Hazel stared blankly at the wall.

After Augustus' death, she was, frankly, a mess.

Her eyes had dark rings around them, showing sleepless nights spent crying. Her hair was greasy, having missed weeks of washing. It fell onto her face, where her skin was a sickly yellow color, her face puffy from crying.

Staring blankly was something that Hazel did a lot lately.

Her parents had been talking about her, long discussions that took half the night. They were bound to be concerned for their daughter.

She seemed to be going insane. She would sit quietly, staring, and then she would get up and throw tantrums out of the blue. Horrible tantrums where she screamed so much it made her throat raw.

She'd scream about different things. Sometimes, she'd yell because she was mad at god for taking her Augustus away. Sometimes it was because she hadn't died, too.

Hazel was on the verge of committing suicide.

She knew she was going to die, anyway. How much time did she have? A few weeks? Months? It didn't matter. She wanted to die now.

More than once, her mom had tried to get her to see a therapist. Hazel screamed about how she didn't want to, and her mom finally stopped trying.

She knew that Isaac had tried visiting her, once. Hazel's mom had told him, quietly, that Hazel wasn't ready to see anyone. She was right, Hazel didn't want to.

She never cried in front of her parents, though. She didn't cry until she was sure they were asleep, and she would sob quietly all night into her pillow. Nowadays, it was almost always damp and wrinkled with her tears.

She thought of all this while staring at the plain white wall.

All of a sudden, a figure formed in front of her, as if he had appeared out of thin air.

Hazel sucked in her breath as she recognized who it was. The mahogany hair, the cigarette dangling out of his mouth, the mischievous smirk...

Augustus.

She felt her heart stop in her chest. She didn't say anything, waiting for him to talk, to see if he was real.

"Hazel Grace," he smiled.

"Augustus?" she squeaked.

"I love you," he said. "Okay?"

Hazel's mother walked into the room. She froze as she saw her daughter smiling at the wall, tears in her eyes and a smile on her face. She couldn't understand why Hazel was so happy at seeing the same wall she had been looking at for weeks.

Then, Hazel opened her mouth.

"Okay."