At lunch, I sit down by myself at the end of a long table featuring several members of my former Group of Friends. This guy Alton says, “How’s it going, faggot?” and I say, “Pretty good,” and then this other guy Cole says, “You coming to the party at Clint’s? It’s gonna be sick,” which makes me think these guys don’t in fact dislike me even though one of them just called me a faggot. Apparently, having Tiny Cooper as your best-and-only friend does not leave you well-prepared for the intricacies of male socialization.
I say, “Yeah, I’ll try to stop by,” even though I don’t know when the party will be occurring. Then this shave-headed guy Ethan says, “Hey, are you trying out for Tiny’s g*y-ass play?”
“Hell, no,” I say.
“I think I am,” he says, and it takes me a second to tell if he’s kidding. Everyone starts laughing and talking all at once, trying to get in the first insult, but he just laughs them off and says, “Girls love a sensitive man.” He turns around in his chair and shouts at the table behind him, where his girlfriend, Anita, is sitting. “Baby, ain’t my singing sexy?”
“Hell, yeah,” she says. Then he just looks, satisfied, at all of us. Still, the guys rag on him. I mostly stay quiet, but by the end of my ham and cheese, I’m laughing at their jokes at the appropriate times, which I guess means I’m having lunch with them.
Tiny finds me when I’m putting my tray onto the conveyor belt, and he’s got Jane with him, and they walk with me. Nobody talks at first. Jane is wearing an army green hoodie, the hood pulled up. She looks almost unfairly adorable, like she picked it out for the express purpose of taunting. Jane says, “Hilarious note, Grayson. So Tiny tells me you’ve taken a vow of silence.”
I nod.
“Why?” she asks.
“I’m only talking to cute girls today,” I answer, and smile. Tiny’s right—the existence of the water-polo guy makes it easy to flirt.
Jane smiles. “I think Tiny’s a fairly cute girl.”
“But why?” Tiny begs as I turn down a hallway. The maze of identical hallways differentiated only by different Wildkit murals that used to scare the hell out of me. God, to go back to when my biggest fear was a hallway. “Grayson, please. You’re KILLING me.”
I am aware that for the first time in my memory, Tiny and Jane are following me.
Tiny decides to ignore me, and he tells Jane that he hopes one day to have enough texts from Will Grayson to turn them into a book, because his texts are like poetry.
Before I can stop myself, I say, “‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’ becomes ‘u r hawt like august.’”
“He speaks!” Tiny shouts, and puts his arm around me. “I knew you’d come around! I’m so happy I’m renaming Gil Wrayson! He shall now be known as Phil Wrayson! Phil Wrayson, who must fill up on the rays of Tiny’s sun in order to become his true self. It’s perfect.” I nod. People will still assume it’s me, but he’s—well, he’s pretending to try. “Oh, text!” Tiny pulls out his phone, reads the text, sighs loudly, and begins trying to type a response with his meaty hands. While he’s thumbing, I say, “I get to pick who plays him.”
Tiny nods distractedly.
“Tiny,” I repeat, “I get to pick who plays him.”
He looks up. “What? No no no. I’m the director. I’m the writer, producer, director, assistant-costume designer, and casting director.”
And Jane says, “I saw you nod, Tiny. You already agreed to it.” He just scoffs, and then we’re at my locker, and Jane kind of pulls me by the elbow away from Tiny and says quietly, “You know, you can’t say that stuff.”
“Damned if I talk, damned if I don’t,” I say, smiling.
“I just. Grayson, I just—you can’t say those things.”
“What things?”
“Cute girl things.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“Because I am still doing research on the relationship between water polo and epiphanies.” She tries a small, tight-lipped smile.
“You wanna go to the Tiny Dancer tryouts with me?” I ask. Tiny is still thumbing away.
“Grayson, I can’t—I mean, I am kind of taken, you know?”
“I’m not asking you on a date. I’m asking you to an extracurricular activity. We will sit in the back of an auditorium and laugh at the kids auditioning to play me.”
I haven’t read Tiny’s play since last summer, but as I recall, there are about nine meaty parts: Tiny, his mom (who has a duet with Tiny), Phil Wrayson, Tiny’s love interests Kaleb and Barry, and then this fictional straight couple who make the character Tiny believe in himself or whatever. And there’s a chorus. Altogether, Tiny needs thirty cast members. I figure there will be maybe twelve people at the auditions.
But when I arrive in the auditorium after chem, there are already at least fifty people lounging around the stage and the first few rows of seats waiting for the auditions to start. Gary is running around handing everyone safety pins and pieces of paper with handwritten numbers on them, which the auditioners are pinning to themselves. And, since they are theater people, they are all talking. All of them. Simultaneously. They do not need to be heard; they only need to be speaking.
I take a seat in the back row, one in from the aisle so that Jane can have the aisle. She shows up just after I do and sits down next to me, appraises the situation for a second, and then says, “Somewhere down there, Grayson, there’s someone who will have to look into your soul in order to properly embody you.”
I’m about to respond when Tiny’s shadow passes over us. He kneels next to us, handing us each a clipboard. “Please write a brief note about each person who you’d consider for the role of Phil. Also I’m thinking of writing in a small role for a character named Janey.”
Then he marches confidently down the aisle. “People!” he shouts. “People, please take a seat.” People scurry into the first few rows as Tiny hurtles onto the stage. “We haven’t much time,” he says, his voice weirdly affected. He’s talking like he thinks theater people talk, I guess. “First, I need to know if you can sing. One minute of a song from each of you; if you’re called back, you’ll read for a part then. You may choose your song, but know this: Tiny. Cooper. Hates. Over. The. Rainbow.”