Will Grayson, Will Grayson(46)
Author: John Green

“You get the day off?”

“I can always get someone to cover,” he says. “Always.”

“I’m okay,” I say.

“I know you are. I just wanted to be home with you, that’s all.”

I blink out some tears, but Dad has the decency not to say anything about it. I turn on the TV then, and we find a show called The World’s Most Amazing Yachts, which is about yachts that have, like, golf courses on them or whatever, and every time they show some fancy feature, Dad says, “It’s UH-MAAZING!” all sarcastically, even though it sort of is amazing. It is and isn’t, I guess.

And then Dad mutes the TV and says, “You know Dr. Porter?”

And I nod. He’s this guy who works with Mom.

“They don’t have any kids, so they’re rich.” I laugh. “But they’ve got this boat they keep at Belmont Harbor, one of these behemoths with cherry-wood cabinets imported from Indonesia and a rotating king-size bed stuffed with the feathers of endangered eagles and everything else. Your mom and I had dinner with the Porters on the boat years ago, and in the span of a single meal—in that two hours—the boat went from feeling like the most extraordinarily luxurious experience to just being a boat.”

“I assume there’s a moral to this story.”

He laughs. “You’re our yacht, bud. All that money that would have gone into a yacht, all that time we would have spent traveling the world? Instead, we got you. It turns out that the yacht is a boat. But you—you can’t be bought on credit, and you aren’t reducible.” He turns his face back toward the TV and after a moment says, “I’m so proud of you that it makes me proud of me. I hope you know that.” I nod, tight-throated, staring now at a muted commercial for laundry detergent. After a second, he mumbles to himself, “Credit, people, consumerism. . . . There’s a pun in there somewhere.”

I say, “What if I didn’t want to go to that program at Northwestern? Or what if I don’t get in?”

“Well, then I would stop loving you,” he says. He keeps a straight face for a second, then laughs and unmutes the TV.

Later in the day, we decide we’re going to surprise Mom with turkey chili for dinner. I’m chopping onions when the doorbell rings. Immediately, I know it’s Tiny, and I feel this weird relief radiate out from my solar plexus. “I got it,” I say. I squeeze past Dad in the kitchen and then run to the door.

It’s not Tiny but Jane. She looks up at me, lips pursed.

“What’s my locker combination?”

“Twenty-five-two-eleven,” I say.

She hits me playfully on the chest. “I knew it! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t figure out which of several true things was the most true,” I answer.

“We gotta open the box,” she tells me.

“Um,” I say. I step forward so I can close the door behind me, but she doesn’t step backward, so now we’re almost touching. “The cat has a boyfriend,” I point out.

“I’m not the cat, actually. The cat is us. I am a physicist. You are a physicist. The cat is us.”

“Um, okay,” I say. “The physicist has a boyfriend.”

“The physicist does not in fact have a boyfriend. The physicist dumped her boyfriend at the botanical gardens because he wouldn’t shut up about how he was going to the Olympics in twenty sixteen, and there was this little voice in the physicist’s head named Will Grayson, saying, ‘And at the Olympics will you be representing the United States or the Kingdom of Douchelandia?’ So the physicist broke up with her boyfriend and insists that the box be opened, because she kind of cannot stop thinking about the cat. The physicist won’t mind if the cat is dead; she just needs to know.”

We kiss. Her hands are freezing on my face, and she tastes like coffee and the smell of the onion is still stuck in my nose, and my lips are all dry from the endless winter. And it’s awesome.

“Your professional physicist opinion?” I ask.

She smiles. “I believe the cat to be alive. And what says my esteemed colleague?”

“Alive,” I say. And it truly is. Which makes it all the weirder that as I’m talking to her, some small cut inside me feels unstitched. I thought it would be Tiny at the door, brimming with apologies I would slowly accept. But such is life. We grow up. Planets like Tiny get new moons. Moons like me get new planets. Jane pulls away from me for a second and says, “Something smells good. I mean, in addition to you.”

I smile. “We’re making chili,” I say. “Do you want to—. Do you want to come in and meet my dad?”

“I don’t want to imp—”

“No,” I say. “He’s nice. A little weird. Nice, though. You can stay for dinner.”

“Um, okay let me call my house.” I stand out there shivering for a second while she talks to her mom, saying, “I’m gonna have dinner at Will Grayson’s house. . . . Yes, his dad is here. . . .They’re doctors. . . . Yeah. . . . Okay, love you.”

I come back inside. “Dad,” I say, “this is my friend Jane.” He emerges from the kitchen wearing his Surgeons Do It with a Steady Hand apron over his shirt and tie. “I give people credit for buying into consumerism!” he says excitedly, having found his pun. I laugh.

Jane extends her hand, the picture of class, saying, “Hello, Dr. Grayson, I’m Jane Turner.”

“Ms. Turner, it’s a pleasure.”

“Is it okay if Jane stays for dinner?”

“Of course, of course. Jane, if you’ll excuse us for a moment.”

Dad takes me into the kitchen, then leans in and says softly, “This was the cause of your problems?”

“Strangely, no,” I say. “But we are sorta yeah.”

“You are sorta yeah,” he mumbles to himself. “You are sorta yeah.” And then quite loudly he says, “Jane?”

“Yes, sir?”

“What is your grade-point average?”

“Um, three point seven, sir?”

He looks at me, his lips scrunched up, and nods slowly. “Acceptable,” he says, and then smiles.

“Dad, I don’t need your approval,” I say softly.

“I know,” he answers. “But I thought you might like it anyway.”

Chapter sixteen

four days before his show is supposed to go on, tiny calls me and tells me he needs to take a mental health day. it’s not just because the show is in chaos. the other will grayson isn’t talking to him. i mean, he’s talking to him, but he’s not saying anything. and part of tiny is pissed that o.w.g. is ‘pulling this shit so close to curtain time’ and part of him seems really, really afraid that something is really, really wrong.