Will Grayson, Will Grayson: Chapters 13-16

I awake to the sound of my alarm clock, blaring rhythmically, and it seems as loud as an air siren, shouting at me with such ferocity that it sort of hurts my feelings.

I've seen him drunk and sober, hungry and sated, loud and louder, in love and in longing.

I assume that, as usual, he is asking this question rhetorically, so I say nothing so he'll go on ranting, because as painful as it is for me to admit, there is something kind of wonderful about Tiny's ranting, particularly on a quiet street when I am still half asleep.

It is something about his voice, not his pitch or his rapid-fire, caffeinated diction, but the voice itself—the familiarity of it, I guess, but also its inexhaustibility.

"No offense, Grayson, but what exactly are your theater credentials?"

I call Tiny after school, but I get his voice mail, so I send him a text: "The Original Will Grayson requests the pleasure of a phone call whenever possible."

My parents get so few details about my private life that whenever they do stumble upon some morsel, they cling to it for eons.

And then at some point, it was nothing personal against Marvin, but he started spending more time in the closet with my other toys, and then more time, until finally Marvin became a full-time resident of the closet.

Tiny dominating at dodgeball despite his width, and always letting me finish second just by virtue of putting me in his shadow and not spiking me until the end.

it's so bizarre, all the times we've been talking or texting or IMing or whatever, i've always imagined that tiny was in a house like mine, or a school like mine, or a car like the one i might get someday — a car almost as old as me, probably bought off an old woman who isn't allowed to drive anymore, now i'm realizing it's not like that at all.

mom's got her apron off by the time we get inside the house, even though i warned her that he's the shape of Utah, there's still a slight moment of astonishment when she first sees tiny in the flesh

i know he's been having a bad week, i know things haven't been going his way, and that he's worried his show is going to bomb, he's rewriting it daily, ('who knew it would be so complicated to fit love into fourteen songs?') i know he's been looking forward to this — and i know that i've been looking forward to this, but now i have to stop looking forward and start looking at where i am.

when mom comes back in, i'm still leaning there, she doesn't flinch, doesn't stop, doesn't seem to mind, she puts our drinks down, then runs to the kitchen again

still, what could i say? that i didn't just feel depressed — instead, it was like the depression was the core of me, of every part of me, from my mind to my bones?

tiny's touch tries to soothe me. his voice tries to calm me.

but i can't take that, i sit up, knocking us right out of our dreamy breathing, making him shift away a little so he can see me clearly, the impulse in me is loud and clear: immediately, i can't do this, not because of my father — i don't really care that much about my father — but because of this whole process of knowing everything, i argue with myself.

i know it's not as easy as tiny says it is. but he's trying so hard, so i surrender to it. i surrender to something else, even if my heart isn't totally believing it.

I want to hear the quiver in his voice when he's singing, the need he hopes no one can hear.

I walk around the backstop fence and sit down on the bench in the dugout, my back against the aluminum wall, warmed by the sunlight, and I cry.

Baseball for me was just one of those weird and terrible things parents do for reasons you cannot fathom, like flu shots and church.

It wouldn't hurt if he weren't right—if I hadn't known somewhere that my weakness aggravates him.

And maybe he thinks like I do, that you don't pick your friends, and he's stuck with this annoying bitchsquealer who can't handle himself, who can't close his glove around the ball, who can't take a dressing-down from the coach, who regrets writing letters to the editor in defense of his best friend.

If nothing else, I can relieve him of that burden.

Hey, Jane, it's Will. I just wanted to talk to you. I . . . radical honesty? I just spent like five minutes going through a list of everyone I could call, and you were the only person I wanted to call, because I like you.

I blink out some tears, but Dad has the decency not to say anything about it.

it's not just because the show is in chaos, the other will grayson isn't talking to him.

mental health days only exist for people who have the luxury of saying 'i don't want to deal with things today' and then can take the whole day off, while the rest of us are stuck fighting the fights we always fight, with no one really caring one way or another, unless we choose to bring a gun to school or ruin the morning announcements with a suicide.

so if i'm going to have a hypothetical boyfriend in this school, i could do much worse.

i tell lizzie the truth — that my boyfriend is sneaking into the school to meet me — and she becomes my accomplice, because even if she wouldn't ordinarily do it for me, she'll definitely do it for LOVE (well, LOVE and gay rights — three cheers for straight girls who max out on helping gay guys.)

his handshake has to be a little firmer than usual, since gideon actually winces before it's through, then he leaves to pull up an extra chair to the table, offering tiny the place where he usually sits.

simon, i fear, is on the verge of saying something wrong, and derek looks like he's going to blog about the whole thing, gideon starts asking tiny friendly questions, and tiny keeps giving one-word answers.

me: you have just met the only people i ever interact with, you have sampled our fine cuisine, if you'd like, i can show you the trophy case on the way out

i'm tiny cooper, and i've been dating this will grayson for four weeks, two days, and eighteen hours now. if you hadn't been such an evil, selfish, deceitful, vindictive frenemy to him, we would have never met.

it's probably been ten years since i sat on a swing, i only do it to shut tiny up for a second, neither of us actually swings — i don't think the frame could take that, we just sit there, dangling over the ground, tiny twists around so he's facing me.

i'd love to live in his musical cartoon world, where witches like maura get vanquished with one heroic word, and all the forest creatures are happy when two gay guys walk hand-in-hand through the meadow, and gideon is the himbo suitor you know the princess can't marry, because her heart belongs to the beast, i'm sure it's a lovely world, where these things happen, a rich, spoiled, colorful world

tiny: you may not have noticed, but i'm not what you'd call conventionally beautiful, in fact, you might say that i'm the opposite of that

are you really dying to try on these size fifteens? because every morning when i wake up, i have to convince myself that, yes, by the end of the day, i will be able to do something good, that's all i ask — to be able to do something good

i want to say i'm feeling remorse or regret or even guilt, but none of those words seem like enough, what i'm feeling is shame, raw, loathing shame, i don't want to be the person i am. i don't want to be the person who just did what i did.

mom: need is never a good basis for any relationship, it has to be much more than that.

i don't really think i can salvage us being boyfriends, but at the very least i want to tell him that even if he was wrong about me, he wasn't wrong about himself, i mean, someone should be trying to do good in the world, so i try.