The Fault in Our Stars

ALSO BY JOHN GREEN

Looking for A laska

A n A bundance of Katherines

Paper Towns

Will Grayson, Will Grayson

W IT H DAVID LEVIT HAN

DUTTON BOOKS| An imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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T O EST HER EARL

Contents

EPIGRA PH

A UTHOR’S NOTE

CHA PTER ONE

CHA PTER TWO

CHA PTER THREE

CHA PTER FOUR

CHA PTER FIVE

CHA PTER SIX

CHA PTER SEVEN

CHA PTER EIGHT

CHA PTER NINE

CHA PTER TEN

CHA PTER ELEVEN

CHA PTER TWELVE

CHA PTER THIRTEEN

CHA PTER FOURTEEN

CHA PTER FIFTEEN

CHA PTER SIXTEEN

CHA PTER SEVENTEEN

CHA PTER EIGHTEEN

CHA PTER NINETEEN

CHA PTER TWENTY

CHA PTER TWENTY-ONE

CHA PTER TWENTY-TWO

CHA PTER TWENTY-THREE

CHA PTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHA PTER TWENTY-FIVE

A s the tide washed in, the Dutch Tulip Man faced the ocean: “Conjoiner rejoinder poisoner concealer revelator. Look at it, rising up and

rising down, taking everything with it.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Water,” the Dutchman said. “Well, and time.”

—PETER VAN HOUTEN, An Imperial Affliction

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This is not so much an author’s note as an author’s reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago: This book is a work of

fiction. I made it up.

Neither novels nor their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea

that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.

I appreciate your cooperation in this matter.

CHAPTER ONE

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.

Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact,

depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer is also a side effect of dying. A lmost everything is, really.) But my mom believed I required treatment, so she took me to see my Regular Doctor Jim, who agreed that I was veritably swimming

in a paralyzing and totally clinical depression, and that therefore my meds should be adjusted and also I should attend a weekly Support

Group.

This Support Group featured a rotating cast of characters in various states of tumor-driven unwellness. Why did the cast rotate? A side

effect of dying.

The Support Group, of course, was depressing as hell. It met every Wednesday in the basement of a stone-walled Episcopal church

shaped like a cross. We all sat in a circle right in the middle of the cross, where the two boards would have met, where the heart of Jesus would have been.

I noticed this because Patrick, the Support Group Leader and only person over eighteen in the room, talked about the heart of Jesus

every freaking meeting, all about how we, as young cancer survivors, were sitting right in Christ’s very sacred heart and whatever.

So here’s how it went in God’s heart: The six or seven or ten of us walked/wheeled in, grazed at a decrepit selection of cookies and

lemonade, sat down in the Circle of Trust, and listened to Patrick recount for the thousandth time his depressingly miserable life story—how he had cancer in his balls and they thought he was going to die but he didn’t die and now here he is, a full-grown adult in a church basement in the 137th nicest city in A merica, divorced, addicted to video games, mostly friendless, eking out a meager living by exploiting his

cancertastic past, slowly working his way toward a master’s degree that will not improve his career prospects, waiting, as we all do, for the sword of Damocles to give him the relief that he escaped lo those many years ago when cancer took both of his nuts but spared what only the most generous soul would call his life.

A ND YOU TOO MIGHT BE SO LUCKY!

Then we introduced ourselves: Name. A ge. Diagnosis. A nd how we’re doing today. I’m Hazel, I’d say when they’d get to me. Sixteen.

Thyroid originally but with an impressive and long-settled satellite colony in my lungs. A nd I’m doing okay.

Once we got around the circle, Patrick always asked if anyone wanted to share. A nd then began the circle jerk of support: everyone

talking about fighting and battling and wi

(Which meant there was quite a lot of competitiveness about it, with everybody wanting to beat not only cancer itself, but also the other

people in the room. Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure that’s one in five . . . so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these bastards.)