John Green & David Levithan Read online

  In the ensuing silence, I have time to contemplate the word cute—how dismissive it is, how it’s the equivalent of calling someone little, how it makes a person into a baby, how the word is a neon sign burning through the dark reading, “Feel Bad About Yourself.”

  And then finally she says, “Not my favorite adjective.”

  “Sorry. I mean, it’s—”

  “I know what you mean, Will,” she says. “I’m sorry. I, uh, I don’t know. I just got out of a relationship, and I think I’m, like, kind of just looking to fill that hole, and you’re the most obvious candidate to fill the hole, and oh my God that sounds dirty. Oh, God. I’m just gonna hang up.”

  “I’m sorry about cute. It wasn’t cute. It was—”

  “Forget it. Forget the note, really. I don’t even . . . Just don’t worry about it, Grayson.”

  After an awkward hanging up, I realize the intended ending of the “I don’t even . . .” sentence. “I don’t even . . . like you, Grayson, because you’re kind of how can I say this politely not that smart. Like, you had to look up that physicist on Wikipedia. I just miss my boyfriend, and you wouldn’t kiss me, so I kind of want to just because you wouldn’t, and it’s really actually not a big deal but I can’t find a way to tell you that without hurting your feelings, and since I’m far more compassionate and thoughtful than you with your cutes, I’m just going to stop the sentence at I don’t even.”

  I call Tiny again, this time not about the Maybe Dead Cats, and he picks up on the first half-ring and says, “Good evening, Grayson.”

  I ask him if he agrees with me about what the end of her sentence probably was, and then I ask him what shortcircuited in my brain to call the note cute, and how is it even possible to be both attracted and not attracted to someone at the very same moment, and whether maybe I am a robot incapable of real feelings, and do you think that actually, like, trying to follow the rules about shutting up and not caring has made me into some kind of hideous monster whom no one will ever love or marry. I say it all, and Tiny says nothing, which is a basically unprecedented turn of events, and then when I finally stop, Tiny says hrmm in the little way that he has and then he says—and I am quoting him directly here—“Grayson, sometimes you are such. a. girl.” And then he hangs up on me.

  The unfinished sentence stays with me all night. And then my robot heart decides to do something—the kind of something that would be enjoyed by a hypothetical girl-I-would-like.

  At school on Friday, I eat lunch superfast, which is easy enough to do because Tiny and I are sitting with a table full of Drama People, and they are discussing Tiny Dancer, all of them speaking more words per minute than I speak in a day. The conversational curve follows a distinct pattern—the voices get louder and faster, crescendoing until Tiny, talking over everyone, makes a joke, and the table explodes in laughter and then things calm briefly, and then the voices start again, building and building into the coming Tiny eruption. Once I notice this pattern, it becomes difficult not to pay attention to it, but I try to focus on wolfing down my enchiladas. I chug a Coke and then stand up.

  Tiny holds up his hand to quiet the chorus. “Where ya going, Grayson?”

  “I gotta go check on something,” I say.

  I know the approximate location of her locker. It is approximately across from the hallway mural in which a poorly painted version of our school mascot, Willie the Wildkit, says in a speech bubble, “Wildkits Respect EVERYONE,” which is hilarious on at least fourteen different levels, the fourteenth being that there is no such thing as a wildkit. Willie the Wildkit looks approximately like a mountain lion, though, and while I am admittedly not an expert in zoology, I’m reasonably sure that mountain lions do not, in fact, respect everyone.

  So I’m leaning against the Willie the Wildkit mural in such a way that it appears that I’m the one saying that Wildkits Respect EVERYONE, and I have to wait like that for about ten minutes, just trying to look like I’m doing something and wishing I’d brought a book or whatever so I wouldn’t look so aggressively stalkerish, and then finally the period bell rings and the hallway floods with people.

  Jane gets to her locker, and I step into the middle of the hallway, and people make way for me, and I take a step to the left to get the angle just right, and I can see her hand reach up to the lock, and I squint, and 25-2-11. I turn into the flow of people and walk to history.

  Seventh period, I take this video game-design class. It turns out that designing video games is incredibly hard and not nearly as fun as playing them, but the one advantage of the class is that I have Internet access and my monitor faces away from the teacher most of the time.

  So I e-mail the Maybe Dead Cats.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: Make My Life

  Dear Maybe Dead Cats,

  If you happen to play “Annus Miribalis” tonight, could you possibly dedicate it to 25-2-11 (a certain girl’s locker combination)? That would be amazing. Sorry about the short notice,

  Will Grayson

  The reply comes before the period is even over.

  Will,

  Anything for love.

  MDC

  So after school on Friday, Jane and Tiny and I go to Frank ’s Franks, a hot-dog restaurant a few blocks away from the club. I sit in a small booth next to Jane, her hip against my hip. Our coats are all bunched up across from us along with Tiny. Her hair is falling in all these big curls on her shoulders, and she’s wearing this non weather-appropriate top with thin straps and quite a lot of eye makeup.

  Because this is a classy hot-dog joint, a waiter takes our order. Jane and I each want one hot dog and a soda. Tiny orders four hot dogs with buns, three hot dogs without buns, a bowl of chili, and a Diet Coke.

  “A Diet Coke?” asks the waiter. “You want four hot dogs with buns, three hot dogs without buns, a bowl of chili, and a Diet Coke?”

  “That’s correct,” says Tiny, and then explains, “simple sugars don’t really help me put on muscle mass.” And the waiter just shakes his head and says, “Uh-huh.”

  “Your poor digestive system,” I say. “One day your intestinal tract is going to revolt. It’s going to reach up and strangle you.”

  “You know Coach says ideally I should put on thirty pounds for the start of next season. If I want to get scholarships from Division I schools? You gotta be big. And it’s just so hard for me to put on weight. I try and I try, but it’s a constant battle.”

  “You’ve got a real hard life, Tiny,” says Jane. I laugh, and we exchange glances, and then Tiny says, “Oh my God, just do it already,” which leads to an uncomfortable silence that lasts until Jane asks, “So where are Gary and Nick?”

  “Probably getting back together,” Tiny says. “I broke up with Nick last night.”

  “That was the right thing to do. It was doomed from the start.”

  “I know, right? I really think I want to be single for a while.”

  I turn to Jane and say, “I bet you five bucks he’ll be in love within four hours.”

  She laughs. “Make it three and you’re on.”

  “Deal.”

  We shake.

  After dinner, we walk around the neighborhood for a little while to kill time and then get in line outside the Storage Room. It’s cold out, but up against the building, we’re out of the wind at least. In line, I pull out my wallet, move the fake ID to the front picture window, and hide my real driver’s license between a health insurance card and my dad’s business card.

  “Let me see it,” says Tiny, and I hand him my wallet, and he says, “Damn, Grayson, for once in your life you don’t look like a bitchsquealer in a picture.”

  Just before we get to the front of the line, Tiny pushes me in front of him—I guess so he can have the pleasure of watching me use the ID for the first time. The bouncer wears a T-shirt that doesn’t quite extend over his belly.

  “ID,” he tells me. I pull my wallet from my ba
ck pocket, slide the ID out, and hand it to him. He shines a flashlight on it, then turns the flashlight onto my face, and then back to the ID, and then he says, “What, you think I can’t add?”

  And I say, “Huh?”

  And the bouncer says, “Kid, you’re twenty.”

  And I say, “No, I’m twenty-two.” And he hands me my ID and says, “Well, your goddamned driver’s license says you’re twenty.” I stare at it, and do the math. It says I turn twenty-one next January.

  “Uh,” I say. “Um, yeah. Sorry.”

  That stupid h-o-p-e-l-e-s-s stoner put the wrong fucking year on my ID. I step away from the club’s entrance, and Tiny walks up to me, laughing his ass off. Jane is giggling, too. Tiny claps me too hard on the shoulder and says, “Only Grayson could get a fake ID that says he’s twenty. It’s totally worthless!”

  And I say to Jane, “Your friend made it with the wrong year,” and she says, “I’m sorry, Will,” but she can’t be that sorry, or else she’d stop laughing.

  “We can try to get you in,” Jane suggests, but I just shake my head.

  “You guys just go,” I say. “Just call me when it’s over. I’ll just hang out at Frank ’s Franks or something. And, like, call me if they play ‘Annus Miribalis.’”

  And here’s the thing: they go. They just get back into line and then I watch them walk into the club, and neither of them even tries to say no, no, we don’t want to see the show without you.

  Don’t get me wrong. The band is great. But being passed over for the band still sucks. Standing in line I hadn’t felt cold, but now it’s freezing. It’s miserable out, the kind of cold where breathing through your nose gives you brain freeze. And I’m out here alone with my worthless fucking hundred-dollar ID.

  I walk back to Frank’s Franks, order a hot dog, and eat it slowly. But I know I can’t possibly eat this one hot dog for the two or three hours they’ll be gone—you can’t savor a hot dog. My phone’s on the table, and I just watch it, stupidly hoping Jane or Tiny might call. And sitting here, I only get more and more pissed. This is a hell of a way to leave someone—sitting alone in a restaurant—just staring straight ahead, not even a book to keep me company. It’s not even just Tiny and Jane; I’m pissed at myself, for giving them an out, for not checking the date on the stupid ID, for sitting here waiting for the phone to ring even though I could be driving home.

  And thinking about it, I realize the problem with going where you’re pushed: sometimes you’re pushed here.

  I’m tired of going where I’m pushed. It’s one thing to get pushed around by my parents. But Tiny Cooper pushing me toward Jane, and then pushing me toward a fake ID, and then laughing at the fuckup that resulted, and then leaving me here alone with a goddamned second-rate hot dog when I don’t even particularly like first-rate hot dogs—that’s bullshit.

  I can see him in my mind, his fat head laughing. It’s totally worthless. It’s totally worthless. Not so! I can buy cigarettes, although I don’t smoke. I can possibly illegally register to vote. I can—oh, hey. Huh. Now there’s an idea.

  See, across from the Storage Room, there’s this place. A neon-sign-and-no-windows kind of place. Now, I don’t particularly like or care about porn—or the “Adult Books” promised by the sign outside the door—but I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend my entire night at Frank’s Franks not using my fake ID. No. I’m going to the porn store. Tiny Cooper doesn’t have the nuts to walk into a place like that. No way. I’m thinking about the story I’ll have when Tiny and Jane get out of the concert. I put a five on the table—a 50 percent tip—and walk four blocks. As I get near the door, I start to feel anxious—but I tell myself that being outside in the dead of winter in downtown Chicago is much more dangerous than any business establishment could possibly be.

  I pull the door open, and step into a room bright with fluorescent light. To my left, a guy with more piercings than a pincushion stands behind a counter, staring at me.

  “You browsing or you want tokens?” he asks me. I don’t have the first idea what tokens are, so I say, “Browsing?”

  “Okay. Go on in,” he tells me.

  “What?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You’re not going to ID me?”

  The guy laughs. “What, are you sixteen or something?”

  He nailed it exactly, but I say, “No, I’m twenty.”

  “Well, yeah. So that’s what I figured. Go ahead.”

  And I’m thinking, Oh, my God. How hard can it fucking be to successfully use a fake ID in this town? This is ridiculous! I won’t stand for it. “No,” I say, forcefully. “ID me.”

  “All right, man. If that’s what gets your maracas shakin’.” And then, real dramatically, he asks, “Can I see some ID, please?”

  “You may,” I answer, and hand it to him. He glances at it, hands it back, and says, “Thanks, Ishmael.”

  “You’re welcome,” I say, exasperated. And then I’m in a porn store.

  It’s kinda boring, actually. It looks like a regular store—shelves of DVDs and old VHS tapes and a rack of magazines, all under this harsh fluorescent glow. I mean, there are some differences from a regular video store, I guess, like A. At the regular video store, very few of the DVDs have the words guzzling or slut in them, whereas here the opposite seems to be the case, and also B. I’m pretty sure the regular video store doesn’t have any devices used for spanking, whereas this place has several. Also, C. There are very few items for sale at the regular video store that make you think, “I have no earthly idea what that is supposed to do or where it is supposed to do it.”

  Other than Señor Muy Pierced, the place is empty, and I very much want to leave because this is possibly the most uncomfortable and unpleasant portion of what has heretofore been a pretty uncomfortable and unpleasant day. But the whole trip is completely worthless if I don’t get a memento to prove I was here. My goal is to find the item that will make for the funniest show-and-tell, the item that will make Tiny and Jane feel like I had a night of hilarity they can only glimpse, which is how I finally come to settle upon a Spanish-language magazine called Mano a Mano.

  chapter six

  at this moment, i want to jump ahead in time. or, if that doesn’t work, i’ll settle for traveling back in time.

  i want to jump ahead in time because in twenty hours i will be with isaac in chicago, and i am willing to skip everything in between in order to get to him faster. i don’t care if in ten hours i’m going to win the lottery, or if in twelve hours i’m going to get the chance to graduate early from high school. i don’t care if in fourteen hours i am going to be jerking off and have the most life-altering orgasm in all of unrecorded history. i would fast-forward past it all to be with isaac instead of having to settle for thinking about him.

  as for traveling back in time, it’s really simple - i want to go back in time and kill the guy who invented math. why? because right now i’m at the lunch table and derek is saying

  derek: aren’t you psyched for mathletes tomorrow?

  with that simple word - mathletes - it’s like every ounce of anesthesia i’ve ever collected in my body wears off at once.

  me: holy sweet f-ing a

  there are four mathletes in our school. i am number four. derek and simon are numbers one and two, and in order to enter competitions they need at least four members. (number three is a freshman whose name i deliberately forget. his pencil has more personality than he does.)

  simon: you do remember, right?

  they’ve both put their meatburgers down (that’s what the cafeteria menu calls them - meatburgers), and they’re staring at me with looks so blank i swear i can see the computer screens reflected in their glasses.

  me: i dunno. i’m not feeling very mathletic. maybe you should find a subset-stitute?

  derek: that’s not funny.

  me: ha ha! wasn’t meant to be!

  simon: i’ve told you - you don’t have to do anything. in a mathletic competition, you enter as a te
am, but are judged as individuals.

  me: you guys know i’m your biggest mathletic supporter. but, um, i kind-of made other plans for tomorrow.

  derek: you can’t do that.

  simon: you said you’d come.

  derek: i promise it’ll be fun.

  simon: nobody else will do it.

  derek: we’ll have a good time.

  i can tell derek’s upset because it looks like he’s considering having a slight emotional response to the informational stimuli being presented to him. maybe it’s too much, because he puts down his meatburger, picks up his tray, murmurs something about library fines, and leaves the table.

  there’s no doubt in my mind that i’m going to bail on these guys. the only question is whether i can do it without feeling like shit. i guess it’s a sign of desperation, but i decide to tell simon something remotely resembling the truth.

  me: look, you know that ordinarily i’d be all over mathletes. but this is like an emergency. i made like a - i guess you could call it a date. and i really, really have to see this person, who’s coming a long way to see me. and if there was any way to do it and go to the mathletic competition with you, i would. but i can’t. it’s like . . . if a train is traveling at ninety miles an hour and it needs to get from the mathletics competition to the middle of chicago in, like, two minutes for a date, it’s never going to make it in time. so i have to jump on the express, because ultimately the tracks that lead to the date are only being laid down this one time, and if i get on the wrong train, i’m going to be more miserable than any equation could ever account for.