CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A typical day with late-stage Gus:

I went over to his house about noon, after he had eaten and puked up breakfast. He met me at the door in his wheelchair, no longer the muscular,

gorgeous boy who stared at me at Support Group, but stil half smiling, stil smoking his unlit cigarette, his blue eyes bright and alive.

We ate lunch with his parents at the dining room table. Peanut-butter-and-jel y sandwiches and last night’s asparagus. Gus didn’t eat. I asked how he

was feeling.

“Grand,” he said. “And you?”

“Good. What’d you do last night?”

“I slept quite a lot. I want to write you a sequel, Hazel Grace, but I’m just so damned tired al the time.”

“You can just tel it to me,” I said.

“Wel, I stand by my pre–Van Houten analysis of the Dutch Tulip Man. Not a con man, but not as rich as he was letting on.”

“And what about Anna’s mom?”

“Haven’t settled on an opinion there. Patience, Grasshopper.” Augustus smiled. His parents were quiet, watching him, never looking away, like they

just wanted to enjoy The Gus Waters Show while it was stil in town. “Sometimes I dream that I’m writing a memoir. A memoir would be just the thing to

keep me in the hearts and memories of my adoring public.”

“Why do you need an adoring public when you’ve got me?” I asked.

“Hazel Grace, when you’re as charming and physical y attractive as myself, it’s easy enough to win over people you meet. But getting strangers to

love you... now, that’s the trick.”

I rol ed my eyes.

After lunch, we went outside to the backyard. He was stil wel enough to push his own wheelchair, pul ing miniature wheelies to get the front wheels over

the bump in the doorway. Stil athletic, in spite of it al, blessed with balance and quick reflexes that even the abundant narcotics could not ful y mask.

His parents stayed inside, but when I glanced back into the dining room, they were always watching us.

We sat out there in silence for a minute and then Gus said, “I wish we had that swing set sometimes.”

“The one from my backyard?”

“Yeah. My nostalgia is so extreme that I am capable of missing a swing my butt never actual y touched.”

“Nostalgia is a side effect of cancer,” I told him.

“Nah, nostalgia is a side effect of dying,” he answered. Above us, the wind blew and the branching shadows rearranged themselves on 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 bel y. 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 basketbal in the

driveway of a different house, and even though Gus was tiny, he could dribble like he’d been born doing it, running circles around his sisters as they

laughed. It was the first time I’d even seen him play basketbal. “He was good,” I said.

“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 stil 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 tel he was sick. We kissed for a while and then lay together

listening to The Hectic Glow’s eponymous album, and eventual y we fel asleep like that, a quantum entanglement of tubes and bodies.

We woke up later and arranged an armada of pil ows 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 beautiful y, to jump in front of a sniper’s bul et and sacrifice himself for me, or else to kil a sentry who was just about to shoot me. How he reveled in saving me. He shouted, “You wil not kil my girlfriend today, International Terrorist of Ambiguous 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 physical y unable to Heimlich, and me having to reveal that it was al a ruse, and the ensuing mutual humiliation.

It’s hard as hel 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.

Final y, his dad came down and dragged Gus back upstairs, and in the entryway, beneath an Encouragement tel ing me that Friends Are Forever, I

knelt to kiss him good night. I went home and ate dinner with my parents, leaving Gus to eat (and puke up) his own dinner.

After some TV, I went to sleep.

I woke up.

Around noon, I went over there again.

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