“Your professional physicist opinion?” I ask.
She smiles. “I believe the cat to be alive. And what says my esteemed colleague?”
“Alive,” I say. And it truly is. Which makes it all the weirder that as I’m talking to her, some small cut inside me feels unstitched. I thought it would be Tiny at the door, brimming with apologies I would slowly accept. But such is life. We grow up. Planets like Tiny get new moons. Moons like me get new planets. Jane pulls away from me for a second and says, “Something smells good. I mean, in addition to you.”
I smile. “We’re making chili,” I say. “Do you want to—. Do you want to come in and meet my dad?”
“I don’t want to imp—”
“No,” I say. “He’s nice. A little weird. Nice, though. You can stay for dinner.”
“Um, okay let me call my house.” I stand out there shivering for a second while she talks to her mom, saying, “I’m gonna have dinner at Will Grayson’s house. . . . Yes, his dad is here. . . .They’re doctors. . . . Yeah. . . . Okay, love you.”
I come back inside. “Dad,” I say, “this is my friend Jane.” He emerges from the kitchen wearing his Surgeons Do It with a Steady Hand apron over his shirt and tie. “I give people credit for buying into consumerism!” he says excitedly, having found his pun. I laugh.
Jane extends her hand, the picture of class, saying, “Hello, Dr. Grayson, I’m Jane Turner.”
“Ms. Turner, it’s a pleasure.”
“Is it okay if Jane stays for dinner?”
“Of course, of course. Jane, if you’ll excuse us for a moment.”
Dad takes me into the kitchen, then leans in and says softly, “This was the cause of your problems?”
“Strangely, no,” I say. “But we are sorta yeah.”
“You are sorta yeah,” he mumbles to himself. “You are sorta yeah.” And then quite loudly he says, “Jane?”
“Yes, sir?”
“What is your grade-point average?”
“Um, three point seven, sir?”
He looks at me, his lips scrunched up, and nods slowly. “Acceptable,” he says, and then smiles.
“Dad, I don’t need your approval,” I say softly.
“I know,” he answers. “But I thought you might like it anyway.”
Chapter sixteen
four days before his show is supposed to go on, tiny calls me and tells me he needs to take a mental health day. it’s not just because the show is in chaos. the other will grayson isn’t talking to him. i mean, he’s talking to him, but he’s not saying anything. and part of tiny is pissed that o.w.g. is ‘pulling this shit so close to curtain time’ and part of him seems really, really afraid that something is really, really wrong.
me: what can i do? i’m the wrong will grayson.
tiny: i just need a will grayson fix. i’ll be at your school in an hour. i’m already on the road.
me: you’re what?
tiny: you just have to tell me where your school is. i google-mapped it, but those directions always suck. and the last thing my mental health day needs is to be google-mapped into iowa at ten in the morning.
I think the idea of a ‘mental health day’ is something completely invented by people who have no clue what it’s like to have bad mental health. the idea that your mind can be aired out in twenty-four hours is kind of like saying heart disease can be cured if you eat the right breakfast cereal. mental health days only exist for people who have the luxury of saying ‘i don’t want to deal with things today’ and then can take the whole day off, while the rest of us are stuck fighting the fights we always fight, with no one really caring one way or another, unless we choose to bring a gun to school or ruin the morning announcements with a suicide.
I don’t say any of this to tiny. i pretend that i want him here. i don’t let him know how freaked out i am about him seeing more of my life. it seems to me that he’s cross-wired on his will graysons. i’m not sure i’m the one who can help him.
It’s gotten so intense - more intense than it was with isaac. and not just because tiny is real. i don’t know what freaks me out more - that i matter to him, or that he matters to me.
I tell gideon right away about tiny’s visit, mostly because he’s the only person in the school who i’ve really talked to about tiny.
gideon: wow, it’s sweet that he wants to see you.
me: i hadn’t even thought of that.
gideon: most guys will drive over an hour for sex. but only a few will drive over an hour just to see you.
me: how do you know this?
It’s sort of strange that gideon’s become my go-to g*y guy, since he’s told me the most play he’s ever gotten was at boy scout camp the summer before ninth grade. but i guess he’s been to enough blogs and chat rooms and things. oh, and he watches hbo-on-demand all the time. i am constantly telling him that i’m not sure the laws of sex and the city apply when there’s no sex and there’s no city, but then he looks at me like i’m throwing spiked darts at the heart-shaped helium balloons that populate his mind, so i let it go.
the funny thing is that most of the school - well, the part that cares, which is not that huge - thinks gideon and i are a couple. because, you know, they see g*y me walking in the halls with g*y him, and they immediately assume.
I will say this, though - i kind-of don’t mind it. because gideon is really cute, and really friendly, and the people who don’t beat him up seem to like him a lot. so if i’m going to have a hypothetical boyfriend in this school, i could do much worse.
still, it’s weird to think of gideon and tiny finally meeting. it’s weird to think of tiny walking the halls with me. it’s like inviting godzilla to the prom.
I can’t picture it . . . but then i get a text that he’s two minutes away, and i have to face facts.
I basically just leave mr. jones’s physics class in the middle of a lab - he never really notices me, anyway, so as long as my lab partner, lizzie, covers for me, i’m set. i tell lizzie the truth - that my boyfriend is sneaking into the school to meet me - and she becomes my accomplice, because even if she wouldn’t ordinarily do it for me, she’ll definitely do it for LOVE. (well, LOVE and g*y rights - three cheers for straight girls who max out on helping g*y guys.)