Will Grayson, Will Grayson(37)
Author: John Green

maura: fine. i understand that you’re mad. but i’m still going to be here when you aren’t so angry.

when things break, it’s not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. it’s because a little piece gets lost – the two remaining ends couldn’t fit together even if they wanted to. the whole shape has changed.

I am never, ever going to be friends with maura again. and the sooner she realizes it, the less annoying it’s going to be.

when i talk to simon and derek, i find out that they vanquished the trigonometric challengers yesterday, so at least i know they’re not still mad at me for ditching. my seat at the lunch table remains secure. we sit there and eat in silence for at least five minutes until simon speaks.

simon: so how was your big date in chicago?

me: do you really want to know?

simon: yeah – if it was big enough for you to bow out of our competition, i want to know how it went.

me: well, at first he didn’t exist, but then he existed and it went pretty well. before, when i told you about it, i was really careful not to use any pronouns, but i don’t give a f**k anymore.

simon: wait a sec – you’re g*y?

me: yup. i suppose that’s the correct conclusion for you to draw.

simon: that’s disgusting!

this is not exactly the reaction i was expecting from simon. i was betting on something a little closer to indifference.

me: what’s disgusting?

simon: you know. that you put your thing in the place where he, um, defecates.

me: first of all, i haven’t put my thing anywhere. and you do realize, don’t you, that when a guy and a girl get together, he puts his thing where she urinates and gets her period?

simon: oh. i hadn’t thought about that.

me: exactly.

simon: still, it’s weird.

me: it’s no weirder than jerking off to video game characters.

simon: who told you that? he whacks derek on the head with his plastic fork.

simon: did you tell him that?

derek: i didn’t tell him anything!

me: i figured it out myself. honestly.

simon: it’s only the girl characters.

derek: and some warlocks!

simon: SHUT UP!

this is not, i have to admit, how i thought being g*y was going to be.

luckily, tiny texts me every five minutes or so. i don’t know how he does it without getting caught in class. maybe he hides the phone in the folds of his stomach or something. whatever the case, i’m grateful. because it’s hard to hate life too much when you have someone interrupting your day with things like

I’M THINKING HAPPY GAY THOUGHTS ABOUT U and

I WANT TO KNIT U A SWEATER. WHAT COLOR? and

I THINK I JUST FAILED A MATH TEST BECAUSE I WAS THINKING OF U 2 MUCH and

WHAT RHYMES WITH SODOMY TRIAL? then

LOBOTOMY VILE? then

BOTTOM ME, KYLE? then

BOTTOMY NILE then

BOTTOMY GUILE! then

BTW—ITS 4 THE SCENE WHEN OSCAR WILD’S GHOST COMES TO ME IN A DREAM

I only know about half of what he’s talking about, and usually that annoys the shit out of me. but with tiny, it doesn’t matter as much. maybe someday i’ll figure it out. and if not, being oblivious could be fun, too. the fatty’s turning me into a softie. it’s sick, really.

he also texts me all the questions about how it’s going, what i’m doing, how i’m feeling, and when is he going to see me again. i can’t help it – i think it’s kind of like it was with isaac. only without the distance. this time, i feel i know who i’m talking to. because i get a sense that with tiny, what you see is how he is. he doesn’t hold anything back. i want to be like that. only without having to gain, like, three hundred pounds to do it.

after school, maura catches me at my locker.

maura: simon told me you’re officially g*y now. that you ‘met somebody’ in chicago.

I don’t owe you anything, maura. especially not an explanation.

maura: what are you doing, will? why did you tell him that?

because i did meet someone, maura.

maura: talk to me.

never. i am going to let the close of my locker speak for me. i am going to let the sound of my footsteps speak for me. i am going to let the way i don’t look back speak for me.

you see, maura, i don’t give a f**k.

that night, tiny and i exchange IMs for four hours. mom leaves me alone and even lets me stay up late.

someone with a fake profile leaves a comment on my myspace page calling me a fag. i don’t think it’s maura; someone else from school must’ve heard.

when i look in my mailbox at all the messages i’ve gathered there, i see isaac’s face has been replaced with a gray box with a red X through it.

‘profile no longer exists,’ it says.

so the mail from him remains, but he’s gone.

I see a few people looking at me weird in school the next day, and i wonder if it would be possible to reconstruct the path the gossip took from derek or simon to the towering snot-nosed jock glaring at me. of course, it’s possible that the towering snot-nosed jock always glared at me, and i’m just noticing it now. i try not to give a f**k.

maura’s laying low, but i assume it’s because she’s planning her next assault. i want to tell her it’s not worth it. maybe our friendship wasn’t meant to last longer than a year. maybe the things that drew us together – doom, gloom, sarcasm – weren’t meant to hold us together. the f**ked-up thing is, i miss isaac and i don’t miss her. even though i know she was isaac. none of those conversations count anymore. i am genuinely sorry that she went to such insane lengths to get me to tell her the truth – we would have been better off if we’d never been friends in the first place. i’m not going to try to punish her – i’m not going to tell everyone what she did, or bomb her locker, or yell at her in front of everyone else. i just want her to go away. that’s all. the end.

right before lunch, this kid gideon catches me by my locker. we haven’t really talked since seventh grade, when we were lab partners in earth science. then he went on the honors track and i didn’t. i’ve always liked him and we’ve always been on hi-in-the-halls terms. he dj’s a lot, mostly at parties i don’t go to.

gideon: hey, will.

me: hey.

I’m pretty sure he’s not here to bash me. the lcd sound-system shirt kinda gives that away.

gideon: so, yeah. i heard that you might be, you know . . .

me: ambidextrous? a philatelist? homosexual?

he smiles.

gideon: yeah. and, i don’t know, when i realized i was g*y, it really sucked that nobody was, like, ‘way to go.’ so i just wanted to come over and say . . .