Will Grayson, Will Grayson(51)
Author: John Green

I’m screaming it, and it sounds so angry and so frightened and so pathetic and desperate. on the other end of the phone, my mother is asking me what’s wrong, where am i, what’s happening, and i’m telling her that i’m at home and that everything’s a mess, and she’s saying she’ll be home in ten minutes, will i be okay for ten minutes? and i want to tell her i’ll be okay, because that’s what she wants to hear, but then i realize that maybe what she wants to hear is the actual truth, so i tell her that i feel things, i really do, and she tells me of course i do, i always have had these feelings, and that’s what makes life hard for me sometimes.

just hearing her voice makes me feel a little better, and i realize that, yes, i appreciate what she’s saying, and i appreciate what she’s doing, and that i need to let her know that. although i don’t say it right away, since i think that will only worry her more, but when she gets home i say it to her, and she says she knows.

I tell her a little about tiny, and she says it sounds like we were putting too much pressure on ourselves, and that it doesn’t have to be love immediately, or even love eventually. i want to ask her which it was with my father, and when it was that everything turned into hate and sadness. but maybe i don’t really want to know. not right now.

mom: need is never a good basis for any relationship. it has to be much more than that.

It’s good to talk to her, but it’s also strange, because she’s my mom, and i don’t want to be one of these kids who thinks his mom’s his best friend. by the time i’ve recovered enough, school is long over, and i figure i can go online and see if gideon’s there. then i realize i can text him instead. then i realize that i can actually call him. finally, i realize i can actually call him and see if he wants to do something. because he’s my friend, and that’s what friends do.

I call, he answers. i need him, he answers. i go over to his house and tell him what’s happened, and he answers. it’s not like it was with maura, who always wanted to take the dark road. it’s not like it was with tiny, because with him i was feeling all these expectations to be a good boyfriend, whatever that is. no, gideon’s ready to believe both the best and the worst in me. in other words: the truth.

when we’re done talking, he asks me if i’m going to call tiny. i tell him i don’t know.

It’s not until later that i decide. i’m on IM, and i see he’s on, too.

I don’t really think i can salvage us being boyfriends, but at the very least i want to tell him that even if he was wrong about me, he wasn’t wrong about himself. i mean, someone should be trying to do good in the world.

so i try.

8:15pm

willupleasebequiet: bluejeanbaby?

willupleasebequiet: tiny?

8:18pm

willupleasebequiet: are you there?

9:33pm

willupleasebequiet: are you there?

10:10pm

willupleasebequiet: please?

11:45pm

willupleasebequiet: are you there?

1:03am

willupleasebequiet: are you there?

willupleasebequiet: are you there?

willupleasebequiet: are you there?

willupleasebequiet: are you there?

willupleasebequiet: are you there?

Chapter seventeen

Three days before the play, Tiny and I are talking again as we wait for precalc to start, but there’s nothing inside our words. He sits down next to me and says, “Hey, Grayson,” and I say, “Hey,” and he says, “What’s new?” and I say, “Not much, you?” and he says, “Not much. The play is kicking my ass, man,” and I say, “I bet,” and he says, “You’re dating Jane, huh?” and I say, “Sorta, yeah,” and he says, “That’s awesome,” and I say, “Yeah. How’s the other Will Grayson,” and he says, “Fine,” and that’s it. Honestly, talking to him is worse than not. Talking to him makes me feel like I’m drowning in lukewarm water.

Jane’s standing by my locker with her hands behind her back when I get there after first period, and when I get to her, there’s this awkward but not unpleasant should-we-kiss moment, or at least I think that’s what the moment is, but then she says, “Sucks about Tiny, huh?”

“What does?” I ask.

“He and the other Will Grayson. Kaput.”

I tilt my head at her, baffled. “No, he just said they were fine. I asked him in precalc.”

“Happened yesterday, at least according to Gary and Nick and the twenty-three other people who told me about it. On a swing set, apparently. Oh, the metaphorical resonance.”

“Then why didn’t he tell me?” I hear my voice catch as I say it.

Jane grabs my hand and stands up to say into my ear, “Hey,” and then I look back at her, trying to act like it doesn’t matter. “Hey,” she says again.

“Hey,” I say.

“Just go back to normal with him, huh? Just talk to him, Will. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but everything goes better for you when you talk to people.”

“You wanna come over after school?” I ask.

“Absolutely.” She smiles, then spins a half-circle in place and walks off. She takes a few steps before turning back and saying, “Talk. To. Tiny.”

For a while, I just stand there at my locker. Even after the bell rings. I know why he didn’t tell me: it isn’t because he feels weird that for the first time in human history, he’s single and I’m taken(ish). He said the other Will Grayson was fine because I don’t matter.

Tiny might ignore you when he’s in love. But when Tiny Cooper lies to you about his heartbreak, the Geiger counter has tripped the hammer. The radiation has been released. The friendship is dead.

That day after school Jane’s at my house, sitting across a Scrabble board from me. I spell hallow, which is a great word but also opens up a triple-word-score spot for her. “Oh my God, I love you,” she says, and it must be close enough to true, because if she’d said that a week before I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, and now it hangs in the air forever until she finally bursts the awkwardness by saying, “That would be a weird thing to say to someone you just started dating! Boy-howdy, is this awkward!” After a moment of silence, she keeps going, “Hey, to extend the weird, are we dating?”

And the word turns my stomach a little and I say, “Can we be not not-dating?”

She smiles and spells cowed for thirty-six points. It’s absolutely amazing, the whole thing. Her shoulder blades are amazing. Her passionately ironic love for 1980s television dramas is amazing. The way she laughs at my jokes really loudly is amazing—all of which only makes it more amazing that she doesn’t fill the Tiny hole left by his absence.