Will Grayson, Will Grayson: Chapters 5-8

I realize he and Mom have decided I should go to this particular program, and that they are introducing me to the idea early, and that they will periodically bring this program up over the next year, pushing and pushing and pushing.

And you know how no one ever listens to this advice, because even if it's true it's so annoying and condescending that it just makes you want to go, like, develop a meth addiction and have unprotected sex with eighty-seven thousand anonymous partners? Well, I listen to my parents. They know what's good for me. I'll listen to anyone, frankly. Almost everyone knows better than I do.

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

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.

"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?"

"Tiny, you have a really warped understanding of compromise."

"Schrodinger. Except the band name is a total fail, because Schrodinger 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."

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."

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."

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.

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.

But the whole trip is completely worthless if I don't get a memento to prove I was here.

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.

i guess it's a sign of desperation, but i decide to tell simon something remotely resembling the truth.

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.

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

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'm not that stupid, we're meeting in a public place, and i have my phone, even if isaac has a psychotic break, i'll be prepared.

i take about five minutes to think about my dating history — five minutes is really all i can fill — and i'm sent back to the traumatic experience of drunkenly groping carissa nye at sloan mitchell's party a couple months ago. the kissing part was actually hot, but then when it got more serious, carissa got this stupidly earnest look on her face and i almost cracked up.

i definitely eye a few specimens, but it's purely scientific research, for the next, oh, ten minutes, i can save myself for isaac.

i remember that isaac's friend suggested the place, or at least that's what he said, if that's true, maybe it's a joke, and poor isaac got here first and was mortified and is waiting for me inside, or maybe this is some kind of cosmic test, i have to cross the river of extreme awkwardness in order to get to the paradise on the other side

Small and big-eyed and towheaded and absolutely terrified—as scared as I would probably be had I not already been driven to the brink by the anti-Will Grayson conspiracy encompassing A. Jane, and B. Tiny, and C. The well-pierced specimen behind the counter, and D. Stonedy McKopyShoppy.

So I just say to Piercings, "Can I have the magazine?" and Piercings hands it to me in an unmarked and thoroughly opaque black plastic bag for which I am very grateful, and he gives me my card and my receipt.

I can't decide if he's paranoid or schizophrenic or both, but then he pulls a duct-taped wallet out of his back pocket and shows me an Illinois driver's license.

His shoulders hunched, he stares intently into the gutter of the street.

His face seems to alternate between hope and anger.

And then he tells me about Isaac, about how they've been friends for a year and that he always wanted to meet him because there's just no one like Isaac out in the suburb where he lives, and it dawns on me pretty quickly that Will Grayson likes Isaac in a not-altogether-platonic way.

I can see him out of the corner of my eye, and I'm sure he can see me out of the corner of his, but mostly we are looking not at each other, but at the same spot on the street as cars rumble past, my brain trying to make sense of all the impossibilities, all the coincidences that brought me here, all the true-and-false things.

"It's gotta mean something, one Will Grayson meeting another Will Grayson in a random porn store where neither Will Grayson belongs."

again, as i was having all these thoughts, i was also thinking about sharing them with isaac. that was my default.

i was only distracted when i heard my name being said by the guy behind the counter, which is how i found o.w.g.

my phone rings at practically the same time as o.w.g.'s even though it's pathetically unlikely that it's going to be isaac, my hopes still do the up thing, then i see it's maura.

i also remember maura's doing me a favor today, if later on i learn that the mathletic competition was attacked by an uzi-wielding squad of frustrated humanities nerds, i'll feel guilty that i didn't answer the phone and let maura say good-bye.

it's hitting, that moment of 'did an anvil really just fall on my head?' has passed and i am feeling that anvil, oh lord am i feeling that anvil.

yes, the synapses are conveying the information now.

then i stop, i feel the tears, and hope that if i keep my eyes closed i can keep them inside, i am so beyond pathetic because i want to open my eyes and see isaac there, have him tell me that maura's out of her mind, or have the other will grayson tell me that this, too, can be dismissed as coincidence.

all of my instincts are telling me to curl into a tiny ball and roll into the nearest sewer — but i don't want to do that to o.w.g. i feel he deserves more than being an eyewitness to my self-destruction.

lord, send me amnesia, make me forget every moment i ever didn't really have with isaac. make me forget that maura exists

he offers his hand, i'm not entirely in a shaking mood, but it's awkward if i just leave him there, so i hold out my hand, too.