Page 30 (1/1)

“Grief does not change you, Hazel It reveals you”

? John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

Prologue

Jase

It’s odd the things you remember in the midst of fear Fourteen years later, and I still recall the cracks in the cement; the sidewalks were littered with theh… I remember it in vivid detail, probably because of what happened immediately after

Against the old brick building of the corner store, a green vine had found its way through the broken ce it had no business being there The crack belonged, but the new life that had sprouted up and borne what looked like a closed floasn’t supposed to be there Nothing beautiful belonged on that street

The diht revealed how lively it was, even that late at night With shades of green on the perfect vine and its single leaf with the bud of a flower just waiting to bloom, it made me pause And in that moment, I hated that it was there

I was almost eleven and ainst the leaf and steainst the rough and faded red bricks I knoasn’t quite eleven, because Maht before my birthday that year It was herI was gripping so tight as I continued to kick at the wall before feeling all the anger and hate well up and form tears in my eyes

Life wasn’t fair Back then I was just learning that truth, or at least I’d felt it soh I hadn’t yet said it out loud

Ma worse too, although he couldn’t use cancer as an excuse Thinking about the two of theh my sneakers were too thin and it hurt to do so The bottles the clerk had given ing iven myself A pain I deserved

All the while, the bottles clinked

That’s what I had gone out to get, even as et so to eat, but Dad always dee, I knew it’d be bad I knew better than to take his iven to eat and do what I was told to do

I picked up theoff so at a classmate’s house on the other side of town Maybe a book I’d borrowed Those details are fuzzy over a decade later I didn’t have many friends but a couple of students pitied me I was the s I needed for school The other kids didn’t s every once in a while I never asked the saave stuff back prootten hos back to my friends I told her they were h

I’ht or to who Only that I had to go by the corner store on the way home

None of that h to remember, but the damn flower I’d killed, I remember that

It was the shaht at the daed sidewalk that was free of asn’t supposed to be there anymore I cried a lot and that’s why everyone looked at me the way they did The teachers, the other kids, the clerk at the corner store They always got a certain look on their faces when they saw the dirty, skinny kid whose

They didn’t look at my older brothers that way They were trouble and I was just… not enough of anything other than a kid to feel sorry for

I stalked down the alley to hide ht was a figination

He was like the boogeyman or Santa Claus; all myths I didn’t believe in

A lot of people called him the Grim Reaper, but I knew his naht they were ht up until I looked into Carter’s eyes and he shook my shoulders because I wouldn’t listen