A boy was staring at me.
I was quite sure I'd never seen him befroe. Long and leanly muscular, he dwarfed and 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 aggresively 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 yellow 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 normally proportioned person with a balloon for a head. This was not even to mention the canckle situation. And yet-I cut a glance to him, and his eyes were still on me.
He was hot. A nonhotboy stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward and, at worst, a form of assault. But a hot boy...well.
John GreenHome is Where the Heart Is, Good Friends Are Hard to Find and Impossible to Forget. True Love is Born from Hard Times.
John GreenSo it was all like, Caroline continues to have behavioral problems. She struggling a lot with anger and frustration over not being able to speak (we are frustrated about these things, too, of course, but we have more socially acceptable ways of dealing with our anger). Gus has taken to calling Caroline HULK SMASH, which resonates with the doctors. There's nothing easy about this for any of us. but you take your humor where you can get it. Hoping to go home on Thursday. We'll let you know...
John GreenDear Mr. Peter Van Houten
(c/o Lidewij Vliegenthart),
My name is Hazel Grace Lancaster. My friend Augustus Waters, who read An Imperial Affliction at my recommendationtion, just received an email from you at this address. I hope you will not mind that Augustus shared that email with me.
Mr. Van Houten, I understand from your email to Augustus that you are not planning to publish any more books. In a way, I am disappointed, but I'm also relieved: I never have to worry whether your next book will live up to the magnificent perfection of the original. As a three-year survivor of Stage IV cancer, I can tell you that you got everything right in An Imperial Affliction. Or at least you got me right. Your book has a way of telling me what I'm feeling before I even feel it, and I've reread it dozens of times.
I wonder, though, if you would mind answering a couple questions I have about what happens after the end of the novel. I understand the book ends because Anna dies or becomes too ill to continue writing it, but I would really like to mom-wether she married the Dutch Tulip Man, whether she ever has another child, and whether she stays at 917 W. Temple etc. Also, is the Dutch Tulip Man a fraud or does he really love them? What happens to Anna's friends-particularly Claire and Jake? Do they stay that this is the kind of deep and thoughtful question you always hoped your readers would ask-what becomes of Sisyphus the Hamster? These questions have haunted me for years-and I don't know long I have left to get answers to them.
I know these are not important literary questions and that your book is full of important literally questions, but I would just really like to know.
And of course, if you ever do decide to write anything else, even if you don't want to publish it. I'd love to read it. Frankly, I'd read your grocery lists.
Yours with great admiration,
Hazel Grace Lancaster (age 16)
Tags: email
Qualities of a Good Nurse: Go," I said.
"1.Doesn't put on your disabilities," Isaac said.
"2.Gets blood on the first try." I said.
"Seriosly, that is huge. I mean is this my freaking arm or a dartboard?
3.No condenscending voice.
Tags: qualities-of-a-good-nurse
Dear Ms. Lancaster,
I fear your faith has been misplaced-but then, faith usually is. I cannot answer your questions, at least not in writing, because to write out such answers would constitute a sequel to An Imperial Affliction, which you might publish or otherwise share on the network that has replaced the brains of your generation. There is the telephone, but then you might record the conversation. Not that I don't trust you, of course, but I don't trust you. Alas, dear Hazel, I could never answer such questions except in person, and you are there while I am here.
That noted, I must confess that the unexpected receipt of your correspondence via Ms. Vliegenthart has delighted me: What a wondrous thing to know that I made something useful to you-even if that book seems so distant from me that I feel it was written by a different man altogether. (The author of that novel was so thin, so frail, so comparatively optimistic!)
Should you find yourself in Amsterdam, however, please do pay a visit at your leisure. I am usually home. I wouold even allow you a peek at my grocery lists.
Your most sincerely,
Peter Van Houten
c/o Lidewij Vliegenthart
Tags: email-replied
(a) It shouldn't've even been a question whether I wanted to kiss him, and (b) Kissing someone so that you can get a free trip is perilous close to full on-hooking, and I have to confess that while I did not fancy myself a particularly good person, I never thought my first real sexual action would be prostitutional.
John GreenManchmal liest man ein Buch, und es erfüllt einen mit diesem seltsamen Missionstrieb, und du bist überzeugt, dass die kaputte Welt nur geheilt werden kann, wenn alle Menschen dieser Erde dieses eine Buch gelesen haben. Und dann gibt es Bücher [...], über die du mit niemandem reden willst, weil das Buch so besonders und kostbar und so persönlich für dich ist, dass darüber zu reden sich wie Verrat anfühlt.
John GreenTags: books
I was left on the shore with the waves washing over me, unable to drown.
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