Hey everyone! oh my gosh guys Mockingjay comes out this Friday!:) are any of you hunger games fans? Agggh I cannot wait to see it I am so excited :) haha anyways, here is chapter 4. hope you like it!
Okay?
~Wallflower95
4
It's been a week since I spoke to Hazel Grace. A week since the night of the broken trophies. Since then I have been attending school as usual and doing some gaming with Isaac. Just boring stuff and then Isaac is losing his sight soon. I'm also trying to come up with something really intelligent to say about An Imperial Affliction so I could discuss it with Hazel Grace. I just really wanted to something nice for Hazel Grace so the other day I had decided to look up old reclusive Peter Van Houten. I had searched and searched until I came upon the email address of his assistant. Lidw... I don't know. Anyway, I wrote an email:
Dear Mr. Peter Van Houten,
My name is Augustus Waters. I am an Osteosarcoma survivor and I coincidentally, at the request of a very good friend of mine, read your book. You see, this friend introduced me to your book 'An Imperial Affliction'. While you book does not feature zombies or stormtroopers I do have to say that your book meant a great deal to me... mostly because this great friend of mine shared it with me and I believe that is was something very special she shared with me. I do have a question for you. A question that I'm sure even my friend would like to know. Do you plan on writing another book? Maybe even a sequel?
Even though your book is not 'my type', I still want to know what the heck happens in the end.
Sincerely,
Augustus Waters
Today, when I got home from school I had an email. I clicked on it. It's from him.
"Oh I gotta tell Hazel Grace." I reached for my phone and dialed her number. There was no answer. I turned on some Hectic Glow and read the email. An hour later, she called back.
"Hazel Grace." I said.
"Hi." She said.
"How are you?"
"Grand. I have been waiting to call you on a nearly minutely basis but I have been waiting until I could form a coherent thought in re And Imperial Affliction." Oh yeah I said in re.
"And?" She questioned.
"I think it's, like. Reading it, I just kept feeling like, like."
"Like?" She said teasingly.
"Like it was a gift?" I said askingly. Oh such great words Augustus. You'll totally get the girl now. I wanted to kick myself.
"Like you'd given me something important." I kept going.
"Oh." She said. I bit my lip and closed my eyes.
"That's cheesy. I'm sorry." I said.
"No. No. Don't apologize." She said.
"But it doesn't end." I said.
"Yeah."
"Torture. I totally get it, like, I get that she died or whatever."
"Right I assume so." She said.
"And okay, fair enough, but there is this unwritten contract between author and reader and I think not ending your book kind of violates that contract."
"I don't know." She said, sounding a little defensive.
"That's part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully. You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence. But I do- God, I do really want to know what happens to everyone else. That's what I asked him in my letters. But he, yeah, he never answers." I smiled.
"Right. You said he's a recluse?"
"Correct."
"Impossible to track down."
"Correct."
"Utterly unreachable."
"Unfortunately so." I smiled and started reading the email Peter Van Houten himself sent me.
"'Dear Mr. Waters," I read. "'I am writing to thank you for your electronic correspondence, received via Ms. Vliegenthart this sixth of April, from the United States of America, insofar as geography can be said to exist in our triumphantly digitized contemporaneity.'"
"Augustus, what the hell?"
"He has an assistant. Lidewij Vliegenthart. I found her. I emailed her. She gave him the email. He responded via her email account."
"Okay. Okay. Keep reading."
"'My response is being written with ink and paper in the glorious tradition of our ancestors and then transcribed by Ms. Vliegenthart into a series of 1s and 0s to travel the insipid web which has lately ensnared our species, so I apologize for any errors or omissions that may result. Given the entertainment bacchanalia at the disposal of young men and women of your generation, I am grateful to anyone anywhere who sets aside the hours necessary to read my little book. But I am particularly indebted to you, sir both for your kind words about An Imperial Affliction and here I quote you directly, "meant a great deal" to you. This comment, however, leads me to wonder: What do you mean by meant? Given the final futility of our struggle, is the fleeting jolt of meaning that art gives us valuable? Or is the only value in passing the time as comfortably as possible? What should a story seek to emulate, Augustus? A ringing alarm? A call to arms? A morphine drip? Of course, like all interrogation of the universe, this line of inquiry inevitably reduces us to asking what it means to be human and whether- to borrow a phrase from the angst- encumbered sixteen year-olds you no doubt revile- there is a point to it all.
"'I fear there is not , my friend, and that you would receive scant encouragement from further encounters with my writing. But to answer your question: No, I have not written anything else, nor will I. I do not feel that continuing to share my thoughts with readers would benefit either them or me. Thank you again for your generous email. Yours most sincerely, Peter Van Houten, via Lidewij Vliegenthart.'"
"Wow. Are you making this up?" I stifled a laughed.
"Hazel Grace, could I, with my meager intellectual capacities, make up a letter from Peter Van Houten featuring phrases like 'our triumphantly digitized contemporaneity'?"
"You could not." She said.
"Can I, can I have the email address?" I smiled.
"Of course."
After Hazel Grace spent two hours writing a very intellectual sounding email to the Mr. Peter Van Houten, she called me back and we stayed up late talking about An Imperial Affliction . She also read me this really nice sounding poem from Emily Dickinson that Van Houten had used for the title of AIA. I told her The Price of Dawn starts with a poem as well. I searched my room for the book and opened it up to the page.
"' Say your life broke down. The last good kiss/ You had was years ago.'"
"Not bad." She said.
"Bit pretentious. I believe Max Mayhem would refer to that as 'sissy shit'."
"Yes, with his teeth gritted, no doubt. God, Mayhem grits his teeth a lot in these books. He's definitely going to get TMJ, if he survives all this combat." I said. And then I asked a question that surprised even myself.
"When was the last good kiss you had?" She was quiet. Thinking about it. My last good kiss had been of course with my ex-girlfriend (if you can even call her that since technically we never broke up).
"Years ago." Hazel Grace finally said. "You?"
"I had a few good kisses with my ex-girlfriend, Caroline Mathers." I said as her face flashed in my mind.
"Years ago?" She asked.
"The last one was just less than a year ago." I said.
"What happened?"
"During the kiss?"
"No, with you and Caroline."
"Oh." I said. I haven't really talked to anyone about Caroline. Isaac had been there during our time together and he had been there for me after she had died. Mom and dad were there for me of course but, I don't know. I guess I didn't really like talking about it.
"Caroline is no longer suffering from personhood." I said.
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry."
"Not your fault Hazel Grace. We're all just side effects, right?"
"Barnacles in the container ship of consciousness." She said, quoting AIA.
"Okay. I gotta go to sleep. It's almost one." I said.
"Okay." She said.
"Okay." I said with a smile. She giggled on the other end.
"Okay." And it was quiet. No one had hung up. It was just me and Hazel Grace. It felt as she was here but actually wasn't here. I could hear her soft even breathing on the other end and I was so tempted to reach out for her hand when I realized she wasn't actually there.
"Okay." I said into the phone.
"Maybe okay will be our 'always'."
"Okay." Sadly, I had to hang up.
Please comment and review guys! I appreciate the feedback muchly:)
~Wallflower95