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The next afternoon, I drove over to Gus’s house and ate peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches with his parents and told the room couch, where atched V for Vendetta I could just see him from the kitchen: He lay on his back, head turned away fro the cancer with a new cocktail: two ches and a protein receptor that they hoped would turn off the oncogene in Gus’s cancer He was lucky to get enrolled in the trial, they toldthe sound of its naht him over

"Isaac, hi, it’s Hazel froirlfriend" Hisroo a ed me back, hard

"Hoas Amsterdam?" he asked

"Awesome," I said

"Waters," he said "Where are ya, bro?"

"He’s napping," I said, and ht Isaac shook his head, everyone quiet

"Sucks," Isaac said after a second His mom walked him to a chair she’d pulled out He sat

"I can still doustus said without turning toward us The ular people

"I’ his hands into the air vaguely, looking for his rabbed him, pulled him up, and they walked over to the couch, where Gus and Isaac hugged aardly "How are you feeling?" Isaac asked

"Everything tastes like pennies Aside frooes up, kid," Gus answered Isaac laughed "How are the eyes?"

"Oh, excellent," he said "I mean, they’re not in my head is the only problem"

"Aweso, but my body isnot to let it get to hih

"I’ room chairs, and Isaac and I sat down next to Gus I took Gus’s hand, stroking circles around the space between his thuer

The adults headed down to the base the three of us alone in the living roo up slow "How’s Monica?" he asked

"Haven’t heard froot this e the voice’s gender or accent or whatever"

"So I can like send you a porn story and you can have an old Gerh Mom still has to help me with it, so maybe hold off on the German porno for a week or two"

"She hasn’t even, like, texted you to ask how you’re doing?" I asked This struck me as an unfathomable injustice

"Total radio silence," Isaac said

"Ridiculous," I said

"I’ve stopped thinking about it I don’t have ti How to Be Blind"

Gus turned his head back away fro out theat the patio in his backyard His eyes closed

Isaac asked hoas doing, and I said I was good, and he told irl in Support Group with a really hot voice and he needed o to tell hiustus said, "You can’t just not contact your for head"

"Just one of--" Isaac started

"Hazel Grace, do you have four dollars?" asked Gus

"U under the coffee table," he said Gus pushed hie of the couch I handed him the prosthetic; he fastened it in slow motion

I helped hi hi that, for the first time in years, I was the healthiest person in the rooun Isaac sat in the back We stopped at a grocery store, where, per Augustus’s instruction, I bought a dozen eggs while he and Isaac waited in the car And then Isaac guided us by his ressively sterile, two-story house near the JCC Monica’s bright green 1990s Pontiac Firebird sat fat-wheeled in the driveway

"Is it there?" Isaac asked when he felt ustus said "You knohat it looks like, Isaac? It looks like all the hopes ere foolish to hope"

"So she’s inside?"

Gus turned his head around slowly to look at Isaac "Who cares where she is? This is not about her This is about you" Gus gripped the egg carton in his lap, then opened the door and pulled his legs out onto the street He opened the door for Isaac, and I watched through the mirror as Gus helped Isaac out of the car, the two of the away, like praying hands that don’t quite meet at the palms

I rolled down the s and watched from the car, because vandalism made me nervous They took a few steps toward the car, then Gus flipped open the egg carton and handed Isaac an egg Isaac tossed it,the car by a solid forty feet

"A little to the left," Gus said

"My throas a little to the left or I need to aim a little to the left?"

"Aim left" Isaac swiveled his shoulders "Lefter," Gus said Isaac swiveled again "Yes Excellent And throw hard" Gus handed hi over the car and s roof of the house "Bull’s-eye!" Gus said

"Really?" Isaac asked excitedly

"No, you threw it like twenty feet over the car Just, throw hard, but keep it low And a little right of where you were last ti hi a taillight "Yes!" Gus said "Yes! TAILLIGHT!"

Isaac reached for another egg,low, then another, hitting the back windshield He then nailed three in a row against the trunk "Hazel Grace," Gus shouted back to me "Take a picture of this so Isaac can see it when they invent robot eyes" I pulledin the rolled-do, my elbows on the roof of the car, and snapped a picture with arette in his mouth, his s carton above his head His other hand is draped around Isaac’s shoulder, whose sunglasses are turned not quite toward the ca yolks drip down the windshield and bu