Misadventures of a College Girl

by Lauren Rowe

  “Zooey, you’re the one who always says great acting isn’t pretending—that it’s telling the truth. So let’s tell the truth about how a young, horny, hopeless romantic would kiss his dream girl when given the chance. I guarantee you, whether the story takes place today or five hundred years ago, that dude’s going to kiss the hell out of that girl, the same way I kissed you our first night on the dance floor.”

  I’m blown away. Utterly incapable of forming words.

  “Good. So it’s settled then,” Tyler declares, apparently misinterpreting my stunned silence as agreement.

  I quickly gather myself. “No, Tyler. No matter how passionately Romeo might have felt about Juliet, you still can’t kiss me with that much heat in front of our class. No way.”

  “Why not? They’re all adults. They can handle it.”

  I shake my head. “If you kiss me with that much passion, everyone will know we’ve been having sex.”

  “We have. No shame in that.”

  “No shame for you. But everyone knows your reputation, Tyler. They’ll assume I’m just another one of your many conquests, and I don’t want people thinking that about me. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Who cares what anyone else thinks about us? As long as we both know you’re not some ‘conquest’ of mine, that’s all that matters.”

  My heart lurches into my throat. “I’m not a conquest?”

  Tyler scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous, Zooey. Of course, not.”

  I shouldn’t do it. I really shouldn’t. But I can’t help myself. “What am I, then, if you had to put a word to it?”

  Tyler takes off his masquerade mask, so I do the same.

  “You’re my beaver. My adorable, weird, sexy, talented, funny, sexpot of an eager beaver.”

  I make a face that says, Not what I was hoping for.

  Tyler exhales. “Aw, Zooey.” He rubs his forehead. “I don’t like labels. We are what we are. It is what it is. We’re just doing our thing, feeling what we feel. There’s no need to call it anything in particular. A label won’t change anything.”

  I remain stone-faced. A label will change everything, I think. But I don’t say it.

  “Okay, here’s what I know,” Tyler says. He counts off on his fingers. “One, I’m having a blast with you—in and out of bed. Two, since I met you, I’ve been playing the best football of my life.” He shrugs. “So I’m just trying not to think too much about what it all means, or I’m afraid I’ll fuck everything up. It’s so damned awesome, why fuck it up?” He looks at me with pleading eyes. “Okay?”

  I scoot closer to him, put my palms onto his cheeks, and kiss him. “Okay.”

  “You’re my eager little beaver,” he whispers softly into my mouth. “That’s all I know. My dorky, weird Zooey Cartwright who’s going to be a star one day. And that’s all I need to know.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The halo effect is real, folks. At least, according to the four social psychology experiments Tyler and Dimitri conducted today, with an assist by Clarissa and me.

  In our first experiment of the day, Dimitri and Tyler stood on opposite street corners in downtown LA, and while Clarissa and I observed them, they asked passersby to sign a petition for “equality.” What kind of equality? On behalf of whom and where would the petition be submitted? The boys didn’t specify. Instead, the guys identified their organization simply as “People for the Equality of People.” If asked any questions, we gave them a few vague, pre-scripted comments they were allowed to state in nothing but a flat, polite tone. No flirting. No turning on the charm. “And absolutely no panty-melting smiles, Tyler Caldwell!” I commanded right before we got started.

  And guess what happened? Tyler wound up getting thirty-three signatures to Dimitri’s four. Four! Clarissa and I couldn’t believe it. Of course, we didn’t tell the guys the shocking tallies at the time because we didn’t want to influence their confidence levels during future experiments throughout the day. But we girls knew right then and there poor Dimitri was in for a very long and humbling day.

  For our second experiment, we repeated the first one to the letter, except this time the guys were allowed to be as gregarious and charming as possible. The result? Tyler got a whopping eighty-six signatures, while Dimitri got seventeen.

  “I slayed it that time,” Dimitri declared confidently when our group reconvened briefly after our second experiment. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I beat Tyler’s extremely muscular ass that time.”

  Yet again, Clarissa and I didn’t reveal the tallies onsite. But we exchanged a look that said, “Poor Dimitri.”

  For our third experiment, Tyler and Dimitri held up signs offering free hugs to any and all passersby…and, once again, Tyler gave away exponentially more hugs than Dimitri.

  At that point, the four of us took a break to eat lunch at a nearby deli, during which we plotted our then-upcoming fourth and final experiment of the day: Tyler and Dimitri soliciting a dollar donation in exchange for the telling of a clean joke, all proceeds to benefit charity.

  “Tyler and I should tell the exact same jokes, word for word,” Dimitri suggested during our lunch. “Same jokes, different result, we’ll know it must have been the joke-teller that made the difference.”

  “Excellent idea, Nerd,” I agreed.

  And so, we promptly proceeded to compile our list of stupid jokes, one contribution from each team member.

  My joke? “What did the ocean say to the beach? Nothing. It just waved.”

  Clarissa’s contribution: “What type of bee produces milk? A boo-bee.”

  Tyler’s joke: “What did the buffalo say to his son when he dropped him off at college? Bison.”

  And, finally, Dimitri’s highly intellectual contribution: “What do you call a guy with a rubber toe? Roberto.”

  For some reason, we laughed ourselves silly the most about Dimitri’s joke, probably because it seemed especially funny to hear such a ridiculously stupid joke come out of Dimitri’s incredibly intelligent mouth.

  “What charity should we choose?” I asked the group, chomping on my turkey sandwich. “Anyone have a particular cause you want to support?”

  “Breast cancer research,” Tyler said without hesitation, before anyone else could say a word.

  “Great idea,” Dimitri replied breezily. “People always like donating to that one.”

  But one glimpse at Tyler’s face and I knew he hadn’t suggested breast cancer research because “people” always like donating to that cause. I understood Tyler had picked it for a deeply personal reason. And that’s when I remembered Tyler telling me his dad and sister always text him on game days…and not mentioning his mom. And that made me wonder if maybe fickle Fortune had gotten its grubby paws on Tyler’s mom the same way it had gotten its paws on my own?

  Oh, how my heart panged for my beautiful Tyler when that horrible possibility occurred to me. But, somehow, I held it together and quietly continued eating my sandwich without saying a word. Clearly, it wasn’t the right time to ask Tyler about why he’d picked breast cancer research as our chosen charity. It was time for us to head back to our opposing corners in downtown LA and let the boys try to raise some money.

  And so, that’s what we did.

  And that completed our first round of experiments. After that, we left downtown LA and reconvened our social psychology fiesta on Bruin Walk outside UCLA’s student center, the one place in the world where everybody knows—and worships—Tyler Caldwell. And that’s where we repeated all four experiments again, right down the line—the new location selected to help us answer the burning question, Does celebrity status demonstrably increase the power of the halo effect? We were dying to find out.

  And now, here we are, sitting in the campus Starbucks after completing all four experiments on Bruin Walk.

  First off, I divulge the tallies from the first three experiments in both locations and everyone looks stunned.

  “Well, shit,” Dimitri says. “I thought I
kicked Tyler’s ass at least a couple times today. Especially in the experiments when I was allowed to be charming. I thought I was kicking ass those times.”

  “I swear the point wasn’t to make you feel like a loser, Dimitri,” I say. “We were just trying to determine if the halo effect is real.”

  “Well, I think we can safely conclude it is.” He looks at Tyler. “Promise me you’ll always use your powers for good, man. Because if you’re secretly a madman hell-bent on destroying the universe, we’re all fucked.”

  Tyler laughs. “I’m as shocked as you are about these results. Especially for that one time when we weren’t allowed to be charming at all. I swear I tried to have all the charisma of a potted plant that time.”

  “Gee, thanks for rubbing it in,” Dimitri says, but he’s laughing.

  “You know what would be fun?” Clarissa says. “We should do all four experiments again, but next time, Dimitri should be instructed to be as charming as possible and Tyler should try to be as boring as possible the whole time. That ought to be interesting.”

  “Interesting?” Dimitri says. “No, it’ll be soul-crushing for me. All we’ll prove is that people strongly prefer a ridiculously good-looking potted plant to a nice guy with a fantastic personality.”

  “Well, I don’t care what anyone else prefers,” Clarissa says, laying her hand on Dimitri’s forearm. “I personally prefer a nice guy with a fantastic personality every time.”

  Dimitri blushes. “Thank you.” He lays a sweet little kiss on Clarissa’s cheek.

  I smile at Tyler. “Me, too.”

  Tyler shoots me a truly lovely smile, letting me know he’s understood my message loud and clear.

  “So what were the tallies on the joke-telling experiment in both locations?” Dimitri asks.

  I peel my eyes off Tyler’s smiling face and give the group the tallies. “So it was actually relatively close when we did it downtown. That suggests humor and charity might be the great equalizer for people. But when we did it again on campus where everyone worships the ground Tyler walks on, his productivity shot up by almost four hundred percent. Oh, my God, it was a bloodbath.”

  “Wow,” Clarissa says. “So does that mean celebrity status is the halo effect on steroids?”

  “Definitely,” Dimitri says. “That’s why so many brands and charities use celebrities to sell products and raise money. We’re all lemmings.”

  Tyler rubs his palms together and lets out an evil laugh. “Oh, man, one day soon I’m going to conquer the world!”

  We all laugh at his exuberance.

  “No doubt about it,” Dimitri says. “Based on today’s results, Tyler’s going to become the Michael Jordan of football.”

  “Actually, not to be an egomaniac or anything, but Jordan’s only one of the four greatest Michaels of all time. I’m going to be the single greatest Tyler of all-time ever.”

  “The four greatest Michaels?” Dimitri asks, laughing. “Who are the other three?”

  Of course, I know the answer to this question. I’ve seen Tyler’s Four Greatest Michaels of All Time poster on his wall countless times. But I wouldn’t dream of stealing Tyler’s thunder.

  “Jackson, Phelps, and Scott,” Tyler replies.

  “Scott?” Clarissa asks. “Who’s Michael Scott?”

  “It’s Steve Carell’s character on The Office,” Tyler says.

  “Tyler’s obsessed with that show,” I explain. “And now he’s got me obsessed, too.”

  “Zooey and I are on season three,” Tyler says proudly.

  “It’s awesome. Pam and Jim are finally about to get together. I can feel it. I keep begging Tyler to let me skip ahead so I can see them get together, but he won’t let me.”

  “Patience, eager beaver,” Tyler says, grabbing my hand. He addresses Dimitri and Clarissa. “The Office is but one of the great pleasures of life I’ve shown my little freshman these past few weeks.” He smiles suggestively.

  “Tyler.” I blush crimson at his obvious sexual innuendo.

  “What?” Tyler replies innocently. “The other great pleasure is fish tacos. What did you think I meant?”

  Everyone laughs.

  Clarissa beams a huge, knowing smile at me and pops out of her seat. “Hey, Zo. I’m going to the bathroom. Come with me.”

  “Sure.”

  And off we go.

  The minute Clarissa and I are in the restroom together, she closes the door behind us and whips around, her face aglow. “Tyler’s in love with you.”

  I gasp. “You think?”

  “Oh, my God. It’s so freaking obvious. I knew you were falling for him, and frankly, I was kind of worried about you getting your little heart broken by him. But now that I’ve seen the two of you together—and especially the way he looks at you—there’s no doubt in my mind he’s fallen for you, too.”

  My heart is clanging wildly. I wring my hands together, too overwhelmed to speak.

  “Tyler hasn’t told you how he’s feeling about you?” Clarissa asks.

  “He said he’s enjoying hanging out with me. And that he doesn’t like labels. But he hasn’t addressed the million-dollar question of what’s going to happen at the five-week mark. As far as I know, he’s still planning on us magically turning into friends right after we turn in our two midterm projects.”

  Clarissa shakes her head emphatically. “That might have been what Tyler said at the beginning, but clearly, things have changed for him. He’s totally smitten.”

  I take a deep breath, praying she’s right.

  “Zooey, don’t leave this to chance. Just tell him how you feel.”

  I shake my head.

  “Yes. If Tyler’s not going to broach the subject, then you need to do it.”

  I shake my head again.

  “Yes. One of you needs to get the ball rolling. Clearly, your initial ‘arrangement’ has morphed into something different now. Anyone can see you two are totally into each other.”

  “I can’t, Clarissa. When Tyler and I talked about his ‘syllabus’ at the beginning, he was abundantly clear about what he wants. If he’s feeling differently now, then he needs to be the one who says so first.”

  “But, Zooey. It’s so obvious you’re both totally and completely smitten with each other.”

  My heart leaps. God, I hope she’s right about that. “You’re just going to have trust me on this, Clarissa. I nudged him a little bit last week, and he didn’t take the bait. He practically begged me to drop it. So, now, I’m just going to keep my mouth shut and enjoy the ride.” I sigh. “The truth is I’m ninety-nine percent sure falling in love isn’t on Tyler’s syllabus. And telling him how I’m feeling—just so he can reject me and smash my heart into a million tiny pieces—most definitely isn’t on mine.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “When are you going to tell me where you’re taking me?” I ask excitedly.

  “Patience, eager beaver. You’ll see when we get there.”

  Tyler and I are having this conversation in Hanalei’s car on a Wednesday evening. Tyler’s driving. I’m giddy. And he’s looking like a million bucks in a blue, tailored suit.

  I fidget with the hem of my little red dress. “Aw, come on, dude. Have mercy on me. I’m dying here.”

  “Sucks to be you, I guess.”

  “Damn.”

  This is torture. The only thing Tyler said about tonight’s surprise was that I should wear the sexiest dress in my closet. So, of course, since I don’t own a single sexy dress, I raided Clarissa’s closet. The dress I picked out resembles the one I wore the night Tyler and I met a month ago, actually. But tonight, with my hair wild and my makeup barely there, I don’t feel like I’m disappearing into a costume the way I did that fateful night. To the contrary, tonight, I feel like I’m revealing my most authentic self.

  I look out the car window, trying in vain to discern from the passing scenery where Tyler’s taking me. But it’s a pointless endeavor. I don’t know Los Angeles at all. “Just gimme
a little hint,” I say in my most persuasive voice.

  “Okay, okay. Here’s a little hint.”

  I hold my breath.

  “You’re going to like it.”

  I roll my eyes. “Lame. I’ll like anything, as long as I’m with you. Tell me more than that.”

  Tyler laughs. “Nope.”

  The song on the radio ends and, by total coincidence, “Crash into Me” begins.

  Tyler turns up the radio. “Ah, now that’s the soundtrack of a great memory.”

  I open my mouth to agree when my eyes spy a neon-lit theater up the street…with a marquee that boasts, in large black lettering, WICKED!

  I shriek at the top of my lungs. “Tyler! Oh, my God, Tyler!” I point up the street toward the theater. “Please tell me that’s where you’re taking me!”

  Tyler laughs. “Of course it is, baby. I figured I should see what inspired my eager little beaver on her path to greatness.”

  An hour and a half later…

  I squeeze Tyler’s hand. We’ve finally reached the moment I’ve been waiting for—the moment toward the end of the first act when Elphaba begins singing “Defying Gravity.” As the first notes of the song begin, I glance at Tyler for the hundredth time since the show began, dying to see his reaction, and the look on his face doesn’t disappoint. He looks precisely the way I feel. Electrified.

  Midway through the song, Elphaba’s body begins physically rising off the stage. She’s literally defying gravity up there! Up, up, up Elphaba goes, her voice soaring and rising along with her body. I squeeze Tyler’s hand again, feeling like I’m going to faint from pure joy. Sharing this with Tyler is the most exciting moment of my life.

  The actress onstage hits the highest note of the song from her perch in the air, and goose bumps erupt across my skin. I look at Tyler again. His eyes are glistening and wide. His mouth is shaped into a cartoon-like “O.” He looks absolutely bowled over.

  A tidal wave of emotion rises up inside me. Joy. Gratitude. Love. I squeeze Tyler’s hand for the millionth time, and he turns his head and beams at me. His eyes are sparkling. His face is flushed. He kisses the top of my hand. And, suddenly, I can’t stuff down my emotions any longer. I let my tears flow.