I made Augustus Waters a promise. I didn't like to think of it as being his dying wish, because it most definitely wasn't, but it had been a promise nonetheless. It had been a promise that had been damn hard to keep a secret from everyone around me, too. Of course, everyone wasn't a lot of people, but when you have parents who are professionals at hovering, it feels like a lot more than just two people.
I had to do it after they went to bed. I'd told them not to check on me more than once tonight, unless I called for one of them; I wanted to be alone. It wasn't entirely a lie. I did want to be alone. I wanted to be alone to think about video games, champagne, and Augustus Waters.
When I snuck out, I took my mom's keys and drove to the nearest convenience store. They really were rather convenient, actually. They sold last minute dinner items, trashy romance novels for those shameless insomniacs, and cigarettes for you to buy for your dead boyfriend to use as a metaphor.
The looks the few people who were waiting in line behind me threw my way when I asked for a pack ranged from disgust, to horror, to plain confusion. Why would a girl hooked up to an oxygen tank be buying something so many people referred to as "cancer sticks"?
"It's a metaphor," I explained, even though I owed absolutely no one an explanation, "You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't light it. You don't give it a chance to do the killing."
True enough, the cigarettes hadn't done the killing, but death had still won. Death always wins. It always comes knocking to claim its prize, sooner or later, no matter how many metaphors you have against it. Death is unavoidable.
That didn't make it any less painful.
I bought Augustus Waters his last pack of metaphorical cigarettes. I liked to think he'd respond to seeing them with a statement containing his usual attitude, such as, "Hazel Grace, bringing a present to my funeral? You shouldn't have. I didn't get you anything."
That would be a lie, though, I realized as soon as I had thought it. Augustus Waters gave me the greatest gift of all; the gift of knowing him; the gift of loving him.