With david levithan dutton books

hamartia
after all.”
After a while, I pulled him over to the bed and we lay there together as he told me they’d
started palliative chemo, but he gave it up to go to Amsterdam, even though his parents were 
furious. They’d tried to stop him right up until that morning, when I he
ard him screaming that 
his body belonged to him. “We could have rescheduled,” I said.
“No, we couldn’t have,” he answered. “Anyway, it wasn’t working. I could tell it wasn’t
working, you know?”
I nodded. “It’s just bullshit, the whole thing,” I said.
“They’ll try something else when I get home. They’ve always got a new idea.”
“Yeah,” I said, having been the experimental pincushion myself.
“I kind of conned you into believing you were falling in love with a healthy person,” he
said. 
I shrugged. “I’d have done the same to you.”
“No, you wouldn’t’ve, but we can’t all be as awesome as you.” He kissed me, then
grimaced. 
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
“No. Just.” He stared at the ceiling for a long time before saying, “I like this world. I like
drinking champagne. I like not smoking. I like the sound of Dutch people speaking Dutch. And 
now . . 
. I don’t even get a battle. I don’t get a fight.”
“You get to battle cancer,” I said. “That is your battle. And you’ll keep fighting,” I told
him. I hated it when people tried to build me up to prepare for battle, but I did it to him, 
anyway. “You’ll
. . 
. you’ll
. . 
. live your best life today. This is your war now.” I despised
myself for the cheesy sentiment, but what else did I have? 
“Some war,” he said dismissively. “What am I
at war with? My cancer. And what is my 
cancer? My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They’re made of me as surely as my
brain and my heart are made of me. It is a civil war, Hazel Grace, with a predetermined 
winner.”
“Gus,” I said. I couldn’t say any
thing else. He was too smart for the kinds of solace I 
could offer. 
“Okay,” he said. But it wasn’t. After a moment, he said, “If you go to the Rijksmuseum,
which I really wanted to do
—
but who are we kidding, neither of us can walk through a 

---

museum. But anyway, I looked at the collection online before we left. If you were to go, and 
hopefully someday you will, you would see a lot of paintings of dead people. You’d see Jesus
on the cross, and you’d see a dude getting stabbed in the neck, and you’d see people
dying at 
sea and in battle and a parade of martyrs. But Not. One. Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody biting it 
from the plague or smallpox or yellow fever or whatever, because there is no glory in illness. 
There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying 
of
.
”
Abraham Maslow, I present to you Augustus Waters, whose existential curiosity dwarfed 
that of his well-fed, well-loved, healthy brethren. While the mass of men went on leading 
thoroughly unexamined lives of monstrous consumption, Augustus Waters examined the 
collection of the Rijksmuseum from afar. 
“What?” Augustus asked after a while.
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m just
. . 
.” I couldn’t finish the sentence, didn’t know how to. “I’m
just very, very fond of you.”
He smiled with half his mouth, his nose inches fr
om mine. “The feeling is mutual. I don’t
suppose you can forget about it and treat me like I’m not dying.”
“I don’t think you’re dying,” I said. “I think you’ve just got a touch of cancer.”
He smiled. Gallows humor. “I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up,” he said.
“And it is my privilege and my responsibility to ride all the way up with you,” I said.
“Would it be absolutely ludicrous to try to make out?”
“There is no try,” I said. “There is only do.”