Misadventures of a College Girl (Misadventures #9)(46)

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.”