The Fault In Our Stars Part 11

"It's a metaphor," I explained. "He puts the killing thing in his mouth but doesn't give it the power to kill him."

The stewardess was flummoxed for only a moment. "Well, that metaphor is prohibited on today's flight," she said. Gus nodded and rejoined the cigarette to its pack.

We finally taxied out to the runway and the pilot said, Flight attendants, prepare for departure, and then two tremendous jet engines roared to life and we began to accelerate. "This is what it feels like to drive in a car with you," I said, and he smiled, but kept his jaw clenched tight and I said, "Okay?"

We were picking up speed and suddenly Gus's hand grabbed the armrest, his eyes wide, and I put my hand on top of his and said, "Okay?" He didn't say anything, just stared at me wide-eyed, and I said, "Are you scared of flying?"

"I'll tell you in a minute," he said. The nose of the plane rose up and we were aloft. Gus stared out the window, watching the planet shrink beneath us, and then I felt his hand relax beneath mine. He glanced at me and then back out the window. "We are flying," he announced.

"You've never been on a plane before?"

He shook his head. "LOOK!" he half shouted, pointing at the window.

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I see it. It looks like we're in an airplane."

"NOTHING HAS EVER LOOKED LIKE THAT EVER IN ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY," he said. His enthusiasm was adorable. I couldn't resist leaning over to kiss him on the cheek.

"Just so you know, I'm right here," Mom said. "Sitting next to you. Your mother. Who held your hand as you took your first infantile steps."

"It's friendly," I reminded her, turning to kiss her on the cheek.

"Didn't feel too friendly," Gus mumbled just loud enough for me to hear. When surprised and excited and innocent Gus emerged from Grand Gesture Metaphorically Inclined Augustus, I literally could not resist.

It was a quick flight to Detroit, where the little electric car met us as we disembarked and drove us to the gate for Amsterdam. That plane had TVs in the back of each seat, and once we were above the clouds, Augustus and I timed it so that we started watching the same romantic comedy at the same time on our respective screens. But even though we were perfectly synchronized in our pressing of the play b.u.t.ton, his movie started a couple seconds before mine, so at every funny moment, he'd laugh just as I started to hear whatever the joke was.

Mom had this big plan that we would sleep for the last several hours of the flight, so when we landed at eight A.M., we'd hit the city ready to suck the marrow out of life or whatever. So after the movie was over, Mom and Augustus and I all took sleeping pills. Mom conked out within seconds, but Augustus and I stayed up to look out the window for a while. It was a clear day, and although we couldn't see the sun setting, we could see the sky's response.

"G.o.d, that is beautiful," I said mostly to myself.

"'The risen sun too bright in her losing eyes,'" he said, a line from An Imperial Affliction.

"But it's not rising," I said.

"It's rising somewhere," he answered, and then after a moment said, "Observation: It would be awesome to fly in a superfast airplane that could chase the sunrise around the world for a while."

"Also I'd live longer." He looked at me askew. "You know, because of relativity or whatever." He still looked confused. "We age slower when we move quickly versus standing still. So right now time is pa.s.sing slower for us than for people on the ground."

"College chicks," he said. "They're so smart."

I rolled my eyes. He hit his (real) knee with my knee and I hit his knee back with mine. "Are you sleepy?" I asked him.

"Not at all," he answered.

"Yeah," I said. "Me neither." Sleeping meds and narcotics didn't do for me what they did for normal people.

"Want to watch another movie?" he asked. "They've got a Portman movie from her Hazel Era."

"I want to watch something you haven't seen."

In the end we watched 300, a war movie about 300 Spartans who protect Sparta from an invading army of like a billion Persians. Augustus's movie started before mine again, and after a few minutes of hearing him go, "Dang!" or "Fatality!" every time someone was killed in some bada.s.s way, I leaned over the armrest and put my head on his shoulder so I could see his screen and we could actually watch the movie together.

300 featured a sizable collection of s.h.i.+rtless and well-oiled strapping young lads, so it was not particularly difficult on the eyes, but it was mostly a lot of sword wielding to no real effect. The bodies of the Persians and the Spartans piled up, and I couldn't quite figure out why the Persians were so evil or the Spartans so awesome. "Contemporaneity," to quote AIA, "specializes in the kind of battles wherein no one loses anything of any value, except arguably their lives." And so it was with these t.i.tans clas.h.i.+ng.

Toward the end of the movie, almost everyone is dead, and there is this insane moment when the Spartans start stacking the bodies of the dead up to form a wall of corpses. The dead become this ma.s.sive roadblock standing between the Persians and the road to Sparta. I found the gore a bit gratuitous, so I looked away for a second, asking Augustus, "How many dead people do you think there are?"

He dismissed me with a wave. "Shh. Shh. This is getting awesome."

When the Persians attacked, they had to climb up the wall of death, and the Spartans were able to occupy the high ground atop the corpse mountain, and as the bodies piled up, the wall of martyrs only became higher and therefore harder to climb, and everybody swung swords/shot arrows, and the rivers of blood poured down Mount Death, etc.

I took my head off his shoulder for a moment to get a break from the gore and watched Augustus watch the movie. He couldn't contain his goofy grin. I watched my own screen through squinted eyes as the mountain grew with the bodies of Persians and Spartans. When the Persians finally overran the Spartans, I looked over at Augustus again. Even though the good guys had just lost, Augustus seemed downright joyful. I nuzzled up to him again, but kept my eyes closed until the battle was finished.

As the credits rolled, he took off his headphones and said, "Sorry, I was awash in the n.o.bility of sacrifice. What were you saying?"

"How many dead people do you think there are?"

"Like, how many fictional people died in that fictional movie? Not enough," he joked.

"No, I mean, like, ever. Like, how many people do you think have ever died?"

"I happen to know the answer to that question," he said. "There are seven billion living people, and about ninety-eight billion dead people."

"Oh," I said. I'd thought that maybe since population growth had been so fast, there were more people alive than all the dead combined.

"There are about fourteen dead people for every living person," he said. The credits continued rolling. It took a long time to identify all those corpses, I guess. My head was still on his shoulder. "I did some research on this a couple years ago," Augustus continued. "I was wondering if everybody could be remembered. Like, if we got organized, and a.s.signed a certain number of corpses to each living person, would there be enough living people to remember all the dead people?"

"And are there?"

"Sure, anyone can name fourteen dead people. But we're disorganized mourners, so a lot of people end up remembering Shakespeare, and no one ends up remembering the person he wrote Sonnet Fifty-five about."

"Yeah," I said.

It was quiet for a minute, and then he asked, "You want to read or something?" I said sure. I was reading this long poem called Howl by Allen Ginsberg for my poetry cla.s.s, and Gus was rereading An Imperial Affliction.

After a while he said, "Is it any good?"

"The poem?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"Yeah, it's great. The guys in this poem take even more drugs than I do. How's AIA?"

"Still perfect," he said. "Read to me."

"This isn't really a poem to read aloud when you are sitting next to your sleeping mother. It has, like, sodomy and angel dust in it," I said.

"You just named two of my favorite pastimes," he said. "Okay, read me something else then?"

"Um," I said. "I don't have anything else?"

"That's too bad. I am so in the mood for poetry. Do you have anything memorized?"

"'Let us go then, you and I,'" I started nervously, "'When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table.'"

"Slower," he said.

I felt bashful, like I had when I'd first told him of An Imperial Affliction. "Um, okay. Okay. 'Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, / The muttering retreats / Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels / And sawdust restaurants with oyster-sh.e.l.ls: / Streets that follow like a tedious argument / Of insidious intent / To lead you to an overwhelming question . . . / Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" / Let us go and make our visit.'"

"I'm in love with you," he said quietly.

"Augustus," I said.

"I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you."

"Augustus," I said again, not knowing what else to say. It felt like everything was rising up in me, like I was drowning in this weirdly painful joy, but I couldn't say it back. I couldn't say anything back. I just looked at him and let him look at me until he nodded, lips pursed, and turned away, placing the side of his head against the window.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

I think he must have fallen asleep. I did, eventually, and woke to the landing gear coming down. My mouth tasted horrible, and I tried to keep it shut for fear of poisoning the airplane.

I looked over at Augustus, who was staring out the window, and as we dipped below the low-hung clouds, I straightened my back to see the Netherlands. The land seemed sunk into the ocean, little rectangles of green surrounded on all sides by ca.n.a.ls. We landed, in fact, parallel to a ca.n.a.l, like there were two runways: one for us and one for waterfowl.

After getting our bags and clearing customs, we all piled into a taxi driven by this doughy bald guy who spoke perfect English-like better English than I do. "The Hotel Filosoof?" I said.

And he said, "You are Americans?"

"Yes," Mom said. "We're from Indiana."

"Indiana," he said. "They steal the land from the Indians and leave the name, yes?"

"Something like that," Mom said. The cabbie pulled out into traffic and we headed toward a highway with lots of blue signs featuring double vowels: Oosthuizen, Haarlem. Beside the highway, flat empty land stretched for miles, interrupted by the occasional huge corporate headquarters. In short, Holland looked like Indianapolis, only with smaller cars. "This is Amsterdam?" I asked the cabdriver.

"Yes and no," he answered. "Amsterdam is like the rings of a tree: It gets older as you get closer to the center."

It happened all at once: We exited the highway and there were the row houses of my imagination leaning precariously toward ca.n.a.ls, ubiquitous bicycles, and coffeeshops advertising LARGE SMOKING ROOM. We drove over a ca.n.a.l and from atop the bridge I could see dozens of houseboats moored along the water. It looked nothing like America. It looked like an old painting, but real-everything achingly idyllic in the morning light-and I thought about how wonderfully strange it would be to live in a place where almost everything had been built by the dead.

"Are these houses very old?" asked my mom.

"Many of the ca.n.a.l houses date from the Golden Age, the seventeenth century," he said. "Our city has a rich history, even though many tourists are only wanting 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."

All the rooms in the Hotel Filosoof were named after filosoofers: Mom and I were staying on the ground floor in the Kierkegaard; Augustus was on the floor above us, in the Heidegger. Our room was small: a double bed pressed against a wall with my BiPAP machine, an oxygen concentrator, and a dozen refillable oxygen tanks at the foot of the bed. Past the equipment, there was a dusty old paisley chair with a sagging seat, a desk, and a bookshelf above the bed containing the collected works of Sren Kierkegaard. On the desk we found a wicker basket full of presents from the Genies: wooden shoes, an orange Holland T-s.h.i.+rt, chocolates, and various other goodies.

The Filosoof was right next to the Vondelpark, Amsterdam's most famous park. Mom wanted to go on a walk, but I was supertired, so she got the BiPAP working and placed its snout on me. I hated talking with that thing on, but I said, "Just go to the park and I'll call you when I wake up."

"Okay," she said. "Sleep tight, honey."

But when I woke up some hours later, she was sitting in the ancient little chair in the corner, reading a guidebook.

"Morning," I said.

"Actually late afternoon," she answered, pus.h.i.+ng herself out of the chair with a sigh. She came to the bed, placed a tank in the cart, and connected it to the tube while I took off the BiPAP snout and placed the nubbins into my nose. She set it for 2.5 liters a minute-six hours before I'd need a change-and then I got up. "How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Good," I said. "Great. How was the Vondelpark?"

"I skipped it," she said. "Read all about it in the guidebook, though."

"Mom," I said, "you didn't have to stay here."

She shrugged. "I know. I wanted to. I like watching you sleep."

"Said the creeper." She laughed, but I still felt bad. "I just want you to have fun or whatever, you know?"

"Okay. I'll have fun tonight, okay? I'll go do crazy mom stuff while you and Augustus go to dinner."

"Without you?" I asked.

"Yes without me. In fact, you have reservations at a place called Oranjee," she said. "Mr. Van Houten's a.s.sistant set it up. It's in this neighborhood called the Jordaan. Very fancy, according to the guidebook. There's a tram station right around the corner. Augustus has directions. You can eat outside, watch the boats go by. It'll be lovely. Very romantic."

"Mom."

"I'm just saying," she said. "You should get dressed. The sundress, maybe?"

One might marvel at the insanity of the situation: A mother sends her sixteen-year-old daughter alone with a seventeen-year-old boy out into a foreign city famous for its permissiveness. But this, too, was a side effect of dying: I could not run or dance or eat foods rich in nitrogen, but in the city of freedom, I was among the most liberated of its residents.

I did indeed wear the sundress-this blue print, flowey knee-length Forever 21 thing-with tights and Mary Janes because I liked being quite a lot shorter than him. I went into the hilariously tiny bathroom and battled my bedhead for a while until everything looked suitably mid-2000s Natalie Portman. At six P.M. on the dot (noon back home), there was a knock.

"h.e.l.lo?" I said through the door. There was no peephole at the Hotel Filosoof.

"Okay," Augustus answered. I could hear the cigarette in his mouth. I looked down at myself. The sundress offered the most in the way of my rib cage and collarbone that Augustus had seen. It wasn't obscene or anything, but it was as close as I ever got to showing some skin. (My mother had a motto on this front that I agreed with: "Lancasters don't bare midriffs.") I pulled the door open. Augustus wore a black suit, narrow lapels, perfectly tailored, over a light blue dress s.h.i.+rt and a thin black tie. A cigarette dangled from the unsmiling corner of his mouth. "Hazel Grace," he said, "you look gorgeous."

"I," I said. I kept thinking the rest of my sentence would emerge from the air pa.s.sing through my vocal cords, but nothing happened. Then finally, I said, "I feel underdressed."

"Ah, this old thing?" he said, smiling down at me.

"Augustus," my mom said behind me, "you look extremely handsome."

"Thank you, ma'am," he said. He offered me his arm. I took it, glancing back to Mom.

"See you by eleven," she said.

Waiting for the number one tram on a wide street busy with traffic, I said to Augustus, "The suit you wear to funerals, I a.s.sume?"