The Fault in Our Stars pdfdrive com

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

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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

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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

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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,

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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.

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Yours most sincerely,
Peter Van Houten
c/o Lidewij Vliegenthart
“WHAT?!” I shouted aloud. “WHAT IS THIS LIFE?”
Mom ran in. “What’s wrong?”