Will Grayson, Will Grayson Page 17

  it’s such a stupid, gay thought. i feel like i have to carve ‘I HATE THE WORLD’ into my arm about a hundred times to make up for it.

  the bed really isn’t big enough for the two of us. twice i end up on the floor. all our clothes stay on - but it’s almost like that doesn’t matter. because we’re all over each other. he’s big and strong, but i match him in the push and pull. soon we’re a complete hot mess.

  when we’ve tired ourselves out, we just lie there. his heartbeat is huge.

  we hear my mother turn on the tv. the detectives start talking. tiny runs his hand under my shirt.

  tiny: where’s your dad?

  i’m totally not ready for the question. i feel myself tense.

  me: i don’t know.

  tiny’s touch tries to soothe me. his voice tries to calm me.

  tiny: it’s okay.

  but i can’t take that. i sit up, knocking us right out of our dreamy breathing, making him shift away a little so he can see me clearly. the impulse in me is loud and clear: immediately, i can’t do this. not because of my father - i don’t really care that much about my father - but because of this whole process of knowing everything.

  i argue with myself.

  stop.

  stay here.

  talk.

  tiny is waiting. tiny is looking at me. tiny is being kind, because he hasn’t realized yet who i am, what i am. i will never be kind back. the best i can do is give him reasons to give up.

  tiny: tell me. what do you want to say? don’t ask me, i want to warn him. but then i’m talking.

  me: look, tiny - i’m trying to be on my best behavior, but you have to understand - i’m always standing on the edge of something bad. and sometimes someone like you can make me look the other way, so that i don’t know how close i am to falling over. but i always end up turning my head. always. i always walk off that edge. and it’s shit i deal with every day, and it’s shit that’s not going away any time soon. it’s really nice to have you here, but do want to know something? do you really want me to be honest?

  he should take this as the warning it is. but no. he nods.

  me: it feels like a vacation. i don’t think you know what that’s like. which is good - you don’t want to. you have no idea how much i hate this. i hate the fact that i’m ruining the night right now, ruining everything -

  tiny: you’re not.

  me: i am.

  tiny: says who?

  me: says me?

  tiny: don’t i get any say?

  me: no. i just ruin it. you don’t get any say.

  tiny touches my ear lightly.

  tiny: you know, you get all sexy when you turn destructive.

  his fingers run down my neck, under my collar.

  tiny: i know i can’t change your dad or your mom or your past. but you know what i can do?

  his other hand works its way up my leg.

  me: what?

  tiny: something else. that’s what i can give you. something else.

  i am so used to bringing out the pain in people. but tiny refuses to play that game. while we’re texting all day, and even here in person, he’s always trying to get to the heart of it. and that means he always assumes there’s a heart to get to. i think that’s ridiculous and admire it at the same time. i want the something else he has to give me, even though i know it’s never going to be something i can actually take and have as my own.

  i know it’s not as easy as tiny says it is. but he’s trying so hard. so i surrender to it. i surrender to something else.

  even if my heart isn’t totally believing it.

  chapter fifteen

  The next day, Tiny isn’t in precalc. I assume he’s hunched over somewhere writing songs into a comically undersized notebook. It doesn’t bother me much. I see him between second and third period when I walk past his locker; his hair looks unwashed and his eyes are wide.

  “Too much Red Bull?” I ask, walking up to him.

  He answers all in a furious rush. “Play opens in nine days, Will Grayson’s adorable, everything’s cool. Listen, Grayson, I gotta go to the auditorium, I’ll see you at lunch.”

  “The other Will Grayson,” I say.

  “What, huh?” Tiny asks, slamming his locker shut.

  “The other Will Grayson’s adorable.”

  “Right, quite right,” he answers.

  He’s not at our table at lunch, and neither is Gary or Nick or Jane or anyone, and I don’t want the entire table to myself, so I take my tray to the auditorium, figuring I’ll find everyone there. Tiny’s standing in the middle of the stage, a notebook in one hand and his cell in the other, gesticulating wildly. Nick ’s sitting in the first row of seats. Tiny’s talking to Gary onstage, and because the acoustics are fantastic in our auditorium, I can hear exactly what he’s saying even from the back.

  “The thing you’ve gotta remember about Phil Wrayson is that he is totally freaking terrified. Of everything. He acts like he doesn’t care, but he’s closer to falling apart than anyone else in the whole freaking play. I want to hear the quiver in his voice when he’s singing, the need he hopes no one can hear. Because that’s gotta be what makes him so annoying, you know? The things he says aren’t annoying; it’s the way he says them. So when Tiny is taping up those Pride posters, and Phil won’t shut up about the stupid girl problems he brought on himself, we’ve gotta hear what’s annoying. But you can’t overdo it, either. It’s the slightest little thing, man. It’s the pebble in your shoe.”

  I just stand there for a minute, waiting for him to see me, and then finally he does. “He’s a CHARACTER, Grayson,” Tiny shouts. “He’s a FICTIONAL CHARACTER.”

  Still holding my tray, I spin around and leave. I sit down outside the auditorium on the tile floor of the hallway, leaning up against a trophy case, and I eat a little.

  I’m waiting for him. To come out and apologize. Or else to come out and yell at me for being a pussy. I’m waiting for those dark wood double doors to open and for Tiny to blow through them and start talking.

  I know it’s immature, but I don’t care. Sometimes you need your best friend to walk through the doors. And then, he doesn’t. Finally, feeling small and stupid, it’s me who gets up and cracks open the door. Tiny is happily singing about Oscar Wilde. I stand there for a moment, still hoping he’ll see me, and I don’t even know that I’m crying until this crooked sound comes up out of me as I inhale. I close the door. If Tiny ever sees me, he doesn’t pause to acknowledge it.

  I walk down the hallway, my head down so far that the salt water drips from the tip of my nose. I walk out the main door—the air cold, the sun warm—and down the steps. I follow the sidewalk until I get to the security gate, then I dart into the bushes. Something in my throat feels like it might choke me. I walk through the shrubs just like Tiny and I did freshman year when we skipped to go down to Boys Town for the Pride Parade where he came out to me.

  I walk all the way to this Little League field that’s halfway between my house and school. It’s right by the middle school, and when I was a kid, I used to go there a lot by myself, like after school or whatever, just to think. Sometimes I would bring a sketchbook or something and try to draw, but mostly I just liked to go there. I walk around the backstop fence and sit down on the bench in the dugout, my back against the aluminum wall, warmed by the sunlight, and I cry.

  Here’s what I like about the dugout: I’m on the third base side, and I can see the diamond of dirt in front of me and the four rows of wooden bleachers on one side; and then on the other side, the outfield and the next diamond over; and then a large park, and then the street. I can see people walking their dogs, and a couple walking into the wind. But with my back to the wall, with this aluminum roof over my head, no one can see me unless I can see them.

  The rarity of the situation is the kind of thing that makes you cry.

  Tiny and I actually played Little League together—not in this park, but in one closer to our houses, starting in third grad
e. That’s how we became friends, I guess. Tiny was strong as hell, of course, but not much good with the bat. He did lead the League in getting hit by pitches, though. There was so much to hit.

  I played a respectable first base and didn’t lead the League in anything.

  I put my elbows on my knees like I did back when I was watching games from a dugout like this one. Tiny always sat next to me, and even though he only played because the coach had to play everyone, he was super-enthusiastic. He’d be all, “Hey, batter batter. Hey, batter batter, SWING, batter,” and then eventually he’d switch to, “We want a pitcher, not a bellyitcher!”

  Then, sixth grade: Tiny was playing third base, and I was at first. It was early in the game, and we were either just barely winning or just barely losing—I don’t remember. Honestly, I never even looked at the score when I was playing. Baseball for me was just one of those weird and terrible things parents do for reasons you cannot fathom, like flu shots and church. So the batter hit the ball, and it rolled to Tiny. Tiny gloved it and threw the ball to first with his cannon arm, and I stretched out to make the catch, careful to keep a foot on the bag, and the ball hit me in the glove and then immediately fell out, because I forgot to squeeze the glove shut. The runner was safe, and the mistake cost us a run or something. After the inning ended, I went back to the dugout. The coach—I think his name was Mr. Frye—leaned down toward me. I became aware of the bigness of his head, his cap riding high over his fat face, and he said, “FOCUS on CATCHING the BALL. CATCH the BALL, okay? Jesus!” My face felt flush, and with that quiver in my voice that Tiny pointed out to Gary, I said, “Suhrry, Coach,” and Mr. Frye said, “Me too, Will. Me too.”

  And then Tiny hauled off and punched Mr. Frye in the nose. Just like that. Thus ended our Little League careers.

  It wouldn’t hurt if he weren’t right—if I hadn’t known somewhere that my weakness aggravates him. And maybe he thinks like I do, that you don’t pick your friends, and he’s stuck with this annoying bitchsquealer who can’t handle himself, who can’t close his glove around the ball, who can’t take a dressing-down from the coach, who regrets writing letters to the editor in defense of his best friend. This is the real story of our friendship: I haven’t been stuck with Tiny. He’s been stuck with me.

  If nothing else, I can relieve him of that burden.

  It takes a long time to stop crying. I use my glove as a handkerchief as I watch the shadow of the dugout roof creep down my outstretched legs as the sun rises to the top of the sky. Finally, my ears feel frozen in the shade of the dugout, so I get up and walk across the park and then home. On the way, I scroll through my list of contacts on my phone for a while and then call Jane. I don’t know why. I feel like I need to call someone. I feel, weirdly, like I still want someone to open the double doors to the auditorium. I get her voice mail.

  “Sorry, Tarzan, Jane’s unavailable. Leave a message.”

  “Hey, Jane, it’s Will. I just wanted to talk to you. I . . . radical honesty? I just spent like five minutes going through a list of everyone I could call, and you were the only person I wanted to call, because I like you. I just like you a lot. I think you’re awesome. You’re just . . . er. Smarter and funni er and prettier and just . . . er. Yeah, okay. That’s all. Bye.”

  When I get home, I call my dad. He picks up on the last ring.

  “Can you call the school and tell them I’m sick? I had to go home,” I say.

  “You okay, bud?”

  “Yeah. I’m okay,” I say, but the quiver is in my voice, and I feel like I might start up with the sobbing again for some reason, and he says, “Okay. Okay. I’ll call.”

  Fifteen minutes later, I’m slumped on the couch in the living room, my feet up on the coffee table. I’m staring at the TV, only the TV isn’t on. I’ve got the remote in my left hand, but I don’t even have the energy to push the goddamned power button.

  I hear the garage door open. Dad comes in through the kitchen and sits down next to me, pretty close. “Five hundred channels,” he says after a moment, “and nothing’s on.”

  “You get the day off?”

  “I can always get someone to cover,” he says. “Always.”

  “I’m okay,” I say.

  “I know you are. I just wanted to be home with you, that’s all.”

  I blink out some tears, but Dad has the decency not to say anything about it. I turn on the TV then, and we find a show called The World’s Most Amazing Yachts, which is about yachts that have, like, golf courses on them or whatever, and every time they show some fancy feature, Dad says, “It’s UH-MAAZING!” all sarcastically, even though it sort of is amazing. It is and isn’t, I guess.

  And then Dad mutes the TV and says, “You know Dr. Porter?”

  And I nod. He’s this guy who works with Mom.

  “They don’t have any kids, so they’re rich.” I laugh. “But they’ve got this boat they keep at Belmont Harbor, one of these behemoths with cherry-wood cabinets imported from Indonesia and a rotating king-size bed stuffed with the feathers of endangered eagles and everything else. Your mom and I had dinner with the Porters on the boat years ago, and in the span of a single meal—in that two hours—the boat went from feeling like the most extraordinarily luxurious experience to just being a boat.”

  “I assume there’s a moral to this story.”

  He laughs. “You’re our yacht, bud. All that money that would have gone into a yacht, all that time we would have spent traveling the world? Instead, we got you. It turns out that the yacht is a boat. But you—you can’t be bought on credit, and you aren’t reducible.” He turns his face back toward the TV and after a moment says, “I’m so proud of you that it makes me proud of me. I hope you know that.” I nod, tight-throated, staring now at a muted commercial for laundry detergent. After a second, he mumbles to himself, “Credit, people, consumerism. . . . There’s a pun in there somewhere.”

  I say, “What if I didn’t want to go to that program at Northwestern? Or what if I don’t get in?”

  “Well, then I would stop loving you,” he says. He keeps a straight face for a second, then laughs and unmutes the TV.

  Later in the day, we decide we’re going to surprise Mom with turkey chili for dinner. I’m chopping onions when the doorbell rings. Immediately, I know it’s Tiny, and I feel this weird relief radiate out from my solar plexus. “I got it,” I say. I squeeze past Dad in the kitchen and then run to the door.

  It’s not Tiny but Jane. She looks up at me, lips pursed.

  “What’s my locker combination?”

  “Twenty-five-two-eleven,” I say.

  She hits me playfully on the chest. “I knew it! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I couldn’t figure out which of several true things was the most true,” I answer.

  “We gotta open the box,” she tells me.

  “Um,” I say. I step forward so I can close the door behind me, but she doesn’t step backward, so now we’re almost touching. “The cat has a boyfriend,” I point out.

  “I’m not the cat, actually. The cat is us. I am a physicist. You are a physicist. The cat is us.”

  “Um, okay,” I say. “The physicist has a boyfriend.”

  “The physicist does not in fact have a boyfriend. The physicist dumped her boyfriend at the botanical gardens because he wouldn’t shut up about how he was going to the Olympics in twenty sixteen, and there was this little voice in the physicist’s head named Will Grayson, saying, ‘And at the Olympics will you be representing the United States or the Kingdom of Douchelandia?’ So the physicist broke up with her boyfriend and insists that the box be opened, because she kind of cannot stop thinking about the cat. The physicist won’t mind if the cat is dead; she just needs to know.”

  We kiss. Her hands are freezing on my face, and she tastes like coffee and the smell of the onion is still stuck in my nose, and my lips are all dry from the endless winter. And it’s awesome.

  “Your professional physicist opinion?” I ask.
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br />   She smiles. “I believe the cat to be alive. And what says my esteemed colleague?”

  “Alive,” I say. And it truly is. Which makes it all the weirder that as I’m talking to her, some small cut inside me feels unstitched. I thought it would be Tiny at the door, brimming with apologies I would slowly accept. But such is life. We grow up. Planets like Tiny get new moons. Moons like me get new planets. Jane pulls away from me for a second and says, “Something smells good. I mean, in addition to you.”

  I smile. “We’re making chili,” I say. “Do you want to—. Do you want to come in and meet my dad?”

  “I don’t want to imp—”

  “No,” I say. “He’s nice. A little weird. Nice, though. You can stay for dinner.”

  “Um, okay let me call my house.” I stand out there shivering for a second while she talks to her mom, saying, “I’m gonna have dinner at Will Grayson’s house. . . . Yes, his dad is here. . . .They’re doctors. . . . Yeah. . . . Okay, love you.”

  I come back inside. “Dad,” I say, “this is my friend Jane.” He emerges from the kitchen wearing his Surgeons Do It with a Steady Hand apron over his shirt and tie. “I give people credit for buying into consumerism!” he says excitedly, having found his pun. I laugh.

  Jane extends her hand, the picture of class, saying, “Hello, Dr. Grayson, I’m Jane Turner.”

  “Ms. Turner, it’s a pleasure.”

  “Is it okay if Jane stays for dinner?”

  “Of course, of course. Jane, if you’ll excuse us for a moment.”

  Dad takes me into the kitchen, then leans in and says softly, “This was the cause of your problems?”

  “Strangely, no,” I say. “But we are sorta yeah.”

  “You are sorta yeah,” he mumbles to himself. “You are sorta yeah.” And then quite loudly he says, “Jane?”

  “Yes, sir?”