He turns to me now. It becomes impossible not to feel Tiny’s immensity as he stands over me, shoulders back, his width almost entirely blocking the school behind him, his body a bundle of tiny tremors. His eyes are open unnaturally wide, like a zombie’s. “Well, I needed to tell someone,” he says.
I think about that a minute, and then follow him into the auditorium. For the next hour, I watch Tiny as he runs around the theater like a rampaging lunatic, mumbling to himself. He puts masking tape down on the floor to mark the spots of his imaginary sets; he pirouettes across the stage as he hums song lyrics in fast motion; and every so often he shouts, “It’s not about Tiny! It’s about love!” Then people start to file in for their first period drama class, so Tiny and I go to precalc, and Tiny performs the Big-Man-in-Small-Desk miracle, and I experience the traditional amazement, and school is boring, and then at lunch I’m sitting with Gary and Nick and Tiny, and Tiny is talking about his blinding light spiritual awakening in a manner that—nothing against Tiny—kind of implies that maybe Tiny has not fully internalized the idea that the earth does not spin around the axis of Tiny Cooper, and then I say to Gary, “Hey, where is Jane?”
And Gary says, “Sick.”
To which Nick adds, “Sick in the I’m-spending-the-day-with-my-boyfriend-at-the-botanical-gardens kind of way.” Gary shoots Nick a disapproving look.
Tiny quickly changes the subject, and I try to laugh at all the appropriate moments for the rest of lunch, but I’m not listening.
I know that she is dating Douchepants McWater Polo, and I know that sometimes when you date people you engage in idiotic activities like going to the botanical gardens, but in spite of all the knowledge that ought to protect me, I still feel like shit for the rest of the day. One of these days, I keep telling myself, you’ll learn to truly shut up and not care. And until then . . . well, until then I’ll keep taking deep breaths because it feels like the wind got knocked out of me. For all my not crying, I sure feel a hell of a lot worse than I did at the end of All Dogs Go to Heaven.
I call Tiny after school, but I get his voice mail, so I send him a text: “The Original Will Grayson requests the pleasure of a phone call whenever possible.” He doesn’t call until 9:30. I’m sitting on the couch watching a dumb romantic comedy with my parents. The plates from our take-out-Chinese-put-on-real-plates-so-you-feel-like-it’s-a-homemade dinner fill the coffee table. Dad is falling asleep, as he always does when he’s not working. Mom sits closer to me than seems necessary.
Watching the movie, I can’t stop thinking about wanting to be at the ridiculous botanical gardens with Jane. Just walking around, her in that hoodie, and me making jokes about the Latin names of the plants, and her saying that ficaria verna would be a good name for a nerdcore hip-hop crew that only raps in Latin, and so on. I can picture the whole damned thing, actually, and it almost makes me desperate enough to complain to Mom about the situation, but that will only mean questions about Jane for the next seven to ten years. My parents get so few details about my private life that whenever they do stumble upon some morsel, they cling to it for eons. I wish they’d do a better job of hiding their desire for me to have tons of friends and girlfriends.
Sobutand Tiny calls, and I say, “Hey,” and then I get up and go to my room and close the door behind me, and in all that time, Tiny doesn’t say anything, so I say, “Hello?”
And he says, “Yeah, hi,” distractedly. I hear typing.
“Tiny, are you typing?”
After a moment he says, “Hold on. Let me finish this sentence.”
“Tiny, you called me.”
Silence. Typing. And then, “Yeah, I know. But I’m, uh, I gotta change the last song. Can’t be about me. Has to be about love.”
“I wish I hadn’t kissed her. The whole boyfriend thing kind of like gnaws at my brain.”
And then I’m quiet for a while, and finally he says, “Sorry, I just got an IM from Will. He’s telling me about lunch with this new g*y friend he’s got. I know it’s not a date if it’s in the cafeteria, but still. Gideon. He sounds hot. It is pretty awesome that Will’s so out, though. He like came out to everyone in the entire world. I swear to God I think he wrote the president of the United States and was like, ‘Dear Mr. President, I am g*y. Yours truly, Will Grayson. ’ It’s f**king beautiful, Grayson.”
“Did you even hear what I said?”
“Jane and her boyfriend ate your brain,” he answers disinterestedly.
“I swear, Tiny, sometimes . . .” I stop myself from saying something pathetic and start over. “Do you want to do something after school tomorrow? Darts or something at your house?”
“Rehearsal then rewrites then Will on the phone then bed. You can sit in on rehearsal if you want.”
“Nah,” I say. “It’s cool.”
After I hang up, I try to read Hamlet for a while, but I don’t understand it that well, and I have to keep looking over to the right margin where they define the words, and it just makes me feel like an idiot.
Not that smart. Not that hot. Not that nice. Not that funny. That’s me: I’m not that.
I’m lying on top of the covers with my clothes still on, the play still on my chest, eyes closed, mind racing. I’m thinking about Tiny. The pathetic thing I wanted to say to him on the phone—but didn’t—was this: When you’re a little kid, you have something. Maybe it’s a blanket or a stuffed animal or whatever. For me, it was this stuffed prairie dog that I got one Christmas when I was like three. I don’t even know where they found a stuffed prairie dog, but whatever, it sat up on its hind legs and I called him Marvin, and I dragged Marvin around by his prairie dog ears until I was about ten.
And then at some point, it was nothing personal against Marvin, but he started spending more time in the closet with my other toys, and then more time, until finally Marvin became a full-time resident of the closet.
But for many years afterward, sometimes I would get Marvin out of the closet and just hang out with him for a while—not for me, but for Marvin. I realized it was crazy, but I still did it.
And the thing I wanted to say to Tiny is that sometimes, I feel like his Marvin.
I remember us together: Tiny and me in gym in middle school, how the athletic wear company didn’t make gym shorts big enough to fit him, so he looked like he was wearing a skintight bathing suit. Tiny dominating at dodgeball despite his width, and always letting me finish second just by virtue of putting me in his shadow and not spiking me until the end. Tiny and me at the g*y pride parade in Boys Town, ninth grade, him saying, “Grayson, I’m g*y,” and me being like, “Oh, really? Is the sky blue? Does the sun rise in the east? Is the Pope Catholic?” and him being like, “Is Tiny Cooper fabulous? Do birds weep from the beauty when they hear Tiny Cooper sing?”