Free Dallas (Time for Tammy #1) by Kit Sergeant Page A

stepped back, signaling for me to open the door. I did, despite my heart, which had started pounding earlier than it normally did when we visited Dallas’s dorm. With him sitting in the open, I didn’t have the customary few seconds before we knocked on the door to his room to calm the rollicking acornworms in the pit of my stomach. I hesitated briefly, contemplating running back to Gandhi, but Jane nudged me forward. I don’t know if Dallas saw Jane’s and my exchange since he was still engrossed in his book when we walked inside.
    “Hey, Dallas,” I said in a cheerful voice.
    He looked up from his. “What’s going on?”
    “Nothing. What you doing?”
    “Reading.” Duh.
    “Oh.” I had nothing more to say, although I could feel Jane’s eyes imploring me to say something .
    “Uh. Hey, Dallas, thanks for saving me the other day. You know… with LaVerne.”
    “No problem.”
    I could hear Jane sigh. “Yeah,” I continued, “She was about to beat me up, so you kind of saved my ass.”
    He placed a bookmark into his book and set it next to him. “Was she really going to beat you up?”
    “You should have seen her,” Jane cut in. “Tammy was as white as a ghost.”
    “I was not.”
    I could feel Jane nod at Dallas over my head. He looked over at me with his lopsided grin as my heart swelled. “She really ought to be stopped,” he said. My hero.
    “She should,” Jane agreed. She sat in an adjacent chair, glancing over at me and tilting her head ever so slightly toward the space next to Dallas.
    “What are you thinking?” I asked as I gingerly sat next to Dallas. Something touched my leg. My face felt hot as I pictured Dallas caressing my thigh. Instead he found his book buried in the crevice next to me and moved it to the other side of the couch.
    “You guys know how to get on the roof of Gandhi?”
    “How’d you hear about that?” I inquired.
    Dallas winked.
    “Oh, right.” The Dadian lived across the hall from both Dallas and Sonofabitch.
    “So let’s put her bike up there.”
    “She’d kill us. She already suspects Jane and I are the ones who put condoms on it.”
    “You put condoms on LaVerne’s bike?”
    “Yeah. It was Tammy’s idea,” Jane told him.
    “Nice,” Dallas said, nodding at me with approval.
    I silently thanked Jane for the lie.
    “Yeah, but LaVerne figured out we were the ones who did it, and she was super-pissed because she couldn’t get the grease stains off the seat,” I said. “So she took my Yoda and threw it in the toilet.”
    “Your what?”
    “My Yoda doll.” It had been a present from Kellen in the 6th grade. Needless to say, it had sentimental value, and I was less than pleased that it now had a bluish-tint to it from the toilet bowl cleaner.
    “See? That girl has to be taught a lesson. Anyway, LaVerne will never need to know it was us who put her bike up there,” Dallas added.
    And so Jane and Dallas concocted a plan to get even with LaVerne while I calculated how much more Dallas-hanging-out time their plan would gain. As we were getting up to leave, Dallas called back to us. “Hey guys...”
    I turned around before Jane.
    “If we’re going to do this, we need a secret knock.” He thought for a second and then began banging on the wooden arm of the couch. “Do you recognize it?”
    “Was that a song?”
    “It’s Third Eye Blind.” He resumed his banging as Jane cocked an eyebrow at me. I shrugged at both of them.
    “ How’s It Going to Be ?”
    “When?” I asked.
    “No, that’s the song.” He banged it out one more time, closing his eyes and humming the opening lines of the song. He must have seen the looks on our face after he opened his eyes because he stopped knocking. “Or not.”
    “See you around, Dallas,” I told him. Jane was already out the door.
    ~*~
    Fall Break was two weeks away. Dallas and Jane decided the weekend before would be the best time to do put LaVerne’s bike on the roof. That way if LaVerne figured out it