by John Green
“Sorry, I know I shouldn’t read texts while we’re talking, but I’m a little twitterpated at the moment.”
“I’m not talking about texts, Tiny. You didn’t tell Jane to get back together with that guy.”
“Well, of course I did, Grayson,” he answers, still looking at the phone. Now he’s writing Will back while talking. “He was gorgeous, and you told me you didn’t like her. So you like her now? Typical boy—you’re interested as long as she isn’t.”
I want to slug him in the kidney, for being wrong and for being right. But it would only hurt me. I’m nothing but a bit character in the Tiny Cooper story, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it except get jerked around until high school is over and I can finally escape his orbit, can finally stop being a moon of his fat planet.
And then I realize what I can do. The weapon I have. Rule 2: Shut up. I step past him and walk toward class.
“Grayson,” he says.
I don’t answer.
I say nothing in precalculus, when he miraculously inserts himself into his desk. And then I say nothing when he tells me that right now I am not even his favorite Will Grayson. I say nothing when he tells me how he has texted the other Will Grayson forty-five times in the last twenty-four hours, and do I think that’s too much. I say nothing when he holds his phone under my nose, showing me some text from Will Grayson that I am supposed to find adorable. I say nothing when he asks me why the hell I’m not saying anything. I say nothing when he says, “Grayson, you were just getting on my nerves, and I only said all that stuff to shut you up. But I didn’t mean to shut you up this much.” I say nothing when he says, “No seriously, talk to me,” and nothing when he says under his breath but still plenty loud enough for people to hear, “Honestly, Grayson, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry.”
And then, blessedly, class starts.
Fifty minutes later, the bell rings, and Tiny follows me out into the hallway like a swollen shadow, saying, “Seriously, come on, this is ridiculous.” It’s not even that I want to torture him anymore. I’m just reveling in the glory of not having to hear the neediness and impotence of my own voice.
At lunch, I sit down by myself at the end of a long table featuring several members of my former Group of Friends. This guy Alton says, “How’s it going, faggot?” and I say, “Pretty good,” and then this other guy Cole says, “You coming to the party at Clint’s? It’s gonna be sick,” which makes me think these guys don’t in fact dislike me even though one of them just called me a faggot. Apparently, having Tiny Cooper as your best-and-only friend does not leave you well-prepared for the intricacies of male socialization.
I say, “Yeah, I’ll try to stop by,” even though I don’t know when the party will be occurring. Then this shave-headed guy Ethan says, “Hey, are you trying out for Tiny’s gay-ass play?”
“Hell, no,” I say.
“I think I am,” he says, and it takes me a second to tell if he’s kidding. Everyone starts laughing and talking all at once, trying to get in the first insult, but he just laughs them off and says, “Girls love a sensitive man.” He turns around in his chair and shouts at the table behind him, where his girlfriend, Anita, is sitting. “Baby, ain’t my singing sexy?”
“Hell, yeah,” she says. Then he just looks, satisfied, at all of us. Still, the guys rag on him. I mostly stay quiet, but by the end of my ham and cheese, I’m laughing at their jokes at the appropriate times, which I guess means I’m having lunch with them.
Tiny finds me when I’m putting my tray onto the conveyor belt, and he’s got Jane with him, and they walk with me. Nobody talks at first. Jane is wearing an army green hoodie, the hood pulled up. She looks almost unfairly adorable, like she picked it out for the express purpose of taunting. Jane says, “Hilarious note, Grayson. So Tiny tells me you’ve taken a vow of silence.”
I nod.
“Why?” she asks.
“I’m only talking to cute girls today,” I answer, and smile. Tiny’s right—the existence of the water-polo guy makes it easy to flirt.
Jane smiles. “I think Tiny’s a fairly cute girl.”
“But why?” Tiny begs as I turn down a hallway. The maze of identical hallways differentiated only by different Wildkit murals that used to scare the hell out of me. God, to go back to when my biggest fear was a hallway. “Grayson, please. You’re KILLING me.”
I am aware that for the first time in my memory, Tiny and Jane are following me.
Tiny decides to ignore me, and he tells Jane that he hopes one day to have enough texts from Will Grayson to turn them into a book, because his texts are like poetry.
Before I can stop myself, I say, “‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’ becomes ‘u r hawt like august.’”
“He speaks!” Tiny shouts, and puts his arm around me. “I knew you’d come around! I’m so happy I’m renaming Gil Wrayson! He shall now be known as Phil Wrayson! Phil Wrayson, who must fill up on the rays of Tiny’s sun in order to become his true self. It’s perfect.” I nod. People will still assume it’s me, but he’s—well, he’s pretending to try. “Oh, text!” Tiny pulls out his phone, reads the text, sighs loudly, and begins trying to type a response with his meaty hands. While he’s thumbing, I say, “I get to pick who plays him.”
Tiny nods distractedly.
“Tiny,” I repeat, “I get to pick who plays him.”
He looks up. “What? No no no. I’m the director. I’m the writer, producer, director, assistant-costume designer, and casting director.”
And Jane says, “I saw you nod, Tiny. You already agreed to it.” He just scoffs, and then we’re at my locker, and Jane kind of pulls me by the elbow away from Tiny and says quietly, “You know, you can’t say that stuff.”
“Damned if I talk, damned if I don’t,” I say, smiling.
“I just. Grayson, I just—you can’t say those things.”
“What things?”
“Cute girl things.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“Because I am still doing research on the relationship between water polo and epiphanies.” She tries a small, tight-lipped smile.
“You wanna go to the Tiny Dancer tryouts with me?” I ask. Tiny is still thumbing away.
“Grayson, I can’t—I mean, I am kind of taken, you know?”
“I’m not asking you on a date. I’m asking you to an extracurricular activity. We will sit in the back of an auditorium and laugh at the kids auditioning to play me.”
I haven’t read Tiny’s play since last summer, but as I recall, there are about nine meaty parts: Tiny, his mom (who has a duet with Tiny), Phil Wrayson, Tiny’s love interests Kaleb and Barry, and then this fictional straight couple who make the character Tiny believe in himself or whatever. And there’s a chorus. Altogether, Tiny needs thirty cast members. I figure there will be maybe twelve people at the auditions.
But when I arrive in the auditorium after chem, there are already at least fifty people lounging around the stage and the first few rows of seats waiting for the auditions to start. Gary is running around handing everyone safety pins and pieces of paper with handwritten numbers on them, which the auditioners are pinning to themselves. And, since they are theater people, they are all talking. All of them. Simultaneously. They do not need to be heard; they only need to be speaking.
I take a seat in the back row, one in from the aisle so that Jane can have the aisle. She shows up just after I do and sits down next to me, appraises the situation for a second, and then says, “Somewhere down there, Grayson, there’s someone who will have to look into your soul in order to properly embody you.”
I’m about to respond when Tiny’s shadow passes over us. He kneels next to us, handing us each a clipboard. “Please write a brief note about each person who you’d consider for the role of Phil. Also I’m thinking of writing in a small role for a character named Janey.”
Then he marches confidently down the aisle. “People!” he shouts. “People, please take a seat.” Peo
ple scurry into the first few rows as Tiny hurtles onto the stage. “We haven’t much time,” he says, his voice weirdly affected. He’s talking like he thinks theater people talk, I guess. “First, I need to know if you can sing. One minute of a song from each of you; if you’re called back, you’ll read for a part then. You may choose your song, but know this: Tiny. Cooper. Hates. Over. The. Rainbow.”
He jumps off the stage dramatically, and then shouts, “Number One, make me love you.”
Number 1, a mousy blonde who identifies herself as Marie F, climbs the stairs beside the stage and slouches to a microphone. She looks up through her bangs toward the back of the auditorium, where it says in large purple block letters WILDKITS ROCK. She proceeds to prove otherwise with a stunningly bad rendition of a Kelly Clarkson ballad.
“Oh, my God,” Jane says under her breath. “Oh, God. Make it end.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mumble. “This chick’s a lock for the role of Janey. She sings off-key, loves corporate pop, and dates bitchsquealers.” She elbows me.
Number 2 is a boy, a husky lad with hair too long to be considered normal but too short to be considered long. He sings a song by a band apparently called Damn Yankees—Jane knows them, natch. I don’t know how the original sounds, but this guy’s howler-monkey a cappella rendition of it leaves a lot to be desired. “He sounds like someone just kicked him in the nuts,” Jane says; to which I respond, “If he doesn’t stop soon, someone will.” By Number 5, I’m wishing for a mediocre rendition of something inoffensive like “Over the Rainbow,” and I suspect Tiny is, too, from the way his peppy, “That was great! We’ll get back to you.” has devolved into a, “Thanks. Next?”
The songs vary from jazz standards to boy band covers, but all the performers have one thing in common: they sort of suck. I mean, certainly, not everyone sucks in the same way, and not everyone sucks equally, but everyone sucks at least a little. I’m stunned when my lunch companion Ethan, Number 19, proves to be the best singer so far, singing a song from some musical called Spring Awakening. The dude can belt.
“He could play you,” Jane says. “If he grew his hair out and developed a bad attitude.”
“I don’t have a bad attitude—”
“—is the kind of thing that people with bad attitudes say.” Jane smiles.
I see a couple potential Janes over the next hour. Number 24 sings a weirdly good sticky-sweet version of a song from Guys and Dolls. The other girl, Number 43, has straight bleached hair streaked with blue and sings “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Something about the distance between children’s songs and blue hair seems pretty Janeish to me.
“I vote for her,” Jane says as soon as the girl gets to the second Mary.
The last auditionee is a diminutive, large-eyed creature named Hazel who sings a song from Rent. After she’s finished, Tiny runs up onto the stage to thank everyone, and to say how brilliant they all were, and how impossibly hard this will be, and how callbacks will be posted the day after tomorrow. Everyone files out past us, and then finally Tiny slouches up the aisle.
“You’ve got your work cut out for you,” I tell him.
He makes a dramatic gesture of futility. “We did not see a lot of future Broadway stars,” he acknowledges.
Gary comes up and says, “I liked numbers six, nineteen, thirty-one, and forty-two. The others, well,” and then Gary puts his hand to his chest and begins to sing, “Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high / The sound of singing Wildkits, makes me want to die.”
“Jesus,” I say. “You’re like a real singer. You sound like Pavarotti.”
“Well, except he’s a baritone,” Jane says, her music pretension apparently extending even to the world of opera.
Tiny snaps the fingers of one hand excitedly while pointing at Gary. “You! You! You! For the part of Kaleb. Congratulations.”
“You want me to play a fictionalized version of my own ex-boyfriend?” Gary asks. “I think not.”
“Then Phil Wrayson! I don’t care. Pick your part. My God, you sing better than all of them.”
“Yes!” I say. “I cast you.”
“But I’d have to kiss a girl,” he says. “Ew.” I don’t remember my character kissing any girls, and I start to ask Tiny about it, but he cuts me off, saying, “I’ve been in rewrites.” Tiny flatters Gary some more and then he agrees to play the part of me, and honestly, I’ll take it. As we walk up the aisle on the way out of the cafeteria, Gary turns to me, cocking his head and squinting. “What’s it like to be Will Grayson? I need to know what it’s like from the inside.” He’s laughing, but then he also seems to be waiting for an answer. I always thought that being Will Grayson meant being me, but apparently not. The other Will Grayson is also Will Grayson, and now Gary will be, too.
“I just try to shut up and not care,” I say.
“Such stirring words.” Gary smiles. “I will base your character upon the attributes of the boulders on the lake-shore: silent, apathetic, and—considering how little they exercise—surprisingly chiseled.” Everybody laughs, except Tiny, who’s texting. As we exit the hallway, I see Ethan standing against the Wildkit trophy stand, his backpack on. I walk up to him and say, “Not bad today,” and he smiles and says, “I just hope I’m not too hot to play you.” He smiles. I smile back, even though he seems a little serious. “See you on Friday at Clint’s?” he asks.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say. He adjusts the backpack over one shoulder and takes off with a nod. Behind me, I hear Tiny dramatically plead, “Someone tell me it will be okay!”
“It’ll be okay,” Jane says. “Mediocre actors rise to great material.”
Tiny takes a deep breath, shakes some thought out of his mind, and says, “You’re right. Together they will be greater than the sum of their parts. Fifty-five people tried out for my play! My hair looks amazing today! I got a B on an English paper!” His phone chirps. “And I just got a text from my new favorite Will Grayson. You’re totally right, Jane: everything’s coming up Tiny.”
chapter twelve
it starts when i get home from chicago. i already have twenty-seven texts from tiny on my phone. and he has twenty-seven texts from me. that took up most of the train ride. the rest of the time, i figured out what i needed to do the moment i walked through the door. because if isaac’s nonexistence is going to weigh me down, i have to let go of some other things in order not to crash right into the ground. i no longer give a fuck. i mean, i didn’t think i gave a fuck before. but that was amateur not-giving-a-fuck. this is stop-at-nothing, don’t-give-a-fuck freedom.
mom’s waiting for me in the kitchen, sipping some tea, flipping through one of those stupid rich-celebrities-show-off-their-houses magazines. she looks up when i come in.
mom: how was chicago?
me: look, mom, i’m totally gay, and i’d appreciate it if you could get the whole freakout over with now, because, yeah, we have the rest of our lives to deal with it, but the sooner we get through the agony part, the better.
mom: the agony part?
me: you know, you praying for my soul and cursing me for not giving you grandbabies with a wifey and saying how incredibly disappointed you are.
mom: you really think i’d do that?
me: it’s your right, i guess. but if you want to skip that step, it’s fine with me.
mom: i think i want to skip that step.
me: really?
mom: really.
me: wow. i mean, that’s cool.
mom: can i at least have a moment or two for surprise?
me: sure. i mean, it can’t be the answer you were expecting when you asked me how chicago was.
mom: i think it’s safe to say that wasn’t the answer i was expecting.
i’m looking at her face to see if she’s holding things back, but it seems like it is what it is. which is pretty spectacular, all things considered.
me: are you going to tell me you knew all along?
mom: no. but i was wondering who
isaac was.
oh, shit.
me: isaac? were you spying on me, too?
mom: no. it’s just—
me: what?
mom: you would say his name in your sleep. i wasn’t spying. but i could hear it.
me: wow.
mom: don’t be mad.
me: how could i be mad?
i know that’s a silly question. i’ve proven that i can be mad about pretty much anything. there was this one time i woke up in the middle of the night and swore that my mother had installed a smoke alarm on the ceiling while i was asleep. so i burst into her room and started yelling about how could she just go and put something in my room without telling me, and she woke up and calmly told me the smoke alarm was in the hallway, and i actually dragged her out of bed to show her, and of course there wasn’t anything on the ceiling - i’d just dreamed it. and she didn’t yell at me or anything like that. she just told me to go back to sleep. and the next day was total crap for her, but not once did she say it was tied to me waking her up in the middle of the night.
mom: did you see isaac when you were in chicago?
how can i explain this to her? i mean, if i tell her i just traveled into the city to go to a porn store to meet some guy who didn’t end up existing, the next few weeks’ poker night earnings are going to be spent on a visit to dr. keebler. but she can tell when i’m lying if she’s looking for it. i don’t want to lie right now. so i bend the truth.
me: yeah, i saw him. his nickname’s tiny. that’s what i call him, even if he’s huge. he’s actually, you know, really nice.
we are in completely uncharted mother-son territory here. not just in this house - maybe in all of america.
me: don’t get all worried. we just went to millennium park and talked a while. some of his friends were there, too. i’m not going to get pregnant.
mom actually laughs.
mom: well, that’s a relief.