AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Then I’d better hang up and start reading. ”
“You’d better,” I said, and the line clicked dead without another word.
Flirting was new to me, but I liked it.
The next morning I had Twentieth-Century American Poetry at MCC. This old woman gave a lecture wherein she managed to talk for ninety minutes about Sylvia Plath without ever once quoting a single word of Sylvia Plath.
When I got out of class, Mom was idling at the curb in front of the building.
“Did you just wait here the entire time?” I asked as she hurried around to help me haul my cart and tank into the car.
“No, I picked up the dry cleaning and went to the post office. ”
“And then?”
“I have a book to read,” she said.
“And I’m the one who needs to get a life. ” I smiled, and she tried to smile back, but there was something flimsy in it. After a second, I said, “Wanna go to a movie?”
“Sure. Anything you’ve been wanting to see?”
“Let’s just do the thing where we go and see whatever starts next. ” She closed the door for me and walked around to the driver’s side. We drove over to the Castleton theater and watched a 3-D movie about talking gerbils. It was kind of funny, actually.
When I got out of the movie, I had four text messages from Augustus.
Tell me my copy is missing the last twenty pages or something.
Hazel Grace, tell me I have not reached the end of this book.
OH MY GOD DO THEY GET MARRIED OR NOT OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS
I guess Anna died and so it just ends? CRUEL. Call me when you can. Hope all’s okay.
So when I got home I went out into the backyard and sat down on this rusting latticed patio chair and called him. It was a cloudy day, typical Indiana: the kind of weather that boxes you in. Our little backyard was dominated by my childhood swing set, which was looking pretty waterlogged and pathetic.
Augustus picked up on the third ring. “Hazel Grace,” he said.
“So welcome to the sweet torture of reading An Imperial—” I stopped when I heard violent sobbing on the other end of the line. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m grand,” Augustus answered. “I am, however, with Isaac, who seems to be decompensating. ” More wailing. Like the death cries of some injured animal. Gus turned his attention to Isaac. “Dude. Dude. Does Support Group Hazel make this better or worse? Isaac. Focus. On. Me. ” After a minute, Gus said to me, “Can you meet us at my house in, say, twenty minutes?”
“Sure,” I said, and hung up.
If you could drive in a straight line, it would only take like five minutes
to get from my house to Augustus’s house, but you can’t drive in a straight line because Holliday Park is between us.
Even though it was a geographic inconvenience, I really liked Holliday Park. When I was a little kid, I would wade in the White River with my dad and there was always this great moment when he would throw me up in the air, just toss me away from him, and I would reach out my arms as I flew and he would reach out his arms, and then we would both see that our arms were not going to touch and no one was going to catch me, and it would kind of scare the shit out of both of us in the best possible way, and then I would legs-flailingly hit the water and then come up for air uninjured and the current would bring me back to him as I said again, Daddy, again.
I pulled into the driveway right next to an old black Toyota sedan I figured was Isaac’s car. Carting the tank behind me, I walked up to the door. I knocked. Gus’s dad answered.
“Just Hazel,” he said. “Nice to see you. ”
“Augustus said I could come over?”
“Yeah, he and Isaac are in the basement. ” At which point there was a wail from below. “That would be Isaac,” Gus’s dad said, and shook his head slowly. “Cindy had to go for a drive. The sound . . . ” he said, drifting off. “Anyway, I guess you’re wanted downstairs. Can I carry your, uh, tank?” he asked.
“Nah, I’m good. Thanks, though, Mr. Waters. ”
