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"Nah, they’d’ve gotten here"

"Then maybe they weren’t written for you," she said "MaybeI , but maybe he wrote them for someone else and mailed them--"

"VAN HOUTEN!" I shouted

"Are you okay? Was that a cough?"

"Kaitlyn, I love you You are a genius I have to go"

I hung up, rolled over, reached for enthart

Lidewij,

I believe Augustus Waters sent a few pages froustus) died It is very ies I want to read theardless, they must be read They must be Can you help?

Your friend,

Hazel Grace Lancaster

She responded late that afternoon

Dear Hazel,

I did not know that Augustus had died I am very sad to hear this news He was such a very charis man I am so sorry, and so sad

I have not spoken to Peter since I resigned that day weover to his house first thing in the s were his best tienthart

ps I a my boyfriend in case we have to physically restrain Peter

I wondered why he’d written Van Houten in those last days instead of ave es had just repeated his request to Van Houten Ithis terminality toto die for, but it was the biggest thing left at his disposal

I refreshed ht, slept for a few hours, and then co arrived I tried to watch TV to distract ining Lidewij Vliegenthart and her boyfriend bicycling around town on this crazy mission to find a dead kid’s last correspondence How fun it would be to bounce on the back of Lidewij Vliegenthart’s bike down the brick streets, her curly red hair blowing into arette s beer, saying their r’s and g’s in a way I’d never learn

I missed the future Obviously I knew even before his recurrence that I’d never grow old with Augustus Waters But thinking about Lidewij and her boyfriend, I felt robbed I would probably never again see the ocean from thirty thousand feet above, so far up that you can’t reat and endless ine it I could reain, and it occurred to me that the voracious a true, because there is always the thought that everything ain

That is probably true even if you live to be ninety--although I’ain, I’d already lived twice as long as Van Houten’s daughter What he wouldn’t have given to have a kid die at sixteen

Suddenly Mo between the TV and me, her hands folded behind her back "Hazel," she said Her voice was so serious I thought so

"Yes?"

"Do you knohat today is?"

"It’s not hed "Not just yet It’s July fourteenth, Hazel"

"Is it your birthday?"

"No"

"Is it Harry Houdini’s birthday?"

"No"

"I a"

"IT IS BASTILLE DAY!" She pulled her ar two s the Like Cholera Awareness Day"

"I assure you, Hazel, that there is nothing fake about Bastille Day Did you know that two hundred and twenty-three years ago today, the people of France storht for their freedom?"

"Wow," I said "We should celebrate this momentous anniversary"