularity, or at least acceptance at my new school. Still, I wouldn’t have to deal with the awkwardness of what to do when your roommate was hooking up, a scenario I had nearly come to know that night. Plus, I had Jane.

The next morning, after Brooke and Tina acquiesced, Linda and I moved upstairs. We had pittingly way less to pack up then Brooke and Tina. LaVerne had deigned to get up before noon for once, and, consequently, was not even there to say farewell to her former roommates. Linda and I settled in upstairs as a duo instead of part of a trio.

“We’re going to need a fridge,” I told her.

“That’s not a problem. My parents already told me that Brian would get me one,” she replied, referring to her brother that worked in Orlando.

Jane was now conveniently across the hall instead of a floor above us. She was soon knocking at our door.

“Hey,” she said without waiting for an invitation to enter. “You guys seem to be settling in well.”

“Yep,” I replied.

“Hey, listen, do you remember that guy from lunch? The foreign one?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, my roommate told me which complex he lives in. Do you want to come with me? You know, to check his dorm out?”

I looked over at Linda. She was arranging her T-shirt drawer. “You guys go. I’m good.”

“Why not?” I told Jane.

We walked across the quad to the Delta complex. Jane started marching up to Ibsen dorm. If our dorm, Gandhi, was where the Virgins dwelled, Ibsen was the domain of the Jocks.

“Wait,” I called. She turned around, thankfully pausing before she knocked on the dorm door. “You’re not actually going in there, are you?”

“Why not?” Jane repeated my earlier question.

“Do you even know which room is his?”

“No. But we could ask.”

“What are you going to say…‘d’ya know where the old guy with the strange accent lives?’”

Jane shrugged. “I don’t know.” She settled for sitting on the picnic table located between the two dorms. We made casual conversation with each other while we attempted to get a glimpse of the Dadian. From our vantage point on the picnic table, we could see right into Ibsen’s two hallways leading from the bathroom. I happened to look up as a very tall and muscular guy strolled back from the shower.

“Who’s that?” I asked Jane. She shrugged. Despite the reflection of the Floridian sun on the dormitory glass, I could see enough to note that Towel Boy, in addition to having a superb body, was extremely good-looking as well.

Hello, Crush Number Two.

Towel Boy’s dorm room was the first one inside the door. He was about to walk into his room as the Dadian appeared from the other side of the hallway. He nodded at Towel Boy before walking into the room across the hall.

Jane glanced at me, her eyes wide. “Do you think they’re teammates?”

“Must be.” Someone as tall as Towel Boy must be a basketball player. “I think I just fell in love.”

“I think I’m still in love,” Jane replied.

Mission accomplished, we hopped off the picnic table. We walked back to Alpha Lame, dreaming of double dates and of attending basketball games clad in our school colors and cheering on our “boyfriends.”

The only problems that could have possibly hampered our plan was that I’d never actually talked to my Towel Boy and Jane was still in awe of the Dadian.

“So how are we going to talk to them?” Jane asked in my room the next day after returning from class.

I shrugged. I didn’t really know how to talk to cute boys. My almost flirtation with Eric was a fluke and netted me nothing.

“I’ve got it! I’m going to send him an e-mail,” Jane said, rising from her seat on my desk chair with the Freshmen Directory in her hand. She marched purposefully toward Alpha’s computer lab. I meekly followed her. She sat in front of an open computer and started flipping through the directory.

“How do you know his name?”

“Pam told LaVerne about that lunch, and of course, LaVerne knew what his name was. Apparently there is only one old-man-basketball player from Trinidad on campus.” She found the right page in the directory and put her finger on an e-mail address.

“What are you going to write?” I asked as she started typing away.

She didn’t reply, so I watched the words pop up onto the computer screen:

DEAR SIR,

YOU DON’T KNOW ME, BUT I’VE BEEN ADMIRING YOU FROM AFAR. I WOULD LIKE TO GET TO KNOW YOU BETTER. LET’S MEET IN THE CAFETERIA TOMORROW NIGHT.

She glanced at me. “Anything else?”

“Tell him to bring friends.” I was only half-joking. I didn’t actually expect her to add that caveat, but she did anyway. She signed it, “YOUR SECRET ADMIRER” and hit the send button without thinking twice.

“Holy Cow,” I told her. “You really did it.”

“Yep,” she said, picking up the directory and getting up from the computer.

“But you didn’t actually tell him a time.” Dinner was served in the campus’s lone cafeteria from 5 until 7 PM.

“Oh yeah,” she paused, glancing down at the computer. “I guess that means we’re going to have a two-hour dinner tomorrow.”

The next afternoon, Jane appeared in our room at 3:30 so we could start primping and powdering ourselves.

“Who’s that?” Jane asked, gesturing toward the prime spot on my closet door.

“Mark Hamill.” It was a giant poster of him posed in a white outfit, arms crossed across his chest with a cocky grin on his face, circa his Star Wars years.

Linda looked up from her textbook. “Don’t you mean Luke Skywalker?”

“No. It’s Mark Hamill.”

Jane raised her eyebrows at Linda, but she didn’t say anything.

Mark Hamill, or okay, perhaps Luke Skywalker, represented everything I had ever wanted in a guy. That confident grin belied an innocence even Darth Vader couldn’t corrupt. He was attentive, he was kind, he knew how to wield a light saber. But most of all, he was my hero. The only person I had ever known to come close to him in real life was Kellen. But Kellen was dating my sister. Quite steadily, according to Corrie. Kellen and I, or maybe just I, had cut off communication except for trite e-mails proclaiming to be adjusting quite well to college. Perhaps mine were the only ones that weren’t completely truthful. At any rate, I didn’t really need to hear how they had “consummated” their love, or joined brother-and-sister fraternities. Corrie’s e-mails contained enough information; I didn’t need the same from my former best friend.

So now it was just me and Mark. Mark’s smile never wavered no matter how frizzy my hair was, or how many extra servings of fries I had in the cafeteria, or how my bare arms looked in a tank top. He would just pose unselfconsciously across my wardrobe, arms locked, grin spread, giving me the impression that at least someone approved of me.

When Jane and I finally finished primping, there was still half an hour before dinner started. We had nothing else to do but watch Jerry Springer and try not to wrinkle our sundresses.

At 4:55, we headed to the cafeteria. We waited outside in the scorching sun for the doors to open. “There goes my make-up,” I thought, feeling the perspiration drip off my face and carry the carefully applied foundation with it. I pulled on the top of my sundress to prevent it from becoming shrink-wrapped with sweat. Jane, on the other hand, was as cool as if she was somehow standing on a block of ice conveniently placed in front of the dining hall. Finally they unlocked the doors. We entered the cafeteria lines and I picked up my routine dinner. I waited for Jane to figure out where to sit, as we had the pick of the nearly empty space. Jane led the way to a long table next to windows overlooking the path leading from Delta. She seemed as calm as always, but I was a bundle of nerves and kept glancing out the window next to me. Because the glass-fronted cafeteria was centrally-located on campus, it was possible to see our dinner dates approach from virtually any direction.

I finished my first veggie burger and loaded some more fries onto my plate. I felt strange sitting there with no food in front of me, so I kept eating. Jane did the same. Finally, at 6 PM— when I could no longer choke down one more fry—Jane grabbed my arm. “There he is.”

Sure enough, I spied the Dadian approaching. We were too focused on the Dadian walking by the window right next to us (thank god the glass was only one-way) to notice the other people walking a few feet behind him. Seconds later the Dadian appeared in the doorway of the cafeteria and dutifully presented his ID card for the cafeteria worker to scan. Jane and I feigned interest in our empty plates as he stalked past the end of our table toward the food lines. He didn’t bother to wait for his companions. Number Two—Towel Boy’s new codename: for my Number Two crush, and more fitting now because he seemed subservient to the Dadian—also presented his ID. Two paused before entering the food lines to wait for someone behind him.
Please don’t be a girl. Please don’t be a girl.

“Who is that?” I asked Jane, referring to the tall, skinny dark-haired guy now walking in with Number Two.

Jane peered at him. “I think that might be Two’s roommate. I’ve seen him around the dorms,” she said, her voice lowering an octave as they walked by. Two didn’t even glance our way, but I made eye contact with the roommate. Although he had a confused look on his face, he had the brightest blue eyes I’d ever seen.

I drained the rest of my diet pop and glanced down at my empty tray. Nerves made me hungry and I realized I could perhaps swallow down a few more fries. “Should we get more food?”

“Not now,” Jane hissed.

“But won’t it look weird if we’re not eating anymore?”

“Shhhh,” Jane said. Two was walking near us, holding a tray and looking slightly lost. The Dadian walked over, setting his tray down loudly at the table next to us and glaring at Two. The Dadian motioned to his table, and Two ambled over and sat down, blocking my view of the Dadian. A few minutes later, the Roommate joined them. The three of them glanced around the cafeteria as I looked down at my tray. Jane had her back to all of them, but she casually turned her head to glance in their direction. She looked back at me, eyebrows raised. I got up to get more Diet Coke, wishing I had never agreed to this meeting. It started to feel less like a date, more like an ambush.

As I sat back down, she angled her head toward them. I shook my head slightly.
Not yet. I’m not ready yet.
Jane shrugged and started in on her second desert. I glanced over at them again. Their faces seemed to grow more and more disappointed with each passing minute their dates didn’t show.

The boys at the table next to us ate their meal quickly, too quickly for me to work up enough nerve to go over there. Before I knew it, they were putting away their trays and leaving. Their letdown at the mysterious admirer’s lack of attendance was clear by their lagging gait as we watched them walk back to their dorm room.

“What was that all about?” Jane asked on our own walk back to the dorm.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. It hadn’t been my bravest moment.

“Did you have a boyfriend in high school?” she asked suddenly.

“Not exactly,” I told her.

The closest I’d ever come to making out with someone had been Kellen. Not that I’m a boyfriend stealer. He’d been my best friend for half a decade before he and Corrie started going out. We’d gone to our junior year prom together, only as friends, but I could have sworn there had been a moment when we might have kissed. But then he and Corrie spent the next day together and became an item. After that, things had changed, obviously. At first Kellen had tried to keep things impartial. Sometimes he’d call and ask for me or come over and hang in my room, but always at the risk of Corrie giving me dirty looks at the dinner table. After a while it became easier to just let both of them do their thing. I occupied the time I normally would have spent with Kellen—analyzing films or listening to John Williams’ music—by joining various scholastic activities. While Kellen and Corrie made Prom Queen and King our senior year, I occupied every picture in the yearbook spread of academic teams: Mathletes, Quiz Bowl, Science Olympiad, etc., resulting in Corrie giving me the nickname, “Queen of the Nerds.”