I am experiencing hurt-and-pain-at-once.
o.w.g.: um . . . will?
he looks like he can see the hurt-and-pain-at-once very clearly on my face.
me: you know that guy i was supposed to meet?
o.w.g.: isaac.
me: yeah, isaac. well, it ends up he wasn’t a fifty-year-old after all. he was my friend maura, playing a joke.
o.w.g.: that’s one helluva mean joke.
me: yeah. i’m feeling that.
I have no idea whether i’m talking to him because he’s also named will grayson or because he told me a little about what’s going on with him or because he’s the only person in the world who’s willing to listen to me right now. all of my instincts are telling me to curl into a tiny ball and roll into the nearest sewer - but i don’t want to do that to o.w.g. i feel he deserves more than being an eyewitness to my self-destruction.
me: anything like this ever happen to you before?
o.w.g. shakes his head.
o.w.g.: i’m afraid we’re in new territory here. my best friend tiny was once going to enter me into seventeen magazine’s boy of the month contest without telling me, but i don’t think that’s really the same thing.
me: how did you find out?
o.w.g.: he decided he needed someone to proofread his entry, so he asked me to do it.
me: did you win?
o.w.g.: i told him i’d mail it for him and then filed it away. he was really upset that i didn’t win . . . but i think it would’ve been worse if i had.
me: you might have gotten to meet miley cyrus. jane would’ve died of jealousy.
o.w.g.: i think jane would’ve died of laughter first.
I can’t help it - i imagine isaac laughing, too.
and then i have to kill that image. because isaac doesn’t exist. i feel like i’m going to lose it again.
me: why?
o.w.g.: why would jane die laughing?
me: no, why would maura do this?
o.w.g: i can’t honestly say.
maura. isaac.
Isaac. maura.
anvil.
anvil.
anvil.
me: you know what sucks about love?
o.w.g.: what?
me: that it’s so tied to truth.
the tears are starting to come back. because that pain - i know i’m giving it all up. isaac. hope. the future. those feelings. that word. i’m giving it all up, and that hurts.
o.w.g.: will?
me: i think i need to close my eyes for a minute and feel what i need to feel.
I shut my eyes, shut my body, try to shut out everything else. i feel o.w.g. stand up. i wish he were isaac, even though i know he’s not. i wish maura weren’t isaac, even though i know she is. i wish i were someone else, even though i know i’ll never, ever be able to get away from what i’ve done and what’s been done to me.
lord, send me amnesia. make me forget every moment i ever didn’t really have with isaac. make me forget that maura exists. this must be what my mother felt when my dad said it was over. i get it now. i get it. the things you hope for the most are the things that destroy you in the end.
I hear o.w.g. talking to someone. a murmured recap of everything that’s just happened.
I hear footsteps coming closer. i try to calm myself a little, then open my eyes . . . and see this ginormous guy standing in front of me. when he notices me noticing him, he gives me this broad smile. i swear, he has dimples the size of a baby’s head.
ginormous guy: hello there. i’m tiny.
he offers his hand. i’m not entirely in a shaking mood, but it’s awkward if i just leave him there, so i hold out my hand, too. instead of shaking it, though, he yanks me up to my feet.
tiny: did someone die?
me: yeah, i did.
he smiles again at that.
tiny: well, then . . . welcome to the afterlife.
Chapter nine
You can say a lot of bad things about Tiny Cooper. I know, because I have said them. But for a guy who knows absolutely nothing about how to conduct his own relationships, Tiny Cooper is kind of brilliant when it comes to dealing with other people’s heartbreak. Tiny is like some gigantic sponge soaking up the pain of lost love everywhere he goes. And so it is with Will Grayson. The other Will Grayson, I mean.
Jane’s a storefront down standing in a doorway, talking on the phone. I look over at her, but she’s not looking at me, and I’m wondering if they played the song. Something Will—the other Will—said right before Tiny and Jane walked up keeps looping around my head: love is tied to truth. I think of them as unhappily conjoined twins.
“Obviously,” Tiny is saying, “she’s just a hot smoldering pile of suck, but even so, I give her full credit for the name. Isaac. Isaac. I mean, I could almost fall in love with a girl, if she were named Isaac.”
The other Will Grayson doesn’t laugh, but Tiny is undeterred. “You must have been so totally freaked out when you realized it was a p**n store, right? Like, who wants to meet there.”
“And then also when his namesake was buying a magazine,” I say, holding up the black bag, thinking that Tiny will snatch it and check out my purchase. But he doesn’t. He just says, “This is even worse than what happened to me and Tommy.”
“What happened with you and Tommy?” Will asks.
“He said he was a natural blonde, but his dye job was so bad it looked like a weave from Mattel—like Barbie. Also, Tommy wasn’t short for Tomas, like he told me. It was short for regular old Thomas.”
Will says, “Yes, this is worse. Much worse.”
I clearly don’t have much to contribute to the conversation, and anyway, Tiny is acting like I don’t exist, so I smile and say, “I’m gonna leave you two boys alone now.” And then I look at the other Will Grayson, and he’s sort of swaying like he might fall over if the wind kicks up. I want to say something, because I feel really bad for him, but I never know what to say. So I just say what I’m thinking. “I know it sucks, but in a way, it’s good.” He looks at me like I’ve just said something absolutely idiotic, which of course I have. “Love and truth being tied together, I mean. They make each other possible, you know?”
The kid gives me about an eighth of a smile and then turns back to Tiny, who—to be fair—is clearly the better therapist. The black bag with Mano a Mano doesn’t seem funny anymore, so I just drop it on the ground next to Tiny and Will. They don’t even notice.
Jane’s standing on the curb on her tiptoes now, almost leaning out into a street choked thick with cabs. A group of college guys walk past and look at her, one raising his eyebrows to another. I’m still thinking about the tying of love and truth—and it makes me want to tell her the truth—the whole, contradictory truth—because otherwise, on some level, am I not that girl? Am I not that girl pretending to be Isaac?