Will Grayson, Will Grayson Read online

  “What? Tiny, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s right. Things couldn’t be righter. Things could be less tired. They could be less busy. They could be less caffeinated. But they couldn’t be righter.”

  “Dude, are you on meth?”

  “No, I’m on Red Bull.” He hands me the Red Bull, and I sniff at it, trying to figure out whether it’s laced with something. “Also coffee,” he adds. “So but listen, Grayson. Five things.”

  “I can’t believe you woke up my entire neighborhood at five forty-three for no reason.”

  “Actually,” he says, his voice louder than seems entirely necessary at such a tender hour, “I woke you up for five reasons, which is what I’ve been trying to tell you, except that you keep interrupting me, which is just a very, like, Tiny Cooper thing of you to do.”

  I’ve known Tiny Cooper since he was a very large and very gay fifth grader. I’ve seen him drunk and sober, hungry and sated, loud and louder, in love and in longing. I have seen him in good times and bad, in sickness and in health. And in lo those many years, he has never before made a self-deprecating joke. And I can’t help but think: maybe Tiny Cooper should fry his brain with caffeine more often.

  “Okay, what are the five things?” I ask.

  “One, I finished casting the show last night around eleven while I was skyping with Will Grayson. He helped me. I imitated all the potential auditioners, and then he helped me decide who was least horrible.”

  “The other Will Grayson,” I correct him.

  “Two,” he says, as if he hasn’t heard me. “Shortly thereafter, Will went to bed. And I was thinking to myself, you know, it’s been eight days since I met him, and I haven’t technically liked someone who liked me back for eight days in my entire life, unless you count my relationship with Bethany Keene in third grade, which obviously you can’t, since she’s a girl.

  “Three, and then I was thinking about that and lying in the bed staring up at the ceiling, and I could see the stars that we stuck up there in like sixth grade or whatever. Do you remember that? The glow-in-the-dark stars and the comet and everything?”

  I nod, but he doesn’t look over, even though we’re stopped at a light. “Well,” he goes on, “I was looking at those stars and they were fading away because it had been a few minutes since I’d turned out the light, and then I had a blinding light spiritual awakening. What is Tiny Dancer about? I mean, what is its subject, Grayson? You’ve read it.”

  I assume that, as usual, he is asking this question rhetorically, so I say nothing so he’ll go on ranting, because as painful as it is for me to admit, there is something kind of wonderful about Tiny’s ranting, particularly on a quiet street when I am still half asleep. There is something about the mere act of him speaking that is vaguely pleasurable even though I wish it weren’t. It is something about his voice, not his pitch or his rapid-fire, caffeinated diction, but the voice itself—the familiarity of it, I guess, but also its inexhaustibility.

  But he doesn’t say anything for a while and then I realize he actually does want me to answer. I don’t know what he wants to hear, so in the end I just tell him the truth. “Tiny Dancer is about Tiny Cooper,” I say.

  “Exactly!” he shouts, pounding the steering wheel. “And no great musical is ever about a person, not really. And that’s the problem. That’s the whole problem with the play. It’s not about tolerance or understanding or love or anything. It’s about me. And, like, nothing against me. I mean, I am pretty fabulous. Am I not?”

  “You’re a pillar of fabulosity in the community,” I tell him.

  “Yes, exactly,” he says. He’s smiling, but it’s tough to tell how much he’s kidding. We’re pulling into school now, the place entirely dead, not even a car in the faculty lot. He turns into his usual spot, reaches into the back for his backpack, gets out, and starts walking across the desolate lot. I follow.

  “Four,” he says. “So I realized, in spite of my great and terrible fabulousness, the play can’t be about me. It must be about something even more fabulous: love. The polychromic many-splendored dreamcoat of love in all its myriad glories. And so it had to be revised. Also retitled. And so I had to stay up all night. And I’ve been writing like crazy, writing a musical called Hold Me Closer. We’ll need more sets than I thought. Also! Also! More voices in the chorus. The chorus must be like a fucking wall of song, you know?”

  “Sure, okay. What’s the fifth thing?”

  “Oh, right.” He wiggles a shoulder out of his backpack and slings it around to his chest. He unzips the front pocket, digs around for a moment, and then pulls out a rose made entirely of green duct tape. He hands it to me. “When I get stressed,” Tiny explains, “I get crafty. Okay. Okay. I’m gonna go to the auditorium and start blocking out some scenes, see how the new stuff looks onstage.”

  I stop walking. “Um, do you need me to help or something?”

  He shakes his head no. “No offense, Grayson, but what exactly are your theater credentials?”

  He’s walking away from me, and I try to stand my ground, but then finally chase after him up the steps to school, because I’ve got a burning question. “Then why the hell did you wake me up at five forty-three in the morning?”

  He turns to me now. It becomes impossible not to feel Tiny’s immensity as he stands over me, shoulders back, his width almost entirely blocking the school behind him, his body a bundle of tiny tremors. His eyes are open unnaturally wide, like a zombie’s. “Well, I needed to tell someone,” he says.

  I think about that a minute, and then follow him into the auditorium. For the next hour, I watch Tiny as he runs around the theater like a rampaging lunatic, mumbling to himself. He puts masking tape down on the floor to mark the spots of his imaginary sets; he pirouettes across the stage as he hums song lyrics in fast motion; and every so often he shouts, “It’s not about Tiny! It’s about love!” Then people start to file in for their first period drama class, so Tiny and I go to precalc, and Tiny performs the Big-Man-in-Small-Desk miracle, and I experience the traditional amazement, and school is boring, and then at lunch I’m sitting with Gary and Nick and Tiny, and Tiny is talking about his blinding light spiritual awakening in a manner that—nothing against Tiny—kind of implies that maybe Tiny has not fully internalized the idea that the earth does not spin around the axis of Tiny Cooper, and then I say to Gary, “Hey, where is Jane?”

  And Gary says, “Sick.”

  To which Nick adds, “Sick in the I’m-spending-the-day-with-my-boyfriend-at-the-botanical-gardens kind of way.” Gary shoots Nick a disapproving look.

  Tiny quickly changes the subject, and I try to laugh at all the appropriate moments for the rest of lunch, but I’m not listening.

  I know that she is dating Douchepants McWater Polo, and I know that sometimes when you date people you engage in idiotic activities like going to the botanical gardens, but in spite of all the knowledge that ought to protect me, I still feel like shit for the rest of the day. One of these days, I keep telling myself, you’ll learn to truly shut up and not care. And until then . . . well, until then I’ll keep taking deep breaths because it feels like the wind got knocked out of me. For all my not crying, I sure feel a hell of a lot worse than I did at the end of All Dogs Go to Heaven.

  I call Tiny after school, but I get his voice mail, so I send him a text: “The Original Will Grayson requests the pleasure of a phone call whenever possible.” He doesn’t call until 9:30. I’m sitting on the couch watching a dumb romantic comedy with my parents. The plates from our take-out-Chinese-put-on-real-plates-so-you-feel-like-it’s-a-homemade dinner fill the coffee table. Dad is falling asleep, as he always does when he’s not working. Mom sits closer to me than seems necessary.

  Watching the movie, I can’t stop thinking about wanting to be at the ridiculous botanical gardens with Jane. Just walking around, her in that hoodie, and me making jokes about the Latin names of the plants, and her saying that ficaria verna would be a good name
for a nerdcore hip-hop crew that only raps in Latin, and so on. I can picture the whole damned thing, actually, and it almost makes me desperate enough to complain to Mom about the situation, but that will only mean questions about Jane for the next seven to ten years. My parents get so few details about my private life that whenever they do stumble upon some morsel, they cling to it for eons. I wish they’d do a better job of hiding their desire for me to have tons of friends and girlfriends.

  Sobutand Tiny calls, and I say, “Hey,” and then I get up and go to my room and close the door behind me, and in all that time, Tiny doesn’t say anything, so I say, “Hello?”

  And he says, “Yeah, hi,” distractedly. I hear typing.

  “Tiny, are you typing?”

  After a moment he says, “Hold on. Let me finish this sentence.”

  “Tiny, you called me.”

  Silence. Typing. And then, “Yeah, I know. But I’m, uh, I gotta change the last song. Can’t be about me. Has to be about love.”

  “I wish I hadn’t kissed her. The whole boyfriend thing kind of like gnaws at my brain.”

  And then I’m quiet for a while, and finally he says, “Sorry, I just got an IM from Will. He’s telling me about lunch with this new gay friend he’s got. I know it’s not a date if it’s in the cafeteria, but still. Gideon. He sounds hot. It is pretty awesome that Will’s so out, though. He like came out to everyone in the entire world. I swear to God I think he wrote the president of the United States and was like, ‘Dear Mr. President, I am gay. Yours truly, Will Grayson. ’ It’s fucking beautiful, Grayson.”

  “Did you even hear what I said?”

  “Jane and her boyfriend ate your brain,” he answers disinterestedly.

  “I swear, Tiny, sometimes . . .” I stop myself from saying something pathetic and start over. “Do you want to do something after school tomorrow? Darts or something at your house?”

  “Rehearsal then rewrites then Will on the phone then bed. You can sit in on rehearsal if you want.”

  “Nah,” I say. “It’s cool.”

  After I hang up, I try to read Hamlet for a while, but I don’t understand it that well, and I have to keep looking over to the right margin where they define the words, and it just makes me feel like an idiot.

  Not that smart. Not that hot. Not that nice. Not that funny. That’s me: I’m not that.

  I’m lying on top of the covers with my clothes still on, the play still on my chest, eyes closed, mind racing. I’m thinking about Tiny. The pathetic thing I wanted to say to him on the phone—but didn’t—was this: When you’re a little kid, you have something. Maybe it’s a blanket or a stuffed animal or whatever. For me, it was this stuffed prairie dog that I got one Christmas when I was like three. I don’t even know where they found a stuffed prairie dog, but whatever, it sat up on its hind legs and I called him Marvin, and I dragged Marvin around by his prairie dog ears until I was about ten.

  And then at some point, it was nothing personal against Marvin, but he started spending more time in the closet with my other toys, and then more time, until finally Marvin became a full-time resident of the closet.

  But for many years afterward, sometimes I would get Marvin out of the closet and just hang out with him for a while—not for me, but for Marvin. I realized it was crazy, but I still did it.

  And the thing I wanted to say to Tiny is that sometimes, I feel like his Marvin.

  I remember us together: Tiny and me in gym in middle school, how the athletic wear company didn’t make gym shorts big enough to fit him, so he looked like he was wearing a skintight bathing suit. Tiny dominating at dodgeball despite his width, and always letting me finish second just by virtue of putting me in his shadow and not spiking me until the end. Tiny and me at the gay pride parade in Boys Town, ninth grade, him saying, “Grayson, I’m gay,” and me being like, “Oh, really? Is the sky blue? Does the sun rise in the east? Is the Pope Catholic?” and him being like, “Is Tiny Cooper fabulous? Do birds weep from the beauty when they hear Tiny Cooper sing?”

  I think about how much depends upon a best friend. When you wake up in the morning you swing your legs out of bed and you put your feet on the ground and you stand up. You don’t scoot to the edge of the bed and look down to make sure the floor is there. The floor is always there. Until it’s not.

  It’s stupid to blame the other Will Grayson for something that was happening before the other Will Grayson existed. And yet.

  And yet I keep thinking about him, and thinking about his eyes unblinking in Frenchy’s, waiting for someone who didn’t exist. In my memory, his eyes get bigger and bigger, almost like he’s a manga character. And then I’m thinking about that guy, Isaac, who was a girl. But the things that were said that made Will go to Frenchy’s to meet that guy—those things were said. They were real.

  All at once I grab my phone from off my bedside table and call Jane. Voice mail. I look at the clock on the phone: it’s 9:42. I call Gary. He picks up on the fifth ring.

  “Will?”

  “Hey, Gary. Do you know Jane’s address?”

  “Um, yes?”

  “Can you give it to me?”

  He pauses. “Are you going all stalker on me, Will?”

  “No, I swear, I have a question about science,” I say.

  “You have a Tuesday night at nine forty-two question about science?”

  “Correct.”

  “Seventeen twelve Wesley.”

  “And where is her bedroom?”

  “I have to tell you, man, that my stalker meter is kind of registering in the red zone right now.” I say nothing, waiting. And then finally he says, “If you’re facing the house, it’s front and left.”

  “Awesome, thanks.”

  I grab the keys off the kitchen counter on my way out, and Dad asks where I’m going, and I try just getting by with, “Out,” but that just results in the pausing of the TV. He comes up close as if to remind me he is just a little bit taller than I am, and sternly asks, “Out with whom and to where?”

  “Tiny wants my help with his stupid play.”

  “Back by eleven,” Mom says from the couch.

  “Okay,” I say.

  I walk down the street to the car. I can see my breath, but I don’t feel cold except on my gloveless hands, and I stand outside the car for a second, looking at the sky, the orange light coming from the city to the south, the leafless streetside trees quiet in the breeze. I open the door, which cracks the silence, and drive the mile to Jane’s house. I find a spot half a block down and walk back up the street to an old, two-story house with a big porch. Those houses don’t come cheap. There’s a light on in the front-left room, but as soon as I get there, I don’t want to walk up. What if she’s changing? What if she’s lying in bed and she sees a creepy guy face pressed against the glass? What if she’s making out with Randall McBitchsquealer? So I send her a text: “Take this in the least stalkery way possible: Im outside ur house.” It’s 9:47. I figure I’ll wait until the clock turns over to 9:50 and then leave. I shove one hand into my jeans and hold the phone with the other, pressing the volume up button each time the screen goes blank. It’s been 9:49 for at least ten seconds when the front door opens and Jane peers outside.

  I wave very slightly, my hand not even rising above my head. Jane puts a finger to her lips, and then dramatically tiptoes out of the house and very slowly closes the door behind her. She walks down the steps of the porch, and in the porch light I can see that she’s wearing the same green hoodie but now with red flannel pajama pants and socks. No shoes.

  She walks up to me and whisper-says, “It’s a slightly creepy delight to see you.”

  And I say, “I have a science question.”

  She smiles and nods. “Of course you do. You’re wondering how it’s scientifically possible that you’re paying oh-so-much attention to me now that I have a boyfriend when you were totally uninterested in me before. Sadly, science is baffled by the mysteries of boy psychology.”

  But I do
have a science question—about Tiny and me, and about her, and about cats. “Can you explain to me about Schrödinger’s cat?”

  “Come on,” she says, and reaches out for my coat and pulls me down the sidewalk. I’m walking beside her, not saying anything, and she’s mumbling, “God God God God God God God,” and I say, “What’s wrong?” and she says, “You. You, Grayson. You’re what’s wrong,” and I say, “What?” and she says, “You know,” and I say, “No I don’t,” and she—still walking and not looking at me—says, “There are probably some girls who don’t want guys to show up at their house randomly on a Tuesday night with questions about Edwin Schrödinger. I am sure such girls exist. But they don’t live at my house.”

  We get five or six houses past Jane’s, near to where my car is parked, and then she turns toward a house with a FOR SALE sign and walks up the stairs to a porch swing. She sits down and pats a place next to her.

  “Nobody lives here?” I ask.

  “No. It’s been for sale for, like, a year.”

  “You’ve probably made out with the Douche on this swing.”

  “I probably have,” she answers. “Schrödinger was doing a thought experiment. Okay, so, this paper had just come out arguing that if, like, an electron might be in any one of four different places, it is sort of in all four places at the same time until the moment someone determines which of the four places it’s in. Does that make sense?”

  “No,” I say. She’s wearing little white socks, and I can see her ankle when she kicks up her feet to keep the swing swinging.

  “Right, it totally doesn’t make sense. It’s mind-bendingly weird. So Schrödinger tries to point this out. He says: put a cat inside a sealed box with a little bit of radioactive stuff that might or might not—depending on the location of its subatomic particles—cause a radiation detector to trip a hammer that releases poison into the box and kills the cat. Got it?”

  “I think so,” I say.

  “So, according to the theory that electrons are in all-possible-positions until they are measured, the cat is both alive and dead until we open the box and find out if it is alive or dead. He was not endorsing cat-killing or anything. He was just saying that it seemed a little improbable that a cat could be simultaneously alive and dead.”