One week after Augustus Water's death...

I knew this day would come. The day where I drowned in my own body, my own lungs. I wish I could say it was as peaceful in the movies, but it's not. It hurts like hell. The burning, the stinging. It's killing me. I'm dying.

I was lying on the grass by my depressing swing-set like usual, staring at the stars, when it just came striking at me. I would scream for help, but I wanted to leave. To be free finally. So I let it just corrupt me.

I just lay there, choking in water, losing unconsciousness, the stars becoming blurry, and out of place. I grabbed the grass, and squeezed as hard as I could. The pain was unbearable, but still a 9 compared to losing Gus.

I clenched my jaw, and forced myself not to scream, so my parents don't come rushing in, and screaming. I focused on the stars and how they're fading away, along with my life. So beautiful, and serene. I am dying a painful, but peaceful death.

"My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won't be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because like all real love stories, it will die with us. As it should. I'd hoped that he'd be eulogizing me, because there is no one I'd rather have. I can't talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this. There is an infinite between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many days of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You have me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful."

The stars are growing distant from me, when suddenly I see someone through them.

Augustus.

I see his arms reach for me, with a big, goofy, humerus smile planted on his face like always, with a cigarette sticking out. He doesn't have wings, or a Halo, but he is at peace, and I crave that. I want to be free from the constant pain without him in my life. I want to give in.

I hope that my parents don't forget me, and know I wanted to leave. Like Gus's term: Oblivion. In hope of not being forgotten. I love them. They've done so much, been through so much, but they need to be free too.

I feel myself lifting out of my yard, and into the stars; my stars. I feel like i'm giving myself up to Augustus to take care of me.

I can feel myself drifting into him.

"Van Houten,

I'm a good person but a shitty writer. You're a shitty person but a good writer. We'd make a good team. I don't want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I've got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently.
Here's the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That's what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease.
I want to leave a mark.
But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, "They'll remember me now," but (a) they don't remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion.
(Okay, maybe I'm not such a shitty writer. But I can't pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations.)
We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can't stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it's silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other.
Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either.
People will say it's sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it's not sad, Van Houten. It's triumphant. It's heroic. Isn't that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm.
The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invented anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.
After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark blue and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar.
A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren't allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, "She's still taking on water." A desert blessing, an ocean curse.
What else? She is so beautiful. You don't get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."

I cross my arms over my chest, and form an "x". I close my eyes and feel that i'm lifting into his chest. It's time to leave. Time to forget about how the world is going to be an Oblivion, about how one hundred years later, we'll all be forgotten, and dead, and how no one will remember us. But that's how it should be. I don't want people to remember me. I want people to not worry about how mine was shitty, but amazing. I want to be forgotten, and die in peace. And be remembered as a "no one" but still a "someone".

I hear his voice echoing through me."Okay Hazel Grace?"

...Okay.