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characters with anyone, that I didn’t even want to share it, because I was a terribly selfish person, and could he please just tell me if the Dutch Tulip Man is for real and if A
But I didn’t send it. It was too pathetic even for me.
A round three, when I figured A ugustus would be home from school, I went into the backyard and called him. A s the phone rang, I sat
down on the grass, which was all overgrown and dandeliony. That swing set was still back there, weeds growing out of the little ditch I’d
created from kicking myself higher as a little kid. I remembered Dad bringing home the kit from Toys “R” Us and building it in the backyard with a neighbor. He’d insisted on swinging on it first to test it, and the thing damn near broke.
The sky was gray and low and full of rain but not yet raining. I hung up when I got A ugustus’s voice mail and then put the phone down
in the dirt beside me and kept looking at the swing set, thinking that I would give up all the sick days I had left for a few healthy ones. I tried to tell myself that it could be worse, that the world was not a wish-granting factory, that I was living with cancer not dying of it, that I mustn’t let it kill me before it kills me, and then I just started muttering stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid over and over again until the sound unhinged from its meaning. I was still saying it when he called back.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hazel Grace,” he said.
“Hi,” I said again.
“A re you crying, Hazel Grace?”
“Kind of?”
“Why?” he asked.
“’Cause I’m just—I want to go to A msterdam, and I want him to tell me what happens after the book is over, and I just don’t want my
particular life, and also the sky is depressing me, and there is this old swing set out here that my dad made for me when I was a kid.”
“I must see this old swing set of tears immediately,” he said. “I’ll be over in twenty minutes.”
I stayed in the backyard because Mom was always really smothery and concerned when I was crying, because I did not cry often, and I knew
she’d want to talk and discuss whether I shouldn’t consider adjusting my medication, and the thought of that whole conversation made me
want to throw up.
It’s not like I had some utterly poignant, well-lit memory of a healthy father pushing a healthy child and the child saying higher higher
higher or some other metaphorically resonant moment. The swing set was just sitting there, abandoned, the two little swings hanging still
and sad from a grayed plank of wood, the outline of the seats like a kid’s drawing of a smile.
Behind me, I heard the sliding-glass door open. I turned around. It was A ugustus, wearing khaki pants and a short-sleeve plaid button-
down. I wiped my face with my sleeve and smiled. “Hi,” I said.
It took him a second to sit down on the ground next to me, and he grimaced as he landed rather ungracefully on his ass. “Hi,” he said
finally. I looked over at him. He was looking past me, into the backyard. “I see your point,” he said as he put an arm around my shoulder.
“That is one sad goddamned swing set.”
I nudged my head into his shoulder. “Thanks for offering to come over.”
“You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you,” he said.
“I guess?” I said.
“A ll efforts to save me from you will fail,” he said.
“Why? Why would you even like me? Haven’t you put yourself through enough of this?” I asked, thinking of Caroline Mathers.
Gus didn’t answer. He just held on to me, his fingers strong against my left arm. “We gotta do something about this frigging swing set,”
he said. “I’m telling you, it’s ninety percent of the problem.”
Once I’d recovered, we went inside and sat down on the couch right next to each other, the laptop half on his (fake) knee and half on mine.
“Hot,” I said of the laptop’s base.
“Is it now?” He smiled. Gus loaded this giveaway site called Free No Catch and together we wrote an ad.
“Headline?” he asked.
“‘Swing Set Needs Home,’” I said.
“‘Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home,’” he said.
“‘Lonely, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set Seeks the Butts of Children,’” I said.
He laughed. “That’s why.”
“What?”
“That’s why I like you. Do you realize how rare it is to come across a hot girl who creates an adjectival version of the word pedophile?
You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.”
I took a deep breath through my nose. There was never enough air in the world, but the shortage was particularly acute in that moment.
We wrote the ad together, editing each other as we went. In the end, we settled upon this:
Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home
One swing set, well worn but structurally sound, seeks new home. Make memories with your kid or kids so that someday he or she or
they will look into the backyard and feel the ache of sentimentality as desperately as I did this afternoon. It’s all fragile and fleeting, dear reader, but with this swing set, your child(ren) will be introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely, and may also
learn the most important lesson of all: No matter how hard you kick, no matter how high you get, you can’t go all the way around.
Swing set currently resides near 83rd and Spring Mill.
A fter that, we turned on the TV for a little while, but we couldn’t find anything to watch, so I grabbed A n Imperial A ffliction off the bedside table and brought it back into the living room and A ugustus Waters read to me while Mom, making lunch, listened in.
“‘Mother’s glass eye turned inward,’” A ugustus began. A s he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.
When I checked my email an hour later, I learned that we had plenty of swing-set suitors to choose from. In the end, we picked a guy named
Daniel A lvarez who’d included a picture of his three kids playing video games with the subject line I just want them to go outside. I emailed him back and told him to pick it up at his leisure.
A ugustus asked if I wanted to go with him to Support Group, but I was really tired from my busy day of Having Cancer, so I passed. We
were sitting there on the couch together, and he pushed himself up to go but then fell back down onto the couch and sneaked a kiss onto my
cheek.
“A ugustus!” I said.
“Friendly,” he said. He pushed himself up again and really stood this time, then took two steps over to my mom and said, “A lways a
pleasure to see you,” and my mom opened her arms to hug him, whereupon A ugustus leaned in and kissed my mom on the cheek. He turned
back to me. “See?” he asked.
I went to bed right after di
I never saw the swing set again.
* * *
I slept for a long time, ten hours, possibly because of the slow recovery and possibly because sleep fights cancer and possibly because I was a teenager with no particular wake-up time. I wasn’t strong enough yet to go back to classes at MCC. When I finally felt like getting up, I
removed the BiPA P snout from my nose, put my oxygen nubbins in, turned them on, and then grabbed my laptop from beneath my bed,
where I’d stashed it the night before.
I had an email from Lidewij Vliegenthart.
Dear Hazel,
I have received word via the Genies that you will be visiting us with A ugustus Waters and your mother begi