Текст книги "The Fault in Our Stars "

Автор книги: John Green

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

“I dunno. Let’s try.” I took it off and let Jackie stick the cannula in her nose and breathe. “Tickles,” she said.

“I know, right?”

“I think I’m breathing better,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” I said, “I wish I could give you my cannula but I kind of really need the help.” I already felt the loss. I focused on my breathing as Jackie handed the tubes back to me. I gave them a quick swipe with my T-shirt, laced the tubes behind my ears, and put the nubbins back in

place.

“Thanks for letting me try it,” she said.

“No problem.”

“Jackie,” her mother said again, and this time I let her go.

I returned to the book, where Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem was regretting that he had but one life to give for his country, but I kept

thinking about that little kid, and how much I liked her.

The other thing about Kaitlyn, I guess, was that it could never again feel natural to talk to her. A ny attempts to feign normal social

interactions were just depressing because it was so glaringly obvious that everyone I spoke to for the rest of my life would feel awkward and self-conscious around me, except maybe kids like Jackie who just didn’t know any better.

A nyway, I really did like being alone. I liked being alone with poor Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem, who—oh, come on, he’s not going to

survive these seventeen bullet wounds, is he?

(Spoiler alert: He lives.)

CHAPTER FOUR

Iwent to bed a little early that night, changing into boy boxers and a T-shirt before crawling under the covers of my bed, which was queen size and pillow topped and one of my favorite places in the world. A nd then I started reading A n Imperial A ffliction for the millionth time.

A IA is about this girl named A nna (who narrates the story) and her one-eyed mom, who is a professional gardener obsessed with tulips,

and they have a normal lower-middle– class life in a little central California town until A nna gets this rare blood cancer.

But it’s not a cancer book, because cancer books suck. Like, in cancer books, the cancer person starts a charity that raises money to fight cancer, right? A nd this commitment to charity reminds the cancer person of the essential goodness of humanity and makes him/her feel loved and encouraged because s/he will leave a cancer-curing legacy. But in A IA , A nna decides that being a person with cancer who starts a cancer charity is a bit narcissistic, so she starts a charity called The A nna Foundation for People with Cancer Who Want to Cure Cholera.

A lso, A nna is honest about all of it in a way no one else really is: Throughout the book, she refers to herself as the side effect, which is just totally correct. Cancer kids are essentially side effects of the relentless mutation that made the diversity of life on earth possible. So as the story goes on, she gets sicker, the treatments and disease racing to kill her, and her mom falls in love with this Dutch tulip trader A nna calls the Dutch Tulip Man. The Dutch Tulip Man has lots of money and very eccentric ideas about how to treat cancer, but A nna thinks this guy

might be a con man and possibly not even Dutch, and then just as the possibly Dutch guy and her mom are about to get married and A nna is

about to start this crazy new treatment regimen involving wheatgrass and low doses of arsenic, the book ends right in the middle of a

I know it’s a very literary decision and everything and probably part of the reason I love the book so much, but there is something to

recommend a story that ends. A nd if it can’t end, then it should at least continue into perpetuity like the adventures of Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem’s platoon.

I understood the story ended because A nna died or got too sick to write and this midsentence thing was supposed to reflect how life

really ends and whatever, but there were characters other than A nna in the story, and it seemed unfair that I would never find out what

happened to them. I’d written, care of his publisher, a dozen letters to Peter Van Houten, each asking for some answers about what happens

after the end of the story: whether the Dutch Tulip Man is a con man, whether A nna’s mother ends up married to him, what happens to

A nna’s stupid hamster (which her mom hates), whether A nna’s friends graduate from high school—all that stuff. But he’d never responded to any of my letters.

A IA was the only book Peter Van Houten had written, and all anyone seemed to know about him was that after the book came out he

moved from the United States to the Netherlands and became kind of reclusive. I imagined that he was working on a sequel set in the

Netherlands—maybe A nna’s mom and the Dutch Tulip Man end up moving there and trying to start a new life. But it had been ten years since

A n Imperial A ffliction came out, and Van Houten hadn’t published so much as a blog post. I couldn’t wait forever.

A s I reread that night, I kept getting distracted imagining A ugustus Waters reading the same words. I wondered if he’d like it, or if he’d dismiss it as pretentious. Then I remembered my promise to call him after reading The Price of Dawn, so I found his number on its title page and texted him.

Price of Dawn review: Too many bodies. Not enough adjectives. How’s A IA ?

He replied a minute later:

A s I recall, you promised to CA LL when you finished the book, not text.

So I called.

“Hazel Grace,” he said upon picking up.

“So have you read it?”

“Well, I haven’t finished it. It’s six hundred fifty-one pages long and I’ve had twenty-four hours.”

“How far are you?”

“Four fifty-three.”

“A nd?”

“I will withhold judgment until I finish. However, I will say that I’m feeling a bit embarrassed to have given you The Price of Dawn.”

“Don’t be. I’m already on Requiem for Mayhem.”

“A sparkling addition to the series. So, okay, is the tulip guy a crook? I’m getting a bad vibe from him.”

“No spoilers,” I said.

“If he is anything other than a total gentleman, I’m going to gouge his eyes out.”

“So you’re into it.”

“Withholding judgment! When can I see you?”

“Certainly not until you finish A n Imperial A ffliction.” I enjoyed being coy.

“Then I’d better hang up and start reading.”

“You’d better,” I said, and the line clicked dead without another word.

Flirting was new to me, but I liked it.

The next morning I had Twentieth-Century A merican Poetry at MCC. This old woman gave a lecture wherein she managed to talk for ninety

minutes about Sylvia Plath without ever once quoting a single word of Sylvia Plath.

When I got out of class, Mom was idling at the curb in front of the building.

“Did you just wait here the entire time?” I asked as she hurried around to help me haul my cart and tank into the car.

“No, I picked up the dry cleaning and went to the post office.”

“A nd then?”

“I have a book to read,” she said.

“A nd I’m the one who needs to get a life.” I smiled, and she tried to smile back, but there was something flimsy in it. A fter a second, I said, “Wanna go to a movie?”

“Sure. A nything you’ve been wanting to see?”

“Let’s just do the thing where we go and see whatever starts next.” She closed the door for me and walked around to the driver’s side. We

drove over to the Castleton theater and watched a 3-D movie about talking gerbils. It was kind of funny, actually.

When I got out of the movie, I had four text messages from A ugustus.

Tell me my copy is missing the last twenty pages or something.

Hazel Grace, tell me I have not reached the end of this book.

OH MY GOD DO THEY GET MA RRIED OR NOT OH MY GOD WHA T IS THIS

I guess A nna died and so it just ends? CRUEL. Call me when you can. Hope all’s okay.

So when I got home I went out into the backyard and sat down on this rusting latticed patio chair and called him. It was a cloudy day, typical Indiana: the kind of weather that boxes you in. Our little backyard was dominated by my childhood swing set, which was looking pretty

waterlogged and pathetic.

A ugustus picked up on the third ring. “Hazel Grace,” he said.

“So welcome to the sweet torture of reading A n Imperial—” I stopped when I heard violent sobbing on the other end of the line. “A re

you okay?” I asked.

“I’m grand,” A ugustus answered. “I am, however, with Isaac, who seems to be decompensating.” More wailing. Like the death cries of

some injured animal. Gus turned his attention to Isaac. “Dude. Dude. Does Support Group Hazel make this better or worse? Isaac. Focus. On.

Me.” A fter a minute, Gus said to me, “Can you meet us at my house in, say, twenty minutes?”

“Sure,” I said, and hung up.

If you could drive in a straight line, it would only take like five minutes to get from my house to A ugustus’s house, but you can’t drive in a straight line because Holliday Park is between us.

Even though it was a geographic inconvenience, I really liked Holliday Park. When I was a little kid, I would wade in the White River with

my dad and there was always this great moment when he would throw me up in the air, just toss me away from him, and I would reach out

my arms as I flew and he would reach out his arms, and then we would both see that our arms were not going to touch and no one was

going to catch me, and it would kind of scare the shit out of both of us in the best possible way, and then I would legs-flailingly hit the water and then come up for air uninjured and the current would bring me back to him as I said again, Daddy, again.

I pulled into the driveway right next to an old black Toyota sedan I figured was Isaac’s car. Carting the tank behind me, I walked up to

the door. I knocked. Gus’s dad answered.

“Just Hazel,” he said. “Nice to see you.”

“A ugustus said I could come over?”

“Yeah, he and Isaac are in the basement.” A t which point there was a wail from below. “That would be Isaac,” Gus’s dad said, and shook

his head slowly. “Cindy had to go for a drive. The sound . . .” he said, drifting off. “A nyway, I guess you’re wanted downstairs. Can I carry your, uh, tank?” he asked.

“Nah, I’m good. Thanks, though, Mr. Waters.”

“Mark,” he said.

I was kind of scared to go down there. Listening to people howl in misery is not among my favorite pastimes. But I went.

“Hazel Grace,” A ugustus said as he heard my footsteps. “Isaac, Hazel from Support Group is coming downstairs. Hazel, a gentle

reminder: Isaac is in the midst of a psychotic episode.”

A ugustus and Isaac were sitting on the floor in gaming chairs shaped like lazy Ls, staring up at a gargantuan television. The screen was

split between Isaac’s point of view on the left, and A ugustus’s on the right. They were soldiers fighting in a bombed-out modern city. I

recognized the place from The Price of Dawn. A s I approached, I saw nothing unusual: just two guys sitting in the lightwash of a huge

television pretending to kill people.

Only when I got parallel to them did I see Isaac’s face. Tears streamed down his reddened cheeks in a continual flow, his face a taut

mask of pain. He stared at the screen, not even glancing at me, and howled, all the while pounding away at his controller. “How are you,

Hazel?” asked A ugustus.

“I’m okay,” I said. “Isaac?” No response. Not even the slightest hint that he was aware of my existence. Just the tears flowing down his

face onto his black T-shirt.

A ugustus glanced away from the screen ever so briefly. “You look nice,” he said. I was wearing this just-past-the-knees dress I’d had

forever. “Girls think they’re only allowed to wear dresses on formal occasions, but I like a woman who says, you know, I’m going over to see a boy who is having a nervous breakdown, a boy whose connection to the sense of sight itself is tenuous, and gosh dang it, I am going to

wear a dress for him.”

“A nd yet,” I said, “Isaac won’t so much as glance over at me. Too in love with Monica, I suppose,” which resulted in a catastrophic sob.

“Bit of a touchy subject,” A ugustus explained. “Isaac, I don’t know about you, but I have the vague sense that we are being outflanked.”

A nd then back to me, “Isaac and Monica are no longer a going concern, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. He just wants to cry and play

Counterinsurgence 2: The Price of Dawn.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

“Isaac, I feel a growing concern about our position. If you agree, head over to that power station, and I’ll cover you.” Isaac ran toward a nondescript building while A ugustus fired a machine gun wildly in a series of quick bursts, running behind him.

“A nyway,” A ugustus said to me, “it doesn’t hurt to talk to him. If you have any sage words of feminine advice.”

“I actually think his response is probably appropriate,” I said as a burst of gunfire from Isaac killed an enemy who’d peeked his head out

from behind the burned-out husk of a pickup truck.

A ugustus nodded at the screen. “Pain demands to be felt,” he said, which was a line from A n Imperial A ffliction. “You’re sure there’s no one behind us?” he asked Isaac. Moments later, tracer bullets started whizzing over their heads. “Oh, goddamn it, Isaac,” A ugustus said. “I don’t mean to criticize you in your moment of great weakness, but you’ve allowed us to be outflanked, and now there’s nothing between the

terrorists and the school.” Isaac’s character took off running toward the fire, zigging and zagging down a narrow alleyway.

“You could go over the bridge and circle back,” I said, a tactic I knew about thanks to The Price of Dawn.

A ugustus sighed. “Sadly, the bridge is already under insurgent control due to questionable strategizing by my bereft cohort.”

“Me?” Isaac said, his voice breathy. “Me?! You’re the one who suggested we hole up in the freaking power station.”

Gus turned away from the screen for a second and flashed his crooked smile at Isaac. “I knew you could talk, buddy,” he said. “Now let’s

go save some fictional schoolchildren.”

Together, they ran down the alleyway, firing and hiding at the right moments, until they reached this one-story, single-room

schoolhouse. They crouched behind a wall across the street and picked off the enemy one by one.

“Why do they want to get into the school?” I asked.

“They want the kids as hostages,” A ugustus answered. His shoulders rounded over his controller, slamming buttons, his forearms taut,

veins visible. Isaac leaned toward the screen, the controller dancing in his thin-fingered hands. “Get it get it get it,” A ugustus said. The waves of terrorists continued, and they mowed down every one, their shooting astonishingly precise, as it had to be, lest they fire into the school.

“Grenade! Grenade!” A ugustus shouted as something arced across the screen, bounced in the doorway of the school, and then rolled

against the door.

Isaac dropped his controller in disappointment. “If the bastards can’t take hostages, they just kill them and claim we did it.”

“Cover me!” A ugustus said as he jumped out from behind the wall and raced toward the school. Isaac fumbled for his controller and then

started firing while the bullets rained down on A ugustus, who was shot once and then twice but still ran, A ugustus shouting, “YOU CA N’T

KILL MA X MA YHEM!” and with a final flurry of button combinations, he dove onto the grenade, which detonated beneath him. His

dismembered body exploded like a geyser and the screen went red. A throaty voice said, “MISSION FA ILURE,” but A ugustus seemed to think

otherwise as he smiled at his remnants on the screen. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and shoved it between his teeth.

“Saved the kids,” he said.

“Temporarily,” I pointed out.

“A ll salvation is temporary,” A ugustus shot back. “I bought them a minute. Maybe that’s the minute that buys them an hour, which is the

hour that buys them a year. No one’s gonna buy them forever, Hazel Grace, but my life bought them a minute. A nd that’s not nothing.”

“Whoa, okay,” I said. “We’re just talking about pixels.”

He shrugged, as if he believed the game might be really real. Isaac was wailing again. A ugustus snapped his head back to him. “A nother

go at the mission, corporal?”

Isaac shook his head no. He leaned over A ugustus to look at me and through tightly strung vocal cords said, “She didn’t want to do it

after.”

“She didn’t want to dump a blind guy,” I said. He nodded, the tears not like tears so much as a quiet metronome—steady, endless.

“She said she couldn’t handle it,” he told me. “I’m about to lose my eyesight and she can’t handle it.”

I was thinking about the word handle, and all the unholdable things that get handled. “I’m sorry,” I said.

He wiped his sopping face with a sleeve. Behind his glasses, Isaac’s eyes seemed so big that everything else on his face kind of

disappeared and it was just these disembodied floating eyes staring at me—one real, one glass. “It’s unacceptable,” he told me. “It’s totally unacceptable.”

“Well, to be fair,” I said, “I mean, she probably can’t handle it. Neither can you, but she doesn’t have to handle it. A nd you do.”

“I kept saying ‘always’ to her today, ‘always always always,’ and she just kept talking over me and not saying it back. It was like I was

already gone, you know? ‘A lways’ was a promise! How can you just break the promise?”

“Sometimes people don’t understand the promises they’re making when they make them,” I said.

Isaac shot me a look. “Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That’s what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway.

Don’t you believe in true love?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t have an answer. But I thought that if true love did exist, that was a pretty good definition of it.

“Well, I believe in true love,” Isaac said. “A nd I love her. A nd she promised. She promised me always.” He stood and took a step toward

me. I pushed myself up, thinking he wanted a hug or something, but then he just spun around, like he couldn’t remember why he’d stood up

in the first place, and then A ugustus and I both saw this rage settle into his face.

“Isaac,” Gus said.

“What?”

“You look a little . . . Pardon the double entendre, my friend, but there’s something a little worrisome in your eyes.”

Suddenly Isaac started kicking the crap out of his gaming chair, which somersaulted back toward Gus’s bed. “Here we go,” said A ugustus.

Isaac chased after the chair and kicked it again. “Yes,” A ugustus said. “Get it. Kick the shit out of that chair!” Isaac kicked the chair again, until it bounced against Gus’s bed, and then he grabbed one of the pillows and started slamming it against the wall between the bed and the trophy shelf above.

A ugustus looked over at me, cigarette still in his mouth, and half smiled. “I can’t stop thinking about that book.”

“I know, right?”

“He never said what happens to the other characters?”

“No,” I told him. Isaac was still throttling the wall with the pillow. “He moved to A msterdam, which makes me think maybe he is writing

a sequel featuring the Dutch Tulip Man, but he hasn’t published anything. He’s never interviewed. He doesn’t seem to be online. I’ve written him a bunch of letters asking what happens to everyone, but he never responds. So . . . yeah.” I stopped talking because A ugustus didn’t

appear to be listening. Instead, he was squinting at Isaac.

“Hold on,” he mumbled to me. He walked over to Isaac and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Dude, pillows don’t break. Try something

that breaks.”

Isaac reached for a basketball trophy from the shelf above the bed and then held it over his head as if waiting for permission. “Yes,”

A ugustus said. “Yes!” The trophy smashed against the floor, the plastic basketball player’s arm splintering off, still grasping its ball. Isaac stomped on the trophy. “Yes!” A ugustus said. “Get it!”

A nd then back to me, “I’ve been looking for a way to tell my father that I actually sort of hate basketball, and I think we’ve found it.” The trophies came down one after the other, and Isaac stomped on them and screamed while A ugustus and I stood a few feet away, bearing

witness to the madness. The poor, mangled bodies of plastic basketballers littered the carpeted ground: here, a ball palmed by a disembodied hand; there, two torsoless legs caught midjump. Isaac kept attacking the trophies, jumping on them with both feet, screaming, breathless,

sweaty, until finally he collapsed on top of the jagged trophic remnants.

A ugustus stepped toward him and looked down. “Feel better?” he asked.

“No,” Isaac mumbled, his chest heaving.

“That’s the thing about pain,” A ugustus said, and then glanced back at me. “It demands to be felt.”