Will Grayson, Will Grayson(12)
Author: John Green

“Hey, Paulie,” says Jane, to a heavily tattooed guy who appears to be the shop’s sole employee. The hot-dog smell has dissipated, but only because Gold Coast Copy and Print stinks of pot. The guy comes around the counter and gives Jane a one-armed hug, and then she says, “This is my friend, Will,” and the guy reaches out his hand, and as I shake his hand, I see that he has the letters, H-O-P-E tattooed on his knuckles. “Paulie and my brother are good friends. They went to Evanston together.”

“Yeah, went together,” Paulie says. “But we sure didn’t graduate together, ’cause I still ain’t graduated.” Paulie laughs.

“Yeah, so, Paulie. Will lost his ID,” explains Jane.

Paulie smiles at me. “That’s a shame, kid.” He hands me a blank sheet of computer paper and says, “I need your full name, your address, date of birth, social, height, weight, and eye color. And a hundred bucks.”

“I, uh—” I say, because I don’t happen to carry hundred dollar bills around with me. But before I can even form the words, Jane puts five twenties on the counter.

Jane and I sit down on the folding chairs, and together we invent my new identity: My name is Ishmael J. Biafra, my address is 1060 W. Addison Street, the location of Wrigley Field. I’ve got brown hair, blue eyes. I’m five ten, weigh 160 pounds, my social security number is nine randomly selected numbers, and I turned twenty-two last month. I hand the paper to Paulie, and then he points to a strip of duct tape and tells me to stand there. He holds a digital camera up to his eye and says, “Smile!” I didn’t smile for my real driver’s license picture, and I’m sure as hell not going to smile for this one.

“I’ll just be a minute,” Paulie says, and so I lean against the wall, and I feel nervous enough about the ID to forget being nervous about my proximity to Jane. Even though I know I’m about the three millionth person to get a fake ID, I’m still pretty sure it’s a felony, and I’m generally opposed to committing felonies. “I don’t even drink,” I say out loud, half to myself and half to Jane.

“Mine’s just for concerts,” she says.

“Can I see it?” I ask. She grabs her backpack, which has been inked all over with band names and quotes, and fishes out her wallet.

“I keep it hidden back here,” she says, unzipping a flap in the wallet, “because if I, like, die or something, I don’t want the hospital trying to call Zora Thurston Moore’s parents.” Sure enough, that’s her name, and the license looks completely real to me. Her picture is brilliant: Her mouth seems right on the edge of laughing, and this is exactly how she looked at Tiny’s house, unlike all her Facebook pictures.

“This is a great picture of you. This is what you look like,” I tell her. And it’s true. That’s the problem: so many things are true. It’s true that I want to smother her with compliments and true that I want to keep my distance. True that I want her to like me and true that I don’t. The stupid, endless truth speaking out of both sides of its big, stupid mouth. It’s what keeps me, stupidly, talking. “Like, you can’t know what you look like, right? Whenever you see yourself in the mirror, you know you’re looking at you, so you can’t help but pose a little. So you never really know. But this—that’s what you look like.”

Jane puts two fingers against the face on the license, which I’m holding against my leg, so her fingers are on my leg if you don’t count the license, and I look at them for a moment and then look up to her and she says, “Paulie, for all his criminality, is actually kinda a good photographer.”

Right then, Paulie comes out waving a driver’s licenseish piece of plastic in the air. “Mr. Biafra, your identification.”

He hands it to me. The knuckles on this hand read L-E-S-S.

It is perfect. All the holograms of a real Illinois license, all the same colors, the same thick, laminated plastic, the same organ donor info. I even look half okay in the picture. “Christ,” I say. “It’s magnificent. It’s the Mona Lisa of IDs.”

“No problem,” says Paulie. “Ahright, kids, I gotta take care of some business.” Paulie smiles and holds up a joint. I’m mystified as to how someone so pot-addled could be such a genius in the field of false identification. “See you later, Jane. Tell Phil to give me a call.”

“Aye aye, cap’n,” Jane says, and then we’re walking down the stairs, and I can feel my fake ID in my front pocket, tight against my thigh, and it feels like I’ve got a ticket to the whole frakking world.

We get outside onto the street, the cold a permanent surprise. Jane takes off running ahead of me and I don’t know whether I’m supposed to follow her or not, but then she turns around toward me and starts skipping backward. The wind in her face, I can barely hear her shout, “Come on, Will! Skip! After all, you’re a man now.”

And I’ll be damned if I don’t start skipping after her.

Chapter four

I am shelving metamusil in aisle seven when maura stalks in. she knows my boss is an ass**le about me standing around and talking while i’m working, so she pretends to look at vitamins while she’s talking to me. she’s telling me there’s something really disturbing about the word ‘chewable’ and then all of a sudden the clock strikes 5:12 and she figures it’s time to ask personal questions.

maura: are you g*y?

me: what the f**k?

maura: it would be okay with me if you were.

me: oh, good, because the thing i’d be worried about the most is whether you were okay with it.

maura: i’m just saying.

me: noted. now will you just shut up and let me work, okay? or do you want me to use my employee discount to get you something for your cramps?

I think there really needs to be a rule against calling a guy’s sexuality into question while he’s working. and anyway, i really don’t want to talk about it with maura no matter where we are. because, here’s the thing – we’re not that close. maura is the kind of friend i enjoy swapping doomsday scenarios with. she’s not, however, someone who makes me want to prevent doomsday from happening. for the year or so we’ve hung out, this has always been a problem. i know if i told her about liking guys, she’d probably stop wanting to date me, which would be a huge plus. but i also know i’d immediately become her g*y pet, and that’s the last kind of leash i want. and it’s not like i’m really that g*y. i f**king hate madonna.