me: what?

tiny: do you want to hear a song from tiny dancer: the tiny cooper story?

me: excuse me?

tiny: it’s a musical i’m working on. it’s based on my life. i think one of the songs might help right now.

we are on a street corner in front of a porn shop. there are people passing by. chicagoans - you can’t be less musical than chicagoans. i am in a completely demolished state. my mind is having a heart attack. the last thing i need is for the fat lady to sing. but do i protest? do i decide to live the rest of my life within the subway system, feeding off the rats? no. i just nod dumbly, because he wants to sing this song so badly that i’d feel like a jerk to say no.

with a dip of his head, tiny starts to hum a little to himself. once he’s gotten the tune, he closes his eyes, opens his arms, and sings:

I thought you’ d make my dreams come true

but it wasn’t you, it wasn’t you

I thought this time it would all be new

but it wasn’t you, it wasn’t you

I pictured all the things we’ d do

but it wasn’t you, it wasn’t you

and now i feel my heart is through

but it isn’t true, it isn’t true

I may be big-boned and afraid

but my faith in love won’t be mislaid!

though i’ve been completely knocked off course

I’m not getting off my faithful horse!

It wasn’t you, it’s true

but there’s more to life than you

I thought you were a boy with a view,

you stuck-up, selfish, addled shrew

you may have kicked me till i was blue

but from that experience i grew

It’s true, fuck you

there are better guys to woo

It won’t be you, comprende vous?

It will never be you.

tiny doesn’t just sing these words - he belts them. it’s like a parade coming out of his mouth. i have no doubt the words travel over lake michigan to most of canada and on to the north pole. the farmers of saskatchewan are crying. santa is turning to mrs. claus and saying ‘what the fuck is that?’ i am completely mortified, but then tiny opens his eyes and looks at me with such obvious caring that i have no idea what to do. no one’s tried to give me something like this in ages. except for isaac, and he doesn’t exist. whatever you might say about tiny, he definitely exists.

he asks me if i want to walk. once again, i nod dumbly. it’s not like i have anything better to do.

me: who are you?

tiny: tiny cooper!

me: you can’t really be named tiny.

tiny: no. that’s irony.

me: oh.

tiny (tsking): no need to ‘oh’ me. i’m fine with it. i’m big-boned.

me: dude, it isn’t just your bones.

tiny: just means there’s more of me to love!

me: but that requires so much more effort.

tiny: darling, i’m worth it.

the sick thing is, i have to admit there’s something a little bit attractive about him. i don’t get it. it’s like, you know how sometimes you see a really sexy baby? wait, that sounds fucked up. that’s not what i mean. but it’s like, even though he’s as big as a house (and i’m not talking about a poor person’s house, either), he’s got super-smooth skin and really green eyes and everything is in, like, proportion. so i’m not feeling the repulsion i would expect to feel toward someone three times my size. i want to tell him i should be out killing some people now, not taking a stroll with him. but he takes a little of the murder off my mind. it’s not like it won’t be there later.

as we walk over to millennium park, tiny tells me all about tiny dancer and how hard he’s struggled to write, act, direct, produce, choreograph, costume-design, lighting-design, set-design, and attain funding for it. basically, he’s out of his mind, and since i’m trying really hard to get out of my mind, too, i attempt to follow. like with maura (fucking witch ass bitch mussolini al-qaeda darth vader non-entity), i don’t have to say a word myself, which is fine.

when we get to the park, tiny makes a great-big beeline to the bean. somehow i’m not surprised.

the bean is this really stupid sculpture that they did for millennium park - i guess at the millennium - which originally had another name, but everyone started calling it the bean and the name stuck. it’s basically this big reflective metal bean that you can walk under and see yourself all distorted. i mean, i’ve been here before on school trips, but i’ve never been here with someone as huge as tiny before. usually it’s hard at first to locate yourself in the reflection, but this time i know i’m the wavy twig standing next to the big blob of humanity. tiny giggles when he sees himself like that. a genuine, tee-heehee giggle. i hate it when girls do that shit, because it’s always so fake. but with tiny it isn’t fake at all. it’s like he’s being tickled by life.

after tiny has tried ballerina pose, swing-batter-batter pose, pump-up-the-jam pose, and top-of-the-mountain-sound-of-music pose in the reflection of the bean, he walks us to a bench overlooking lake shore drive. i think he’ll be all sweaty because, let’s face it, most fat people get sweaty just from lifting the twinkie to their mouth. but tiny is just too fabulous to sweat.

tiny: so tell tiny your problems.

I can’t answer, because the way he says it, it’s like you could substitute the word ‘mama’ for the word ‘tiny’ and the sentence would still sound the same.

me: can tiny talk normal?

tiny (in his best anderson cooper voice): yes, he can. but it’s not nearly as fun when he does it.

me: you just sound so gay.

tiny: um . . . there’s a reason for that?

me: yeah, but. i dunno. i don’t like gay people.

tiny: but surely you must like yourself?

holy shit, i want to be from this boy’s planet. is he serious? i look at him and see that, yes, he is.

me: why should i like myself? nobody else does.

tiny: i do.

me: you don’t know me at all.

tiny: but i want to.

It’s so stupid, because all of a sudden i’m screaming

me: shut up! just shut up!

and he looks so hurt, so i have to say

me: no, ha, it’s not you. okay? you’re nice. i’m not. i’m not nice, okay? stop it!

because now he doesn’t look hurt; he looks sad. sad for me. he sees me. christ.

me: this is so stupid.

It’s like he knows that if he touches me, i will probably lose it on him and start hitting him and start crying and never want to see him again. so instead he just sits there as i put my head in my hands, as if i’m literally trying to hold my head together. and the thing is, he doesn’t need to touch me, because with someone like tiny cooper, if he’s next to you, you know it. all he has to do is stay, and you know he’s there.

me: shit shit shit shit shit shit shit

here’s the sick, twisted thing: part of me thinks i deserve this. that maybe if i wasn’t such an asshole, isaac would have been real. if i wasn’t such a lame excuse for a person, something right might happen to me. it’s not fair, because i didn’t ask for dad to leave, and i didn’t ask to be depressed, and i didn’t ask for us to have no money, and i didn’t ask to want to fuck boys, and i didn’t ask to be so stupid, and i didn’t ask to have no real friends, and i didn’t ask to have half the shit that comes out of my mouth come out of my mouth. all i wanted was one fucking break, one idiotic good thing, and that was clearly too much to ask for, too much to want.

I don’t understand why this boy who writes musicals about himself is sitting with me. am i that pathetic? does he get a merit badge for picking up the pieces of a wrecked human being?

I let go of my head. it’s not helping. when i surface, i look at tiny, and it’s strange all over again. he’s not just watching me - he’s still seeing me. his eyes are practically gleaming.

tiny: i never kiss on the first date.

I look at him with total incomprehension, and then he adds

tiny: . . . but sometimes i make exceptions.

so now my shock from before is turning into a different kind of shock, and it’s a charged shock, because at that moment, even though he’s enormous, and even though he doesn’t know me at all, and even though he’s taking up roughly three times more of the bench than i am, tiny cooper is surprisingly, undeniably attractive. yeah, his skin is smooth, his smile is gentle, and most of all his eyes - his eyes have this crazy hope and crazy longing and ridiculous giddiness in them, and even though i think it’s completely stupid and even though i am never going to feel the things that he feels, at the very least i don’t mind the idea of kissing him and seeing what happens. he is starting to blush from what he’s said, and he’s actually too shy to lean down to me, so i find myself lifting to kiss him, keeping my eyes open because i want to see his surprise and see his happiness because there’s no way for me to see or even feel my own.

It’s not like kissing a sofa. it’s like kissing a boy. finally, a boy.

he closes his eyes. he smiles when we stop.

tiny: this is not where i thought the night was going. me: tell me about it.

I want to run away. not with him. i just don’t want to go back to school or to life. if my mom wasn’t waiting on the other end for me, i would probably do it. i want to run away because i’ve lost everything. i’m sure if i said this to tiny cooper, he’d point out that i’ve lost the bad things as well as the good things. he’d tell me the sun will come out tomorrow, or some shit like that. but then i wouldn’t believe him. i don’t believe any of it.

tiny: hey - i don’t even know your name. me: will grayson.

with that, tiny jumps off the bench, nearly knocking me to the grass.

tiny: no!

me: um . . . yes?

tiny: well, doesn’t that just take the cake?

with that, he starts laughing, and calling out

tiny: i kissed will grayson! i kissed will grayson!

when he sees that this freaks me out more than sharks do, he sits back down and says

tiny: i’m glad it was you.

I think about the other will grayson. i wonder how he’s doing with jane.

me: it’s not like i’m seventeen magazine material, right?

tiny’s eyes light up.

tiny: he told you about that?

me: yeah.

tiny: he was totally robbed. i was so mad, i wrote a letter to the editor. but they never printed it.

I have this deep pang of jealousy, that o.w.g. has a friend like tiny. i can’t imagine anyone ever writing a letter to the editor for me. i can’t even imagine them giving a quote for my obituary.

I think of everything that’s happened, and how when i go home i won’t really have anyone to tell it to. then i look at tiny and, surprising myself, kiss him again. because what the fuck. completely, what the fuck.

this goes on for some time. i am getting totally big-boned from kissing someone big-boned. and in between the making out, he’s asking me where i live, what happened tonight, what i want to do with my life, what my favorite ice-cream flavor is. i answer the questions i can (basically, where i live and the ice-cream flavor) and tell him i have no idea about the rest of it.

nobody’s really watching us, but i’m beginning to feel that they are. so we stop and i can’t help but think about isaac, and how even though this whole tiny thing is an interesting development, all-in-all things still suck in a tornado-destroyed-my-home kind of way. tiny’s like the one room left standing. i feel i owe him something for that, so i say

me: i’m glad that you exist.

tiny: i’m glad to be existing right now.

me: you have no idea how wrong you are about me.

tiny: you have no idea how wrong you are about yourself.

me: stop that.

tiny: only if you stop it.

me: i’m warning you.

I have no idea what truth has to do with love, and vice versa. i’m not even thinking in terms of love here. it’s way, way, way early for that. but i guess i am thinking in terms of truth. i want this to be truthful. and even as i protest to tiny and i protest to myself, the truth is becoming increasingly clear.

It’s time for us to figure out how the hell this is ever going to work.

Chapter eleven

I’m sitting against my locker ten minutes before the first period bell when Tiny comes running down the hallway, his arms a jumble of Tiny Dancer audition posters.

“Grayson!” he shouts.

“Hey,” I answer. I get up, grab a poster from him, and hold it against the wall. He lets the others fall to the ground and then starts taping, ripping off the masking tape with his teeth. He tapes the poster up, then we gather up the ones he dropped, walk a few paces, and repeat. And all the while, he talks. His heart beats and his eyelids blink and he breathes and his kidneys process toxins and he talks, and all of it utterly involuntary.

“So I’m sorry I didn’t go back to Frenchy’s to meet you, but I figured you’d guess I just took a cab, which I did, and anyway, Will and I had walked all the way down to the Bean and, like, Grayson, I know I’ve said this before but I really like him. I mean, you have to really like someone to go all the way to the Bean with them and listen to them talk about their boyfriend who was neither boy nor friend and also I sang for him. And Grayson, I mean really: can you believe I kissed Will Grayson? I. Freaking. Kissed. Will. Grayson. And like nothing personal because like I’ve told you a gajillion times, I think you’re a top-shelf person, but I would have bet my left nut that I would never make out with Will Grayson, you know?”

“Uh-hu—” I say, but he doesn’t even wait for me to get through the huh before he starts up again.

“And I get texts from him like every forty-two seconds and he’s a brilliant texter, which is nice because it’s just a little pleasant leg vibration, just a reminder-in-the-thigh that he’s—see, there’s one.” I keep holding up the poster while he pulls his phone out of his jeans. “Aww.”