Hello, fellow Nerd fighters. I'm very happy, I'd be doing backflips if I wasn't completely coordinated, that you all like my story and have left a few reviews. They are very much appreciated, even if you just said hi. I like hearing from you all!

Hopefully, I'll be posting every one to two weeks. So, here you go!

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my idea. John Green owns all.

I take a deep rattling breath. I'm going through this book so fast that I'm barely even thinking. This is Augustus, literal in the page Gus. How the hell did Van Houten write this?

For the next dreadful half hour, I look at her. She's wearing a worn yellow band t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans. Her hair is short and brown and her eyes are green, really green. She even makes wearing a cannula look beautiful and I don't even think she knows it.

I adjust my cannula. Huh.

She doesn't look at me again, and I'm kind of glad because I don't want to get the what-are-you-doing-you-weirdo look when suddenly everyone chants in the same zombie voice I have become accustomed.

"Living our best life today."

I really hate that motto.

Everyone stands and I do too, a bit unsteady with the prosthetic and attempt to walk over to her smoothly, though I most likely look like an over excited kid with a limp.

You did not. I think and can't help the rueful smile that crosses me lips. Oh Gus. I miss him.

I stop a few feet away from her and keep on smiling then ask and immediately regret asking. "What's your name?"

She already told you! I think and she says. "Hazel."

"No, your full name." Nice save, Waters.

I smirk. It's funny reading about Augustus like this. The way he felt when we first met and how he thinks and I think maybe I will like this book, despite-

No, I bite my lip and take another slow breath. Focus. I've got to finish. I've got to.

"Um," I've caught her off guard and I smile wider. Tables have turned, Hazel. "Hazel Grace Lancaster. "

Smooth, Waters. Smooth.

I open my mouth to say something else when Isaac, being not only half-blind to the world but blind to my awkward attempt at flirting appears and I hold up a finger. "Hold on." I turn to Isaac. "That was actually worse than you made it out to be."

Isaac shrugs. "I told you it was bleak."

"Why do you bother with it?"

"I don't know. It kind of helps?"

I lean on slightly towards him, a horrendous attempt at at privacy. "She's a regular?"

"None of us are really regular, are we?" He jokes.

So that's what he said. I'd always wondered what if was Isaac had said to him that day but Augustus never told me and I never really asked Isaac either.

"I'll say." I clap him on the shoulders and take a step back. "Tell Hazel about the clinic."

While Isaac launches into his story about his horrible eye doctor and his lack of and even worse attempts at humor, which I would've found absolutely hilarious if not for being distracted by this gorgeous Natalie Portman lookalike, I watch her listen. With his glass eye, people tend to feel a little weird around Isaac but she keeps eye contact with him the entire time. Huh.

"He sounds like a winner," She says. "I'm going to get me some eye cancer just so I can make this guy's acquaintance."

It's a bit weird, I think. Reading about yourself. Like reading a book even when you've read it before.

Even though I know how it ends.

Isaac wishes her luck and points out that Monica, his girlfriend and his whole universe, mind you, is waiting for him and as he walks away I ask.

"Counter insurgence tomorrow?"

"Definitely," And he runs, taking the steps two at a time and leaving me, finally, with the lovely company of Hazel Grace Lancaster in the literal heart of Jesus.

My heart jumps. Even in type, he still has that effect on me.

"Literally," I say.

"Literally?" She asks.

"We are literally in the heart of Jesus. I thought we were in a church basement but we are literally in the Heart of Jesus."

She smiles and so do I. "Someone should tell Jesus. I mean, it's gotta be dangerous, storing children with cancer in your heart."

She's funny too. "I would tell Him myself, but unfortunately I am literally stuck inside of His heart, so He wouldn't be able to hear me." She laughs and I keep staring.

"What?" She blushes a bit.

Crap. "Nothing."

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Hazel Grace Lancaster demands.

"I did not!" I yell and cover my mouth with my hand. Okay, I think. Come down. Or else Mom-

"Sweetie, what's wrong?" Mom appears in my doorway and I drop the book next to me.

"Nothing." I can't tell her about the book. She'd freak and she would never let me read it, because she'd think it would only hurt too much, and it might, and probably sue Van Houten, which might not be so bad.

"I heard you yell." She continues and kneels down next to Phillip, my oxygen tank, and fiddles with the knobs. "And I thought-"

"I'm fine, I-" I shrug. "I thought I'd finished my homework but I, um, I did not so I was a bit surprised. I'm okay though, really."

Mom still looks, as well she should be with my vapid lie, unconvinced. "Are you feeling alright? What I said before didn't make you upset, did it?"

"I'm okay." I try to look as okay as I possibly can and give her a small smile. "Really, go back to your work, or you'll never become the next Patrick."

Mom laughs at that. We both agree that while I should still attend support group, Patrick is a bit, in her words, enthusiastic. "No one could compete with him, Hazel."

Finally, finally, Mom leaves me alone and I pull out my book. I don't even need to read this part, I know what he said so well.

I half-smile. Doesn't she know? "because you're beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a long time ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasure of existence." I paused and, seeing her just staring, did all I could do. Keep talking. "I mean, particularly given that, as you so deliciously pointed out, all of this will end in oblivion and everything."

Jesus, what is this girl doing to me?

I'm grinning from ear to ear. I, meeting Augustus Waters for the very first time, make him nervous.

She kind of scoffed a bit that turned into her coughing and I saw she was about to brush off my compliment. "I'm not beau-"

"You're like a millennial Natalie Portman." Did I really just say that? Whatever, it was true. "Like V for Vendetta Natalie Portman."

"Never seen it." She says.

I haven't seen it since that night, Gus. I think, the page wavering in front of my eyes.

"Really?" I ask. Why do girls never like seeing the classic action film? "Pixie-haired gorgeous girl dislikes authority and can't help but fall for a boy who knows she's trouble. It's your autobiography, so far I can tell."

She opens her mouth to say something when a younger girl named Alissa walks by us, smiling shyly at me. "How's it going, Alissa?" She mumbles a hello and I turn back to Hazel. "Memorial people. Where do you go?"

I hadn't seen her at the big research hospital so I wasn't all that surprised when she says in a small kind of cute voice. "Children's."

I flush. He thought it was cute?

"Well," She nods to the stairs behind us and tilting her cart, tarts to trudge up the stairs where I follow with my limping gait. "So, see you next time, maybe?"

Not likely. "You should see it. V for Vendetta, I mean." With me.

"Okay," She says. "I'll look it up."

"No," Before I know it, the word is out. "With me. At my house. Now."

She stops walking and stares up at me with those green eyes. "I hardly know you, Augustus Waters. You could be an ax murder."

Oh well. "True enough, Hazel Grace." I walk away, trying my best not to show my limp and trying not to seem too disappointed.

My heart breaks. Oh, Gus.

But, I don't think I'm going to give up so easily on Hazel Grace.

We stumble out pf the church into the light where I only see two cars, my Toyota SUV and Monica's bright green Firebird, sitting in the parking lot. Against the church, Isaac is pinned down by his girlfriend, kissing each other aggressively and mumbling their trademark, Always.

Way to rub it in, Isaac. I think walking up beside Hazel whose inconspicuously staring at the lip locked couple. 'They're big believers in PDA." Obviously.

I think about Isaac and Kaitlyn. How she always has her arm around him or a hand on his wrist, leading him or just standing next to him and revealing in being so close. He's toned it down a lot since then and Kaitlyn's been more, committed. I'm happy for both of them.

"What's with the always?" She asks, looking away as the slurping noises get louder. Seriously?

I shrug. "Always is there thing. They'll always love each other and whatever would conservatively estimate they have texted each other the word always four million times in the past year."

I smile. Thank god Isaac and Kaitlyn don't have a-

A song from Hectic Glow's latest album cuts through my thought and I jump, remembering that I left my phone next to me on the bed. I grab it and, speak of the devil, it's her.

"Hey Kaitlyn-" Is all I can get out when she cuts me off sounding, as usually, Faintly British and, unusually, frantic.

"Tell me that you are far away from the world wide web and have severed all contact you had with he-who-is-drunk-and-should-not-be-named."

My eyes widen. "What?"

"Hazel," She says slowly, but I can tell she's still on edge. "I hope your sitting and that Phillip is sitting nearby. Van Houten's come out with a new book. Called Side Effect. Can you believe it? And guess the worst part?" She doesn't have to tell me, I already know. "It's all about Augustus."

So, there you go. A mini-ish conflict in the bigger-ish conflict. And a cliff hanger! Sorry about that, couldn't resist. Tell me what you think!

Side note, did you know there are 41 of you who are following this story? WOW.