me: look. i just want you to know that while i still think what you did was completely shitty, i realize that i was shitty to you, too. not in the elaborately shitty way that you were to me, but still pretty shitty. i should have just been honest with you and told you i didn’t want to talk to you or be your boyfriend or be your best friend or anything like that. i tried - i swear i tried. but you didn’t want to hear what i was saying, and i used that as an excuse to let it go on.
maura: you didn’t mind me when i was isaac. when we would chat every night.
me: but that was a lie! a complete lie!
now maura looked me right in the eye.
maura: c’mon, will - you know there’s no such thing as a complete lie. there’s always some truth in there.
i don’t know how to react to that. i just say the next thing that comes to my mind.
me: it wasn’t you i liked. it was isaac. i liked isaac.
the blankness has disappeared now. there’s sadness instead.
maura: . . . and isaac liked you.
i want to say to her: i just want to be myself. and i want to be with someone who’s just himself. that’s all. i want to see through all the performance and all the pretending and get right to the truth. and maybe this is the most truth that maura and i will ever find - an acknowledgment of the lie, and of the feelings that fell behind it.
me: i’m sorry, maura.
maura: i’m sorry, too.
this is why we call people exes, i guess - because the paths that cross in the middle end up separating at the end. it’s too easy to see an X as a cross-out. it’s not, because there’s no way to cross out something like that. the X is a diagram of two paths.
i hear a honk and turn to see gideon pulling up in his mom’s car.
me: i gotta go.
maura: so go.
i leave her and get in the car with gideon and tell him everything that just happened. he says he’s proud of me, and i don’t know what to do with that. i ask him
me: why?
and he says
gideon: for saying you were sorry. i wasn’t sure if you’d be able to do that.
i tell him i wasn’t sure, either. but it’s how i felt. and i wanted to be honest.
suddenly - it’s like the next thing i know - we’re on the road. i’m not even sure if we’re going to make it to tiny’s show on time. i’m not even sure i should be there. i’m not even sure that i want to see tiny. i just want to see how the play turned out.
gideon is whistling along to the radio beside me. normally that kind of shit annoys me, but this time it doesn’t.
me: i wish i could show him the truth.
gideon: tiny?
me: yeah. you don’t have to date someone to think they’re great, right?
we drive some more. gideon starts whistling again. i picture tiny running around backstage. then gideon stops whistling. he smiles and hits the steering wheel.
gideon: by jove, i think i’ve got it!
me: did you really just say that?
gideon: admit it. you love it.
me: strangely, i do. gideon: i think i have an idea.
so he tells me. and i can’t believe i have such a sick and twisted and brilliant individual sitting at my side.
even more than that, though, i can’t believe i’m about to do what he’s suggesting.
chapter ninteen
Jane and I spend the hours before Opening Night constructing the perfect preshow playlist, which comprises—as requested—odd-numbered pop punk songs and even-numbered tunes from musicals. “Annus Miribalis” makes an appearance; we even include the punkest song from the resolutely unpunk Neutral Milk Hotel. As for the songs from musicals, we choose nine distinct renditions of “Over the Rainbow,” including a reggae one.
Once we’re finished debating and downloading, Jane heads home to change. I’m anxious to get to the auditorium, but it seems unfair to Tiny merely to wear jeans and a Willy the Wildkit T-shirt to the most important event of his life. So I put one of Dad’s sports coats over the Wildkit shirt, fix my hair, and feel ready.
I wait at home until Mom pulls in, take the keys from her before she can even get the door all the way open, and drive to school.
I walk into the mostly empty auditorium—curtain time is still more than an hour away—and I’m met by Gary, who’s hair is dyed lighter, and chopped short and messy like mine. Also, he’s wearing my clothes, which I delivered to him yesterday: khakis; a short-sleeve, plaid button-down I love; and my black Chucks. The entire effect would be surreal except the clothes are ridiculously wrinkled.
“What, Tiny couldn’t find an iron?” I ask.
“Grayson,” Gary says, “look at your pants, man.”
I do. Huh. I didn’t even know that jeans could wrinkle. He puts his arm around me and says, “I always thought it was part of your look.”
“It is now,” I say. “How’s it going? Are you nervous?”
“I’m a little nervous, but I’m not Tiny nervous. Actually, could you go back there and, um, try to help? This,” he says, gesturing at the outfit, “was for dress rehearsal. I gotta put on my White Sox garb.”
“Done and done,” I say. “Where is he?”
“Bathroom backstage,” Gary answers. I hand him the preshow CD, jog down the aisle, and snake behind the heavy red curtain. I’m met by a gaggle of cast and crew in various stages of costume, and for once they are quiet, working away on each other’s makeup. All the guys in the cast wear White Sox uniforms, complete with cleats and high socks pulled up over their tight pants. I say hi to Ethan, the only one I really know, and then I’m about to look for the bathroom when I notice the set. It’s a very realistic baseball field dugout, which surprises me. “This is the set for the whole play?” I ask Ethan.
“God no,” he says. “There’s a different one for each act.”
I hear in the distance a thunderous roar followed by a horrifying series of splashes, and my first thought is, Tiny has written an elephant into the play, and the elephant has just vomited, but then I realize that Tiny is the elephant.
Against my better judgment, I follow the sound to a bathroom, whereupon it promptly happens again. I can see his feet peeking out the bottom of the stall. “Tiny,” I say.
“BLLLLAAARRRRGGGGH,” he answers, and then
sucks in a desperate wheezing breath before more pours forth. The smell is overpowering, but I step forward and push the door open a bit. Tiny, wearing the world’s largest Sox uniform, hugs the toilet. “Nerves or sickness?” I ask.
“BLLLLLAAAAAAOOOO.” One cannot help but be
surprised by the sheer volume of what pours forth from Tiny’s distended mouth. I notice some lettuce and wish I hadn’t, because then I begin to wonder: Tacos? Turkey sandwich? I start to feel like I may join him.
“Okay, bud, just get it all up and you’ll be fine.”
Nick bursts into the bathroom then, moaning, “The smell, the smell,” and then says, “Do not fuck your hair up, Cooper! Keep that head out of the toilet. We spent hours on that hair!”
Tiny sputters and coughs a bit and then croaks, “My throat. So raw.” He and I realize simultaneously: the central voice of the show is shot.
I take one armpit and Nick takes another and we pull him up and away. I flush, trying not to look into the unspeakable horror in the toilet. “What did you eat?”
“A chicken burrito and a steak burrito from Burrito Palace,” he answers. His voice sounds all weird, and he knows it, so he tries to sing. “What’s second base for a—shit shit shit shit shit I wrecked my voice. Shit.”
With Nick still beneath one Tiny arm and me beneath the other, we walk back toward the crew, and I shout, “I need some warm tea with a lot of honey and some Pepto-Bismol immediately, people!”
Jane runs up wearing a white, men’s v-neck T-shirt, Sharpie-scrawled with the words I’m with Phil Wrayson.
“I’m on it,” she says. “Tiny, you need anything else?” He holds up a hand
to quiet us and then groans, “What is that?”
“What is what?” I ask.
“That noise. In the distance. Is that—is that—goddamn it, Grayson, did you put ‘Over the Rainbow’ on the preshow CD?”
“Oh yes,” I say. “Repeatedly.”
“TINY COOPER HATES ‘OVER THE RAINBOW’!” His voice cracks as he screams. “Shit, my voice is so gone. Shit.”
“Stay quiet,” I say. “We’re gonna fix this, dude. Just don’t puke anymore.”
“I am bereft of burrito to puke,” he answers.
“STAY QUIET,” I insist.
He nods. And for a few minutes, while everyone runs around fanning their pancake faces and whispering to one another how great they’ll be, I’m alone with a silent Tiny Cooper. “I didn’t know you could get nervous. Do you get nervous before football games?” He shakes his head no. “Okay, just nod if I’m right. You’re scared the play isn’t actually that good.” He nods. “Worried about your voice.” Nod. “What else? Is that it?” He shakes his head no. “Um, you’re worried it won’t change homophobic minds.” No. “You’re worried you’ll hurl onstage.” No. “I don’t know, Tiny, but whatever you’re worried about, you’re bigger than the worries. You’re gonna kill out there. The ovation will last for hours. Longer than the play itself.”
“Will,” he whispers.
“Dude, save the voice.”
“Will,” he says again.
“Yeah?”
“No. Will.”
“You mean the other Will,” I say, and he just raises his eyebrows at me and smirks.
“I’ll go look,” I say. Twenty minutes to curtain, and the auditorium is now damn near full. I stand on the edge of the stage looking out for a second, feeling a little bit famous. Then I jog down the stairs and slowly walk up the stage-right aisle. I want him here, too. I want it possible for people like Will and Tiny to be friends, not just tried errors.
Even though I feel like I know Will, I barely remember what he looks like. I try to exclude each face in each row. A thousand people texting and laughing and squirming in their seats. A thousand people reading the program in which, I later learn, Jane and I are specially thanked for “being awesome.” A thousand people waiting to see Gary pretend to be me for a couple hours, with no idea what they’re about to see. And I don’t know, either, of course—I know the play has changed in the months since I read it, but I don’t know how.
All these people, and I try to look at every last one of them. I see Mr. Fortson, the GSA advisor, sitting with his partner. I see two of our assistant principals. And then as I get into the middle, my eyes scanning faces looking for Will Graysony ones, I see two older faces staring back at me on the aisle. My parents.
“What are you doing here?”
My father shrugs. “You will be surprised to learn it was not my idea.”
Mom nudges him. “Tiny wrote me a very nice Facebook message inviting us personally, and I just thought that was so sweet.”
“You’re Facebook friends with Tiny?”
“Yes. He request-friended me,” Mom says, epically failing to speak Facebook.
“Well, thanks for coming. I’m gonna be backstage but I’ll, um, see you after.”
“Say hi to Jane for us,” Mom says, all smiley and conspiratorial.
“Will do.”
I finish making my way up the aisle and then walk back the stage-left aisle. No Will Grayson. When I get backstage, I see Jane holding a supersize bottle of Pepto-Bismol.
She turns it upside down and says, “He drank it all.”
Tiny jumps out from behind the set and sings, “And now I feel GrrrrrEAT!” His voice sounds fine for the moment.
“Rock ’n’ roll,” I tell him. He walks up to me and looks at me askingly. “There’s like twelve hundred people in the audience, Tiny,” I say.
“You didn’t see him,” he says, nodding softly. “Okay. Yeah. Okay. That’s okay. Thanks for making me shut up.”
“And flushing your ten thousand gallons of vomit.”
“Sure, also that.” He takes a big breath and puffs out his cheeks, rendering his face almost perfectly circular. “I guess it’s time.”
Tiny gathers the cast and crew around him. He kneels in the center of a thick mass of people, everyone touching everyone because one of the laws of nature is that theater people love to be touchy. The cast is in the first circle around Tiny, everyone—guy and girl—dressed like White Sox. Then the chorus, dressed all in black for the moment. Jane and I lean in, too. Tiny says, “I just want to say thank you and you’re all amazing and it’s all about falling. Also I’m sorry I hurled earlier. I was hurling because I actually got awesome-poisoning from being around so many awesome people.” That gets a bit of nervous laughter. “I know you’re freaked out but just trust me: you’re fabulous. And anyway, it’s not about you. Let’s go make some dreams come true.”
Everyone kind of shouts and does this thing where we raise up one hand to the ceiling, and then there are a lot of jazz fingers. The light beneath the curtain is extinguished. Three football players push the set forward into its place. I step off to the side, standing in cave-darkness next to Jane, whose fingers interlace with mine. My heart pounds, and I can only imagine what it’s like to be Tiny now, praying that a quart of Pepto-Bismol will coat his vocal cords, that he won’t forget a line or fall or pass out or hurl. It’s bad enough in the wings, and I realize the courage it actually takes to get onstage and tell the truth. Worse, to sing the truth.
A disembodied voice says, “To prevent interruptions of the fabulousness, please turn off your cell phones.” I reach into a pocket with my free hand and click mine over to vibrate. I whisper to Jane, “I might puke,” and she says, “Shh,” and I whisper, “Hey, are my clothes always superwrinkly?” and she whispers, “Yes. Shh,” and squeezes my hand. The curtain parts. The applause is polite.
Everyone in the cast sits on the dugout bench except for Tiny, who walks nervously back and forth in front of the players. “Come on, Billy. Be patient, Billy. Wait for your pitch.” I realize that Tiny isn’t playing Tiny; he’s playing the coach.
Some pudgy freshman plays Tiny instead. He can’t stop moving his legs around; I can’t tell if he’s acting or nervous. He says, all exaggeratedly effeminate, “Hey, Batta Batta THWING batta.” It sounds like he’s flirting with the batter.
“Idiot,” someone on the bench says. “Our guy is batting.”
Gary says, “Tiny’s rubber. You’re glue. Whatever you say bounces off him and sticks to you.” I can tell from his sloping shoulders and meek look that Gary’s me.
“Tiny’s gay,” adds someone else.
The coach wheels around to the bench and shouts. “Hey! HEY! No insulting teammates.”
“It’s not an insult,” Gary says. But he isn’t Gary anymore. It isn’t Gary talking. It’s me. “It’s just a thing. Like, some people are gay. Some people have blue eyes.”
“Shut up, Wrayson,” the coach says.
The kid playing Tiny glances gratefully at the kid playing me, and then one of the bullies stage-whispers, “You’re so gay for each other.”
And I say, “We’re not gay. We’re eight.” This happened. I’d forgotten it, but seeing the moment resurrected, I remember.
And the kid says, “You want to go to second base . . . WITH TINY.”
The me onstage just rolls his eyes. And then the pudgy kid playing Tiny stands up and takes a step forward, in front of the coach and sings, “What’s second base for a gay man?” And then Tiny takes a step forward and joins him, harmonizing, and they launch into the greatest musical song I’ve ever heard. The chorus goes:
What’s second base for a gay man?
Is it tuning in Tokyo?
I can’t see how that would feel good
But maybe that’s how it should go?
Behind the two Tinys singing arm in arm, the guys in the chorus—including Ethan—pull off a hilariously elaborate old-fashioned, high-stepping, highly
choreographed dance, their bats used as canes and their ball caps as top hats. Midway through, half the guys swing their bats toward the heads of half the others, and even though from my side view I can see it’s totally faked, when the other boys fall backward dramatically and the music cuts out, I gasp with the audience. Moments later, they all jump up in a single motion and the song starts up again. When it’s done, Tiny and the kid dance offstage to thunderous shouts from the crowd, and as the lights cut, Tiny damn near lands in my arms, bathed in sweat.
“Not bad,” he says.
I just shake my head, amazed. Jane helps him out of his shoes and says, “Tiny, you’re kind of a genius.” He rips off his baseball uniform to reveal a very Tiny purple polo shirt and chino shorts.
“I know, right?” he says. “Okay, time to come out to the folks,” he says, and hustles out onto the stage. Jane grabs my hand and kisses me on the neck.
It’s a quiet scene, as Tiny tells his parents he’s “probably kinda gay.” His dad is sitting silent while his mom sings about unconditional love. The song is only funny because Tiny keeps cutting in with other comings-out each time his mom sings, “We’ll always love our Tiny,” like, “Also, I cheated in algebra,” and, “There’s a reason your vodka tastes watered down,” and “I feed my peas to the dog.”
When the song ends, the lights go down again, but Tiny doesn’t leave the stage. When the lights go back up, there’s no set, but judging from the elaborately costumed cast, I gather we’re at a Gay Pride Parade. Tiny and Phil Wrayson stand center stage as people march past, chanting their chants, waving dramatically. Gary looks so much like me it’s weird. He looks more like freshman-year me than Tiny looks like freshman-year Tiny.
John Green & David Levithan Page 23