The stars glitter amidst the velvet night sky, and Hazel Grace lies alone on the grass in the garden behind her house. A cylinder of oxygen lies beside her, its metal exterior coated in a thin veil of dew. Hazel's eyes are damp with tears, her cheeks stained with salty disbelief as whispers escape from between her blue lips. Her skin is tinged with grey, her numb fingers trembling in the grass at her sides. "Please." She gasps as the wind blows cold spikes through her thin clothes. "Please don't be gone."
"I'm still here." I reach out to her, my hand finding her shivering hand. "I promise."
She shakes her head, and the grass beneath her hair bends as she moves. A rattling breath escapes her chest, and I want to desperately to pick her up in my arms and take her inside before she catches a cold. Like the slightest breeze will tear the petals from a drying flower, any kind of infection would explode like a bomb within her. A cold would escalate. It would mutate, turn into pneumonia and kill her. It occurs to me, as I sit invisible at her side, that perhaps this is what she wants.
"Just do one thing for me, Augustus Waters. Just don't be dead."
Her words crush my chest, and I want to scream and shout and stamp on the ground and kick at the stupid tree that seems to be mocking me from the corner of the garden. I want to cry out, to unleash my rage in a blood-stained tornado of angst. We are so close, and yet worlds apart, and I have never felt so helpless.
A sob escapes her lips and she curls onto her side, pressing her face into the cold, damp grass and turning her back away from me. In the faint light from the porch, I see the slight curve of her back, each individual bump of her ribs as they rise and fall with her laboured breaths. She hasn't been eating enough, and though the steroids keep her cheeks puffy and her ankles swollen, I can tell that she will soon starve herself to death, if nothing else.
"Hazel…"
"No, Augustus."
A shiver prickles over my skin, and I stop. My hand hovers above her ribs, my heart seeming to shrink inside my chest.
"Hazel Grace?"
She stays silent, sniffing against the grass. Did I imagine it?
But she moves again, curling into a tight ball then shifting her whole body until she is sitting up, her legs tucked into her chest. Her thin, pale lips are tightly pinched together, her red eyes staring up towards the sky. In the faint glow, her eyelashes are damp with tears and beginning to crystallise with salt. "I hate you, you know. You were okay, and I got to know you, and I was scared of being a grenade. But in the end it was you. I got attached to you, and you left. You were the grenade, and you blew up and hurt everyone around you." She wipes her eyes angrily, her mouth twisting into a grotesque grin of agony and grief. "But I love you, Augustus. Each little bit of you that ended up stabbing me in the heart was worth it. All the pain, all the grief, all the heartbreak. For our little infinity, I am forever grateful."
She wipes her eyes a final time, tucking her sleeves over her arms and wiping at her cheeks. I watch her from the grass as she struggles to rise, the oxygen tank weighing her down, and reach out to help. My hands clutch at her skin, but she doesn't feel me, and my assistance doesn't do anything to help. She doesn't even know I'm here.
The skin next to her eyes, red and streaked with lines of salt, wrinkles as she firmly closes her eyes and opens them again. Her skin shines in the glittering starlight, and she looks up at the dark folds of the night sky as the sways on her feet.
"Hazel? Are you done, honey? I made you hot chocolate!" Her mother shouts from the back door, and Hazel nods hurriedly.
"Goodbye, Augustus. I'll see you soon." She whispers, her voice hoarse and barely anything more than a gasp as another stabbing pain shoots through her chest. Too soon, I think secretly, feeling a cold dread wash over me like an ocean wave.
But as she takes a step forwards, towards her mother standing in the light of the doorway and away from me, hovering alone in the dark, she slips and falls to her knees. Her mother rushes forwards and takes her arm, helping the struggling Hazel to her feet once more. "I'm sorry, Mom."
"It's okay sweetie. Let's get you inside, dry you off and warm you up."
She smiles in thanks and struggles onwards, her feet slipping on the damp grass as her mother carries the cumbersome oxygen tank alongside her. "Goodbye, Hazel." I whisper, and she turns to face me.
"What is it? What's wrong?" Her mom asks, touching her shoulder lightly. Hazel's face has paled even further, and she stares right through me as she glances back into the garden.
"Go on." I urge, my whole being consumed with a heavy ache as I notice her eyes- staring right through me like I'm not even here. "Go towards the light."
If she could hear me, she'd laugh. I know she would. A small smile curves on her lips, and I think for a second that she must have heard me.
"I just think," She pauses, and I realise that she is staring not through me, but at me. Her smile tranforms into a grin, and my own mouth copies as I look into her sparkling eyes. "That perhaps death is just another great adventure."