Will Grayson, Will Grayson Read online

  Andbutso little does my dad know, but all his explanation of this future is lost on me; I’m already fine with it. No, I’m thinking about how little I feel in this absurdly immense chair, and I’m thinking about the fake ID warming up Jane Austen’s pages, and I’m thinking about whether I’m more mad at Tiny or in awe of him, and thinking about Friday, steering clear of Tiny in the mosh pit as he tries to dance like everyone else, and the heat turned on too high in the club and everyone sweating through their clothes and the music so uptempo and goose bumps that I don’t even care what they’re singing about.

  And I say, “Yeah, it sounds really cool, Dad,” and he’s talking about how he knows people there, and I’m just nodding nodding nodding.

  I’m at school Monday morning twenty minutes early because Mom has to get to the hospital by seven—I guess someone has an extralarge tumor or something. So I lean against the flagpole on the lawn in front of school waiting for Tiny Cooper, shivering in spite of the gloves and the hat and the coat and the hood. The wind tears across the lawn, and I can hear it whipping the flag above me, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to enter that building a nanosecond before the first period bell rings.

  The buses let off, and the lawn starts to fill up with freshmen, none of whom seems particularly impressed by me. And then I see Clint, a tenured member of my former Group of Friends, walking toward me from the junior parking lot, and I’m able to convince myself that he’s not really walking toward me until his visible breath is blowing over me like a small, malodorous cloud. And I’m not going to lie: I kind of hope he’s about to apologize for the smallmindedness of certain of his friends.

  “Hey, fucker,” he says. He calls everyone fucker. Is it a compliment? An insult? Or maybe it is both at once, which is precisely what makes it so useful.

  I wince a little from the sourness of his breath, and then just say, “Hey.” Equally noncommittal. Every conversation I ever had with Clint or any of the Group of Friends is identical: all the words we use are stripped bare, so that no one ever knows what anyone else is saying, so that all kindness is cruelty, all selfishness generous, all care callous.

  And he says, “Got a call from Tiny this weekend about his musical. Wants student council to fund it.” Clint is student council vice president. “He told me all the fuck about it. A musical about a big gay bastard and his best friend who uses tweezers to jack off ’cause his dick’s so small.” He’s saying all this with a smile. He’s not being mean. Not exactly.

  And I want to say, That’s so incredibly original. Where do you come up with these zingers, Clint? Do you own some kind of joke factory in Indonesia where you’ve got eight-yearolds working ninety hours a week to deliver you that kind of top-quality witticism? There are boy bands with more original material. But I say nothing.

  “So yeah,” Clint finally continues. “I think I might help Tiny out at the meeting tomorrow. Because that play sounds like a fantastic idea. I’ve only got one question: are you going to sing your own songs? Because I’d pay to see that.”

  I laugh a little, but not too much. “I’m not much for drama,” I say, finally. Right then, I feel an enormous presence behind me. Clint raises his chin way the hell up to look at Tiny and then nods at him. He says, “’Sup, Tiny,” and then walks away.

  “He trying to steal you back?” Tiny asks.

  I turn around, and now I can talk. “You go all weekend without logging on or calling me and yet you find time to call him in your continuing attempts to ruin my social life through the magic of song?”

  “First off, Tiny Dancer isn’t going to ruin your social life, because you don’t have a social life. Second off, you didn’t call me, either. Third off, I was so busy! Nick and I spent almost the entire weekend together.”

  “I thought I explained to you why you couldn’t date Nick,” I say, and Tiny’s just starting to talk again when I see Jane, hunched forward, plowing through the wind. She’s wearing a not-thick-enough hoodie and walking up to us.

  I say hi, and she says hi, and she comes and stands next to me as if I’m a space heater or something, and she squints into the wind, and I say, “Hey, take my coat.” I take it off and she buries herself in it. I’m still trying to think of a question to ask Jane when the bell goes off, and we all hustle inside.

  I don’t see Jane at all during the entire school day, which is a little frustrating, because it’s even-the-hallways-are-freezing cold, and I keep worrying that after school I’m gonna freeze to death on the walk to Tiny’s car. After my last class, I race downstairs and unlock my locker. My coat is stuffed inside it.

  Now, it is possible to slip a note into a locked locker through the vents. Even, with some pushing, a pencil. Once, Tiny Cooper slipped a Happy Bunny book into my locker. But I find it extraordinarily difficult to imagine how Jane, who, after all, is not the world’s strongest individual, managed to stuff an entire winter coat through the tiny slits in my locker.

  But I’m not here to ask questions, so I put my coat on and walk out to the parking lot, where Tiny Cooper is sharing one of those hand-shake-followed-by-one-armed-hug things with none other than Clint. I open the passenger door and get into Tiny’s Acura. He shows up soon afterward, and although I’m pissed at him, even I am able to appreciate the fascinating and complex geometry involved in Tiny Cooper inserting himself into a tiny car.

  “I have a proposition,” I tell him as he engages in another miracle of engineering—that of fastening his seat belt.

  “I’m flattered, but I’m not gonna sleep with you,” Tiny answers.

  “Not funny. Listen, my proposition is that if you back off this Tiny Dancer business, I will—well, what do you want me to do? Because I’ll do anything.”

  “Well, I want you to hook up with Jane. Or at least call her. After I so artfully arranged for you to be alone together, she seems to have gotten the impression that you don’t want to date her.”

  “I don’t,” I say. Which is entirely true and entirely not. The stupid, all-encompassing truth.

  “What do you think this is, eighteen thirty-two? When you like someone and they like you, you fucking put your lips against their lips and then you open your mouth a little, and then just a little hint of tongue to spice things up. I mean, God, Grayson. Everybody’s always got their panties in a twist about how the youth of America are debaucherous, sex-crazed maniacs passing out handjobs like they were lollipops, and you can’t even kiss a girl who definitely likes you?”

  “I don’t like her, Tiny. Not like that.”

  “She’s adorable.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I’m gay, not blind. Her hair’s all poofy and she’s got a great nose. I mean, a great nose. And, what? What do you people like? Boobs? She seems to have boobs. They seem to be of approximately normal boob size. What else do you want?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  He starts the car and then begins banging his tetherball of a head against the car’s horn rhythmically. Ahnnnk. Ahhhnk. Ahhhnk.

  “You’re embarrassing us,” I shout over the horn.

  “I’m going to keep doing this until I get a concussion or you say you’ll call her.”

  I jam my fingers into my ears, but Tiny keeps headbutting the horn. People are looking at us. Finally I just say, “Fine. Fine! FINE!” And the honking ceases.

  “I’ll call Jane. I’ll be nice to her. But I still don’t want to date her.”

  “That is your choice. Your stupid choice.”

  “So then,” I say hopefully, “no production of Tiny Dancer?”

  Tiny starts the car. “Sorry, Grayson, but I can’t do it. Tiny Dancer is bigger than you or me, or any of us.”

  “Tiny, you have a really warped understanding of compromise.”

  He laughs. “Compromise is when you do what I tell you and I do what I want. Which reminds me: I’m gonna need you to be in the play.”

  I stifle a laugh, because this shit won’t be funny anymore if it’s sta
ged in our goddamned auditorium. “Absolutely not. No. NO. Also, I insist that you write me out of it.”

  Tiny sighs. “You just don’t get it, do you? Gil Wrayson isn’t you; he’s a fictional character. I can’t just change my art because you’re uncomfortable with it.”

  I try a different tack. “You’re gonna humiliate yourself up there, Tiny.”

  “It’s going to happen, Grayson. I’ve got the support on the student council for the money. So shut up and deal with it.”

  I shut up and deal with it, but I don’t call Jane that night. I’m not Tiny’s errand boy.

  The next afternoon I take the bus home, because Tiny is busy at the student council meeting. He calls me as soon as it’s over.

  “Great news, Grayson!” he shouts.

  “Great news for someone is always bad news for someone else,” I answer.

  And sure enough, the student council has approved a thousand dollars for the staging and production of the musical Tiny Dancer.

  That night I’m waiting for my parents to come home so we can eat, and I’m trying to work on this essay about Emily Dickinson, but mostly I’m just downloading everything the Maybe Dead Cats have ever recorded. I kind of absolutely love them. And as I keep listening to them, I keep wanting to tell someone how good they are, and so I call Tiny, but he doesn’t pick up, and so I do exactly what Tiny wants—just like always. I call Jane.

  “Hey, Will,” she says.

  “I kind of absolutely love the Maybe Dead Cats,” I say.

  “They’re not bad, yeah. A bit pseudointellectual but, hey, aren’t we all?”

  “I think their band name is a reference to, like, this physicist guy,” I say. In fact, I know it. I’ve just looked the band up on Wikipedia.

  “Yeah,” she says. “Schrödinger. Except the band name is a total fail, because Schrödinger is famous for pointing out this paradox in quantum physics where, like, under certain circumstances, an unseen cat can be both alive and dead. Not maybe dead.”

  “Oh,” I say, because I can’t even pretend to have known that. I feel like a total dumbass, so I change the subject. “So I hear Tiny Cooper worked his Tiny Magic and the musical’s on.”

  “Yeah. What’s your problem with Tiny Dancer, anyway?”

  “Have you ever read it?”

  “Yeah. It’s amazing, if he can pull it off.”

  “Well, I’m, like, the costar. Gil Wrayson. That’s me, obviously. And it’s just, it’s embarrassing.”

  “Don’t you think it’s kind of awesome to be, like, the costar of Tiny’s life?”

  “I don’t really want to be the costar of anyone’s life,” I say. She doesn’t say anything in response. “So how are you?” I ask after a second.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  “Did you get the note in your coat pocket?”

  “The what—no. There was a note?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh. Hold on.” I put the phone down on the desk and ransack my pockets. The thing about my coat pockets is that if I have a small amount of trash—like, say, a Snickers wrapper—but I don’t see a garbage can, my pockets end up becoming the garbage can. And I’m not great when it comes to taking out the pocket trash. So it takes me a few minutes before I find a folded piece of notebook paper. On the outside it says:

  To: Will Grayson

  From: The Locker Houdini

  I grab the phone and say, “Hey, I found it.” I feel a little sick to my stomach, in a way that is both nice and not.

  “Well, did you read it?”

  “No,” I say, and I wonder if maybe the note is not better left unread. I shouldn’t have called her in the first place. “Hold on.” I unfold the paper:

  Mr. Grayson,

  You should always make sure no one’s watching when you unlock your locker. You never know (18) when someone (26) will memorize (4) your combination. Thanks for the coat. I guess chivalry isn’t dead.

  yours,

  Jane

  p.s. I like how you treat your pockets the way I treat my car.

  Upon finishing the note, I read it again. It makes both truths more true. I want her. I don’t. Maybe I am a robot after all. I have no idea what to say, so I go ahead and say the worst possible thing. “Very cute.” This is why I should adhere to Rule 2.

  In the ensuing silence, I have time to contemplate the word cute—how dismissive it is, how it’s the equivalent of calling someone little, how it makes a person into a baby, how the word is a neon sign burning through the dark reading, “Feel Bad About Yourself.”

  And then finally she says, “Not my favorite adjective.”

  “Sorry. I mean, it’s—”

  “I know what you mean, Will,” she says. “I’m sorry. I, uh, I don’t know. I just got out of a relationship, and I think I’m, like, kind of just looking to fill that hole, and you’re the most obvious candidate to fill the hole, and oh my God that sounds dirty. Oh, God. I’m just gonna hang up.”

  “I’m sorry about cute. It wasn’t cute. It was—”

  “Forget it. Forget the note, really. I don’t even . . . Just don’t worry about it, Grayson.”

  After an awkward hanging up, I realize the intended ending of the “I don’t even . . .” sentence. “I don’t even . . . like you, Grayson, because you’re kind of how can I say this politely not that smart. Like, you had to look up that physicist on Wikipedia. I just miss my boyfriend, and you wouldn’t kiss me, so I kind of want to just because you wouldn’t, and it’s really actually not a big deal but I can’t find a way to tell you that without hurting your feelings, and since I’m far more compassionate and thoughtful than you with your cutes, I’m just going to stop the sentence at I don’t even.”

  I call Tiny again, this time not about the Maybe Dead Cats, and he picks up on the first half-ring and says, “Good evening, Grayson.”

  I ask him if he agrees with me about what the end of her sentence probably was, and then I ask him what shortcircuited in my brain to call the note cute, and how is it even possible to be both attracted and not attracted to someone at the very same moment, and whether maybe I am a robot incapable of real feelings, and do you think that actually, like, trying to follow the rules about shutting up and not caring has made me into some kind of hideous monster whom no one will ever love or marry. I say it all, and Tiny says nothing, which is a basically unprecedented turn of events, and then when I finally stop, Tiny says hrmm in the little way that he has and then he says—and I am quoting him directly here—“Grayson, sometimes you are such. a. girl.” And then he hangs up on me.

  The unfinished sentence stays with me all night. And then my robot heart decides to do something—the kind of something that would be enjoyed by a hypothetical girl-I-would-like.

  At school on Friday, I eat lunch superfast, which is easy enough to do because Tiny and I are sitting with a table full of Drama People, and they are discussing Tiny Dancer, all of them speaking more words per minute than I speak in a day. The conversational curve follows a distinct pattern—the voices get louder and faster, crescendoing until Tiny, talking over everyone, makes a joke, and the table explodes in laughter and then things calm briefly, and then the voices start again, building and building into the coming Tiny eruption. Once I notice this pattern, it becomes difficult not to pay attention to it, but I try to focus on wolfing down my enchiladas. I chug a Coke and then stand up.

  Tiny holds up his hand to quiet the chorus. “Where ya going, Grayson?”

  “I gotta go check on something,” I say.

  I know the approximate location of her locker. It is approximately across from the hallway mural in which a poorly painted version of our school mascot, Willie the Wildkit, says in a speech bubble, “Wildkits Respect EVERYONE,” which is hilarious on at least fourteen different levels, the fourteenth being that there is no such thing as a wildkit. Willie the Wildkit looks approximately like a mountain lion, though, and while I am admittedly not an expert in zoology, I’m reasonab
ly sure that mountain lions do not, in fact, respect everyone.

  So I’m leaning against the Willie the Wildkit mural in such a way that it appears that I’m the one saying that Wildkits Respect EVERYONE, and I have to wait like that for about ten minutes, just trying to look like I’m doing something and wishing I’d brought a book or whatever so I wouldn’t look so aggressively stalkerish, and then finally the period bell rings and the hallway floods with people.

  Jane gets to her locker, and I step into the middle of the hallway, and people make way for me, and I take a step to the left to get the angle just right, and I can see her hand reach up to the lock, and I squint, and 25-2-11. I turn into the flow of people and walk to history.

  Seventh period, I take this video game-design class. It turns out that designing video games is incredibly hard and not nearly as fun as playing them, but the one advantage of the class is that I have Internet access and my monitor faces away from the teacher most of the time.

  So I e-mail the Maybe Dead Cats.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: Make My Life

  Dear Maybe Dead Cats,

  If you happen to play “Annus Miribalis” tonight, could you possibly dedicate it to 25-2-11 (a certain girl’s locker combination)? That would be amazing. Sorry about the short notice,

  Will Grayson

  The reply comes before the period is even over.

  Will,

  Anything for love.

  MDC

  So after school on Friday, Jane and Tiny and I go to Frank ’s Franks, a hot-dog restaurant a few blocks away from the club. I sit in a small booth next to Jane, her hip against my hip. Our coats are all bunched up across from us along with Tiny. Her hair is falling in all these big curls on her shoulders, and she’s wearing this non weather-appropriate top with thin straps and quite a lot of eye makeup.