by John Green
And then I settle into my precalc seat twenty minutes early. I try to study a little for chem but give up within twenty seconds. I get out my phone and check my email. Nothing. I keep looking over at his empty chair, the chair he fills with a completeness unimaginable to the rest of us.
I decide to write him an email, thumbing it out on my tiny keyboard. I’m just passing time, really. I keep using unnecessarily long words because they make the writing soak up the minutes.
it’s not like i feel some urgent desire to be friends, but i wish we could be one thing or the other. this, even though rationally i know that your departure from my life is a bountiful blessing, that on most days you are nothing but a 300-pound burden shackled to me, and that you clearly never liked me. i always complained about you and your general hugeness, and now i miss it. typical guy, you’ d say. they don’t know what they’ve got till it’s gone. and maybe you’re right, tiny. i’m sorry about will grayson. both of us.
The first bell finally rings. I save the email as a draft.
Tiny sits down next to me and says, “Hey, Grayson,” and I say, “Hey, how’s it going?” and he says, “Good, man. Dress rehearsal today,” and I say, “Awesome,” and he says, “What’s going on with you?” and I say, “This paper for English is killing me,” and he says, “Yeah, my grades are in the tank,” and I say, “Yeah,” and the second bell rings and we turn our attention to Mr. Applebaum.
Four hours later: I’m in the middle of the line of people rushing out of the physics classroom fifth period when I see Tiny walking past the window. He stops, dramatically pivots toward the door, and waits for me.
“We broke up,” he says matter-of-factly.
“So I heard. Thanks for letting me know—after telling everyone else.”
“Yeah, well,” he says. People weave around us like we’re a blood clot in the hallway’s artery. “Rehearsal’s gonna go late—we’re gonna do a run-through after dress—but you wanna get some late-night dinner? Hot Dog Palace or something?
I consider it a minute, thinking about the unsent email in my drafts folder, and the other Will Grayson, and Tiny up onstage telling me the truth behind my back, and then I say, “I don’t think so. I’m tired of being your Plan B, Tiny.”
It doesn’t faze him, of course. “Well, I guess I’ll see you at the play then.”
“I don’t know if I can make it, but yeah, I’ll try.”
It’s hard to read Tiny’s face for some reason, but I think I’ve gotten a shot in. I don’t know exactly why I want to make him feel like crap, but I do.
I’m walking to Jane’s locker to find her when she comes up behind me and says, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“You can talk to me for billions of minutes.” I smile.
We duck into an abandoned Spanish classroom. She spins a chair around and sits, the chair’s back like a shield. She’s wearing a tight T-shirt underneath a peacoat, which she presently takes off, and she looks awfully good, good enough that I wonder aloud if we can’t talk at home.
“I get distracted at your house.” She raises her eyebrows and smiles, but I see the fake in it. “You said yesterday that we were not not-dating, and like it’s not a big deal, and I realize that it has been one week and one week only, but I actually don’t want to not not-date you; I want to be your girlfriend or not, and I would think by now you’re qualified to make at least a temporary decision on the topic, because I know I am.”
She looks down for a second, and I notice her hair parted in the middle has an accidental zigzag at the top of her head, and I inhale to talk, but then she says, “Also, I’m not going to be devastated or anything either way. I’m not that kind of person. I just think if you don’t say the honest thing, sometimes the honest thing never becomes true, you know, and I—” she says, but then I hold up my finger, because I need to hear the thing she just said, and she talks too fast for me to keep up. I keep holding up my hand, thinking if you don’t say the honest thing, it never becomes true.
I put my hands on her shoulders. “I just realized something. I really really like you. You’re amazing, and I so want to be your boyfriend, because of what you just said, and also because that shirt makes me want to take you home now and do unspeakable things while we watch live-action Sailor Moon videos. But but but you’re totally right about saying the honest thing. I think if you keep the box closed long enough you do kill the cat, actually. And—God, I hope you won’t take this personally—but I love my best friend more than anyone in the world.”
She’s looking at me now, squinting confusion.
“I do. I fucking love Tiny Cooper.”
Jane says, “Um, okay. Are you asking me to be your girlfriend, or are you telling me that you’re gay?”
“The first one. The girlfriend one. I gotta go find Tiny.”
I stand up and kiss her on the zigzag and then bolt.
I call him while running across the soccer field, holding down 1 to speed dial. He doesn’t pick up, but I think I know where he thinks I’m going, so I go there.
Once I see the park to my left, I slow to a fast-walk, heaving breaths, my shoulders burning beneath the backpack straps. Everything depends upon him being in the dugout, and it’s so unlikely that he would go there, three days before the opening of the play, and as I walk, I start to feel like an idiot: His phone is off because he’s in rehearsal, and I ran here instead of running to the auditorium, which means that now I am going to have to run back to the auditorium, and my lungs were not designed for such rigorous use.
I slow further when I hit the park, half because I’m out of breath and half because so long as I can’t see into the dugout, he’s there and he isn’t. I watch this couple walking on the lawn, knowing that they can see into the dugout, trying to tell from their eyes whether they see a gigantic someone sitting in the visitors’ dugout of this Little League field. But their eyes give me nothing, and I just watch them as they hold hands and walk.
Finally, the dugout comes into view. And damned if he isn’t sitting right in the middle of that wooden bench.
I walk over. “Don’t you have dress rehearsal?” He doesn’t say anything until I sit down next to him on the cold wooden bench.
“They need a run-through without me. Otherwise, they may mutiny. We’ll do the dress a little later tonight.”
“So, what brings you to the visitors’ dugout?”
“You remember after I first came out, you used to say, instead of like saying, ‘Tiny plays for the other team,’ you’d say, ‘Tiny plays for the White Sox.’”
“Yeah. Is that homophobic?” I ask.
“Nah,” he says. “Well, probably it is, but it didn’t bother me. Anyway, I want to apologize.”
“For what?”
Apparently, I’ve uttered the magic words, because Tiny takes a deep breath before he starts talking, as if—fancy this—he has a lot to say. “For not saying to your face what I said to Gary. I’m not gonna apologize for saying it, because it’s true. You and your damn rules. And you do get tag-alongy sometimes, and there’s something a little Drama Queeny about your anti-Drama Queenyness, and I know I’m difficult but so are you and your whole put-upon act gets really old, and also you are so self-involved.”
“Said the pot to the kettle,” I say, trying not to get pissed. Tiny is awfully talented at puncturing the love bubble I felt for him. Perhaps, I think, this is why he gets dumped so much.
“Ha! True. True. I’m not saying I’m innocent. I’m saying you’re guilty, too.”
The couple walks out of my view. And then finally I feel ready to banish the quiver Tiny apparently thinks is weakness. I stand up so he has to look at me, and so I have to look at him, and for once, I’m taller. “I love you,” I say.
He tilts his fat lovable head like a confused puppy.
“You are a terrible best friend,” I tell him. “Terrible! You totally ditch me every time you have a boyfriend, and then you come crawling back when you’re heartbroken. You don�
�t listen to me. You don’t even seem to like me. You get obsessed with the play and totally ignore me except to insult me to our friend behind my back, and you exploit your life and the people you say you care about so that your little play can make people love you and think how awesome you are and how liberated you are and how wondrously gay you are, but you know what? Being gay is not an excuse for being a dick.
“But you’re one on my speed dial and I want you to stay there and I’m sorry I’m a terrible best friend, too, and I love you.”
He won’t stop it with the turned head. “Grayson, are you coming out to me? Because I’m, I mean, don’t take this personally, but I would sooner go straight than go gay with you.”
“NO. No no no. I don’t want to screw you. I just love you. When did who you want to screw become the whole game? Since when is the person you want to screw the only person you get to love? It’s so stupid, Tiny! I mean, Jesus, who even gives a fuck about sex?! People act like it’s the most important thing humans do, but come on. How can our sentient fucking lives revolve around something slugs can do. I mean, who you want to screw and whether you screw them? Those are important questions, I guess. But they’re not that important. You know what’s important? Who would you die for? Who do you wake up at five forty-five in the morning for even though you don’t even know why he needs you? Whose drunken nose would you pick?!”
I’m shouting, my arms whirling with gesticulations, and I don’t even notice until I run out of important questions that Tiny is crying. And then softly, the softest I’ve ever heard Tiny say anything, he says, “If you could write a play about anybody . . .” and then his voice trails off.
I sit down next to him, put my arm around him. “Are you okay?”
Somehow, Tiny Cooper manages to contort himself so that his massive head cries on my narrow shoulder. And after a while he says, “Long week. Long month. Long life.”
He recovers quickly, wiping his eyes with the popped collar of the polo shirt he’s wearing beneath a striped sweater.
“When you date someone, you have the markers along the way, right: You kiss, you have The Talk, you say the Three Little Words, you sit on a swing set and break up. You can plot the points on a graph. And you check up with each other along the way: Can I do this? If I say this, will you say it back?
“But with friendship, there’s nothing like that. Being in a relationship, that’s something you choose. Being friends, that’s just something you are.”
I just stare out at the ball field for a minute. Tiny sniffles. “I’d pick you,” I say. “Fuck it, I do pick you. I want you to come over to my house in twenty years with your dude and your adopted kids and I want our fucking kids to hang out and I want to, like, drink wine and talk about the Middle East or whatever the fuck we’re gonna want to do when we’re old. We’ve been friends too long to pick, but if we could pick, I’d pick you.”
“Yeah, okay. You’re getting a little feelingsy, Grayson,” he says. “It’s kinda freaking me out.”
“Got it.”
“Like, don’t ever say you love me again.”
“But I do love you. I’m not embarrassed about it.”
“Seriously, Grayson, stop it. You’re making me throw up in the back of my mouth a little.”
I laugh. “Can I help with the play?”
Tiny reaches into his pocket and produces a neatly folded piece of notebook paper and hands it to me. “I thought you’d never ask,” he says, smirking.
Will (and to a lesser extent Jane),
Thank you for your interest in assisting me in the run-up to Hold Me Closer. I would greatly appreciate it if you would both be backstage opening night to assist with costume changes and to generally calm cast members (okay, let’s just say it: me). Also, you’ll have an excellent view of the play.
Also, the Phil Wrayson costume is excellent as is, but it’d be even better if we had some Will Graysonish clothes for Gary to wear.
Furthermore, I thought I would have time to make a preshow mix in which the odd-numbered tracks are punk rock and the even-numbered tracks are from musicals. I will not, in fact, have time to do this; if you do, it would be truly fabulous.
You are a cute couple, and it was my distinct pleasure to set you up, and I do not in any way resent either of you for failing to have thanked me for making your love possible.
I remain . . .
Your faithful matchmaker and servant . . .
Toiling alone and newly single in an ocean of pain so that some light may be brought into your lives . . . Tiny Cooper
I laugh while I read it, and Tiny laughs, too, nodding his head, appreciating his own awesome.
“I’m sorry about the other Will Grayson,” I say.
His smile folds in upon itself. His response seems directed more toward my namesake than me. “There’s never been anybody like him.”
I don’t trust the words as he says them, but then he exhales through pursed lips, his sad eyes squinting at the distance, and I believe him.
“I should probably get started on this, eh? Thanks for the backstage invite.”
He gets up and starts nodding like he sometimes does, the repetitive nodding that tells me he’s convincing himself of something. “Yeah, I should get back to infuriating the cast and crew with my tyrannical direction.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” I say.
“And all the other days,” he says, patting me too hard between the shoulder blades.
chapter eighteen
i start holding my breath. not like you do when you pass a graveyard or something like that. no. i’m trying to see how long i can do it before i pass out or die. it’s a really convenient pastime - you can do it pretty much anywhere. class. lunch. at the urinal. in the discomfort of your own room.
the sucky part is that the moment always comes when i take the next breath. i can only push myself so far.
i’ve given up on hearing from tiny. i hurt him, he hates me - it’s as simple as that. and now that he’s not texting me, i realize that no one else texts me. or messages me. or cares.
now that he isn’t into me, i realize that no one else is all that into me, either.
okay, so there’s gideon. he’s not much of a texter or a messager, but when we’re at school, he’s always asking me how things are going. and i always stop not-breathing in order to answer him. sometimes i even tell the truth.
me: seriously, is this what the rest of my life is going to be? i don’t think i signed up for this.
i know it sounds like teenage idiocy - the needles! in my heart! and my eyes! - but the pattern seems inescapable. i am never going to get better at being a good person. i am always going to be the blood and shit of things.
gideon: just breathe.
and i wonder how he knows to say that.
the only time that i pretend i have it all together is when maura’s around. i don’t want her to see me falling apart. worst case scenario: she stomps on all the pieces. worse-than-that case scenario: she tries to put them together again. i realize: i am now where she was with me. on the other side of the silence. you’d think that silence would be peaceful. but really, it’s painful.
at home, mom is keeping close watch on me. which makes me feel worse, because now i’m putting her through it, too.
that night - the night i screwed everything up with tiny
- she hid the glass bowl he gave her. while i was asleep, she put it away. and the stupid thing was, when i saw it was gone, the first thing i thought was that she was afraid i’d smash it. then i realized she was only trying to protect me from seeing it, from getting upset.
at school, i ask gideon
me: why is it upset? shouldn’t it be downset?
gideon: i will file a lawsuit against the dictionaries first thing tomorrow morning. we’re going to tear merriam a new asshole and throw webster inside of it.
me: you are such a dork.
gideon: only if you catch me on a good day.
i don’t
tell gideon that i feel guilty being around him. because what if the threat tiny felt turns out to be true? what if i was cheating on him without knowing it?
me: can you cheat on someone without knowing it?
i am not asking gideon this. i am asking my mother.
she has been so careful with me. she has been tiptoeing around my moods, acting like everything’s okay. but now she just freezes.
mom: why are you asking me that? did you cheat on tiny?
and i’m thinking, oh shit, i should not have asked that question.
me: no. i didn’t. why are you so mad?
mom: nothing.
me: no, why? did dad cheat on you?
she shakes her head.
me: did you cheat on dad?
she sighs.
mom: no. it’s not that. it’s . . . i don’t want you to ever be a cheater. not on people. sometimes it’s okay to cheat on things - but don’t ever cheat on people. because once you start, it’s very hard to stop. you find out how easy it is to do.
me: mom?
mom: that’s all. why are you asking?
me: no reason. just wondering.
i’ve been wondering a lot lately. sometimes, when i’m passing the minute mark on holding my breath, besides imagining being dead, i’m also imagining what tiny is doing. sometimes i picture the other will grayson there. most of the time, they’re onstage. but i can never understand what they’re singing.
and the weird thing is, i’m thinking about isaac again. and maura. and how weird it is that it was a lie that made me happiest.
tiny doesn’t respond to any of my instant messages. then, the night before the musical, i decide to type in the other will grayson’s screenname. and there he is. it’s not like i think he’ll completely understand. yeah, we have the same name, but it’s not like we’re psychic twins. it’s not like he’ll wince in pain if i burn myself or anything. but that one night in chicago, i felt he understood a little of it. and, yeah, i also want to see if tiny’s okay.