Hey guys! Sorry for all the late updates. It's been super busy! I just want you guys to know that I am still continuing this story and I am not giving up. We're are going all the way to the end! My updates are a lot less frequent then usual though and for that I am really sorry :(
I hope you all like this chapter! We are in Amsterdam now:) enjoy and please comment and review. Loving all your feedback!
Okay?
~Wallflower95
11
I woke up to my mouth tasting awful and sunlight streaming in from the window. And then I remembered I was on a plane. The sky was streaked with orange and pink and the clouds were vast. We were so close to them I felt as if I could reach out and touch them. Down below was the ground and it was so green. I felt Hazel Grace stir beside me. I felt the plane sink lower, the clouds rising above us as we went for the runway. We finally touched on solid earth. I relaxed. I'm alive... for now.
After hunting down our bags and clearing through customs the three of us piled in a taxi driven by some hobo looking bald guy. We were all exhausted and sore from the long plane ride.
"The Hotel Filosoof?" Hazel Grace said to the driver.
"You are Americans?" He said.
"'Yes.'" Mrs. Lancaster said. "'We're from Indiana."
"Indiana. They steal the land from the Indians and leave the name, yes?"
"Something like that." Mrs. Lancaster said. The cabbie guy pulled out into traffic and we were off towards our destination. I thought traffic was bad back home. Man was I wrong. Beside the highway we were on there was empty land that stretched out for miles. A few buildings here and there.
"This is Amsterdam?" Hazel Grace asked.
"Yes and no." The cabbie said as we exited the highway. There were rows and rows of houses right on the canal. People were there in the canal, greeting each other for the day. The sunlight peeking out from behind the clouds made the canal water glow. It was an amazing sight. The scene looked like a painting that could be in a museum.
"Are these houses very old?" Mrs. Lancaster asked.
"Many of the canal houses date from the Golden Age, the seventeenth century," he said. "Our city has rich history, even though many tourists are only waiting to see the Red Light District." He paused. "Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin."
We were told that all the rooms in the Hotel Filosoof were named after filosoofers (I have no idea what that means). Mrs. Lancaster and Hazel Grace were staying on the ground floor in the Kierkegaard and I'm on the floor above in the Heidegger. My room wasn't terribly big. As you opened the door there was a single bed big enough for two on the left. Further ahead was the window overlooking the canal. To the right was the bathroom and next to the bed was a wardrobe. It was great.
I threw my suitcase in front of the wardrobe and threw myself onto the bed. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out.
Couple hours later there was a knock at the door. I rolled off the bed and groaned as my hip throbbed. Deep breaths. I closed my eyes and stood up. Its just demands to be felt. I opened the door. Mrs. Lancaster smiled.
"Afternoon ma'am." I said. Mrs. Lancaster smiled.
"Good afternoon, Augustus." She said.
"Where's Hazel Grace?"
"She's just sleeping." I nodded.
"You two have a dinner reservation tonight at a restaurant called Oranjee. Compliments of Mr. Peter Van Houten." She said.
"I'm liking this guy more and more." I said with a smile. She handed me some papers and a guidebook.
"Here are the directions to the restaurant. It's not far. It's a very nice restaurant." She said. I nodded and smiled.
"Well, of course. Thanks Mrs. Lancaster." And I closed the door. I opened my suitcase and pulled out my suit. It's suit meant for... special occasions and I guess this being one of those. I buttoned up the blue dress shirt on with a black tie. When I was ready, I slipped a cigarette into my mouth and I headed downstairs and knocked on her door.
"Hello?" Her voice called through the door. I smiled.
"Okay." I answered, the cigarette dancing in my mouth. The door was pulled open and standing in the doorway as radiant as the sun was Hazel Grace. My ciagarette almost fell out of my mouth. She was wearing a blue print sundress, flowey and knee length with tight and mary jane shoes. Her hair was brushed and looked mid 2000 Natalie Portman. Her green eyes stared back at me.
"Hazel Grace," I breathed out. "You look gorgeous." She opened her mouth to say something. She looked down at her shoes shyly.
"I feel under dressed."
"Ah, this old thing?" I said, smiling down at her.
"Augustus," Mrs. Lancaster said from behind Hazel Grace. "you look extremely handsome."
"Thank you, ma'am." I held out my arm, offering it to Hazel Grace. She took it gingerly and looked back at her mom.
"See you by eleven."
Waiting for the tram Hazel Grace asked me,
"The suit you wear to funerals, I assume?"
"Actually, no." I said. "That suit isn't nearly this nice." I said. The tram arrived, I handed our cards to the driver and he explained to me in very rusty English that I had to wave them in front of a machine. I guess this kind of one of the reasons I don't care much for travelling. When you go too another country you feel like a complete idiot. The tram was completely crowded and there wasn't really anywhere to sit. As we walked down the aisle an old man stood up and offered us seats together. Hazel Grace tried to decline his offer but he insisted. We rode the tram for three stops, Hazel Grace leaned over towards me and we both looked out the window. I was staring at the trees as something, seeds maybe, flew off the branches making it look like it was snowing. I pointed to them.
"Do you see that?" I said to Hazel Grace. They were like delicate looking petals dancing in the wind. The old man who offered us the seats explained to us in English;
"Amsterdam's spring snow. The iepen throw confetti to greet the spring." We switched trams and after four more stops we arrived at the restaurant. Oranjee had outdoor seating next to the canal. The iepen falling into the canal. It looked like another picture in a museum. As we approached, the hostess's eyes lit up when we walked towards her,
"Mr. and Mrs. Waters?"
"I guess?"
"Your table." She said, gesturing across the street to narrow table inches from the canal.
"The champagne is our gift." She said. I glanced at Hazel Grace and we smiled at each other. I pulled the seat out for Hazel Grace and she sat down, tucking the oxygen tank under seat. There were two flutes of champagne resting on our table. The sun slowly setting in the sky, making the sky orange and pink. People on the street were dress in business suits, walking home from work. Cyclist pedaled past. The canal was covered in the iepen. It fell from the sky above us. We each took a flute of champagne and we looked at each other, clinking our glasses together.
"Okay," I said.
"Okay." I'm not much of drinker. Once I had some of my dad's beer and I had thought the smell was awful. I had always been invited to school parties that involved drinking but I had always declined the offers. It wasn't something I had wanted to participate in. But when I took a sip of that champagne, it was like there was an explosion in my mouth. The bubbles danced and popped in my mouth. It was incredible.
"That is really good," Hazel Grace said. "I've never drunk champagne." she said. A sturdy young looking waiter with wavy blonde hair appeared.
"Do you know," He said in a dutch accent. "what Dom Perigon said after inventing champagne?"
"No?"
"He called out to his fellow monks, 'Come quickly: I am tasting the stars.' Welcome to Amsterdam. Would you like to see the menu, or will you have the chef's choice?" I looked at Hazel Grace and she looked at me.
"The chef's choice sounds lovely," Did I really just say the word 'lovely'? "but Hazel is a vegetarian." I said.
"This is not a problem," the waiter said.
"Awesome. And can we get some more of this?" I asked, pointing to the champagne.
"Of course," said the waiter. "We have bottled all the stars this evening, my young friends. Gah, the confetti!" he said, brushing off a petal from Hazel Grace's shoulder.
"It hasn't been so bad in many years. It's everywhere. Very annoying." The waiter disappeared and we watched the confetti fall from the sky.
"Kind of hard to believe anyone could ever find that annoying." I said.
"People always get used to beauty, though." Hazel Grace said. I looked at her.
"I haven't gotten used to you just yet." I answered, smiling at Hazel Grace. Her face turned slightly red and my smile grew bigger.
"Thank you for coming to Amsterdam." I said.
"Thank you for letting me hijack your wish," she said.
"Thank you for wearing that dress which is like, whoa." I said. She shook her head. I could see she was trying hard not smile. She was trying not being a grenade like she said to me a while back. You're not the grenade anymore Hazel. I thought.
"Hey, how's that poem end?" I asked, referring to the poem she recited to me on the plane.
"Huh?"
"The one you recited to me on the plane."
"Oh, 'Prufrock'? It ends, 'We have lingered in the chambers of the sea / By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown / Till human voices wake us, and we drown.'"
I pulled out a cigarette and tapped the filter against the table, not that it was extremely necessary to do that.
"Stupid human voices ruining everything." I said. The waiter appeared with, hell yes more champagne and what he called Belgian white asparagus with lavender infusion on a plate. Once he left, I spoke again.
"I've never had champagne either," I said. "In case you were wondering or whatever. Also, I've never had white asparagus." Hazel Grace was chewing her first bite and I her eyes light up.
"It's amazing." I took a bite and swallowed. Wow.
"God. If asparagus tasted like that all the time, I'd be a vegetarian, too." Some people passing by on a boat in the canal were drinking and on their merry way. One of them, a woman with curly blonde hair with a glass of beer raised her glass and shouted something at us.
"We don't speak Dutch." I shouted back. Another person on the boat translated for us.
"The beautiful couple is beautiful." The food was great, the service was great, the champagne was great. Soon Hazel Grace and I were marveling the deliciousness of all the food brought out to us.
"I want this dragon carrot risotto to become a person so I can take it to Las Vegas and marry it."
"Sweet-pea sorbet, you are so unexpectedly magnificent." I wish I could keep eating but I had a fear of bursting out of my suit. After some green garlic gnocchi with red mustard leaves the waiter said,
"Dessert next. More stars first?" The champagne was amazing but I've never been drunk before and I've seen some friends get that way at school. No, I wanted this to be a night to remember.
"Mmmmm." We were both quiet, staring at everything beautiful thing before us and it wasn't an awkward silence either because we had plenty to look at and we were probably to full to even talk.
"It's not my funeral suit," I said after a while. Hazel Grace looked at me. A strand of her hair hung in front of her green eyes. Her cheeks were a rosy pink and her shoulders were relaxed.
"When I first found out I was sick-I mean, they told me I had like an eighty-five percent chance of cure. I know those are great odds, but I kept thinking it was a game of Russian roulette. I mean, I was going to have to go through hell for six months or a year and lose my leg and then at the end, it still might not work, you know?" And it hasn't worked. It will never work.
"I know." Hazel Grace said.
"Right, so I went through this whole thing about wanting to be ready. We bought a plot in Crown Hill, and I walked around with my dad one day and picked out a spot. And I had my whole funeral planned out and everything, and then right before surgery, I asked my parents if I could buy a suit, like a really nice suit, just in case I bit it. Anyway, I've never had occasion to wear it. Until tonight."
"So it's your death suit."
"Correct. Don't you have a death outfit?"
"Yeah," she said. "It's a dress I bought for my fifteenth birthday party. But I don't wear it on dates." I looked at her.
"We're on a date?" She looked down, her cheeks turning redder.
"Don't push it."
We waited for a bit before having dessert which was passion fruit surrounded by rich cream. Everything around us was still awake. The sun refused to set, still lingering in the pink and orange sky. I was looking at the sun, wondering.
"Do you believe in afterlife?" I asked.
"I think forever is an incorrect concept." She answered. I smirked at her.
"You're an incorrect concept."
"I know. That's why I'm being taken out of the rotation." I felt my smile disappear and I looked at her hard. The thought of Hazel going before me was unfair and cruel. I'd go before her. I wanted to go before her because her of all people deserved to live. And right then and there I knew I'd go before. All I wanted some time with her. Just a little bit of time.
"That's not funny."
"Come on," she said. "It was a joke."
"The thought of you being removed from the rotation is not funny to me. Seriously though: afterlife?"
"No," she said and then said. "Well, maybe I wouldn't go so far as no. You?"
"Yes," I said, my voice full of confidence. "Yes, absolutely. Not like heaven where you ride unicorns, play harps, and live in a mansion made of clouds. But yes. I believe in Something with a capital 'S'. Always have."
"Really?" She said, sounding surprised.
"Yeah," I said, getting quiet. "I believe in that line from 'An Imperial Affliction'. "'The risen sun too bright in her losing eyes.' That's God, I think, the rising sun, and the light is too bright and her eyes are losing but they aren't lost. I don't believe we return to haunt or comfort the living or anything, but I think something becomes of us."
"But you fear oblivion."
"Sure, I fear earthly oblivion. But, I mean, not to sound like my parents, but I believe humans have souls, and I believe in the conversation of souls. The oblivion fear is something else, fear that I won't be able to give anything in exchange for my life. If you don't live a life in service of a greater good, you've gotta at least die a death in service of a greater good, you know? And I fear that I won't get either a life or death that means anything."
She shook her head.
"What?"
"Your obsession with, like, dying for something or leaving behind some great sign of your heroism or whatever. It's just weird."
"Everyone want to lead an extraordinary life."
"Not everyone." She said. There was no disguising the annoyance in her tone.
"Are you mad?"
"It's just, just." The candle in between on us on the table flickered. "It's really mean of you to say that the only lives that matter are the ones that are lived for something. That's a really mean thing to say to me." She said. She took a bite of the dessert and tried to avert her eyes making it seem like she wasn't upset. But I knew I had upset her.
"Sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I was just thinking about myself."
"Yeah, you were." Was I? Was I only thinking of myself and not others? All my life I have worked to be caring and considerate of others but even when I do try, I only think of myself.
"I'm sorry." I reached across the table for her hand.
"I could be worse, you know."
"How?"
"I mean, I have a work of calligraphy over my toilet that reads, 'Bathe yourself daily in the comfort of God's words,' Hazel. I could be way worse." I said, flashing my crooked smile.
"Sounds unsanitary."
"I could be worse."
"You could be worse." Our waiter appeared again.
"Your meal has been paid for by Mr. Peter Van Houten." I smiled.
"This Peter Van Houten fellow ain't half bad."
Hazel Grace had her arm wrapped around mine as we walked along the canal. The sky was slowly darkening above us. The pink and orange sunset slowly ebbing away. Half a block away from Oranjee, we stopped at a park bench surrounded by old rusty bicycles locked to the bike racks. I was thankful for the break. Although I wasn't showing it, my hip and my only leg were throbbing. I was trying to focus on my breathing. Come on. Don't give up now.
"I can't believe he's going to tell us tomorrow," Hazel Grace said. I perked up and looked at her. She really did look amazing in that dress. "Peter Van Houten is going to tell us the famously unwritten end to the best book ever." There was awe and wonder in her voice. I smiled.
"Plus he paid for our dinner."
"I keep imagining that he is going to search us for recording devices before he tells us. And then he will sit down between us on the couch in his living room and whisper whether Anna's mom married the Dutch Tulip Man."
"Don't forget Sisyphus the Hamster," I added.
"Right, and also of course what fate awaited Sisyphus the Hamster." She leaned forwards to see into the canal. Her hands resting on her knees. Her hair falling over her eyes. A small smile playing on her lips.
"A sequel that will exist just for us." She said.
"So what's your guess?" I ask.
"I really don't know. I've gone back and forth like a thousand times about it all. Each time I reread it, I think something different, you know?" I nodded, I've done the same but I believed I had a solid theory by now. "You have a theory?" She asked me.
"Yeah. I don't think the Dutch Tulip Man is a con man, but he's also not rich like he leads them to believe. And I think after Anna dies, Anna's mom goes to Holland with him and thinks they will live there forever, but it doesn't work out, because she wants to be near where her daughter was."
Hazel Grace seems surprised by my answer. Probably because she didn't think I cared so much. The water in the canal hit the wall. A group of people rode past on their bikes. I put my arm over and pulled Hazel Grace to my side. Everything was perfect. Hazel Grace leaned into me and I felt a sharp pain in my side. I tried not to react, but I winced.
"Sorry, you okay?" I don't want her to find out. Not yet at least. Now wasn't the time to tell the girl I love that I'm dying. No, now is not the time. I breathed out slowly as the pain disappeared.
"Sorry, bony shoulder." She said.
"It's okay. Nice, actually." We sat there for a very long time. My arm was still wrapped around her, my hand was resting on the park bench. She was still leaning into me but I could tell she wasn't putting her full weight into me.
"Can I ask you about Caroline Mathers?"
Caroline. The first girl I really fell for. Her face appears in my mind. Her long dark hair and her brown eyes. Her smile. Her gorgeous smile. And then I pictured her the day she died. I saw the life leave her. I watched her suffer.
"And you say there's no afterlife," I answered, without looking at her. "But yeah, of course. What do you want to know?" I tried preparing myself for all the questions I would have to answer. Other than Isaac and my parents I haven't really talked about Caroline to anyone.
"Just, like, what happened." Hazel Grace said. I sighed. I popped a cigarette into my mouth and started talking.
"You know how there is famously no place less played in than a hospital playground?" She nodded. I pictured seeing Caroline for the first time. Below my window sitting all alone on that sad little swing.
"Well, I was at Memorial for a couple of weeks when they took off the leg and everything. I was up on the fifth floor and I had a view of the playground, which was always of course utterly desolate. I was all awash in the metaphorical resonance of the empty playground in the hospital courtyard. But then this girl started showing up alone at the playground, every day, swinging on a swing completely alone, like you'd see in a movie or something. So I asked one of my nicer nurses to get the skinny on the girl, and the nurse brought her up to visit, and it was Caroline, and I used my immense charisma to win her over." I paused, remembering that moment.
"You're not that charismatic," Hazel Grace said. I scoffed. "You're mostly just hot." She said. I laughed.
"The thing about dead people," I started saying again. "The thing is you sound like a bastard if you don't romanticize them, but the truth is... complicated, I guess. Like, you are familiar with the trope of the stoic and determined cancer victim who heroically fights her cancer with inhuman strength and never complains or stops smiling even at the very end, etcetera?"
"Indeed. They are kindhearted and generous souls whose every breath is an Inspiration to Us All. They're so strong! We admire the so!" Hazel Grace said.
"Right, but really, I mean aside from us obviously, cancer kids are not statistically more likely to be awesome or compassionate or perseverant or whatever. Caroline was moody and miserable, but I liked it. I liked feeling as if she had chosen me as the only person in the world not to hate, and so we spent all this time together just ragging on everyone, you know? Ragging on the nurses and the other kids and our families and whatever else. But I don't know if that was her or the tumor. I mean, one of her nurses told me once that the kind of tumor Caroline had is known among medical types as the Asshole Tumor, because it just turns you into a monster. So here's this girl missing a fifth of her brain who's just had a recurrence of the Asshole Tumor and so she was not, you know, the paragon of stoic cancer-kid heroism. She was.. I mean, to be honest, she was a bitch. But you can't say that, because she had this tumor, and also she's, I mean, she's dead. And she had plenty of reason to be unpleasant, you know?"
"You know that part in An Imperial Affliction when Anna's walking across the football field to go to P.E or whatever and she falls and goes face-first into the grass and that's when she knows that the cancer is back and in her nervous system and she can't get up and her face is like an inch from the football field grass and she's stuck there looking at this grass up close, noticing the way the light hits it and... I don't remember the line but it's something like Anna having the Whitmanesque revelation that the definition of humanness is the opportunity to marvel at the majesty of creation or whatever. You know that part?"
"I know that part," she said quietly.
"So afterward, while I was getting eviscerated by chemo, for some reason I decided to feel really hopeful. No about survival specifically, but I felt like Anna does in the book, that feeling of excitement and gratitude about just being able to marvel at it all. But meanwhile Caroline got worse every day. She went home after a while and there were moments when I thought we could have, like, a regular relationship, but we couldn't, really, because she had no filter between her thoughts and her speech, which was sad and unpleasant and frequently hurtful. But, I mean, you can't dumpy a girl with a brain tumor. And her parents liked me, and she had this little brother who is a really cool kid. I mean, how can you dump her? She's dying."
"It took forever. It took almost a year, and it was a year of me hanging out with this girl who would, like, just start laughing out of nowhere and point at my prosthetic and call me Stumpy."
"No," Hazel Grace said.
"Yeah. I mean, it was the tumor. It ate her brain, you know? Or it wasn't the tumor. I have no way of knowing, because they were inseparable, she and the tumor. But as she got sicker, I mean, she'd just repeat the same stories and laugh at her own comments even if she'd already said the same thing a hundred times that day. Like, she made the same joke over and over again for weeks: 'Gus has great legs. I mean leg.' And then she would just laugh like a maniac."
"Oh Gus," Hazel Grace said softly. "That's..." There's not much to say. At the time, yeah it did really suck. Having cancer sucks. That's about it. I took the cigarette out of my mouth and looked at it and then put it back in my mouth before I started talking again.
"Well, to be fair, I do have great legs." I said, trying to change the subject. I didn't want to talk about it anymore. I missed Caroline of course but thinking of Caroline made me think of what I was going to put Hazel through when she found out about my relapse.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm really sorry."
"It's all good Hazel Grace. But just to be clear, when I thought I saw Caroline Mathers's ghost in Support Group, I was not entirely happy. I was staring but I wasn't yearning, if you know what I mean." I pulled my pack of cigarettes out of my pocket and placed the cigarette I had now back in the pack.
"I'm sorry." She said again.
"Me too."
"I don't ever want to do that to you." I smiled to myself. Oh you don't have to worry about that Hazel Grace for it is I that am doing it to you.
"Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you."