Will Grayson, Will Grayson(33)
Author: John Green

“I’m really not in the mood for your bullshit,” I say.

“I’m not bullshitting you. His name has to be Wrayson. Say it slow. Ray-sin. Rays-in. It’s a double meaning—Gil Wrayson is undergoing a transformation. And he has to let the rays of sunlight in—those rays of sunlight coming in the form of Tiny’s songs—in order to become his true self—no longer a plum, but a sun-soaked raisin. Don’t you see?”

“Oh, come on, Tiny. If that’s true, why the hell is his name Gil?”

That stops him for a moment. “Hmm,” he says, squinting down the still-quiet hallway. “It just always sounded right to me. But I suppose I could change it. I’ll think about it, okay?”

“Thank you,” I say.

“You’re welcome. Now please stop being a pu**y.”

“What?”

We get to our lockers, and even though other people can hear him, he talks as loud as ever. “Wah-wah, Jane doesn’t like me even though I don’t like her. Wah-wah, Tiny named a character after me in his play. Like, there are people in the world with real problems, you know? You gotta keep it in perspective.”

“Dude, YOU’RE telling ME to keep it in perspective? Jesus Christ, Tiny. I just wanted to know she had a boyfriend.”

Tiny closes his eyes and takes a deep breath like I’m the annoying one. “As I said, I didn’t even know he existed, okay? But then I saw him talking to her, and I could tell he was into her just from his posture. And when he left, I just had to go up and ask who he was, and she was, like, ‘My ex-boyfriend,’ and I was, like, ‘Ex?! You need to scoop that beautiful man back up immediately!’”

I’m staring into the broad side of Tiny Cooper’s face. He’s looking away from me, into his locker. He looks sort of bored, but then his eyebrows dart up, and I think for a second he realizes how pissed I am about what he just said, but then he reaches into his jeans and pulls out the phone. “You didn’t,” I say.

“Sorry, I know I shouldn’t read texts while we’re talking, but I’m a little twitterpated at the moment.”

“I’m not talking about texts, Tiny. You didn’t tell Jane to get back together with that guy.”

“Well, of course I did, Grayson,” he answers, still looking at the phone. Now he’s writing Will back while talking. “He was gorgeous, and you told me you didn’t like her. So you like her now? Typical boy—you’re interested as long as she isn’t.”

I want to slug him in the kidney, for being wrong and for being right. But it would only hurt me. I’m nothing but a bit character in the Tiny Cooper story, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it except get jerked around until high school is over and I can finally escape his orbit, can finally stop being a moon of his fat planet.

And then I realize what I can do. The weapon I have. Rule 2: Shut up. I step past him and walk toward class.

“Grayson,” he says.

I don’t answer.

I say nothing in precalculus, when he miraculously inserts himself into his desk. And then I say nothing when he tells me that right now I am not even his favorite Will Grayson. I say nothing when he tells me how he has texted the other Will Grayson forty-five times in the last twenty-four hours, and do I think that’s too much. I say nothing when he holds his phone under my nose, showing me some text from Will Grayson that I am supposed to find adorable. I say nothing when he asks me why the hell I’m not saying anything. I say nothing when he says, “Grayson, you were just getting on my nerves, and I only said all that stuff to shut you up. But I didn’t mean to shut you up this much.” I say nothing when he says, “No seriously, talk to me,” and nothing when he says under his breath but still plenty loud enough for people to hear, “Honestly, Grayson, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry.”

And then, blessedly, class starts.

Fifty minutes later, the bell rings, and Tiny follows me out into the hallway like a swollen shadow, saying, “Seriously, come on, this is ridiculous.” It’s not even that I want to torture him anymore. I’m just reveling in the glory of not having to hear the neediness and impotence of my own voice.

At lunch, I sit down by myself at the end of a long table featuring several members of my former Group of Friends. This guy Alton says, “How’s it going, faggot?” and I say, “Pretty good,” and then this other guy Cole says, “You coming to the party at Clint’s? It’s gonna be sick,” which makes me think these guys don’t in fact dislike me even though one of them just called me a faggot. Apparently, having Tiny Cooper as your best-and-only friend does not leave you well-prepared for the intricacies of male socialization.

I say, “Yeah, I’ll try to stop by,” even though I don’t know when the party will be occurring. Then this shave-headed guy Ethan says, “Hey, are you trying out for Tiny’s g*y-ass play?”

“Hell, no,” I say.

“I think I am,” he says, and it takes me a second to tell if he’s kidding. Everyone starts laughing and talking all at once, trying to get in the first insult, but he just laughs them off and says, “Girls love a sensitive man.” He turns around in his chair and shouts at the table behind him, where his girlfriend, Anita, is sitting. “Baby, ain’t my singing sexy?”

“Hell, yeah,” she says. Then he just looks, satisfied, at all of us. Still, the guys rag on him. I mostly stay quiet, but by the end of my ham and cheese, I’m laughing at their jokes at the appropriate times, which I guess means I’m having lunch with them.

Tiny finds me when I’m putting my tray onto the conveyor belt, and he’s got Jane with him, and they walk with me. Nobody talks at first. Jane is wearing an army green hoodie, the hood pulled up. She looks almost unfairly adorable, like she picked it out for the express purpose of taunting. Jane says, “Hilarious note, Grayson. So Tiny tells me you’ve taken a vow of silence.”

I nod.

“Why?” she asks.

“I’m only talking to cute girls today,” I answer, and smile. Tiny’s right—the existence of the water-polo guy makes it easy to flirt.

Jane smiles. “I think Tiny’s a fairly cute girl.”

“But why?” Tiny begs as I turn down a hallway. The maze of identical hallways differentiated only by different Wildkit murals that used to scare the hell out of me. God, to go back to when my biggest fear was a hallway. “Grayson, please. You’re KILLING me.”