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“Yeah,” I said. “How long’s he gonna be in the hospital?”
“Few days. Then he goes to this rehab or something for a while, but he gets to sleep at home, I think. ”
“Sucks,” I said.
“I see his mom. I gotta go. ”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” he answered. I could hear his crooked smile.
On Saturday, my parents and I went down to the farmers’ market in Broad Ripple. It was sunny, a rarity for Indiana in April, and everyone at the farmers’ market was wearing short sleeves even though the temperature didn’t quite justify it. We Hoosiers are excessively optimistic about summer. Mom and I sat next to each other on a bench across from a goat-soap maker, a man in overalls who had to explain to every single person who walked by that yes, they were his goats, and no, goat soap does not smell like goats.
My phone rang. “Who is it?” Mom asked before I could even check.
“I don’t know,” I said. It was Gus, though.
“Are you currently at your house?” he asked.
“Um, no,” I said.
“That was a trick question. I knew the answer, because I am currently at your house. ”
“Oh. Um. Well, we are on our way, I guess?”
“Awesome. See you soon. ”
Augustus Waters was sitting on the front step as we pulled into the driveway. He was holding a bouquet of bright orange tulips just beginning to bloom, and wearing an Indiana Pacers jersey under his fleece, a wardrobe choice that seemed utterly out of character, although it did look quite good on him. He pushed himself up off the stoop, handed me the tulips, and asked, “Wanna go on a picnic?” I nodded, taking the flowers.
My dad walked up behind me and shook Gus’s hand.
“Is that a Rik Smits jersey?” my dad asked.
“Indeed it is. ”
“God, I loved that guy,” Dad said, and immediately they were engrossed in a basketball conversation I could not (and did not want to) join, so I took my tulips inside.
“Do you want me to put those in a vase?” Mom asked as I walked in, a huge smile on her face.
“No, it’s okay,” I told her. If we’d put them in a vase in the living room, they would have been everyone’s flowers. I wanted them to be my flowers.
I went to my room but didn’t change. I brushed my hair and teeth and put on some lip gloss and the smallest possible dab of perfume. I kept looking at the flowers. They were aggressively orange, almost too orange to be pretty. I didn’t have a vase or anything, so I took my toothbrush out of my toothbrush holder and filled it halfway with water and left the flowers there in the bathroom.
When I reentered my room, I could hear people talking, so I sat on the edge of my bed for a while and listened through my hollow bedroom door:
Dad: “So you met Hazel at Support Group. ”
Augustus: “Yes, sir. This is a lovely house you’ve got. I like your artwork. ”
Mom: “Thank you, Augustus. ”
Dad: “You’re a survivor yourself, then?”
Augustus: “I am. I didn’t cut this fella off for the sheer unadulterated pleasure of it, although it is an excellent weight-loss strategy. Legs are heavy!”
Dad: “And how’s your health now?”
Augustus: “NEC for fourteen months. ”
Mom: “That’s wonderful. The treatment options these days—it really is remarkable. ”
Augustus: “I know. I’m lucky. ”
Dad: “You have to understand that Hazel is still sick, Augustus, and will be for the rest of her life. She’ll want to keep up with you, but her lungs—”
At which point I emerged, silencing him.
“So where are you going?” asked Mom. Augustus stood up and leaned over to her, whispering the answer, and then held a finger to his lips. “Shh,” he told her. “It’s a secret. ”
Mom smiled. “You’ve got your phone?” she asked me. I held it up as evidence, tilted my oxygen cart onto its front wheels, and started walking. Augustus hustled over, offering me his arm, which I took. My fingers wrapped around his biceps.
Unfortunately, he insisted upon driving, so the surprise could be a surprise. As we shuddered toward our destination, I said, “You nearly charmed the pants off my mom. ”
“Yeah, and your dad is a Smits fan, which helps. You think they liked me?”
“Sure they did. Who cares, though? They’re just parents. ”
“They’re your parents,” he said, glancing over at me. “Plus, I like being liked. Is that crazy?”
“Well, you don’t have to rush to hold doors open or smother me in compliments for me to like you. ” He slammed the brakes, and I flew forward hard enough that my breathing felt weird and tight. I thought of the PET scan. Don’t worry. Worry is useless. I worried anyway.
We burned rubber, roaring away from a stop sign before turning left onto the misnomered Grandview (there’s a view of a golf course, I guess, but nothing grand). The only thing I could think of in this direction was the cemetery. Augustus reached into the center console, flipped open a full pack of cigarettes, and removed one.
“Do you ever throw them away?” I asked him.
“One of the many benefits of not smoking is that packs of cigarettes last forever,” he answered. “I’ve had this one for almost a year. A few of them are broken near the filters, but I think this pack could easily get me to my eighteenth birthday. ” He held the filter between his fingers, then put it in his mouth. “So, okay,” he said. “Okay. Name some things that you never see in Indianapolis. ”
“Um. Skinny adults,” I said.
He laughed. “Good. Keep going. ”
“Mmm, beaches. Family-owned restaurants. Topography. ”
“All excellent examples of things we lack. Also, culture. ”
“Yeah, we are a bit short on culture,” I said, finally realizing where he was taking me. “Are we going to the museum?”
“In a manner of speaking. ”
“Oh, are we going to that park or whatever?”
Gus looked a bit deflated. “Yes, we are going to that park or whatever,” he said. “You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?”
“Um, figured what out?”
“Nothing. ”
There was this park behind the museum where a bunch of artists had made big sculptures. I’d heard about it but had never visited. We drove past the museum and parked right next to this basketball court filled with huge blue and red steel arcs that imagined the path of a bouncing ball.
We walked down what passes for a hill in Indianapolis to this clearing where kids were climbing all over this huge oversize skeleton sculpture. The bones were each about waist high, and the thighbone was longer than me. It looked like a child’s drawing of a skeleton rising up out of the ground.
My shoulder hurt. I worried the cancer had spread from my lungs. I imagined the tumor metastasizing into my own bones, boring holes into my skeleton, a slithering eel of insidious intent. “Funky Bones,” Augustus said. “Created by Joep Van Lieshout. ”
“Sounds Dutch. ”
“He is,” Gus said. “So is Rik Smits. So are tulips. ” Gus stopped in the middle of the clearing with the bones right in front of us and slipped his backpack off one shoulder, then the other. He unzipped it, producing an orange blanket, a pint of orange juice, and some sandwiches wrapped in plastic wrap with the crusts cut off.
“What’s with all the orange?” I asked, still not wanting to let myself imagine that all this would lead to Amsterdam.
“National color of the Netherlands, of course. You remember William of Orange and everything?”
“He wasn’t on the GED test. ” I smiled, trying to contain my excitement.
“Sandwich?” he asked.
“Let me guess,” I said.
“Dutch cheese. And tomato. The tomatoes are from Mexico. Sorry. ”
“You’re always such a disappointment, Augustus. Couldn’t you have at least gotten orange tomatoes?”
He laughed, and we ate our sandwiches in silence, watching the kids play on the sculpture. I couldn’t very well ask him about it, so I just sat there surrounded by Dutchness, feeling awkward and hopeful.
In the distance, soaked in the unblemished sunlight so rare and precious in our hometown, a gaggle of kids made a skeleton into a playground, jumping back and forth among the prosthetic bones.
“Two things I love about this sculpture,” Augustus said. He was holding the unlit cigarette between his fingers, flicking at it as if to get rid of the ash. He placed it back in his mouth. “First, the bones are just far enough apart that if you’re a kid, you cannot resist the urge to jump between them. Like, you just have to jump from rib cage to skull. Which means that, second, the sculpture essentially forces children to play on bones. The symbolic resonances are endless, Hazel Grace. ”
“You do love symbols,” I said, hoping to steer the conversation back toward the many symbols of the Netherlands at our picnic.
“Right, about that. You are probably wondering why you are eating a bad cheese sandwich and drinking orange juice and why I am wearing the jersey of a Dutchman who played a sport I have come to loathe. ”
“It has crossed my mind,” I said.
“Hazel Grace, like so many children before you—and I say this with great affection—you spent your Wish hastily, with little care for the consequences. The Grim Reaper was staring you in the face and the fear of dying with your Wish still in your proverbial pocket, ungranted, led you to rush toward the first Wish you could think of, and you, like so many others, chose the cold and artificial pleasures of the theme park. ”
“I actually had a great time on that trip. I met Goofy and Minn—”
“I am in the midst of a soliloquy! I wrote this out and memorized it and if you interrupt me I will completely screw it up,” Augustus interrupted. “Please to be eating your sandwich and listening. ” (The sandwich was inedibly dry, but I smiled and took a bite anyway. ) “Okay, where was I?”
“The artificial pleasures. ”
He returned the cigarette to its pack. “Right, the cold and artificial pleasures of the theme park. But let me submit that the real heroes of the Wish Factory are the young men and women who wait like Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot and good Christian girls wait for marriage. These young heroes wait stoically and without complaint for their one true Wish to come along. Sure, it may never come along, but at least they can rest easily in the grave knowing that they’ve done their little part to preserve the integrity of the Wish as an idea.
“But then again, maybe it will come along: Maybe you’ll realize that your one true Wish is to visit the brilliant Peter Van Houten in his Amsterdamian exile, and you will be glad indeed to have saved your Wish. ”
Augustus stopped speaking long enough that I figured the soliloquy was over. “But I didn’t save my Wish,” I said.
“Ah,” he said. And then, after what felt like a practiced pause, he added, “But I saved mine. ”
“Really?” I was surprised that Augustus was Wish-eligible, what with being still in school and a year into remission. You had to be pretty sick for the Genies to hook you up with a Wish.
“I got it in exchange for the leg,” he explained. There was all this light on his face; he had to squint to look at me, which made his nose crinkle adorably. “Now, I’m not going to give you my Wish or anything. But I also have an interest in meeting Peter Van Houten, and it wouldn’t make sense to meet him without the girl who introduced me to his book. ”
“It definitely wouldn’t,” I said.
“So I talked to the Genies, and they are in total agreement. They said Amsterdam is lovely in the beginning of May. They proposed leaving May third and returning May seventh. ”
“Augustus, really?”
He reached over and touched my cheek and for a moment I thought he might kiss me. My body tensed, and I think he saw it, because he pulled his hand away.
“Augustus,” I said. “Really. You don’t have to do this. ”
“Sure I do,” he said. “I found my Wish. ”
“God, you’re the best,” I told him.
“I bet you say that to all the boys who finance your international travel,” he answered.
CHAPTER SIX
Mom was folding my laundry while watching this TV show called The View when I got home. I told her that the tulips and the Dutch artist and everything were all because Augustus was using his Wish to take me to Amsterdam. “That’s too much,” she said, shaking her head. “We can’t accept that from a virtual stranger. ”
“He’s not a stranger. He’s easily my second best friend. ”
“Behind Kaitlyn?”
“Behind you,” I said. It was true, but I’d mostly said it because I wanted to go to Amsterdam.
“I’ll ask Dr. Maria,” she said after a moment.
* * *
Dr. Maria said I couldn’t go to Amsterdam without an adult intimately familiar with my case, which more or less meant either Mom or Dr. Maria herself. (My dad understood my cancer the way I did: in the vague and incomplete way people understand electrical circuits and ocean tides. But my mom knew more about differentiated thyroid carcinoma in adolescents than most oncologists. )
“So you’ll come,” I said. “The Genies will pay for it. The Genies are loaded. ”
“But your father,” she said. “He would miss us. It wouldn’t be fair to him, and he can’t get time off work. ”
“Are you kidding? You don’t think Dad would enjoy a few days of watching TV shows that are not about aspiring models and ordering pizza every night, using paper towels as plates so he doesn’t have to do the dishes?”
Mom laughed. Finally, she started to get excited, typing tasks into her phone: She’d have to call Gus’s parents and talk to the Genies about my medical needs and do they have a hotel yet and what are the best guidebooks and we should do our research if we only have three days, and so on. I kind of had a headache, so I downed a couple Advil and decided to take a nap.