The Stars Shine For You

I push myself out of my chair and walk over to Hazel. I towered over her but kept my distance, so she didn’t have to crane her neck to look me in the eye. I didn’t know how to start a conversation with her so I started off simple.

“What’s your name?” I ask

“Hazel” she replied.

“No, your full name.”

“Um, Hazel Grace Lancaster”

I was about to say something else when Isaac walked up to us. “Hold on.” I said, raising a finger towards Hazel as I direct my attention towards Isaac.

“That was actually worse than you made it out to be” I said.

“I told you it was bleak.”

“Why do you bother with it?”

“I don’t know. It kind of helps?”

I lean in towards Isaac with a hope that Hazel does not hear me. “She’s a regular?” I ask.

“Yeah, she’s friendly.”

“I’ll say.” I respond, clasping Isaac by both shoulders and taking a half step away from him. “Tell Hazel about clinic.”

Isaac leaned a hand against the snack table and focused his huge eye on Hazel. “Okay, so I went into a clinic this morning, and I was telling my surgeon that I’d rather be deaf than blind. And he said, ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ and I was, like, ‘Yeah, I realize it doesn’t work that way; I’m just saying I’d rather be deaf than blind if I had the choice, which I realize I don’t have,’ and he said, ‘Well, the good news is that you won’t be deaf,’ and I was like, “Thank you for explaining that my eye cancer isn’t going to make me deaf. I feel so fortunate than an intellectual giant like yourself would deign to operate on me.”

“He sounds like a winner,” Hazel says. “I’m gonna try to get me some eye cancer just so I can make this guys acquaintance.”

“Good luck with that. All right, I should go. Monica’s waiting for me. I gotta look at her a lot while I can.”

“Counterinsurgence tomorrow?” I ask.

“Definitely.” Isaac turned and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time, leaving me and Hazel alone together.

“Literally,” I say to Hazel.

“Literally?” she asks.

“We are literally in the heart of Jesus,” I say. “I thought we were in a church basement, but we are literally in the heart of Jesus.”

“Someone should tell Jesus,” She said. “I mean, it’s gotta be dangerous, storing children with cancer in your heart.”

“I would tell Him myself,” I said, “but unfortunately I am literally stuck inside of His heart, so He won’t be able to hear me.” Hazel laughed and I shook my head, looking at her.

“What?” She asked.

“Nothing.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

I half smiled. “Because your beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence.”

A brief awkward silence ensued, but I plowed through.

“I mean, particulatly given that, as you so deliciously pointed out, all of this will end in oblivion and everything.”

Hazel kind of scoffed or sighed or exhaled in a way that was vaguely coughy then said, “I’m not beau-“

“You’re like a millennial Natalie Portman. Like V for Vendetta Natalie Portman.”

“Never seen it,” she said.

“Really?” I ask. “Pixie-haired gorgeous girl dislikes authority and can’t help but fall for a boy she knows is trouble. It’s your autobiography, so far as I can tell.”

“How’s it going, Alisa?” I say to a friend as they walk past.

She smiles and mumbles “Hi, Augustus.”

“Memorial people.” I explain to Hazel. Memorial being a big research hospital.

“Where do you go?” I asked her.

“Children’s” she said, her voice smaller than I expected. I nod and the conversation seems to be at an end.

“Well,” I say, nodding vaguely toward the steps that led us out of the Literal Heart of Jesus. Hazel tilted her cart onto its weels and started walking. I limped beside her.

“So, see you next time, maybe?” she asks.

“You should see it,” I say. “V for Vendetta, I mean.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll look it up.”

“No. With me. At my house,” I said. “Now.”

Hazel stopped walking. “I hardly know you, Augustus Waters. You could be an ax murderer.”

I nod. “True enough, Hazel Grace.” I walk past her, and she follows me upstairs slowly. We walk out of Jesus’s heart and into the parking lot.

We stand out the front, and to the side a tall, curvy brunette girl had Isaac pinned against the stone wall of the church, kissing him rather aggressively. They were close enough to me that I could hear the weird noises of their mouths together, and I could hear him saying, “Always,” and her saying, “Always,” in return.

I half whisper, “They’re big believers in PDA.”

“What’s with the ‘always’?” Hazel asks, the slurping sounds intensified.

“Always is their thing. They’ll always love each other and whatever. I would conservatively estimate they have texted each other the word always four million times in the last year.”

We watch Isaac and Monica, who proceed apace as if they were not leaning against a place of worship. His hand reached for her boob over her shirt and pawed at it, his palm still while his fingers moved around.

“Imagine taking that last drive to the hospital,” Hazel said quietly. “The last time you’ll ever drive a car.”

Without looking at her, I said, “You’re killing my vibe here, Hazel Grace. I’m trying to observe young love in its many-splendored awkwardness.”

“I think he’s hurting her boob,” she said.

“Yes, it’s difficult to ascertain whether he is trying to arouse her or perform a breast exam.” I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out my pack of cigarettes. I flipped it open and put a cigarette between my lips.

“Are you serious?” Hazel asks, anger and annoyance in her voice. “You think that’s cool? Oh, my God, you just ruined the whole thing.”

“Which whole thing?” I ask, turning to her.

“The whole thing where a boy who is not unattractive or unintelligent or seemingly in any way unacceptable stares at me and points out incorrect uses of literality and compares me to actresses and asks me to watch a movie at his house. But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER. Oh, my God. Let me just assure you that not being able to breathe? SUCKS. Totally disappointing. Totally.”

“A hamartia?” I ask.

“A fatal flaw,” she explained, turning away from me and stepping toward the curb, leaving me behind her.

I grabbed her hand. She yanked it free but turned back to me.

“They don’t kill you unless you light them,” I said, as a woman in a car, presumably Hazel’s Mom, arrived at the curb. “And I’ve never lit one. It’s a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do it’s killing.”

“It’s a metaphor.” She said.

“It’s a metaphor.” I said.

“You choose your behaviours based on their metaphorical resonances…” she said.

“Oh yes.” I smiled. “I’m a big believer in metaphor, Hazel Grace.”

She turned to the car, tapping on the window and it rolled down.

“I’m going to a movie with Augustus Waters,” she said. “Please record the next several episodes of the ANTM marathon for me.”