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The other thing about Kaitlyn, I guess, was that it could never again feel natural to talk to her Any atte because it was so glaringly obvious that everyone I spoke to for the rest of my life would feel aard and self-conscious around me, except maybe kids like Jackie who just didn’t know any better

Anyway, I really did like being alone I liked being alone with poor Staff Sergeant Max Mayhe to survive these seventeen bullet wounds, is he?

(Spoiler alert: He lives)

CHAPTER FOUR

I went to bed a little early that night, changing into boy boxers and a T-shirt before crawling under the covers of my bed, which was queen size and pillow topped and one ofAn Imperial Affliction for the irl named Anna (who narrates the story) and her one-eyed ardener obsessed with tulips, and they have a normal lower-middle- class life in a little central California town until Anna gets this rare blood cancer

But it’s not a cancer book, because cancer books suck Like, in cancer books, the cancer person starts a charity that raises ht? And this commitoodness of hued because s/he will leave a cancer-curing legacy But in AIA, Anna decides that being a person with cancer who starts a cancer charity is a bit narcissistic, so she starts a charity called The Anna Foundation for People with Cancer Who Want to Cure Cholera

Also, Anna is honest about all of it in a way no one else really is: Throughout the book, she refers to herself as the side effect, which is just totally correct Cancer kids are essentially side effects of the relentless mutation that made the diversity of life on earth possible So as the story goes on, she gets sicker, the treat to kill her, and her mom falls in love with this Dutch tulip trader Anna calls the Dutch Tulip Man The Dutch Tulip Man has lots of money and very eccentric ideas about how to treat cancer, but Anna thinks this guy ht be a con man and possibly not even Dutch, and then just as the possibly Dutch guy and her et married and Anna is about to start this crazy new treatrass and low doses of arsenic, the book ends right in the middle of a

I know it’s a very literary decision and everything and probably part of the reason I love the book soto recommend a story that ends And if it can’t end, then it should at least continue into perpetuity like the adventures of Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem’s platoon

I understood the story ended because Anna died or got too sick to write and thiswas supposed to reflect how life really ends and whatever, but there were characters other than Anna in the story, and it seemed unfair that I would never find out what happened to them I’d written, care of his publisher, a dozen letters to Peter Van Houten, each asking for some answers about what happens after the end of the story: whether the Dutch Tulip Man is a con man, whether Anna’s mother ends up married to him, what happens to Anna’s stupid haraduate froh school--all that stuff But he’d never responded to any of my letters

AIA was the only book Peter Van Houten had written, and all anyone seemed to know about him was that after the book came out he moved from the United States to the Netherlands and beca on a sequel set in the Netherlands-- there and trying to start a new life But it had been ten years since An Imperial Affliction ca post I couldn’t wait forever

As I reread that night, I kept getting distracted i the same words I wondered if he’d like it, or if he’d dismiss it as pretentious Then I re The Price of Dawn, so I found his nue and texted hih adjectives How’s AIA?

He replied a minute later:

As I recall, you promised to CALL when you finished the book, not text

So I called

"Hazel Grace," he said upon picking up

"So have you read it?"

"Well, I haven’t finished it It’s six hundred fifty-one pages long and I’ve had twenty-four hours"

"How far are you?"

"Four fifty-three"

"And?"

"I ithhold judg a bit eiven you The Price of Dawn"

"Don’t be I’ addition to the series So, okay, is the tulip guy a crook? I’ a bad vibe fro other than a total gentlee his eyes out"

"So you’re into it"

"Withholding judgment! When can I see you?"

"Certainly not until you finish An I coy

"Then I’d better hang up and start reading"

"You’d better," I said, and the line clicked dead without another word

Flirting was new toI had Twentieth-Century Aave a lecture wherein she ed to talk for ninety le word of Sylvia Plath

When I got out of class, Mo

"Did you just wait here the entire time?" I asked as she hurried around to help me haul my cart and tank into the car

"No, I picked up the dry cleaning and went to the post office"

"And then?"