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our skin. Gus squeezed my hand. “It is a good life, Hazel Grace.”
We went inside when he needed meds, which were pressed into him along with liquid nutrition through his G-tube, a bit of plastic that
disappeared into his belly. He was quiet for a while, zoned out. His mom wanted him to take a nap, but he kept shaking his head no when she suggested it, so we just let him sit there half asleep in the chair for a while.
His parents watched an old video of Gus with his sisters—they were probably my age and Gus was about five. They were playing
basketball in the driveway of a different house, and even though Gus was tiny, he could dribble like he’d been born doing it, ru
“Should’ve seen him in high school,” his dad said. “Started varsity as a freshman.”
Gus mumbled, “Can I go downstairs?”
His mom and dad wheeled the chair downstairs with Gus still in it, bouncing down crazily in a way that would have been dangerous if
danger retained its relevance, and then they left us alone. He got into bed and we lay there together under the covers, me on my side and Gus on his back, my head on his bony shoulder, his heat radiating through his polo shirt and into my skin, my feet tangled with his real foot, my hand on his cheek.
When I got his face nose-touchingly close so that I could only see his eyes, I couldn’t tell he was sick. We kissed for a while and then lay together listening to The Hectic Glow’s eponymous album, and eventually we fell asleep like that, a quantum entanglement of tubes and
bodies.
We woke up later and arranged an armada of pillows so that we could sit comfortably against the edge of the bed and played
Counterinsurgence 2: The Price of Dawn. I sucked at it, of course, but my sucking was useful to him: It made it easier for him to die
beautifully, to jump in front of a sniper’s bullet and sacrifice himself for me, or else to kill a sentry who was just about to shoot me. How he reveled in saving me. He shouted, “You will not kill my girlfriend today, International Terrorist of A mbiguous Nationality!”
It crossed my mind to fake a choking incident or something so that he might give me the Heimlich. Maybe then he could rid himself of
this fear that his life had been lived and lost for no greater good. But then I imagined him being physically unable to Heimlich, and me having to reveal that it was all a ruse, and the ensuing mutual humiliation.
It’s hard as hell to hold on to your dignity when the risen sun is too bright in your losing eyes, and that’s what I was thinking about as we hunted for bad guys through the ruins of a city that didn’t exist.
Finally, his dad came down and dragged Gus back upstairs, and in the entryway, beneath an Encouragement telling me that Friends A re
Forever, I knelt to kiss him good night. I went home and ate di
A fter some TV, I went to sleep.
I woke up.
A round noon, I went over there again.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
One morning, a month after returning home from Amsterdam, I drove over to his house. His parents told me he was still sleeping
downstairs, so I knocked loudly on the basement door before entering, then asked, “Gus?”
I found him mumbling in a language of his own creation. He’d pissed the bed. It was awful. I couldn’t even look, really. I just shouted for his parents and they came down, and I went upstairs while they cleaned him up.
When I came back down, he was slowly waking up out of the narcotics to the excruciating day. I arranged his pillows so we could play
Counterinsurgence on the bare sheetless mattress, but he was so tired and out of it that he sucked almost as bad as I did, and we couldn’t go five minutes without both getting dead. Not fancy heroic deaths either, just careless ones.
I didn’t really say anything to him. I almost wanted him to forget I was there, I guess, and I was hoping he didn’t remember that I’d
found the boy I love deranged in a wide pool of his own piss. I kept kind of hoping that he’d look over at me and say, “Oh, Hazel Grace.
How’d you get here?”
But unfortunately, he remembered. “With each passing minute, I’m developing a deeper appreciation of the word mortified,” he said
finally.
“I’ve pissed the bed, Gus, believe me. It’s no big deal.”
“You used,” he said, and then took a sharp breath, “to call me A ugustus.”
“You know,” he said after a while, “it’s kids’ stuff, but I always thought my obituary would be in all the newspapers, that I’d have a story worth telling. I always had this secret suspicion that I was special.”
“You are,” I said.
“You know what I mean, though,” he said.
I did know what he meant. I just didn’t agree. “I don’t care if the New York Times writes an obituary for me. I just want you to write
one,” I told him. “You say you’re not special because the world doesn’t know about you, but that’s an insult to me. I know about you.”
“I don’t think I’m go
I was so frustrated with him. “I just want to be enough for you, but I never can be. This can never be enough for you. But this is all you
get. You get me, and your family, and this world. This is your life. I’m sorry if it sucks. But you’re not going to be the first man on Mars, and you’re not going to be an NBA star, and you’re not going to hunt Nazis. I mean, look at yourself, Gus.” He didn’t respond. “I don’t mean—” I started.
“Oh, you meant it,” he interrupted. I started to apologize and he said, “No, I’m sorry. You’re right. Let’s just play.”
So we just played.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Iwoke up to my phone singing a song by The Hectic Glow. Gus’s favorite. That meant he was calling—or someone was calling from his
phone. I glanced at the alarm clock: 2:35 A.M. He’s gone, I thought as everything inside of me collapsed into a singularity.
I could barely creak out a “Hello?”
I waited for the sound of a parent’s a
“Hazel Grace,” A ugustus said weakly.
“Oh, thank God it’s you. Hi. Hi, I love you.”
“Hazel Grace, I’m at the gas station. Something’s wrong. You gotta help me.”
“What? Where are you?”
“The Speedway at Eighty-sixth and Ditch. I did something wrong with the G-tube and I can’t figure it out and—”
“I’m calling nine-one-one,” I said.
“No no no no no, they’ll take me to a hospital. Hazel, listen to me. Do not call nine-one-one or my parents I will never forgive you don’t
please just come please just come and fix my goddamned G-tube. I’m just, God, this is the stupidest thing. I don’t want my parents to know
I’m gone. Please. I have the medicine with me; I just can’t get it in. Please.” He was crying. I’d never heard him sob like this except from outside his house before A msterdam.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m leaving now.”
I took the BiPA P off and co
pajama pants and a Butler basketball T-shirt, which had originally been Gus’s. I grabbed the keys from the kitchen drawer where Mom kept
them and wrote a note in case they woke up while I was gone.
Went to check on Gus. It’s important. Sorry.
Love, H
A s I drove the couple miles to the gas station, I woke up enough to wonder why Gus had left the house in the middle of the night. Maybe
he’d been hallucinating, or his martyrdom fantasies had gotten the better of him.