by John Green
Because this is a classy hot-dog joint, a waiter takes our order. Jane and I each want one hot dog and a soda. Tiny orders four hot dogs with buns, three hot dogs without buns, a bowl of chili, and a Diet Coke.
“A Diet Coke?” asks the waiter. “You want four hot dogs with buns, three hot dogs without buns, a bowl of chili, and a Diet Coke?”
“That’s correct,” says Tiny, and then explains, “simple sugars don’t really help me put on muscle mass.” And the waiter just shakes his head and says, “Uh-huh.”
“Your poor digestive system,” I say. “One day your intestinal tract is going to revolt. It’s going to reach up and strangle you.”
“You know Coach says ideally I should put on thirty pounds for the start of next season. If I want to get scholarships from Division I schools? You gotta be big. And it’s just so hard for me to put on weight. I try and I try, but it’s a constant battle.”
“You’ve got a real hard life, Tiny,” says Jane. I laugh, and we exchange glances, and then Tiny says, “Oh my God, just do it already,” which leads to an uncomfortable silence that lasts until Jane asks, “So where are Gary and Nick?”
“Probably getting back together,” Tiny says. “I broke up with Nick last night.”
“That was the right thing to do. It was doomed from the start.”
“I know, right? I really think I want to be single for a while.”
I turn to Jane and say, “I bet you five bucks he’ll be in love within four hours.”
She laughs. “Make it three and you’re on.”
“Deal.”
We shake.
After dinner, we walk around the neighborhood for a little while to kill time and then get in line outside the Storage Room. It’s cold out, but up against the building, we’re out of the wind at least. In line, I pull out my wallet, move the fake ID to the front picture window, and hide my real driver’s license between a health insurance card and my dad’s business card.
“Let me see it,” says Tiny, and I hand him my wallet, and he says, “Damn, Grayson, for once in your life you don’t look like a bitchsquealer in a picture.”
Just before we get to the front of the line, Tiny pushes me in front of him—I guess so he can have the pleasure of watching me use the ID for the first time. The bouncer wears a T-shirt that doesn’t quite extend over his belly.
“ID,” he tells me. I pull my wallet from my back pocket, slide the ID out, and hand it to him. He shines a flashlight on it, then turns the flashlight onto my face, and then back to the ID, and then he says, “What, you think I can’t add?”
And I say, “Huh?”
And the bouncer says, “Kid, you’re twenty.”
And I say, “No, I’m twenty-two.” And he hands me my ID and says, “Well, your goddamned driver’s license says you’re twenty.” I stare at it, and do the math. It says I turn twenty-one next January.
“Uh,” I say. “Um, yeah. Sorry.”
That stupid h-o-p-e-l-e-s-s stoner put the wrong fucking year on my ID. I step away from the club’s entrance, and Tiny walks up to me, laughing his ass off. Jane is giggling, too. Tiny claps me too hard on the shoulder and says, “Only Grayson could get a fake ID that says he’s twenty. It’s totally worthless!”
And I say to Jane, “Your friend made it with the wrong year,” and she says, “I’m sorry, Will,” but she can’t be that sorry, or else she’d stop laughing.
“We can try to get you in,” Jane suggests, but I just shake my head.
“You guys just go,” I say. “Just call me when it’s over. I’ll just hang out at Frank ’s Franks or something. And, like, call me if they play ‘Annus Miribalis.’”
And here’s the thing: they go. They just get back into line and then I watch them walk into the club, and neither of them even tries to say no, no, we don’t want to see the show without you.
Don’t get me wrong. The band is great. But being passed over for the band still sucks. Standing in line I hadn’t felt cold, but now it’s freezing. It’s miserable out, the kind of cold where breathing through your nose gives you brain freeze. And I’m out here alone with my worthless fucking hundred-dollar ID.
I walk back to Frank’s Franks, order a hot dog, and eat it slowly. But I know I can’t possibly eat this one hot dog for the two or three hours they’ll be gone—you can’t savor a hot dog. My phone’s on the table, and I just watch it, stupidly hoping Jane or Tiny might call. And sitting here, I only get more and more pissed. This is a hell of a way to leave someone—sitting alone in a restaurant—just staring straight ahead, not even a book to keep me company. It’s not even just Tiny and Jane; I’m pissed at myself, for giving them an out, for not checking the date on the stupid ID, for sitting here waiting for the phone to ring even though I could be driving home.
And thinking about it, I realize the problem with going where you’re pushed: sometimes you’re pushed here.
I’m tired of going where I’m pushed. It’s one thing to get pushed around by my parents. But Tiny Cooper pushing me toward Jane, and then pushing me toward a fake ID, and then laughing at the fuckup that resulted, and then leaving me here alone with a goddamned second-rate hot dog when I don’t even particularly like first-rate hot dogs—that’s bullshit.
I can see him in my mind, his fat head laughing. It’s totally worthless. It’s totally worthless. Not so! I can buy cigarettes, although I don’t smoke. I can possibly illegally register to vote. I can—oh, hey. Huh. Now there’s an idea.
See, across from the Storage Room, there’s this place. A neon-sign-and-no-windows kind of place. Now, I don’t particularly like or care about porn—or the “Adult Books” promised by the sign outside the door—but I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend my entire night at Frank’s Franks not using my fake ID. No. I’m going to the porn store. Tiny Cooper doesn’t have the nuts to walk into a place like that. No way. I’m thinking about the story I’ll have when Tiny and Jane get out of the concert. I put a five on the table—a 50 percent tip—and walk four blocks. As I get near the door, I start to feel anxious—but I tell myself that being outside in the dead of winter in downtown Chicago is much more dangerous than any business establishment could possibly be.
I pull the door open, and step into a room bright with fluorescent light. To my left, a guy with more piercings than a pincushion stands behind a counter, staring at me.
“You browsing or you want tokens?” he asks me. I don’t have the first idea what tokens are, so I say, “Browsing?”
“Okay. Go on in,” he tells me.
“What?”
“Go ahead.”
“You’re not going to ID me?”
The guy laughs. “What, are you sixteen or something?”
He nailed it exactly, but I say, “No, I’m twenty.”
“Well, yeah. So that’s what I figured. Go ahead.”
And I’m thinking, Oh, my God. How hard can it fucking be to successfully use a fake ID in this town? This is ridiculous! I won’t stand for it. “No,” I say, forcefully. “ID me.”
“All right, man. If that’s what gets your maracas shakin’.” And then, real dramatically, he asks, “Can I see some ID, please?”
“You may,” I answer, and hand it to him. He glances at it, hands it back, and says, “Thanks, Ishmael.”
“You’re welcome,” I say, exasperated. And then I’m in a porn store.
It’s kinda boring, actually. It looks like a regular store—shelves of DVDs and old VHS tapes and a rack of magazines, all under this harsh fluorescent glow. I mean, there are some differences from a regular video store, I guess, like A. At the regular video store, very few of the DVDs have the words guzzling or slut in them, whereas here the opposite seems to be the case, and also B. I’m pretty sure the regular video store doesn’t have any devices used for spanking, whereas this place has several. Also, C. There are very few items for sale at the regular video store that make you think, “I have no earthly idea what that is supposed to do or where it is supposed
to do it.”
Other than Señor Muy Pierced, the place is empty, and I very much want to leave because this is possibly the most uncomfortable and unpleasant portion of what has heretofore been a pretty uncomfortable and unpleasant day. But the whole trip is completely worthless if I don’t get a memento to prove I was here. My goal is to find the item that will make for the funniest show-and-tell, the item that will make Tiny and Jane feel like I had a night of hilarity they can only glimpse, which is how I finally come to settle upon a Spanish-language magazine called Mano a Mano.
chapter six
at this moment, i want to jump ahead in time. or, if that doesn’t work, i’ll settle for traveling back in time.
i want to jump ahead in time because in twenty hours i will be with isaac in chicago, and i am willing to skip everything in between in order to get to him faster. i don’t care if in ten hours i’m going to win the lottery, or if in twelve hours i’m going to get the chance to graduate early from high school. i don’t care if in fourteen hours i am going to be jerking off and have the most life-altering orgasm in all of unrecorded history. i would fast-forward past it all to be with isaac instead of having to settle for thinking about him.
as for traveling back in time, it’s really simple - i want to go back in time and kill the guy who invented math. why? because right now i’m at the lunch table and derek is saying
derek: aren’t you psyched for mathletes tomorrow?
with that simple word - mathletes - it’s like every ounce of anesthesia i’ve ever collected in my body wears off at once.
me: holy sweet f-ing a
there are four mathletes in our school. i am number four. derek and simon are numbers one and two, and in order to enter competitions they need at least four members. (number three is a freshman whose name i deliberately forget. his pencil has more personality than he does.)
simon: you do remember, right?
they’ve both put their meatburgers down (that’s what the cafeteria menu calls them - meatburgers), and they’re staring at me with looks so blank i swear i can see the computer screens reflected in their glasses.
me: i dunno. i’m not feeling very mathletic. maybe you should find a subset-stitute?
derek: that’s not funny.
me: ha ha! wasn’t meant to be!
simon: i’ve told you - you don’t have to do anything. in a mathletic competition, you enter as a team, but are judged as individuals.
me: you guys know i’m your biggest mathletic supporter. but, um, i kind-of made other plans for tomorrow.
derek: you can’t do that.
simon: you said you’d come.
derek: i promise it’ll be fun.
simon: nobody else will do it.
derek: we’ll have a good time.
i can tell derek’s upset because it looks like he’s considering having a slight emotional response to the informational stimuli being presented to him. maybe it’s too much, because he puts down his meatburger, picks up his tray, murmurs something about library fines, and leaves the table.
there’s no doubt in my mind that i’m going to bail on these guys. the only question is whether i can do it without feeling like shit. i guess it’s a sign of desperation, but i decide to tell simon something remotely resembling the truth.
me: look, you know that ordinarily i’d be all over mathletes. but this is like an emergency. i made like a - i guess you could call it a date. and i really, really have to see this person, who’s coming a long way to see me. and if there was any way to do it and go to the mathletic competition with you, i would. but i can’t. it’s like . . . if a train is traveling at ninety miles an hour and it needs to get from the mathletics competition to the middle of chicago in, like, two minutes for a date, it’s never going to make it in time. so i have to jump on the express, because ultimately the tracks that lead to the date are only being laid down this one time, and if i get on the wrong train, i’m going to be more miserable than any equation could ever account for.
it feels so strange to be telling someone this, especially simon.
simon: i don’t care. you said you’d be there and you have to be there. this is an instance where four minus one equals zero.
me: but simon . . .
simon: stop whining and find another warm body to get in mr. nadler’s car with us. or even a cold body if it can stay propped up for an hour. it would be a change of pace to have someone who can actually add, but i swear i won’t be choosy, you fart.
it’s amazing how i usually make it through the day without realizing i don’t have that many friends. i mean, once you get out of the top five you’ll find a lot more of the custodial staff than members of the student body. and while janitor jim doesn’t mind if i swipe a roll of toilet paper every now and then for ‘art projects,’ i have a feeling he wouldn’t be willing to forfeit his friday night for a trip with the calcsuckers and their faculty groupies.
i know i only have one shot, and it ain’t an easy one. maura’s been in a good mood all day - well, a maura version of a good mood, which means the forecast calls for drizzle instead of thunderstorms. she hasn’t brought up the gay thing, and lord knows i haven’t either.
i wait until last period, knowing that if the pressure’s on, she’s more likely to say yes. even though we’re sitting next to each other, i take my phone out under the desk and text her.
me: whatre u doing tmrw night?
maura: nothing. wanna do something? me: i wish. i have to go to chicago with my mom.
maura: fun?
me: i need you to sub for me in mathletes. otherwise s&d are screwed.
maura: ure kidding, right?
me: no, theyll really be screwed.
maura: and y would i?
me: because ill o u 1. and ill give you 20 bucks.
maura: o me 3 and make it 50.
me: deal.
maura: im saving these texts.
truth? i probably just rescued maura from an afternoon of shopping with her mom or doing homework or poking a pen into her veins to get some material for her poetry. after class, i tell her that she’ll no doubt meet some other deadbeat fourth-string mathlete from some town we’ve never heard of, and the two of them will sneak out for clove cigarettes and talk about how lame everyone else is while derek and simon and that stupid freshman get smashed on theorems and rhombazoids. really, i’m doing wonders for her social life.
maura: don’t push it.
me: i swear, it’ll be hot.
maura: i want twenty bucks up front.
i’m just glad i didn’t have to lie and say that i had to go visit my sick grandma or something. those kind of lies are dangerous, because you know the minute you say your grandma’s sick the phone’s going to ring and your mom’s going to come into the room with really bad news about grandma’s pancreas, and even though you’ll know that little white lies do not cause cancer, you’ll still feel guilty for the rest of your life. maura asks me more about my trip to chicago with my mom, so i make it sound like it’s necessary bonding time, and since maura has two happy parents and i have one bummed-out one, i win the sympathy vote. i’m thinking about isaac so much that i’m completely scared i’m just going to blurt him out, but luckily maura’s interest keeps me on my guard.
when it’s time for her to go her way and me to go mine, she makes one more stab for the truth.
maura: is there anything you want to tell me?
me: yeah. i want to tell you that my third nipple is lactating and my butt cheeks are threatening to unionize. what do you think i should do about it?
maura: i feel you’re not telling me something.
here’s the thing about maura: it’s always about her. always. now, normally i don’t mind this, because if everything’s about her, then nothing has to be about me. but sometimes her spotlight clinging drags me in, and that’s what i hate.
she’s pouting at me now, and, to give her credit, it’s a genuine pout. it’s not like she’s trying to manipulate
me by pretending to be annoyed. maura doesn’t do that kind of crap, and that’s why i put up with her. i can take everything on her face at face value, and that’s valuable in a friend.
me: i’ll tell you when i have something to tell you, okay? now go home and practice your math. here . . . i made you flash cards.
i reach into my bag and take out these cards i made seventh period, kinda knowing maura was going to say yes. they’re not actually cards, since it’s not like i carry a set of index cards around in my bag for indexing emergencies. but i made all these dotted lines on the piece of paper so she’ll know where to cut. each card has its own equation.
2 + 2 = 4
50 x 40 = 2000
834620 x 375002 = who really gives a fuck?
x + y = z
cock + pussy = a happy rooster-kitten couple
red + blue = purple
me - mathletes = me + gratitude to you
maura looks at them for a second, then folds the piece of paper along the dotted lines, squaring it together like a map. she doesn’t smile or anything, but she looks unpissed for a second.
me: don’t let derek and simon get too frisky, okay? always wear pocket protection.
maura: i think i’ll be able to keep my maidenhead at a mathletes competition.
me: you say that now, but we’ll see in nine months. if it’s a girl, you should name her logorrhea. if it’s a boy, go for trig.
it does occur to me that because of the way life works, maura probably will get some hot math-reject guy to put his plus in her minus, while i bomb out with isaac and come home to the comfort of my own hand.
i decide not to tell maura this, ’cause why jinx us both? maura gives me an actual ‘good-bye’ before she goes, and she looks like she has something else to say, but has decided not to say it. another reason for me to be grateful.