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Augustus: "I’ve heard worse ideas"

We squeezed into the tiny elevator together Every surface, including the floor, was mirrored We had to pull the door to shut ourselves in and then the old thing creaked slowly up to the second floor I was tired and sweaty and worried that I generally looked and sross, but even so I kissed him in that elevator, and then he pulled away and pointed at the mirror and said, "Look, infinite Hazels"

"Soer than other infinities," I drawled, ustus said, and it took all that tiet us to the second floor Finally the elevator lurched to a halt, and he pushed the mirrored door open When it was half open, he winced in pain and lost his grip on the door for a second

"You okay?" I asked

After a second, he said, "Yeah, yeah, door’s just heavy, I guess" He pushed again and got it open He let me walk out first, of course, but then I didn’t knohich direction to walk down the hallway, and so I just stood there outside the elevator and he stood there, too, his face still contorted, and I said again, "Okay?"

"Just out of shape, Hazel Grace All is well"

We were just standing there in the hallway, and he wasn’t leading the way to his roo, and I didn’t knohere his room was, and as the staleure out a way not to hook up with ested the idea in the first place, that it was unladylike and therefore had disgusted Augustus Waters, as standing there looking atto think of a way to extricate himself from the situation politely And then, after forever, he said, "It’s above my knee and it just tapers a little and then it’s just skin There’s a nasty scar, but it just looks like--"

"What?" I asked

"My leg," he said "Just so you’re prepared in case, I et over yourself," I said, and took the two steps I needed to get to hiainst the wall, and I kept kissing him as he fumbled for the room key

We crawled into the bed, en, but even so I could get on top of him and take his shirt off and taste the sweat on the skin below his collarbone as I whispered into his skin, "I love you, Augustus Waters," his body relaxing beneath mine as he heard me say it He reached down and tried to pull hed

"How do you do this every day?" he asked as I disentangled my shirt from the tubes Idiotically, it occurred to me that my pink underwear didn’t s I crawled under the covers and kicked out of my jeans and socks and then watched the coustus re on our backs next to each other, everything hidden by the covers, and after a second I reached over for his thigh and let my hand trail doard to the stump, the thick scarred skin I held the stump for a second He flinched "It hurts?" I asked

"No," he said

He flipped himself onto his side and kissed

"I’ to think you have an ahed

"I have an Augustus Waters fetish," I explained

The whole affair was the precise opposite of what I figured it would be: slow and patient and quiet and neither particularly painful nor particularly ecstatic There were a lot of condoood look at No headboards were broken No screaest ti followed type: Afterward, when I hadto his heart pound, Augustus said, "Hazel Grace, I literally cannot keep my eyes open"

"Misuse of literality," I said

"No," he said "So Tired"

His face turned away fros settle into the rhythot up, dressed, found the Hotel Filosoof stationery, and wrote hiustus,

yrs,

Hazel Grace

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The next ustus and I walked the half block from the hotel to the Vondelpark, where we found a café in the shadow of the Dutch national film museum Over lattes--which, the waiter explained to us, the Dutch called "wrong coffee" because it had e chestnut tree and recounted for Moreat Peter Van Houten We made the story funny You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we ustus, sluue-tied, word-slurring Van Houten who could not so much as push himself out of his chair; I stood up to play a , "Get up, you fat ugly old o with it," I told hiirl"

"You’re a coward!" I ruh I sat down We told Mo

"Did you go back to chez Van Houten afterward?" Moiveout at a café Hazel alanced at me God, he was sexy

"Sounds lovely," she said "Listen, I’o for a walk Give the two of you tie in it "Then o for a tour on a canal boat"

"Um, okay?" I said Mom left a five-euro note under her saucer and then kissed , "I love love love you," which o more loves than usual

Gusand co apart on the concrete "Beautiful, huh?"

"Yeah," I said

"Such a good ative iether and then blown apart," he said Before us, hundreds of people passed, jogging and biking and Rollerblading Aned for movement and activity, a city that would rather not travel by car, and so inevitably I felt excluded fro a path around the huge tree, a heron standing still at the water’s edge, searching for a breakfast a in the water