CHAPTER ONE. Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house

L ate 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. Almost everything is, real y.) 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 total y 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 unwel ness. Why did the cast rotate? A side effect of

dying.

The Support Group, of course, was depressing as hel. It met every Wednesday in the basement of a stone-wal ed Episcopal church shaped like a

cross. We al 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, al 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 bal s

and they thought he was going to die but he didn’t die and now here he is, a ful -grown adult in a church basement in the 137th nicest city in America,

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 wil not improve his career prospects, waiting, as we al 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 cal his life.

AND YOU TOO MIGHT BE SO LUCKY!

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

original y but with an impressive and long-settled satel ite colony in my lungs. And I’m doing okay.

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

fighting and battling and winning and shrinking and scanning. To be fair to Patrick, he let us talk about dying, too. But most of them weren’t dying. Most

would live into adulthood, as Patrick had.

(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 tel 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.)

The only redeeming facet of Support Group was this kid named Isaac, a long-faced, skinny guy with straight blond hair swept over one eye.

And his eyes were the problem. He had some fantastical y improbable eye cancer. One eye had been cut out when he was a kid, and now he wore

the kind of thick glasses that made his eyes (both the real one and the glass one) preternatural y huge, like his whole head was basical y just this fake eye and this real eye staring at you. From what I could gather on the rare occasions when Isaac shared with the group, a recurrence had placed his remaining

eye in mortal peril.

Isaac and I communicated almost exclusively through sighs. Each time someone discussed anticancer diets or snorting ground-up shark fin or

whatever, he’d glance over at me and sigh ever so slightly. I’d shake my head microscopical y and exhale in response.

So Support Group blew, and after a few weeks, I grew to be rather kicking-and-screaming about the whole affair. In fact, on the Wednesday I made the

acquaintance of Augustus Waters, I tried my level best to get out of Support Group while sitting on the couch with my mom in the third leg of a twelve-hour

marathon of the previous season’s America’s Next Top Model, which admittedly I had already seen, but stil.

Me: “I refuse to attend Support Group.”

Mom: “One of the symptoms of depression is disinterest in activities.”

Me: “Please just let me watch America’s Next Top Model. It’s an activity.”

Mom: “Television is a passivity.”

Me: “Ugh, Mom, please.”

Mom: “Hazel, you’re a teenager. You’re not a little kid anymore. You need to make friends, get out of the house, and live your life.”

Me: “If you want me to be a teenager, don’t send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot.”

Mom: “You don’t take pot, for starters.”

Me: “See, that’s the kind of thing I’d know if you got me a fake ID.”

Mom: “You’re going to Support Group.”

Me: “UGGGGGGGGGGGGG.”

Mom: “Hazel, you deserve a life.”

That shut me up, although I failed to see how attendance at Support Group met the definition of life. Stil, I agreed to go—after negotiating the right to record the 1.5 episodes of ANTM I’d be missing.

I went to Support Group for the same reason that I’d once al owed nurses with a mere eighteen months of graduate education to poison me with

exotical y named chemicals: I wanted to make my parents happy. There is only one thing in this world shittier than biting it from cancer when you’re

sixteen, and that’s having a kid who bites it from cancer.

Mom pul ed into the circular driveway behind the church at 4:56. I pretended to fiddle with my oxygen tank for a second just to kil time.

“Do you want me to carry it in for you?”

“No, it’s fine,” I said. The cylindrical green tank only weighed a few pounds, and I had this little steel cart to wheel it around behind me. It delivered two liters of oxygen to me each minute through a cannula, a transparent tube that split just beneath my neck, wrapped behind my ears, and then reunited in my

nostrils. The contraption was necessary because my lungs sucked at being lungs.

“I love you,” she said as I got out.

“You too, Mom. See you at six.”

“Make friends!” she said through the rol ed-down window as I walked away.

I didn’t want to take the elevator because taking the elevator is a Last Days kind of activity at Support Group, so I took the stairs. I grabbed a cookie

and poured some lemonade into a Dixie cup and then turned around.

A boy was staring at me.

I was quite sure I’d never seen him before. Long and leanly muscular, he dwarfed the molded plastic elementary school chair he was sitting in.

Mahogany hair, straight and short. He looked my age, maybe a year older, and he sat with his tailbone against the edge of the chair, his posture

aggressively poor, one hand half in a pocket of dark jeans.

I looked away, suddenly conscious of my myriad insufficiencies. I was wearing old jeans, which had once been tight but now sagged in weird places,

and a yel ow T-shirt advertising a band I didn’t even like anymore. Also my hair: I had this pageboy haircut, and I hadn’t even bothered to, like, brush it.

Furthermore, I had ridiculously fat chipmunked cheeks, a side effect of treatment. I looked like a normal y proportioned person with a bal oon for a head.

This was not even to mention the cankle situation. And yet—I cut a glance to him, and his eyes were stil on me.

It occurred to me why they cal it eye contact.

I walked into the circle and sat down next to Isaac, two seats away from the boy. I glanced again. He was stil watching me.

Look, let me just say it: He was hot. A nonhot boy stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward and, at worst, a form of assault. But a hot

boy... wel.

I pul ed out my phone and clicked it so it would display the time: 4:59. The circle fil ed in with the unlucky twelve-to-eighteens, and then Patrick started us out with the serenity prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. The guy was stil staring at me. I felt rather blushy.

Final y, I decided that the proper strategy was to stare back. Boys do not have a monopoly on the Staring Business, after al. So I looked him over as

Patrick acknowledged for the thousandth time his bal -lessness etc., and soon it was a staring contest. After a while the boy smiled, and then final y his

blue eyes glanced away. When he looked back at me, I flicked my eyebrows up to say, I win.

He shrugged. Patrick continued and then final y it was time for the introductions. “Isaac, perhaps you’d like to go first today. I know you’re facing a

chal enging time.”

“Yeah,” Isaac said. “I’m Isaac. I’m seventeen. And it’s looking like I have to get surgery in a couple weeks, after which I’l be blind. Not to complain or

anything because I know a lot of us have it worse, but yeah, I mean, being blind does sort of suck. My girlfriend helps, though. And friends like Augustus.”

He nodded toward the boy, who now had a name. “So, yeah,” Isaac continued. He was looking at his hands, which he’d folded into each other like the top

of a tepee. “There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“We’re here for you, Isaac,” Patrick said. “Let Isaac hear it, guys.” And then we al, in a monotone, said, “We’re here for you, Isaac.”

Michael was next. He was twelve. He had leukemia. He’d always had leukemia. He was okay. (Or so he said. He’d taken the elevator.)

Lida was sixteen, and pretty enough to be the object of the hot boy’s eye. She was a regular—in a long remission from appendiceal cancer, which I

had not previously known existed. She said—as she had every other time I’d attended Support Group—that she felt strong, which felt like bragging to me as the oxygen-drizzling nubs tickled my nostrils.

There were five others before they got to him. He smiled a little when his turn came. His voice was low, smoky, and dead sexy. “My name is Augustus

Waters,” he said. “I’m seventeen. I had a little touch of osteosarcoma a year and a half ago, but I’m just here today at Isaac’s request.”

“And how are you feeling?” asked Patrick.

“Oh, I’m grand.” Augustus Waters smiled with a corner of his mouth. “I’m on a rol er coaster that only goes up, my friend.”

When it was my turn, I said, “My name is Hazel. I’m sixteen. Thyroid with mets in my lungs. I’m okay.”

The hour proceeded apace: Fights were recounted, battles won amid wars sure to be lost; hope was clung to; families were both celebrated and

denounced; it was agreed that friends just didn’t get it; tears were shed; comfort proffered. Neither Augustus Waters nor I spoke again until Patrick said,

“Augustus, perhaps you’d like to share your fears with the group.”

“My fears?”

“Yes.”

“I fear oblivion,” he said without a moment’s pause. “I fear it like the proverbial blind man who’s afraid of the dark.”

“Too soon,” Isaac said, cracking a smile.

“Was that insensitive?” Augustus asked. “I can be pretty blind to other people’s feelings.”

Isaac was laughing, but Patrick raised a chastening finger and said, “Augustus, please. Let’s return to you and your struggles. You said you fear oblivion?”

“I did,” Augustus answered.

Patrick seemed lost. “Would, uh, would anyone like to speak to that?”

I hadn’t been in proper school in three years. My parents were my two best friends. My third best friend was an author who did not know I existed. I

was a fairly shy person—not the hand-raising type.

And yet, just this once, I decided to speak. I half raised my hand and Patrick, his delight evident, immediately said, “Hazel!” I was, I’m sure he

assumed, opening up. Becoming Part Of The Group.

I looked over at Augustus Waters, who looked back at me. You could almost see through his eyes they were so blue. “There wil come a time,” I said,

“when al of us are dead. Al of us. There wil come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our

species ever did anything. There wil be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and

thought and discovered wil be forgotten and al of this”—I gestured encompassingly—“wil have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and

maybe it is mil ions of years away, but even if we survive the col apse of our sun, we wil not survive forever. There was time before organisms

experienced consciousness, and there wil be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows

that’s what everyone else does.”

I’d learned this from my aforementioned third best friend, Peter Van Houten, the reclusive author of An Imperial Affliction, the book that was as close a thing as I had to a Bible. Peter Van Houten was the only person I’d ever come across who seemed to (a) understand what it’s like to be dying, and (b)

not have died.

After I finished, there was quite a long period of silence as I watched a smile spread al the way across Augustus’s face—not the little crooked smile

of the boy trying to be sexy while he stared at me, but his real smile, too big for his face. “Goddamn,” Augustus said quietly. “Aren’t you something else.”

Neither of us said anything for the rest of Support Group. At the end, we al had to hold hands, and Patrick led us in a prayer. “Lord Jesus Christ, we

are gathered here in Your heart, literally in Your heart, as cancer survivors. You and You alone know us as we know ourselves. Guide us to life and the Light through our times of trial. We pray for Isaac’s eyes, for Michael’s and Jamie’s blood, for Augustus’s bones, for Hazel’s lungs, for James’s throat. We pray that You might heal us and that we might feel Your love, and Your peace, which passes al understanding. And we remember in our hearts those

whom we knew and loved who have gone home to you: Maria and Kade and Joseph and Haley and Abigail and Angelina and Taylor and Gabriel and...”

It was a long list. The world contains a lot of dead people. And while Patrick droned on, reading the list from a sheet of paper because it was too long

to memorize, I kept my eyes closed, trying to think prayerful y but mostly imagining the day when my name would find its way onto that list, al the way at the end when everyone had stopped listening.

When Patrick was finished, we said this stupid mantra together—LIVING OUR BEST LIFE TODAY—and it was over. Augustus Waters pushed

himself out of his chair and walked over to me. His gait was crooked like his smile. He towered over me, but he kept his distance so I wouldn’t have to

crane my neck to look him in the eye. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Hazel.”

“No, your ful name.”

“Um, Hazel Grace Lancaster.” He was just about to say something else when Isaac walked up. “Hold on,” Augustus said, raising a finger, and turned

to Isaac. “That was actual y worse than you made it out to be.”

“I told you it was bleak.”

“Why do you bother with it?”

“I don’t know. It kind of helps?”

Augustus leaned in so he thought I couldn’t hear. “She’s a regular?” I couldn’t hear Isaac’s comment, but Augustus responded, “I’l say.” He clasped

Isaac by both shoulders and then took a half step away from him. “Tel Hazel about clinic.”

Isaac leaned a hand against the snack table and focused his huge eye on me. “Okay, so I went into clinic this morning, and I was tel ing my surgeon

that I’d rather be deaf than blind. And he said, ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ and I was, like, ‘Yeah, I realize it doesn’t work that way; I’m just saying I’d rather be deaf than blind if I had the choice, which I realize I don’t have,’ and he said, ‘Wel, the good news is that you won’t be deaf,’ and I was like, ‘Thank you for explaining that my eye cancer isn’t going to make me deaf. I feel so fortunate that an intel ectual giant like yourself would deign to operate on me.’”

“He sounds like a winner,” I said. “I’m gonna try to get me some eye cancer just so I can make this guy’s acquaintance.”

“Good luck with that. Al right, I should go. Monica’s waiting for me. I gotta look at her a lot while I can.”

“Counterinsurgence tomorrow?” Augustus asked.

“Definitely.” Isaac turned and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Augustus Waters turned to me. “Literal y,” he said.

“Literal y?” I asked.

“We are literal y in the heart of Jesus,” he said. “I thought we were in a church basement, but we are literal y in the heart of Jesus.”

“Someone should tel Jesus,” I said. “I mean, it’s gotta be dangerous, storing children with cancer in your heart.”

“I would tel Him myself,” Augustus said, “but unfortunately I am literal y stuck inside of His heart, so He won’t be able to hear me.” I laughed. He shook

his head, just looking at me.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Augustus half smiled. “Because you’re beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler

pleasures of existence.” A brief awkward silence ensued. Augustus plowed through: “I mean, particularly given that, as you so deliciously pointed out, al of this wil end in oblivion and everything.”

I kind of scoffed or sighed or exhaled in a way that was vaguely coughy and then said, “I’m not beau—”

“You’re like a mil ennial Natalie Portman. Like V for Vendetta Natalie Portman.”

“Never seen it,” I said.

“Real y?” he asked. “Pixie-haired gorgeous girl dislikes authority and can’t help but fal for a boy she knows is trouble. It’s your autobiography, so far

as I can tel.”

His every syl able flirted. Honestly, he kind of turned me on. I didn’t even know that guys could turn me on—not, like, in real life.

A younger girl walked past us. “How’s it going, Alisa?” he asked. She smiled and mumbled, “Hi, Augustus.” “Memorial people,” he explained.

Memorial was the big research hospital. “Where do you go?”

“Children’s,” I said, my voice smal er than I expected it to be. He nodded. The conversation seemed over. “Wel,” I said, nodding vaguely toward the

steps that led us out of the Literal Heart of Jesus. I tilted my cart onto its wheels and started walking. He limped beside me. “So, see you next time,

maybe?” I asked.

“You should see it,” he said. “ V for Vendetta, I mean.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’l look it up.”

“No. With me. At my house,” he said. “Now.”

I stopped walking. “I hardly know you, Augustus Waters. You could be an ax murderer.”

He nodded. “True enough, Hazel Grace.” He walked past me, his shoulders fil ing out his green knit polo shirt, his back straight, his steps lilting just

slightly to the right as he walked steady and confident on what I had determined was a prosthetic leg. Osteosarcoma sometimes takes a limb to check

you out. Then, if it likes you, it takes the rest.

I fol owed him upstairs, losing ground as I made my way up slowly, stairs not being a field of expertise for my lungs.

And then we were out of Jesus’s heart and in the parking lot, the spring air just on the cold side of perfect, the late-afternoon light heavenly in its

hurtfulness.

Mom wasn’t there yet, which was unusual, because Mom was almost always waiting for me. I glanced around and saw that a tal, curvy brunette girl

had Isaac pinned against the stone wal of the church, kissing him rather aggressively. They were close enough to me that I could hear the weird noises of

their mouths together, and I could hear him saying, “Always,” and her saying, “Always,” in return.

Suddenly standing next to me, Augustus half whispered, “They’re big believers in PDA.”

“What’s with the ‘always’?” The slurping sounds intensified.

“Always is their thing. They’l always love each other and whatever. I would conservatively estimate they have texted each other the word always four mil ion times in the last year.”

A couple more cars drove up, taking Michael and Alisa away. It was just Augustus and me now, watching Isaac and Monica, who proceeded apace

as if they were not leaning against a place of worship. His hand reached for her boob over her shirt and pawed at it, his palm stil while his fingers moved around. I wondered if that felt good. Didn’t seem like it would, but I decided to forgive Isaac on the grounds that he was going blind. The senses must feast while there is yet hunger and whatever.

“Imagine taking that last drive to the hospital,” I said quietly. “The last time you’l ever drive a car.”

Without looking over at me, Augustus said, “You’re kil ing my vibe here, Hazel Grace. I’m trying to observe young love in its many-splendored

awkwardness.”

“I think he’s hurting her boob,” I said.

“Yes, it’s difficult to ascertain whether he is trying to arouse her or perform a breast exam.” Then Augustus Waters reached into a pocket and pul ed

out, of al things, a pack of cigarettes. He flipped it open and put a cigarette between his lips.

“Are you serious?” I asked. “You think that’s cool? Oh, my God, you just ruined the whole thing. ”

“Which whole thing?” he asked, turning to me. The cigarette dangled unlit from the unsmiling corner of his mouth.

“The whole thing where a boy who is not unattractive or unintel igent or seemingly in any way unacceptable stares at me and points out incorrect uses

of literality and compares me to actresses and asks me to watch a movie at his house. But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER. Oh, my

God. Let me just assure you that not being able to breathe? SUCKS. Total y disappointing. Totally. ”

“A hamartia?” he asked, the cigarette stil in his mouth. It tightened his jaw. He had a hel of a jawline, unfortunately.

“A fatal flaw,” I explained, turning away from him. I stepped toward the curb, leaving Augustus Waters behind me, and then I heard a car start down

the street. It was Mom. She’d been waiting for me to, like, make friends or whatever.

I felt this weird mix of disappointment and anger wel ing up inside of me. I don’t even know what the feeling was, real y, just that there was a lot of it, and I wanted to smack Augustus Waters and also replace my lungs with lungs that didn’t suck at being lungs. I was standing with my Chuck Taylors on the

very edge of the curb, the oxygen tank bal -and-chaining in the cart by my side, and right as my mom pul ed up, I felt a hand grab mine.

I yanked my hand free but turned back to him.

“They don’t kil you unless you light them,” he said as Mom arrived at the curb. “And I’ve never lit one. It’s a metaphor, see: You put the kil ing thing

right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its kil ing.”

“It’s a metaphor,” I said, dubious. Mom was just idling.

“It’s a metaphor,” he said.

“You choose your behaviors based on their metaphorical resonances...” I said.

“Oh, yes.” He smiled. The big, goofy, real smile. “I’m a big believer in metaphor, Hazel Grace.”

I turned to the car. Tapped the window. It rol ed down. “I’m going to a movie with Augustus Waters,” I said. “Please record the next several episodes

of the ANTM marathon for me.”

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