HAZEL
I read.
Skipping the parts where I see my name, the chapters I know I will regret reading. I read about Kelly, Leo, Teddy, Austin, Cory, and so many others - and it starts to make sense. Different characters from fictional books come to life in Kelly's world, and I can feel hope fluttering in my chest.
Because if I'm in that book, Gus might be too. Or Anna, from An Imperial Affliction.
It's so tempting, being able to read your future. All I ever wanted to know was that. If everything would be okay.
But I might change something. And then everything would be messed up.
It knows, somehow. And I want to find out how.
The boy on the cover - I now know he's Austin. And I also know secrets about him - in fact, I know secrets about everyone. About how Calypso is scared. How Leo doesn't want to be a joker anymore. How Kelly is losing touch with her friends. How they feel like outcasts. Not of their worlds.
It's power.
If I ever met these people, how would I keep this all inside? Austin's secret, Kelly's imagination, Leo's past... There's so much power in these words. In one book. All the futures of these people… I've read it. I know what will happen – up until the part where I appear in Kelly's life.
After that, I don't dare to read anymore.
Mom comes in when I'm reading the book, skipping the dangerous parts, for the fifth time. "You've found a new book?"
"Yeah," I tell her, and adjust my breathing tube.
She coughs. "It's time to go see your doctor."
I cough, slightly louder. "Don't call him a doctor if he's a psychiatrist."
"Hazel, I don't want to have this argument with you every week."
I set the book down. "Look, Mom, I don't need to see a psychiatrist. I'm perfectly fine."
She taps the door. "Not if you're reading the book for the fifth time. The same thing happened with An Imperial Affliction, and… Well. You could start – "
"Not support group. Anything but that."
She knows not to push it.
"Fine. But we set up the appointment, and I don't want to back out on it."
I know I'll eventually end up going, but I continue to argue. Even in the car, as I'm holding the leather book (which is, decidedly, not as good as An Imperial Affliction), I'm arguing with her. But I still go.
And I'm thinking about the book the whole time.
…
Isaac seems to have forgotten the book when we play video games in his basement today. Well, when I play video games and shout out what he has to do to him.
After we've spent a very tiring half an hour, we lean back and sit in silence for a while. Then Isaac asks, "Are you ever afraid of what may happen? You know. After."
I pretend to think about it, although I've already thought my answer through so many times because when you have cancer, it's something you inevitably think about. Death. "Yeah. I guess we're all scared of the unknown, right?"
"I hope Gus is okay, wherever he is," Isaac murmurs.
"As long as it's not oblivion… Well, he wouldn't know if he was obliviated," I say.
Isaac smiles sadly, and turns his head toward me. "He'll never be, you know that? He left his mark here. On you, on me. He's only gone if his story is gone."
This makes me glance at my bag – where the book is. Lately, I have been wondering if all I am is just words. Am I really real? Because… I may just be words on paper. Maybe I'm not real. How would I ever know, unless I experience a different reality? Maybe a writer is just controlling every move I make, inside and outside of the book, and I'd never know.
It's scary, but there's nothing I can do about it.
Key may be just a character, too, and I'm the real one, or maybe she's real, and I'm fake.
If someone can read about me, if someone knows what I'm going to do before I do it, how is it free choice? How is it being human?
…
When I am back home, lying in my bed, I stare at the ceiling and think.
I know I appear pretty far into the book – but I don't know how, because I didn't read part anything I haven't experienced. I get home, and I find that Isaac and my video gaming experience was written into the book. So I read through that – and it's creepy, seeing my thoughts down on paper. But it helps me to think more.
Key, can you read this?
Can anybody else read this?
I Google the Bermuda Triangle – things come up like Amelia Earhart's disappearance, wild portal theories, alien theories, all sorts of things that would make sense in an imaginary world full of magic – Leo and Teddy's worlds, whoever they are – but not here. As Kelly might say, she lives in a world that has physics and math and objective facts – no magic, no inexplicable signs, nothing. I live in a world like that too.
I almost do not believe it.
Except for the fact that I am in the book too.
I Google with keywords like Leo and Calypso, and I find something on Calypso, but not Leo. She's a mythical creature, a daughter of the Greek Titan Atlas, who was punished to hold up the sky for all eternity. Leo doesn't help, neither does Percy Jackson. I Google Teddy, Harry Potter, anything that could be connected to Key, but nothing comes up. Nothing. It's like my world's like Kelly's, but with different books, different people, different fiction. But how?
How is it possible that we have the same but different worlds? Amelia Earhart – she disappeared in Key's world too, from research Key does in one of the later chapters. How can historical figures be the same, but not fictional worlds?
Maybe it's better not to wonder about these things, and to just work on getting to Key's world.
I have no magic to help me, not like Teddy or Leo. No trip to the Bermuda for me, no secret organization to send me somewhere I could get lost. We have no money, no wish from a foundation to send me on another far-fetched trip, and my parents would be devastated if I drowned at sea or went missing. I am as normal – if not more normal – than Key, and there is definitely no magic in my world. Without help from someone else, I'd never get in.
Teddy's summoning spells?
But there was nothing about that in the part before I appeared. I saw my name on the page, and I just stopped reading. Only barely.
I don't want to go, because I know they will miss me, but I know I will have to.
It's in the book.
I put the book down, close it, because I am scared. More scared than I was in the beginning. Because maybe, I will have to read the book in order to find out how to get to Kelly's world. Maybe I'll be able to see the future.
But there is this nagging doubt – the future of others is okay to read, while I am not sure if I can get there in the first place. But when it is my future, and everything can spiral out of control for myself… I don't think I want to know.
I feel dizzy.
I realize I am sucking air.
Somehow – there's something wrong with Philip. I can't breathe, I start hyperventilating, scream Mom over and over and over and over –
And all I see is a swirl of colours, and then I am gone.
CASTING
Leo Valdez: Nat Wolff
Calypso: Shailene Woodley
Hazel Grace Lancaster: Hailee Steinfeld
Edward Remus "Teddy" Lupin: Andrew Garfield
Gale Hawthorne: Liam Hemsworth
Author's note:
Hey everyone! Thank you all for waiting so patiently for the updates and for reviewing and reading! I haven't been very regular in updating (understatement of the century) and while I've been on holiday I have managed to write a ton more. Also I've been reading through reviews and I'm going to answer QUESTIONSSSS YAYYY
*Ahem*
without giving away the final plot or saying too much but enough that will annoy you guys (ahaha, sorry).
Q: Will she HAVE to let them go fully? (ThePointer)
A: Only time will tell ;)
Q: At the end of the prophecy didn't it mention something about finding out who she truly is or something? (ThePointer)
A: "Bring the lost home, to find her kind," is the exact line. Who knows what this means? :3 Except I'll have you know that the prophecy doesn't actually end here HAHA
Q: So now does Hazel know the whole story already? (GetDaFacts4.0)
A: Pretty much answered that in this chapter, but she knows the story until the part where she appears.
Thank you thank you thank you for your wonderful reviews, for reading the story, and for your feedback. This really motivates me to write faster (as you can see I have moved from not updating in months to updating within a week hahaha).
As a note on this chapter, repeating Hazel's character doesn't close off the rest of the people coming into the story. There are still many more surprises on the way
