Will Grayson, Will Grayson(27)
Author: John Green

me: no, why would maura do this?

o.w.g: i can’t honestly say.

maura. isaac.

Isaac. maura.

anvil.

anvil.

anvil.

me: you know what sucks about love?

o.w.g.: what?

me: that it’s so tied to truth.

the tears are starting to come back. because that pain – i know i’m giving it all up. isaac. hope. the future. those feelings. that word. i’m giving it all up, and that hurts.

o.w.g.: will?

me: i think i need to close my eyes for a minute and feel what i need to feel.

I shut my eyes, shut my body, try to shut out everything else. i feel o.w.g. stand up. i wish he were isaac, even though i know he’s not. i wish maura weren’t isaac, even though i know she is. i wish i were someone else, even though i know i’ll never, ever be able to get away from what i’ve done and what’s been done to me.

lord, send me amnesia. make me forget every moment i ever didn’t really have with isaac. make me forget that maura exists. this must be what my mother felt when my dad said it was over. i get it now. i get it. the things you hope for the most are the things that destroy you in the end.

I hear o.w.g. talking to someone. a murmured recap of everything that’s just happened.

I hear footsteps coming closer. i try to calm myself a little, then open my eyes . . . and see this ginormous guy standing in front of me. when he notices me noticing him, he gives me this broad smile. i swear, he has dimples the size of a baby’s head.

ginormous guy: hello there. i’m tiny.

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. instead of shaking it, though, he yanks me up to my feet.

tiny: did someone die?

me: yeah, i did.

he smiles again at that.

tiny: well, then . . . welcome to the afterlife.

Chapter nine

You can say a lot of bad things about Tiny Cooper. I know, because I have said them. But for a guy who knows absolutely nothing about how to conduct his own relationships, Tiny Cooper is kind of brilliant when it comes to dealing with other people’s heartbreak. Tiny is like some gigantic sponge soaking up the pain of lost love everywhere he goes. And so it is with Will Grayson. The other Will Grayson, I mean.

Jane’s a storefront down standing in a doorway, talking on the phone. I look over at her, but she’s not looking at me, and I’m wondering if they played the song. Something Will—the other Will—said right before Tiny and Jane walked up keeps looping around my head: love is tied to truth. I think of them as unhappily conjoined twins.

“Obviously,” Tiny is saying, “she’s just a hot smoldering pile of suck, but even so, I give her full credit for the name. Isaac. Isaac. I mean, I could almost fall in love with a girl, if she were named Isaac.”

The other Will Grayson doesn’t laugh, but Tiny is undeterred. “You must have been so totally freaked out when you realized it was a  p**n  store, right? Like, who wants to meet there.”

“And then also when his namesake was buying a magazine,” I say, holding up the black bag, thinking that Tiny will snatch it and check out my purchase. But he doesn’t. He just says, “This is even worse than what happened to me and Tommy.”

“What happened with you and Tommy?” Will asks.

“He said he was a natural blonde, but his dye job was so bad it looked like a weave from Mattel—like Barbie. Also, Tommy wasn’t short for Tomas, like he told me. It was short for regular old Thomas.”

Will says, “Yes, this is worse. Much worse.”

I clearly don’t have much to contribute to the conversation, and anyway, Tiny is acting like I don’t exist, so I smile and say, “I’m gonna leave you two boys alone now.” And then I look at the other Will Grayson, and he’s sort of swaying like he might fall over if the wind kicks up. I want to say something, because I feel really bad for him, but I never know what to say. So I just say what I’m thinking. “I know it sucks, but in a way, it’s good.” He looks at me like I’ve just said something absolutely idiotic, which of course I have. “Love and truth being tied together, I mean. They make each other possible, you know?”

The kid gives me about an eighth of a smile and then turns back to Tiny, who—to be fair—is clearly the better therapist. The black bag with Mano a Mano doesn’t seem funny anymore, so I just drop it on the ground next to Tiny and Will. They don’t even notice.

Jane’s standing on the curb on her tiptoes now, almost leaning out into a street choked thick with cabs. A group of college guys walk past and look at her, one raising his eyebrows to another. I’m still thinking about the tying of love and truth—and it makes me want to tell her the truth—the whole, contradictory truth—because otherwise, on some level, am I not that girl? Am I not that girl pretending to be Isaac?

I walk over to her and try to touch the back of her elbow, but my touch is too soft and I only get her coat. She turns to me and I see that she’s still on her cell. I make a gesture that is intended to convey, “Hey, no hurry, talk as long as you’d like,” and probably actually conveys, “Hey, look at me! I have spastic hands.” Jane holds up a finger. I nod. She speaks softly, cutely into the phone, saying, “Yeah, I know. Me too.”

I step backward across the sidewalk and lean against the brick wall between Frenchy’s and a closed sushi restaurant. To my right, Will and Tiny talk. To my left, Jane talks. I pull out my cell as though I’m going to send a text, but I just scroll through my contact list. Clint. Dad. Jane. Mom. People I used to be friends with. People I sorta know. Tiny. Nothing after the T’s. Not much for a phone I’ve had three years.

“Hey,” Jane says. I look up, flip the phone shut, and smile at her. “Sorry about the concert,” she says.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” I answer, because it is.

“Who’s the guy?” she asks, gesturing toward him.

“Will Grayson,” I say. She squints at me, confused. “I met a guy named Will Grayson in that  p**n  store,” I say. “I was there to use my fake ID, and he was there to meet his fake boyfriend.”

“Jesus, if I’d known that was gonna happen, I would’ve skipped the concert.”

“Yeah,” I say, trying not to sound annoyed. “Let’s take a walk.”

She nods. We walk over toward Michigan Avenue, the Magnificent Mile, home to all of Chicago’s biggest, chainiest stores. Everything’s closed now, and the tourists who flood the wide sidewalks during the day have gone back to their hotels, towering fifty stories above us. The homeless people who beg off the tourists are gone, too, and it is mostly just Jane and me. You can’t tell the truth without talking, so I’m telling her the whole story, trying to make it funny, trying to make it grander than any MDC concert could ever be. And when I finish there’s a lull and she says, “Can I ask you something random?”