she’s pouting at me now, and, to give her credit, it’s a genuine pout. it’s not like she’s trying to manipulate me by pretending to be annoyed. maura doesn’t do that kind of crap, and that’s why i put up with her. i can take everything on her face at face value, and that’s valuable in a friend.

me: i’ll tell you when i have something to tell you, okay? now go home and practice your math. here . . . i made you flash cards.

I reach into my bag and take out these cards i made seventh period, kinda knowing maura was going to say yes. they’re not actually cards, since it’s not like i carry a set of index cards around in my bag for indexing emergencies. but i made all these dotted lines on the piece of paper so she’ll know where to cut. each card has its own equation.

2 + 2 = 4

50 x 40 = 2000

834620 x 375002 = who really gives a fuck?

x + y = z

cock + pussy = a happy rooster-kitten couple

red + blue = purple

me - mathletes = me + gratitude to you

maura looks at them for a second, then folds the piece of paper along the dotted lines, squaring it together like a map. she doesn’t smile or anything, but she looks unpissed for a second.

me: don’t let derek and simon get too frisky, okay? always wear pocket protection.

maura: i think i’ll be able to keep my maidenhead at a mathletes competition.

me: you say that now, but we’ll see in nine months. if it’s a girl, you should name her logorrhea. if it’s a boy, go for trig.

It does occur to me that because of the way life works, maura probably will get some hot math-reject guy to put his plus in her minus, while i bomb out with isaac and come home to the comfort of my own hand.

I decide not to tell maura this, ’cause why jinx us both? maura gives me an actual ‘good-bye’ before she goes, and she looks like she has something else to say, but has decided not to say it. another reason for me to be grateful.

I thank her again. and again. and again.

when that’s done, i head home and email with isaac once he gets home from school - no work for him today. we go over our plan about two thousand times. he says a friend of his suggested we meet at a place called frenchy’s, and since i don’t really know chicago that much outside of places where you’d go on a class trip, i tell him that’s fine by me, and print out the directions he sends me.

when we’re through, i go on facebook and look at his profile for the millionth thousandth time. he doesn’t really change it that often, but it’s a good enough reminder to me that he’s real. i mean, we’ve exchanged photos and have talked enough for me to know that he’s real - it’s not like he’s some forty-six-year-old who’s already prepared a nice spot in the back of his unmarked van for me. i’m not that stupid. we’re meeting in a public place, and i have my phone. even if isaac has a psychotic break, i’ll be prepared.

before i go to sleep, i look at all the pictures i have of him, as if i haven’t already memorized them. i’m sure i’ll recognize him the moment i see him. and i’m sure it’ll be one of the best moments of my life.

friday after school is brutal. i want to commit murder about a thousand different ways, and it’s my closet i want to kill. i have no fucking idea what to wear - and i am not a what-do-i-wear kind of guy at all, so it’s like i can’t even begin to comprehend the task at hand. every single goddamn piece of clothing i own seems to have chosen now to reveal its faults. i put on this one shirt which i’ve always thought made me look good, and sure enough it makes my chest look like it actually has some definition. but then i realize it’s so small that if i raise my arms even an inch, my belly pubes are on full display. so then i try this black shirt which makes me look like i’m trying too hard, and then this white shirt which is cool until i find this stain near the bottom which i’m hoping is orange juice, but is probably from when i tucked before i tapped. band t-shirts are too obvious - if i wear a shirt from one of his favorites, it’s like i’m being a kiss-ass, and if i wear one for a band he might not like, he might think my taste is lame. my gray hoodie is too blech and this blue shirt i have is practically the same color as my jeans, and looking all-blue is something only cookie monster can pull off.

for the first time in my life i realize why hangers are called hangers, because after fifteen minutes of trying things on and throwing them aside, all i want to do is hook one to the top of my closet door, lean my neck into the loop, and let my weight fall. my mother will come in and think it’s some autoerotic asphyxiation where i didn’t even have the time to get my dick out, and i won’t be alive enough to tell her that i think autoerotic asphyxiation is one of the dumbest things in the whole universe, right up there with gay republicans. but, yeah, i’ll be dead. and it’ll be like an episode of CSI: FU, where the investigators will come in and spend forty-three minutes plus commercials scouring over my life, and at the end they’ll bring my mother to the station house and they’ll sit her down and give her the truth.

cop: ma’am, your son wasn’t murdered. he was just getting ready for a first date.

I’m kind-of smiling, picturing how the scene would be shot, then i remember that i’m standing shirtless in the middle of my room, and i have a train to catch. finally i just pick this shirt that has a little picture of this robot made out of duct tape or something, with the word robotboy in small lowercase underneath it. i don’t know why i like it, but i do. and i don’t know why i think isaac will like it, but i do.

I know i must be nervous, because i’m actually thinking about how my hair looks, but when i get to the bathroom mirror, i decide my hair’s going to do what it wants to do, and since it usually looks better when it’s windy, i’ll just stick my head out of the train window or something on my way there. i could use my mother’s hair stuff, but i have no desire to smell like butterflies in a field. so i’m done.

I’ve told mom that the mathletes competition is in chicago - i figured if i was going to lie, she might as well think we made the state finals. i claimed the school had chartered a bus, but instead i head to the train station, no problem. my nerves are completely jangling by now. i try to read to kill a mockingbird for english class, but it’s like the letters are this nice design on the page and don’t mean anything more to me than the patterns on the train seats. it could be an action movie called die, mockingbird, die! and i still wouldn’t be into it. so i close my eyes and listen to my ipod, but it’s like it’s been preprogrammed by a mean-ass cupid, because every single song makes me think of isaac. he’s become the one the songs are about. and while part of me knows he’s probably worth that, another part is yelling at me to slow the fuck down. while it’s going to be exciting to see isaac, it’s also going to be awkward. the key will be to not let that awkwardness get to us.

I take about five minutes to think about my dating history - five minutes is really all i can fill - and i’m sent back to the traumatic experience of drunkenly groping carissa nye at sloan mitchell’s party a couple months ago. the kissing part was actually hot, but then when it got more serious, carissa got this stupidly earnest look on her face and i almost cracked up. we had some serious problems with her bra cutting off the circulation to her brain, and when i finally had her boobs in my hands (not that i’d asked for them), i didn’t know what to do with them except pet them, like they were puppies. the puppies liked that, and carissa decided to give me a rub or two also, and i liked that, because when it all comes down to it, hands are hands, and touch is touch, and your body’s going to react the way your body’s going to react. it doesn’t give a damn about all the conversations you’re going to have afterward - not just with carissa, who wanted to be my girlfriend and who i tried to let down easy, but ended up hurting anyway. no, there was also maura to deal with, because the moment she heard (not from me) she was pissed (all at me). she said she thought carissa was using me, and she acted like she thought i was using carissa, when really the whole thing was useless, and no matter how many times i told maura this, she refused to let me off the hook. for weeks i had her shouting ‘well, why don’t you give carissa a call, then?’ whenever we disagreed. for that alone, the groping wasn’t worth it.

Isaac, of course, is completely different. not just in the groping sense. although there is certainly that. i’m not heading into the city just to mess around with him. it might not be the last thing on my mind, but it isn’t near the first, either.

I thought i was going to be early, but of course by the time i get near where we’re supposed to meet, i’m later than a pregnant girl’s period. i walk along michigan avenue with the right-before-curfew tourist girls and tourist boys, who all look like they’ve just come from basketball practice or watching basketball on tv. i definitely eye a few specimens, but it’s purely scientific research. for the next, oh, ten minutes, i can save myself for isaac.

I wonder if he’s already there. i wonder if he’s as nervous as i am. i wonder if he has spent as much time this morning as i did picking a shirt out. i wonder if by some freak of nature we’ll be wearing the same thing. like this is so meant to be that god’s decided to make it really obvious.

sweaty palms. check. shaky bones. check. the feeling that all oxygen in the air has been replaced by helium. yup. i look at the map fifteen times a second. five blocks to go. four blocks to go. three blocks to go. two blocks to go. state street. the corner. looking for frenchy’s. thinking it’s going to be a hip diner. or a coffee shop. or an indie record store. or even just a rundown restaurant.

then: getting there and finding out . . . it’s a porn shop.

thinking maybe the porn shop was named after something else nearby. maybe this is the frenchy’s district, and everything is named frenchy’s, like the way you can go downtown and find downtown bagels and the downtown cleaners and the downtown yoga studio. but no. i loop the block. i try the other side. i check the address over and over and over.

and there i am. back at the door.

I remember that isaac’s friend suggested the place. or at least that’s what he said. if that’s true, maybe it’s a joke, and poor isaac got here first and was mortified and is waiting for me inside. or maybe this is some kind of cosmic test. i have to cross the river of extreme awkwardness in order to get to the paradise on the other side.

what the fuck, i figure.

cold wind blowing all around me, i head inside.

Chapter seven

I hear the electronic bing and turn around to see a kid walking in. Naturally, he doesn’t get carded, and while he is on the hairy side of puberty, there’s no way he’s eighteen. Small and big-eyed and towheaded and absolutely terrified—as scared as I would probably be had I not already been driven to the brink by the anti-Will Grayson conspiracy encompassing A. Jane, and B. Tiny, and C. The well-pierced specimen behind the counter, and D. Stonedy McKopyShoppy.

But, anyway, the kid is staring at me with a level of intensity that I find very troubling, particularly given that I am holding a copy of Mano a Mano. I’m sure there are a number of fantastic ways to indicate to the underage stranger standing next to a Great Wall of Dildos that you are not, in fact, a fan of Mano a Mano, but the particular strategy I choose is to mumble, “It’s, uh, for a friend.” Which is true, but A. It’s not a terribly convincing excuse, and B. It implies that I’m the kind of guy who is friends with the kind of guy who likes Mano a Mano, and further implies that C. I’m the kind of guy who buys porn magazines for his friends. Immediately after saying “It’s for a friend,” I realize that I should have said, “I’m trying to learn Spanish.”

The kid just continues to stare at me, and then after a while he narrows his eyes, squinting. I hold his stare for a few seconds but then glance away. Finally, he walks past me and into the video aisles. It seems to me that he is looking for something specific, and that the something specific is not related to sex, in which case I rather suspect he will not find it here. He meanders toward the back of the store, which contains an open door that I believe may in some way be related to “Tokens.” All I want to do is get the hell out of here with my copy of Mano a Mano, so I walk up to the pierced guy and say, “Just this, please.”

He rings it up on the cash register. “Nine eighty-three,” he says.

“Nine DOLLARS?” I ask, incredulous.

“And eighty-three cents,” he adds.

I shake my head. This is turning into an extraordinarily expensive joke, but I’m not very well going to return to the creepy magazine rack and look for a bargain. I reach into my pockets and come out with somewhere in the neighborhood of four dollars. I sigh, and then reach for my back pocket, handing the guy my debit card. My parents look at the statement, but they won’t know Frenchy’s from Denny’s.

The guy looks at the card. He looks at me. He looks at the card. He looks at me. And just before he talks, I realize: my card says William Grayson. My ID says Ishmael J. Biafra.

Quite loud, the guy says, “William. Grayson. William. Grayson. Where have I seen that name before? Oh, right. NOT on your driver’s license.”

I consider my options for a moment and then say, real quietly, “It’s my card. I know my pin. Just—ring it up.”

He swipes it through the card machine and says, “I don’t give a shit, kid. It all spends the same.” And just then I can feel the guy right behind me, looking at me again, and so I wheel around, and he says, “What did you say?” Only he’s not talking to me, he’s talking to Piercings.

“I said I don’t give a shit about his ID.”

“You didn’t call me?”

“What the fuck are you talking about, kid?”