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The other thing about Kaitlyn, I guess, was that it could never again feel natural to talk to her. Any attempts to feign normal social interactions were just depressing because it was so glaringly obvious that everyone I spoke to for the rest of my life would feel awkward and self-conscious around me, except maybe kids like Jackie who just didn’t know any better.
Anyway, I really did like being alone. I liked being alone with poor Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem, who—oh, come on, he’s not going to survive these seventeen bullet wounds, is he?
(Spoiler alert: He lives. )
CHAPTER FOUR
I went to bed a little early that night, changing into boy boxers and a T-shirt before crawling under the covers of my bed, which was queen size and pillow topped and one of my favorite places in the world. And then I started reading An Imperial Affliction for the millionth time.
AIA is about this girl named Anna (who narrates the story) and her one-eyed mom, who is a professional gardener obsessed with tulips, and they have a normal lower-middle- class life in a little central California town until Anna gets this rare blood cancer.
But it’s not a cancer book, because cancer books suck. Like, in cancer books, the cancer person starts a charity that raises money to fight cancer, right? And this commitment to charity reminds the cancer person of the essential goodness of humanity and makes him/her feel loved and encouraged because s/he will leave a cancer-curing legacy. But in AIA, Anna decides that being a person with cancer who starts a cancer charity is a bit narcissistic, so she starts a charity called The Anna Foundation for People with Cancer Who Want to Cure Cholera.
Also, Anna is honest about all of it in a way no one else really is: Throughout the book, she refers to herself as the side effect, which is just totally correct. Cancer kids are essentially side effects of the relentless mutation that made the diversity of life on earth possible. So as the story goes on, she gets sicker, the treatments and disease racing to kill her, and her mom falls in love with this Dutch tulip trader Anna calls the Dutch Tulip Man. The Dutch Tulip Man has lots of money and very eccentric ideas about how to treat cancer, but Anna thinks this guy might be a con man and possibly not even Dutch, and then just as the possibly Dutch guy and her mom are about to get married and Anna is about to start this crazy new treatment regimen involving wheatgrass and low doses of arsenic, the book ends right in the middle of a
I know it’s a very literary decision and everything and probably part of the reason I love the book so much, but there is something to recommend a story that ends. And if it can’t end, then it should at least continue into perpetuity like the adventures of Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem’s platoon.
I understood the story ended because Anna died or got too sick to write and this midsentence thing was supposed to reflect how life really ends and whatever, but there were characters other than Anna in the story, and it seemed unfair that I would never find out what happened to them. I’d written, care of his publisher, a dozen letters to Peter Van Houten, each asking for some answers about what happens after the end of the story: whether the Dutch Tulip Man is a con man, whether Anna’s mother ends up married to him, what happens to Anna’s stupid hamster (which her mom hates), whether Anna’s friends graduate from high school—all that stuff. But he’d never responded to any of my letters.
AIA was the only book Peter Van Houten had written, and all anyone seemed to know about him was that after the book came out he moved from the United States to the Netherlands and became kind of reclusive. I imagined that he was working on a sequel set in the Netherlands—maybe Anna’s mom and the Dutch Tulip Man end up moving there and trying to start a new life. But it had been ten years since An Imperial Affliction came out, and Van Houten hadn’t published so much as a blog post. I couldn’t wait forever.
As I reread that night, I kept getting distracted imagining Augustus Waters reading the same words. I wondered if he’d like it, or if he’d dismiss it as pretentious. Then I remembered my promise to call him after reading The Price of Dawn, so I found his number on its title page and texted him.
Price of Dawn review: Too many bodies. Not enough adjectives. How’s AIA?
He replied a minute later:
As I recall, you promised to CALL when you finished the book, not text.
So I called.
“Hazel Grace,” he said upon picking up.
“So have you read it?”
“Well, I haven’t finished it. It’s six hundred fifty-one pages long and I’ve had twenty-four hours. ”
“How far are you?”
“Four fifty-three. ”
“And?”
“I will withhold judgment until I finish. However, I will say that I’m feeling a bit embarrassed to have given you The Price of Dawn. ”
“Don’t be. I’m already on Requiem for Mayhem. ”
“A sparkling addition to the series. So, okay, is the tulip guy a crook? I’m getting a bad vibe from him. ”
“No spoilers,” I said.
“If he is anything other than a total gentleman, I’m going to gouge his eyes out. ”
“So you’re into it. ”
“Withholding judgment! When can I see you?”
“Certainly not until you finish An Imperial Affliction. ” I enjoyed being coy.
