John Green & David Levithan Read online

  maura: fine.

  mom’s maxiseries hasn’t come yet to its austen shitty limits, so i know maura and i will be able to talk undisturbed. or, at least, we’ll be the only disturbed ones in the garage. it seems really stupid to sit in the car, so i clear a space for us by the things of dad’s that mom never got around to throwing out.

  me: so what’s up?

  maura: you’re a prick.

  me: this is a news flash?

  maura: shut up for a second.

  me: only if you shut up, too.

  maura: stop it.

  me: you started it.

  maura: just stop it.

  i decide, okay, i’ll shut up. and what do i get? fifteen fucking seconds of silence. then it’s all

  maura: i always tell myself that you don’t mean to hurt me, which makes it less hurtful, you know. but today - i’m just so fucking sick of it. of you. just so you know, i don’t want to sleep with you, either. i would never sleep with someone i can’t even be friends with.

  me: wait a second - now we’re not friends?

  maura: i don’t know what we are. you won’t even tell me that you’re gay.

  this is a classic maura maneuver. if she doesn’t get an answer she wants, she will create a corner to back you into. like the time she went through my bag when i was in the bathroom and found my pills - i hadn’t taken them in the morning, so i brought them along with me to school. she waited a good ten minutes before asking me if i was on any medication. this seemed a little random to me, and i didn’t really want to talk about it, so i told her no. and then what does she do? she reaches into my bag and pulls out the pill bottles and asks me what they’re for. she got her answer, but it didn’t exactly inspire trust. she kept telling me i didn’t need to be ashamed of my ‘mental condition,’ and i kept telling her i wasn’t ashamed - i just didn’t want to talk about it with her. she couldn’t understand the difference.

  so now we’re back in another corner, and this time it’s the gay thing.

  me: whoa, wait a second. even if i was gay, wouldn’t that be my decision? to tell you?

  maura: who’s isaac?

  me: fuck.

  maura: you think i can’t see what you draw in your notebook?

  me: you’re kidding me. this is about isaac? maura: just tell me who he is.

  i fundamentally don’t want to tell her. he’s mine, not hers. if i give her just a piece of the story, she’ll want the whole thing. i know in some twisted way she’s doing this because she thinks it’s what i want - to talk about everything, to have her know everything about me. but that’s not what i want. that’s not what she can have.

  me: maura maura maura . . . isaac’s a character. he doesn’t actually exist. fuck! it’s just this thing i’m working on. this - i don’t know - idea. i have all these stories in my head. starring this character, isaac.

  i don’t know where this shit comes from. it’s like it’s just being given to me by some divine force of fabrication. maura looks like she wants to believe it, but doesn’t really.

  me: like pogo dog. only he’s not a dog, and he’s not on a pogo stick.

  maura: god, i forgot all about pogo dog.

  me: are you kidding? he was going to make us rich!

  and she’s buying it. she’s leaning against me and, i swear to god, if she was a guy i’d be able to see the boner in her pants.

  maura: i know it’s awful, but i’m kind of relieved that you’re not hiding something that big from me.

  i figure this would be a bad time to point out that i’ve never actually said i wasn’t gay. i just told her to fuck off.

  i don’t know if there’s anything more horrifying than a goth girl getting all cuddly. maura’s not only leaning, but now she’s examining my hand like somebody stamped it with the meaning of life. in braille.

  me: i should probably get back to my mom.

  maura: tell her we’re hanging out.

  me: i promised her i would watch this thing with her.

  the key here is to blow off maura without her realizing i’m blowing her off. because i really don’t want to hurt her, not when i just managed to bring her back from the brink of the last hurt i allegedly inflicted. i know as soon as maura gets home, she’s going to dive right into her notebook of skull-blood poetry, and i’m doing my best not to get a bad review. maura once showed me one of her poems.

  hang me

  like a dead rose

  preserve me

  and my petals won’t fall

  until you touch them

  and i dissolve

  and i wrote her a poem back

  i am like

  a dead begonia

  hanging upside down

  because

  like a dead begonia

  i don’t give a fuck

  to which she replied

  not all flowers

  depend on light

  to grow

  so now maybe tonight i’ll inspire

  i thought his soil was gay

  but maybe there’s a chance

  i can get myself some play

  and get into his pants

  hopefully i’ll never have to read it or know about it or even think about it ever again.

  i stand up and open the garage door so maura can leave that way. i tell her i’ll see her monday in school and she says ‘not if i see you first’ and i go har har har until she’s a safe distance away and i can shut the garage door again.

  the sick thing is, i’m sure that someday this is going to come back to haunt me. that someday she’s going to say i led her on, when the truth is i was only holding her off. i have to set her up with somebody else. soon. it’s not me she wants - she just wants anybody who will make it all about her. and i can’t be that guy.

  when i get back to the living room, pride & prejudice is almost over, which means that everyone knows pretty much where they stand with everyone else. usually my mom is a crumpled-tissue mess at this point, but this time there’s not a wet eye in the house. she pretty much confirms it when she turns the dvd off.

  mom: i really have to stop doing this. i need to get a life.

  i think she’s directing this at herself, or the universe, not really at me. still, i can’t help thinking that ‘getting a life’ is something only a complete idiot could believe. like you can just drive to a store and get a life. see it in its shiny box and look inside the plastic window and catch a glimpse of yourself in a new life and say, ‘wow, i look much happier - i think this is the life i need to get!’ take it to the counter, ring it up, put it on your credit card. if getting a life was that easy, we’d be one blissed-out race. but we’re not. so it’s like, mom, your life isn’t out there waiting, so don’t think all you have to do is find it and get it. no, your life is right here. and, yeah, it sucks. lives usually do. so if you want things to change, you don’t need to get a life. you need to get off your ass.

  of course i don’t say any of these things to her. moms don’t need to hear that kind of shit from their kids, unless they’re doing something really wrong, like smoking in bed, or doing heroin, or doing heroin while they’re smoking in bed. if my mom were a jock guy in my school, all of her jock-guy friends would be saying, ‘dude, you just need to get laid.’ but sorry, geniuses, there’s no such thing as a fuck cure. a fuck cure is like the adult version of santa claus.

  it’s kind of sick that my mind has gone from my mom to fucking, so i’m glad when she complains about herself a little more.

  mom: it’s getting old, isn’t it? mom at home on a saturday night, waiting for darcy to show up.

  me: there’s not an actual answer to that question, is there?

  mom: no. probably not.

  me: have you actually asked this darcy guy out?

  mom: no. i haven’t actually found him.

  me: well, he’s not going to show up until you ask him out.

  me giving my mom romantic advice is kind of like a goldfish giving a snail advice on how to fly. i cou
ld remind her that not all guys are dickheads like my dad, but she perversely hates it when i say bad things about him. she’s probably just worried about the day i’ll wake up and realize half my genes are so geared toward being a bastard that i’ll wish i was a bastard. well, mom, guess what - that day came a long time ago. and i wish i could say that’s where the pills come in, but the pills only deal with the side effects.

  god bless the mood equalizers. and all moods shall be created equal. i am the fucking civil rights movement of moods.

  it’s late enough for isaac to be home, so i tell my mom i’m heading off to bed and then, to be nice, tell her that if i see any cute guys wearing, like, knickers and riding a horse sexily on the way to the mall, i’ll be sure to slip ’em her number. she thanks me for that, and says it’s a better idea than any of her friends at girls poker night have had. i wonder if she’ll be asking the mailman for his opinion soon.

  there’s a dangling IM waiting for me when i banish my screen saver and check what’s up.

  boundbydad: u there?

  boundbydad: i’m wishin’

  boundbydad: and hopin’

  boundbydad: and prayin’

  all sorts of yayness floods my brain. love is such a drug.

  grayscale: please be the one voice of sanity left in the world

  boundbydad: you’re there!

  grayscale: just.

  boundbydad: if you’re relying on me for sanity, it must be pretty bad.

  grayscale: yeah, well, maura stopped by cvs for a hag audition, then when i told her that tryouts were canceled, she decided she’d go for some

  grayscale: nookie instead. and then my mom started saying she had no life. oh, and i have homework to do. or not.

  boundbydad: it’s hard to be you, isn’t it?

  grayscale: clearly.

  boundbydad: do you think maura knows the truth?

  grayscale: i’m sure she thinks she does.

  boundbydad: what a nosy bitch.

  grayscale: not really. it’s not her fault i don’t really want to get into it. i’d rather share it with you.

  boundbydad: and so you are. meanwhile, no big saturday night plans? more quality time with mom?

  grayscale: you, my dear, are my saturday night plans.

  boundbydad: i’m honored.

  grayscale: you should be. how was the bday celebration?

  boundbydad: small. kara just wanted to see a movie with me and janine. good time, lame movie. the one with the guy who learns that the girl he marries is a sucubus

  boundbydad: sucubbus?

  boundbydad: succubus?

  grayscale: succubus

  boundbydad: yeah, one of those. it was really stupid. then it was really boring. then it got loud and stupid. then there were about two minutes where it was so stupid it was funny. then it went back to being dumb, and finally ended lame.

  boundbydad: good times, good times

  grayscale: how’s kara?

  boundbydad: in recovery. grayscale: meaning?

  boundbydad: she talks a lot about her problems in the past tense as a way to convince us they’re in the past. and maybe they are.

  grayscale: did you say hi to her for me?

  boundbydad: yeah. i think i phrased it as ‘will says he wants you inside of him,’ but the effect was the same. she said hi back.

  grayscale: **sighs forlornly** i wish i could’ve been there.

  boundbydad: i wish i was there with you right now.

  grayscale: really? ☺

  boundbydad: yessirreebob.

  grayscale: and if you were here . . .

  boundbydad: what would i do?

  grayscale: ☺

  boundbydad: let me tell you what i’d do.

  this is a game we play. most of the time we’re not serious. like, there are different ways it could go. the first is we basically make fun of people who have IM sex by inventing our own ridiculous scornographic dialogue.

  grayscale: i want you to lick my clavicle.

  boundbydad: i am licking your clavicle.

  grayscale: ooh my clavicle feels so good.

  boundbydad: naughty, naughty clavicle.

  grayscale: mmmmmm

  boundbydad: wwwwwwww

  grayscale: rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr boundbydad: tttttttttttttttttttt

  other times we go for the romance novel approach. corn porn.

  boundbydad: thrust your fierce quavering manpole at me, stud

  grayscale: your dastardly appendage engorges me with hellfire

  boundbydad: my search party is creeping into your no man’s land grayscale: baste me like a thanksgiving turkey!!!

  and then there are nights like tonight, when the truth is what comes out, because it’s what we need the most. or maybe just one of us needs it the most, but the other knows the right time to give it.

  like now, when what i want most in the universe is to have him beside me. he knows this, and he says

  boundbydad: if i was there, i would stand behind your chair and put my hands on your shoulders, lightly, and would rub them gently until you finished your last sentence

  boundbydad: then i would lean forward and trace my hands down your arms and curve my neck into yours and let you turn into me and rest there for a while

  boundbydad: rest

  boundbydad: and when you were ready, i’d kiss you once and lift myself away, sit back on your bed and wait for you there, just so we could lie there, and you could hold me, and i could hold you

  boundbydad: and it would be so peaceful. completely peaceful. like the feeling of sleep, but being awake in it together.

  grayscale: that would be so wonderful. boundbydad: i know. i would love it, too.

  i can’t imagine us saying these things to each other out loud. but even if i can’t imagine hearing these words, i can imagine living them. i don’t even picture it. instead i’m in it. how i would feel with him here. that peace. it would be so happy, and it makes me sad because it only exists in words.

  early on, isaac let me know that he always finds pauses awkward - if too much time went by without me responding, he’d think i was typing something else in another window, or had left the computer, or was IMing twelve other boys besides him. and i had to admit that i felt the same fears. so now we do this thing whenever we’re pausing. we just type

  grayscale: i’m here

  boundbydad: i’m here

  grayscale: i’m here

  boundbydad: i’m here

  until the next sentence comes.

  grayscale: i’m here

  boundbydad: i’m here

  grayscale: i’m here

  boundbydad: what are we doing?

  grayscale: ???

  boundbydad: i think it’s time

  boundbydad: time for us to meet

  grayscale: !!!

  grayscale: seriously?

  boundbydad: deliriously

  grayscale: you mean i would get a chance to see you

  boundbydad: hold you for real

  grayscale: for real

  boundbydad: yes

  grayscale: yes?

  boundbydad: yes.