The John Green Collection (104 page)
Read The John Green Collection Online
Authors: John Green
“Right. You said he is a recluse?”
“Correct.”
“Impossible to track down.”
“Correct.”
“Utterly unreachable,” Augustus said.
“Unfortunately so,” I said.
“‘Dear Mr. Waters,’” he answered. “‘I am writing to thank you for your electronic correspondence, received via Ms. Vliegenthart this sixth of April, from the United States of America, insofar as geography can be said to exist in our triumphantly digitized contemporaneity.’”
“Augustus, what the hell?”
“He has an assistant,” Augustus said. “Lidewij Vliegenthart. I found her. I emailed her. She gave him the email. He responded via her email account.”
“Okay, okay. Keep reading.”
“‘My response is being written with ink and paper in the glorious tradition of our ancestors and then transcribed by Ms. Vliegenthart into a series of 1s and 0s to travel through the insipid web which has lately ensnared our species, so I apologize for any errors or omissions that may result.
“‘Given the entertainment bacchanalia at the disposal of young men and women of your generation, I am grateful to anyone anywhere who sets aside the hours necessary to read my little book. But I am particularly indebted to you, sir, both for your kind words about
An Imperial Affliction
and for taking the time to tell me that the book, and here I quote you directly, “meant a great deal” to you.
“‘This comment, however, leads me to wonder: What do you mean by
meant
? Given the final futility of our struggle, is the fleeting jolt of meaning that art gives us valuable? Or is the only value in passing the time as comfortably as possible? What should a story seek to emulate, Augustus? A ringing alarm? A call to arms? A morphine drip? Of course, like all interrogation of the universe, this line of inquiry inevitably reduces us to asking what it means to be human and whether—to borrow a phrase from the angst-encumbered sixteen-year-olds you no doubt revile—
there is a point to it all
.
“‘I fear there is not, my friend, and that you would receive scant encouragement from further encounters with my writing. But to answer your question: No, I have not written anything else, nor will I. I do not feel that continuing
to share my thoughts with readers would benefit either them or me. Thank you again for your generous email.
“‘Yours most sincerely, Peter Van Houten, via Lidewij Vliegenthart.’”
“Wow,” I said. “Are you making this up?”
“Hazel Grace, could I, with my meager intellectual capacities, make up a letter from Peter Van Houten featuring phrases like ‘our triumphantly digitized contemporaneity’?”
“You could not,” I allowed. “Can I, can I have the email address?”
“Of course,” Augustus said, like it was not the best gift ever.
•••
I spent the next two hours writing an email to Peter Van Houten. It seemed to get worse each time I rewrote it, but I couldn’t stop myself.
Dear Mr. Peter Van Houten
(c/o Lidewij Vliegenthart),
My name is Hazel Grace Lancaster. My friend Augustus Waters, who read
An Imperial Affliction
at my recommendation, just received an email from you at this address. I hope you will not mind that Augustus shared that email with me.
Mr. Van Houten, I understand from your email to Augustus that you are not planning to publish
any more books. In a way, I am disappointed, but I’m also relieved: I never have to worry whether your next book will live up to the magnificent perfection of the original. As a three-year survivor of Stage IV cancer, I can tell you that you got everything right in
An Imperial Affliction
. Or at least you got
me
right. Your book has a way of telling me what I’m feeling before I even feel it, and I’ve reread it dozens of times.
I wonder, though, if you would mind answering a couple questions I have about what happens after the end of the novel. I understand the book ends because Anna dies or becomes too ill to continue writing it, but I would really like to know what happens to Anna’s mom—whether she married the Dutch Tulip Man, whether she ever has another child, and whether she stays at 917 W. Temple, etc. Also, is the Dutch Tulip Man a fraud or does he really love them? What happens to Anna’s friends—particularly Claire and Jake? Do they stay together? And lastly—I realize that this is the kind of deep and thoughtful question you always hoped your readers would ask—what becomes of Sisyphus the Hamster? These questions have haunted me for years—and I don’t know how long I have left to get answers to them.
I know these are not important literary questions and that your book is full of important literary questions, but I would just really like to know.
And of course, if you ever do decide to write anything else, even if you don’t want to publish it, I’d love to read it. Frankly, I’d read your grocery lists.
Yours with great admiration,
Hazel Grace Lancaster
(age 16)
After I sent it, I called Augustus back, and we stayed up late talking about
An Imperial Affliction
, and I read him the Emily Dickinson poem that Van Houten had used for the title, and he said I had a good voice for reading and didn’t pause too long for the line breaks, and then he told me that the sixth
Price of Dawn
book,
The Blood Approves
, begins with a quote from a poem. It took him a minute to find the book, but finally he read the quote to me. “‘Say your life broke down. The last good kiss / You had was years ago.’”
“Not bad,” I said. “Bit pretentious. I believe Max Mayhem would refer to that as ‘sissy shit.’”
“Yes, with his teeth gritted, no doubt. God, Mayhem grits his teeth a lot in these books. He’s definitely going to get TMJ, if he survives all this combat.” And then after a second, Gus asked, “When was the last good kiss you had?”
I thought about it. My kissing—all prediagnosis—had been uncomfortable and slobbery, and on some level it always felt like kids playing at being grown. But of course it had been a while. “Years ago,” I said finally. “You?”
“I had a few good kisses with my ex-girlfriend, Caroline Mathers.”
“Years ago?”
“The last one was just less than a year ago.”
“What happened?”
“During the kiss?”
“No, with you and Caroline.”
“Oh,” he said. And then after a second, “Caroline is no longer suffering from personhood.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I’d known plenty of dead people, of course. But I’d never dated one. I couldn’t even imagine it, really.
“Not your fault, Hazel Grace. We’re all just side effects, right?”
“‘Barnacles on the container ship of consciousness,’” I said, quoting
AIA
.
“Okay,” he said. “I gotta go to sleep. It’s almost one.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” he said.
I giggled and said, “Okay.” And then the line was quiet but not dead. I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way it was better, like I was not in my room and he was not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space that could only be visited on the phone.
“Okay,” he said after forever. “Maybe
okay
will be our
always
.”
“Okay,” I said.
It was Augustus who finally hung up.
•••
Peter Van Houten replied to Augustus’s email four hours after he sent it, but two days later, Van Houten still hadn’t replied to me. Augustus assured me it was because my email was better and required a more thoughtful response, that Van Houten was busy writing answers to my questions, and that brilliant prose took time. But still I worried.
On Wednesday during American Poetry for Dummies 101, I got a text from Augustus:
Isaac out of surgery. It went well. He’s officially NEC.
NEC meant “no evidence of cancer.” A second text came a few seconds later.
I mean, he’s blind. So that’s unfortunate.
That afternoon, Mom consented to loan me the car so I could drive down to Memorial to check in on Isaac.
I found my way to his room on the fifth floor, knocking even though the door was open, and a woman’s voice said, “Come in.” It was a nurse who was doing something to the bandages on Isaac’s eyes. “Hey, Isaac,” I said.
And he said, “Mon?”
“Oh, no. Sorry. No, it’s, um, Hazel. Um, Support Group Hazel? Night-of-the-broken-trophies Hazel?”
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, people keep saying my other senses will improve to compensate, but CLEARLY NOT YET. Hi, Support Group Hazel. Come over here so I can examine your face with my hands and see deeper into your soul than a sighted person ever could.”
“He’s kidding,” the nurse said.
“Yes,” I said. “I realize.”
I took a few steps toward the bed. I pulled a chair up and sat down, took his hand. “Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” he said back. Then nothing for a while.
“How you feeling?” I asked.
“Okay,” he said. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?” I asked. I looked at his hand because I didn’t want to look at his face blindfolded by bandages. Isaac bit his nails, and I could see some blood on the corners of a couple of his cuticles.
“She hasn’t even visited,” he said. “I mean, we were together fourteen months. Fourteen months is a long time. God, that hurts.” Isaac let go of my hand to fumble for his pain pump, which you hit to give yourself a wave of narcotics.
The nurse, having finished the bandage change, stepped back. “It’s only been a day, Isaac,” she said, vaguely condescending. “You’ve gotta give yourself time to heal.
And fourteen months
isn’t
that long, not in the scheme of things. You’re just getting started, buddy. You’ll see.”
The nurse left. “Is she gone?”
I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see me nod. “Yeah,” I said.
“I’ll
see
? Really? Did she seriously say that?”
“Qualities of a Good Nurse: Go,” I said.
“1. Doesn’t pun on your disability,” Isaac said.
“2. Gets blood on the first try,” I said.
“Seriously, that is huge. I mean is this my freaking arm or a dartboard? 3. No condescending voice.”
“How are you doing, sweetie?” I asked, cloying. “I’m going to stick you with a needle now. There might be a little ouchie.”
“Is my wittle fuffywump sickywicky?” he answered. And then after a second, “Most of them are good, actually. I just want the hell out of this place.”
“This place as in the hospital?”
“That, too,” he said. His mouth tightened. I could see the pain. “Honestly, I think a hell of a lot more about Monica than my eye. Is that crazy? That’s crazy.”
“It’s a little crazy,” I allowed.
“But I believe in true love, you know? I don’t believe that everybody gets to keep their eyes or not get sick or whatever, but everybody
should
have true love, and it should last at least as long as your life does.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I just wish the whole thing hadn’t happened sometimes. The whole cancer thing.” His speech was slowing down. The medicine working.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Gus was here earlier. He was here when I woke up. Took off school. He…” His head turned to the side a little. “It’s better,” he said quietly.
“The pain?” I asked. He nodded a little.
“Good,” I said. And then, like the bitch I am: “You were saying something about Gus?” But he was gone.
I went downstairs to the tiny windowless gift shop and asked the decrepit volunteer sitting on a stool behind a cash register what kind of flowers smell the strongest.
“They all smell the same. They get sprayed with Super Scent,” she said.
“Really?”
“Yeah, they just squirt ’em with it.”
I opened the cooler to her left and sniffed at a dozen roses, and then leaned over some carnations. Same smell, and lots of it. The carnations were cheaper, so I grabbed a dozen yellow ones. They cost fourteen dollars. I went back into the room; his mom was there, holding his hand. She was young and really pretty.
“Are you a friend?” she asked, which struck me as one of those unintentionally broad and unanswerable questions.
“Um, yeah,” I said. “I’m from Support Group. These are for him.”
She took them and placed them in her lap. “Do you know Monica?” she asked.
I shook my head no.
“Well, he’s sleeping,” she said.
“Yeah. I talked to him a little before, when they were doing the bandages or whatever.”
“I hated leaving him for that but I had to pick up Graham at school,” she said.
“He did okay,” I told her. She nodded. “I should let him sleep.” She nodded again. I left.
•••
The next morning I woke up early and checked my email first thing.
[email protected] had finally replied.
Dear Ms. Lancaster,
I fear your faith has been misplaced—but then, faith usually is. I cannot answer your questions, at least not in writing, because to write out such answers would constitute a sequel to
An Imperial Affliction,
which you might publish or otherwise share on the network that has replaced the brains of your generation. There is the telephone, but then you might record the
conversation. Not that I don’t trust you, of course, but I don’t trust you. Alas, dear Hazel, I could never answer such questions except in person, and you are there, while I am here.
That noted, I must confess that the unexpected receipt of your correspondence via Ms. Vliegenthart has delighted me: What a wondrous thing to know that I made something useful to you—even if that book seems so distant from me that I feel it was written by a different man altogether. (The author of that novel was so thin, so frail, so comparatively optimistic!)
Should you find yourself in Amsterdam, however, please do pay a visit at your leisure. I am usually home. I would even allow you a peek at my grocery lists.
Yours most sincerely,
Peter Van Houten
c/o Lidewij Vliegenthart
“WHAT?!” I shouted aloud. “WHAT IS THIS LIFE?”
Mom ran in. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,”
I assured her.