Hey everyone! Really sorry about these updates. I'm trying my best. So what do you guys think of the Paper Towns trailer? I thought it looked pretty good and I'm hoping the movie will be good. Did you hear about Looking for Alaska being a movie? Which are you looking forward to see more, Paper Towns or Looking for Alaska? Comment and share your thoughts! And please review. Hope you like the chapter! Until next time :)

Okay?

~Wallflower95

13

We climbed into Lidewij's clunky looking gray fiat with an engine that sounded like a little kid wailing. As we drove through Amsterdam, Lidewij apologized for Peter's behavior.

"I am very sorry. There is no excuse. He is very sick," she said. "I thought meeting you would help him, if he would see that his work has shaped real lives, but... I'm very sorry. It is very embarrassing." But neither of us were paying attention, or even speaking to her. I was just staring out the window. Looking at the canal and wondering what life would be like if you lived on the water.

"I have continued this work because I believe he is a genius and because the pay is good, but he has become a monster." Lidewij said.

"I guess he got pretty rich on that book." Hazel Grace spoke up in the back.

"Oh, no, no, he is of the Van Houten's," she said. "In the seventeenth century, his ancestor discovered how to mix cocoa into water. Some Van Houtens moved to the United States long ago, and Peter is of those, but he moved to Holland after his novel. He is an embarrassment to a great family." Lidewij said. The car engine screamed and I looked out the window again. I had this feeling, a feeling that Van Houten may have run away from something. Something painful.

"It is circumstance. Circumstance has made him so cruel. He is not an evil man. But this day, I did not think- when he said these terrible things. I could not believe it. I am very sorry. Very very sorry."

But I'm not listening anymore because no matter how many times you say sorry it won't change the past. I stare out at the canal below us wondering if maybe it was something in Van Houten's past, something that made him so cruel. So withdrawn from society.

We had to park a block away from the Anne Frank house. My hip was starting to throb and my leg hurt. I felt sweat dripping from my forehead. Ignore the pain. I told myself. I wiped my forehead. I had to get through this. Hazel Grace was sitting on a bench. I was standing up rolling her little card in lazy circles, just watching the wheels spin. The wheels are like life, it just going and going and going. Hazel Grace was just staring at the ground, probably still recovering from our encounter with the Great Van Houten.

"Okay?" I asked. She shrugged and reached for my calf, well, my fake calf.

"I wanted..." She said.

"I know," I said. "Apparently the world is not a wish-granting factory." That made smile a little bit and despite all the pain that was demanding to be felt, her smile made me happy. Lidewij returned with the tickets but she had a look on her face that expressed disappointment.

"There is no elevator," she said. "I am very very sorry."

"It's okay." Hazel Grace said.

"No, there are many stairs," Lidewij said. "Steep stairs."

"It's okay." Hazel Grace repeated in a determined tone. I tried to speak, saying maybe we should go another time. I doubt her at all. I know she can do it. But what if I can't? What if she finds out that I'm relapsing? That I am the ticking bomb she never wanted to be?

"It's okay. I can do it." She said to me. Her green eyes were burning bright. Determination was set on her face. I nodded and we went into the building. It was hard to believe that I was standing in the house that Anne Frank once lived. Once hid in. It was a slow and painful process walking up the stairs. Every time I moved my leg it throbbed even more. The only thing that that kept me going was watching Hazel Grace walk up those stairs before me. She was tired and breathing hard but she was so strong. So brave. She kept going and I followed.

I felt like I was being watched and judged by everyone else behind me. It was the same feeling I had been trying to avoid at the airport before coming here to Amsterdam. But I kept. I kept going because I'm need to. For Hazel.

Hazel Grace had sat down at the top of the stairs. Everyone else walked past us. I came up beside her and wiped the sweat from my forehead. I was in so much pain. It was indescribable... but I gritted my teeth and ignore it because it's me and Hazel Grace. I have to keep going for her. I would be her Max Mayhem.

"You're a champion." I said. But we were so out of breath neither of us said anything for the next few minutes. Once we had recovered, I helped Hazel Grace onto her feet and looked around. We were in the room Anne had shared with Fritz Pfeffer the dentist. Still pasted to the wall were yellowing pictures of magazines and newspaper clippings. I touched one gently. She could have had so much ahead of her if she been born in another time or another country.

We went up another staircase. A staircase that led up to where the Van Pels had lived. It was steeper than the last one. Hazel Grace paused on the staircase.

"Let's go back." I breathed.

"I'm okay." She practically whispered. I couldn't tell what she was thinking but I knew she was going to give up. She was going to climb all of these stairs no matter what. She crawled up the stairs like a little kid. People behind us were waiting patiently. I admired her so much. She just kept going. When we finally reached the top, my chest was heaving. Every breath hurt. My chest felt tight and my leg had gone numb. Hazel Grace was on the ground, coughing hard but I could see the a hint of a smile on her face despite all the pain. Lidewij crouched down beside her.

"You are at the top, that is it." Hazel Grace nodded. All the people who had been behind us were at the top glancing at us with worried expressions on their faces. Probably thinking we were going to drop dead any moment. Once I could actually breathe, Lidewij and I pulled Hazel Grace to her feet. That's when I noticed something on the wall that was protected by a glass case. I got a better look and my stomach was tied in not. There were a bunch of lines on the wall with names of the children who had lived in the Annex. They went all the way up until they would never grow again. These kids could have had so much more but they had to live back then. Imagine your life ending right in the middle. In the middle of something great. In the middle of a sentence.

We were walking down a hallway with a picture of each member of the Annex. Describing how and where they died.

"The only member of his whole family who survived the war," Lidewij said, referring to Otto Frank.

"But he didn't survive a war, not really." I said. "He survived a genocide."

"True. I do not know how you go on, without your family. I do not know." As she said that, I wondered how my family would go after I died. Would they be driven to depression? Would the mourn me until they die? How would Hazel Grace take it? I don't want anyone to be said when I die. It would hurt me. But that the thing about pain, it is always demanding to be felt. At the end of the hallway there is a list of names of all the Jews who were killed during the Holocaust. Right underneath Anne Frank's name were four Aron Franks. All these people and they had nothing to be remembered by. They were forgotten and lost.

When I go I don't want to be forgotten. I want to be remembered. I want to leave my mark. I want to be remembered by the people I cared about.

I saw Anne Frank's picture. She looked so young. How did it feel? To almost make it through the war and then die weeks before the end? She could have made it. She could have survived. Her father could have had his daughter. She could have made it.

Hazel Grace looked at me.

"You okay?" She asked me. I nodded.

"The worst part is that she almost lived, you know? She died weeks away from liberation." Lidewij had walked away to watch a video. Hazel Grace took my hand and continued down the hallway.

"Are there any Nazis left that I could hunt down and bring to justice?" I asked as we leaned over to view the many letters Otto had sent out inquiring about his family's whereabouts.

"I think they're all dead. But it's not like the Nazis had a monopoly on evil."

"True. That's what we should do, Hazel Grace: We should team up and be this disabled vigilante duo roaring through the world, righting wrongs, defending the weak, protecting the endangered." She smiled.

"Our fearlessness shall be our secret weapon."

"The tales of our exploits will survive as long as the human voice itself." I said.

"And even after that, when the robots recall the human absurdities of sacrifice and compassion, they will remember us."

"They will robot-laugh at our courageous folly," I said. "But something in their iron hearts will yearn to have lived and died as we did: on the hero's errand."

"Augustus Waters." She said as she looked up at me. Have I mentioned that I love her face. I love her messy hair, how it never sits still. I love her sparkling green eyes. I love that pipe shirt on her. I love those chuck taylors on her feet. I love how she climbed all of those stairs and she didn't give up once.

I wonder if you could get arrested for kissing in the Anne Frank House. I mean, this is a place of... well, I'm not sure. I mean, people lived here and hid from the Nazis. But then, I think that our friend Anne Frank would appreciate the fact that people kissed and fell in love in the place she believed was full of sorrow and fear. After all, Anne Frank herself kissed someone in the Anne Frank House, so why not us?

"I must say," Otto Frank's voice said on the video. "I was very much surprised by the deep thoughts Anne had." And then I reached down and gently pulled her towards me. It's like everything around us melted away and it was just us. Just me and Hazel Grace. She reached for my neck and I pulled her up by her waist so she was standing on her toes. I was breathless. I wonder if this is how you're supposed to feel. All that pain I was feeling disappeared. I suddenly felt like I could do anything. I felt like a normal guy. Cancer free.

"It was quite a different Anne I had known as my daughter. She never really showed this kind of inner feeling," Otto Frank continued. "And my conclusion is since I had been in very good terms with Anne, that most parents don't know really their children." Hazel Grace's eyes opened and I was just staring at her. It was a few moments before I realized that everyone in the room had their eyes on us. And I truly believed this is they part we'd get arrested for illegal smooching in a sacred place. Hazel Grace pulled away from me. I wish she hadn't. I felt the absence immediately. She stared down at her shoes, her cheeks turning bright red. I tried not to look at the crowd. And then they started clapping. Wait, what? I looked up and everyone in the room was clapping. I even heard people cheering 'Bravo!' I smiled and bowed before them. Hazel Grace laughed and curtsied.

Thank God there was an elevator. My legs felt like jelly. When we got downstairs into the gift shop we saw a page of Anne's diary and also her book of unpublished quotations. It was turned to a Shakespeare quote:

For who so firm that cannot be seduced?

I don't believe in signs but maybe that's what it was.