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CHAPTER SIX
M
om was folding my laundry while watching this TV show called The View
when I got home. I told her that the tulips and the Dutch artist and everything
were all because Augustus was using his Wish to take me to Amsterdam. “That’s
too much,” she said, shaking her head. “We can’t accept that from a virtual
stranger.”
“He’s not a stranger. He’s easily my second best friend.”
“Behind Kaitlyn?”
“Behind you,” I said. It was true, but I’d mostly said it because I wanted to
go to Amsterdam.
“I’ll ask Dr. Maria,” she said after a moment.
*
Dr. Maria said I couldn’t go to Amsterdam without an adult intimately familiar
with my case, which more or less meant either Mom or Dr. Maria herself. (My
dad understood my cancer the way I did: in the vague and incomplete way
people understand electrical circuits and ocean tides. But my mom knew more
about differentiated thyroid carcinoma in adolescents than most oncologists.)
“So you’ll come,” I said. “The Genies will pay for it. The Genies are
loaded.”
“But your father,” she said. “He would miss us. It wouldn’t be fair to him,
and he can’t get time off work.”
“Are you kidding? You don’t think Dad would enjoy a few days of
watching TV shows that are not about aspiring models and ordering pizza every
night, using paper towels as plates so he doesn’t have to do the dishes?”
Mom laughed. Finally, she started to get excited, typing tasks into her
phone: She’d have to call Gus’s parents and talk to the Genies about my medical
needs and do they have a hotel yet and what are the best guidebooks and we
should do our research if we only have three days, and so on. I kind of had a
headache, so I downed a couple Advil and decided to take a nap.
But I ended up just lying in bed and replaying the whole picnic with

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Augustus. I couldn’t stop thinking about the little moment when I’d tensed up as
he touched me. The gentle familiarity felt wrong, somehow. I thought maybe it
was how orchestrated the whole thing had been: Augustus was amazing, but
he’d overdone everything at the picnic, right down to the sandwiches that were
metaphorically resonant but tasted terrible and the memorized soliloquy that
prevented conversation. It all felt Romantic, but not romantic.
But the truth is that I had never wanted him to kiss me, not in the way you
are supposed to want these things. I mean, he was gorgeous. I was attracted to
him. I thought about him in that way, to borrow a phrase from the middle school
vernacular. But the actual touch, the realized touch . . . it was all wrong.
Then I found myself worrying I would have to make out with him to get to
Amsterdam, which is not the kind of thing you want to be thinking, because (a)
It shouldn’t’ve even been a question whether I wanted to kiss him, and (b)
Kissing someone so that you can get a free trip is perilously close to full-on
hooking, and I have to confess that while I did not fancy myself a particularly
good person, I never thought my first real sexual action would be prostitutional.
But then again, he hadn’t tried to kiss me; he’d only touched my face,
which is not even sexual. It was not a move designed to elicit arousal, but it was
certainly a designed move, because Augustus Waters was no improviser. So
what had he been trying to convey? And why hadn’t I wanted to accept it?
At some point, I realized I was Kaitlyning the encounter, so I decided to
text Kaitlyn and ask for some advice. She called immediately.
“I have a boy problem,” I said.
“DELICIOUS,” Kaitlyn responded. I told her all about it, complete with the
awkward face touching, leaving out only Amsterdam and Augustus’s name.
“You’re sure he’s hot?” she asked when I was finished.
“Pretty sure,” I said.
“Athletic?”
“Yeah, he used to play basketball for North Central.”
“Wow. How’d you meet him?”
“This hideous Support Group.”
“Huh,” Kaitlyn said. “Out of curiosity, how many legs does this guy have?”
“Like, 1.4,” I said, smiling. Basketball players were famous in Indiana, and
although Kaitlyn didn’t go to North Central, her social connectivity was endless.
“Augustus Waters,” she said.
“Um, maybe?”
“Oh, my God. I’ve seen him at parties. The things I would do to that boy. I
mean, not now that I know you’re interested in him. But, oh, sweet holy Lord, I
would ride that one-legged pony all the way around the corral.”

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“Kaitlyn,” I said.
“Sorry. Do you think you’d have to be on top?”
“Kaitlyn,” I said.
“What were we talking about. Right, you and Augustus Waters. Maybe . . .
are you gay?”
“I don’t think so? I mean, I definitely like him.”
“Does he have ugly hands? Sometimes beautiful people have ugly hands.”
“No, he has kind of amazing hands.”
“Hmm,” she said.
“Hmm,” I said.
After a second, Kaitlyn said, “Remember Derek? He broke up with me last
week because he’d decided there was something fundamentally incompatible
about us deep down and that we’d only get hurt more if we played it out. He
called it preemptive dumping. So maybe you have this premonition that there is
something fundamentally incompatible and you’re preempting the preemption.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“I’m just thinking out loud here.”
“Sorry about Derek.”
“Oh, I got over it, darling. It took me a sleeve of Girl Scout Thin Mints and
forty minutes to get over that boy.”
I laughed. “Well, thanks, Kaitlyn.”
“In the event you do hook up with him, I expect lascivious details.”
“But of course,” I said, and then Kaitlyn made a kissy sound into the phone
and I said, “Bye,” and she hung up.
*
I realized while listening to Kaitlyn that I didn’t have a premonition of hurting
him. I had a postmonition.
I pulled out my laptop and looked up Caroline Mathers. The physical
similarities were striking: same steroidally round face, same nose, same
approximate overall body shape. But her eyes were dark brown (mine are green)
and her complexion was much darker—Italian or something.
Thousands of people—literally thousands—had left condolence messages
for her. It was an endless scroll of people who missed her, so many that it took
me an hour of clicking to get past the I’m sorry you’re dead wall posts to the I’m