The Fault in Our Stars

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.
[e-mail] 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?”