Great.
…
.
…
"There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired."
…
He finds her one evening alone, splayed out over a park bench with eyes half closed and chin tilted upwards. It's dark; a heavy bruised like sky but somehow the park lights ward of the clustering shadows without a second thought.
Music pounds through her ear buds, and he can pick out the same music from his CD collection back home. He likes her, a perfect stranger who tunes out the world with such strange contentment. Her hair is hacked softly at the jawline, and her cheeks are almost hollow. She looks so tired before him, pursued by dreams and damnations.
There's a raw scratch on her shoulder. Livid, dried crimson against pale glow.
She reminds him of the pages of a well-loved book. Finger tips ink stained and eyes rimmed with insomnia. Like if he touched her, her pages might crackle and bend.
Her eyes open suddenly, sharp and filled with life forms dancing before him.
Sharper than things he had never known. He's standing amongst the shadows of the park, standing on his leg that isn't made of metal and plastic. It's surprisingly cold out, and he feels goose bumps rising on his bare arms. He forgets where he was going, why he was going. Something seals his fate right before her.
"I'm going to be a poet, you know?"
He forgets about dying, he forgets about living.
He swallows. Dry fingertips trace the outline of an unopened cigarette pack. "Overly cliché, but I imagine that you would make a fine one."
She smiles brightly, lips dark.
Suddenly, she's gone. An outline in the night, growing smaller and smaller as if Alice shrinking right before his eyes.
She's gone, he's gone. A story with pages ripped out, and the ending nowhere in sight.
…
"I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity."
…
All she can hear is a thumping sound that fills the gymnasium. She drags the oxygen tank beside her easily, and travels toward the sounds of laughter and movement. He bag is filled with transfer papers, and she's a stranger in the school she was meant to be in. Instead of all those advanced classes she'd signed up for, she's thrown headfirst into college classes, because why not? She's the dying smart girl who's gifting experimental science?
She doesn't really mind, because why should she? She's Hazel Grace Lancaster. It makes her dad proud, and her mom smile. She owes them so much.
They've all lost so much.
So much time spent and lost to death and living.
She's curious, feeling apprehension as she forces her lungs to behave. It's late, after hours. She feels small in dark hallways, and wonders who occupies the same realm that she grapples from.
The doors open coolly beneath her hesitant touch. All she can see is a boy running full length of the court with a ball in his hands, and some girl taking off after him yelling words like cheat.
He shouts, launching the ball wildly at the far off net. "I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up, Caroline! You got to do much better than that!" The words are familiar, sharpening in her skull. They're the sort of the words that she knows she'll remember a life time.
He sinks the ball.
Hazel leaves without a word. Detached.
…
"You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me."
…
She met Kaitlyn through school. She was a girl with a bubble gum smile and had one to many attractions to every boy that wandered by.
One day she vanished, leaving Hazel to tap alone at her cellphone and sneak a sip of wine at a friend's house. It had been months since she last heard a single word from her once close friend, and all she could remember was such sick eyes filled with grimness.
"I heard she moved." Alice comments, as she pours a delicate amount into the glass for her, before topping her own off. "Though, Caroline from Music class-you know the one? The girl with the scar on her face, you know?- said she heard that she was at the hospital." America's Top Model was played before them on mute, flashing brightly on the oversized TV.
Hazel really doesn't want to talk about the girl that used to sit next to her in math class, and make fun of the oversized teacher who used to make fun of Hazel when she made an error. Math was never her strong point, but Kaitlyn just knew how to crunch down equations to get the right answer.
Her phone buzzed.
She ignored it.
"Maybe she's visiting someone." It's softly put, but firm as the conversation closes. She wonders what shoes Kaitlyn is wearing. What Aunt is sick, what Uncle is dying?
She's so sad of being alone, circling friends who really aren't her friends. She feels like a lone piece of drift wood, trying to forget about the girl that left her alone.
Later when she returns home she checks her phone. Brad from Advanced English sent her a photo attachment. 'Guess who?'
There's a scrawny girl emerging from large doors with tubes connecting to the tank dragged on little wheels beside her.
She thinks she does know the girl, but all she can see is a stranger.
…
"All I kept thinking about, over and over, was 'You can't live forever; you can't live forever."
…
Augustus is playing Price of Dawn, screaming at the controllers.
"The children, Isaac! The children!" He stomps his good foot down, leaning over. The air is full. Gun shots and explosions and Isaac swearing. "Go left; we'll stake out that outpost. Shoot 'em from above!"
Isaac groaned, before jerking his figure right. "That tower's rigged."
Augustus begins firing at the approaching enemies, while Isaac begins to loop through the hallways to find a nook to take cover from. "Those children are going to die!"
"Who ca-" A sharp ring tone begins, and all of a sudden the game's on paused, and Isaac is practically forcing the phone into his skull.
"Hazel." One single word. Staccato.
He remembers the name from Isaac's rambles of support group. Some girl who had some rare sort of cancer that made her go half blind, before full blind.
"Always." He swore, smile bright. "How's the view?"
He'd seen photos of her before. Tucked away in Isaac's wallet. Taped to his car's dash board. His wallpaper of phone, IPod and laptop. Scowl tugging at her lips and her eyes narrowed slightly. One image was her flipping the camera off. Entire figure blurred from movement, but somehow sharp against the empty background.
Her face though. It's almost identical to another face he once knew.
He starts to tap his real foot against the floor, sighing heavy. "Hurry up. We have children to save."
Isaac glares, sticking his tongue out. "Gus is being a little bitch right now, Hazel. I have to go. Always. I'll be in to see you tonight, alright? Ha. Like they can keep me out. Always, Hazel."
And just like that.
He hangs up, a whisper of always hanging onto his words.
"Sap."
"Shut up." He's harsh, and Augustus regrets it. Isaac spends half the night reassuring Hazel when she panics, and spend half the day trying to assist her in coping. His eyes shut, and he wonders how it must be. To be totally shut away from the world, just to stay alive.
He swallowed. "Sorry, man."
Isaac shrugs, and stands. "I should get going. Visiting hours."
Augustus looks toward his dresser where a picture of someone is crammed deep into his drawers. Jealousy surges through his veins. "Do you always have to be with her?"
"Don't have to."
Isaac leaves, and Augustus thinks.
…
"Can't repeat the past?…Why of course you can!"
…
In one world, they've become passing figures. Warped by indecision, with reality and insanity.
They brush wrists as they pass through the halls. He's off to visit some boy who's blind, and she's off to die.
He never went to the support group.
She stopped going.
…
"I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."
…
She plays without hesitating. Hazel doesn't bother to try and smile. Doesn't bother to try and enjoy it. Life feels grappling. Unsteady before her.
Swinging from the swing set, and sliding down the slide. The ground is soft beneath her bare foot. Metal cool beneath fingertips. The reality to this playground is a Nurse waits for her, as she stumbles.
She cries out, and arms brace themselves around her arms. "Steady there," Nurse Jane smiles, cocking her head. "Alright?"
Hazel swallows. Wiggles nonexistent toes.
"Fine." Other words swallowed. Screams she doesn't dare release.
"Maybe that should be it for today, don't you think?" It's not really a question. More of an order. Beneath her bright smile are teeth laced with misery, poison and steel.
She allows herself to be led inwards into the hospital. Crutches support her.
Five days later, she's greeting some boy named Isaac. He's surviving on will and experimental medicine. Years later into life, she follows him to support group. She meets some boy who wears an eye patch and smiles to bright.
Isaac rather firmly informs him of the current relationship status. Hazel thinks about the cancer chewing at her bones.
…
"It takes two to make an accident."
…
They live. They have five children. She's a writer. He's some basketball star.
They never experience cancer themselves, but their younger one finds her bones rotting.
…
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
…
"I want to be great." She whispers.
"You're going to be great." He informs her.
"You're going to live." She speaks with lies.
"You'll never die." He wishes.
…
"Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."
…