The Big Day was finally here. Today, I would meet Peter Van Houten.
I woke up at five in the morning and all attempts to go back to sleep failed, so I reread An Imperial Affliction until Mom woke up. The hotel then brought us some breakfast. I was hoping they’d call it dinner, but apparently the Netherlands is as unenlightened as the rest of the world.
After I showered, I spent twenty minutes debating possible outfits before deciding to dress as much like Anna in AIA as possible: Chuck Taylors, black jeans, and a light blue T-shirt that said THIS IS NOT A SHIRT.
“I just don’t get that shirt,” Mom said.
“Peter Van Houten will get it, trust me,” I said. “Anna wears it in An Imperial Affliction.”
“But it is a shirt.”
“Only if you don’t get it,” I said.
As it got closer to ten, I grew more and more nervous: nervous to meet Peter Van Houten, nervous that we’d be late to Van Houten’s house, nervous that Isaac would realize that the hill in the Vondelpark wasn’t Mt. Fuji. Mom kept trying to calm me down, but I wasn’t really listening. I was about to ask her to go to Augustus’ room and make sure he was awake when he knocked.
I opened the door, and Augustus looked down at my shirt. “I never got that,” he said. “Because it is a shirt.”
Mom handed me a fresh oxygen tank for the day’s travels. “You’re good to go,” she said.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” I said.
“Nah, I never really got into that book. Probably because I don’t have cancer.” She knocked on the table a few times. “Thank God for that!”
***
Peter Van Houten’s house was just around the corner from the hotel, on the Vondelstraat. Number 158. We found the house and walked up the steps to the lacquered blue-black front door. My heart was pounding. I was a door away from the answers I’d dreamed about for all these years.
I grabbed the fox head door knocker and knocked tentatively. Nothing happened. “Maybe he can’t hear us?” Augustus asked. He grabbed the fox head and knocked more loudly.
There were some shuffled footsteps. A dead bolt slid, then another, and the door creaked open. A pot-bellied, balding man with a week-old beard and wearing pajamas squinted out. He saw me, and smiled.
“Mr. Van Houten?” I said.
He took my hand. “It is so wonderful to see you!” he said, and kissed me on the cheek. But his smile disappeared when he saw Augustus.
“And this is your…brother?” he asked.
I shook my head no.
“Your male nurse?”
I shook my head no.
“Your gay friend?”
I shook my head no.
“Your significant other who you’re in an open relationship with where you can have sex with other people?”
“No,” I said. “It’s my boyfriend, Augustus.”
The door slammed shut.
“LEEEE-DUH-VIGH!” I heard Van Houten shout behind the door.
I then heard a woman’s voice, and through the door I could make out some of the conversation:
“You invited them both here, remember?”
“But I didn’t think they’d actually come. Who goes to fucking Amsterdam to ask an author some fucking questions?”
“You must meet them, Peter. You must. You need to see how your work matters.”
“FUCK!”
A long silence ensued, and then the door opened again. Van Houten said nothing, but walked back into the house and left the door open behind him, so we followed him in.
I had hoped that Peter Van Houten would be super-nice, but the important thing is that I was here and was going to learn what happens to the characters of An Imperial Affliction. And that was sufficient. We followed Van Houten and Lidewij (who had now appeared) into a sparsely furnished living room. Aside from a couch and a couple of lounge chairs, the room seemed empty, except for two large garbage bags, full and twist-tied, sitting behind the couch.
“Trash?” I whispered to Augustus, soft enough that I thought no one could hear.
“Unopened fan mail,” Lidewij said. “The first bag is all the fan mail written by males, and the second bag is all the fan mail written by females that didn’t include a photo.”
That explained why he’d never answered my letters. Except the one I sent a couple weeks ago when I thought the trip wouldn’t happen, where I included a photo of myself masturbating.
Van Houten kicked his feet up onto the couch and crossed his slippers. “Would you care for some refreshments?” he said, at which point Lidewij left the room and returned carrying a tray of three “beer helmets”: baseball helmets with a can of beer on each side of the helmet and two straws so that the wearer could drink them. Van Houten put on one of the helmets and started drinking from both straws at once.
“Um, no thanks,” I said.
“Hell yeah!” Augustus said. He enthusiastically put on his helmet and started drinking. “Freakin’ cool.”
“Mr. Van Houten,” I said, “thank you so much for letting us visit. As you probably remember from my email, I have some questions about what happens to the characters in the book.”
“Yes, the questions,” he said, and then just sat there rubbing his beard, kind of staring into space. He then turned to me. “Did you dress like her on purpose?”
“Anna?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Kind of,” I said.
“You know I never understood that shirt,” he said. “Because it is a shirt.” Lidewij nodded in agreement.
“Well anyway,” I said, “I was really hoping you could answer those questions for me. I’ve been waiting literally years to hear the answers.”
Van Houten sat there for a long beat. “Fine,” he said. “I will now give you the answers. But first…reinforcements!” He pointed at the empty beer cans on his helmet. Lidewij quickly exited and came back carrying four beers. She replaced the two on Van Houten’s helmet, then brought two over to Augustus.
“Oh, I’m not finished with these yet,” Augustus said.
“If you’re trying to kill the vibe, it’s working,” Van Houten said.
Augustus laughed and drained his beers, and Lidewij replaced them with the two fresh ones. Augustus turned to me and mouthed the words, “This guy’s awesome!”
I was starting to get annoyed, and impatient. “So back to the questions,” I said. “The first one was about Anna’s dad. Does he end up marrying–”
“Do you guys like rap music?” said Van Houten.
“Fuck yeah,” Augustus said. I shot him a look. He shrugged.
“Well you haven’t heard rap music until you’ve heard Swedish rap music,” Van Houten said. He nodded to Lidewij, who walked over and pressed a button on an mp3 player. A rap song started blasting incredibly loudly. Aside from the words being in Swedish, it was a completely normal rap song.
Something inside me snapped. I got up, went over to the mp3 player, and slammed my hand down on it. The mp3 player spun balletically through the air and crashed to the floor, splitting into several pieces.
“BULLSHIT!” I said. “This is complete and utter bullshit! I fly four thousand miles to visit because you said you’d answer my questions, and now you’re refusing to answer them. You PROMISED me answers. So give me my goddamn answers!”
The room was silent. Finally Van Houten said, “Miss Lancaster, I’m going to give you something even more valuable than the answers: the truth.”
I just stood there, having no idea what he was going to say.
“The truth is: there are no answers, because I didn’t write An Imperial Affliction. No one did.”
“Peter!” Lidewij said.
“No, she needs to know,” Van Houten said, and turned back to me. “An Imperial Affliction was actually written by a large roster of unemployed English PhDs who were barely paid enough to live on, and received none of the credit for their work. Once the word got out in the English PhD community, no PhDs would do any more work for me. That’s why there was never a sequel. And it’s also why there are no answers to your questions. There’s no single person who wrote the book. So there’s no single person who could provide the answers.”
I was trembling. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “So Veronica Roth in the book was actually you?” I said.
“I’m afraid so,” Van Houten said. “This is why I drink. To forget.” He took a big sip through his straws.
“But if you knew there were no answers,” I said, tears now streaming down my cheeks, “why did you tell me there were? Why did you make me come all the way here?”
“When you first wrote me, I thought I could convince the original PhD students to come up with some answers for you, because it was such a noble cause,” Van Houten said. “But they thought I was trying to trick them into writing a sequel, and they never answered my letters. Ironic.”
“No. No!” I said. “There have to be answers! I WANT MY ANSWERS!”
“Unfortunately, my dear, the world is not a wish-granting factory,” Van Houten said.
Augustus held up an empty beer can. “Do you think the world could at least answer my wish for a couple more beers?”
I couldn’t be there any longer. I ran out of the room and through the door, into the spring morning and the falling petals of the elms.
***
For me there was no such thing as a quick getaway. So after ten minutes of walking back toward the LaBoof, I had only gotten a block away from Van Houten’s house. Suddenly Augustus came running up, wearing his beer helmet and carrying a 24-pack. “Parting gift from Van Houten,” he said. “That guy’s pretty awesome, huh?”
I had stopped crying after fleeing the house, but started crying again. “Hey,” Augustus said, putting his arm around me. “It’s okay.”
I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “It sucks,” I said.
“Look, I’ll write you an epilogue to An Imperial Affliction,” he said. “And it’ll have a lot more lesbian sex than anything his army of unemployed English PhDs would write.” I nodded, and Augustus hugged me, pulling me into his muscular chest, where I sogged up his shirt a little.
“I spent Isaac’s wish on that doucheface,” I said into his chest.
“No, Hazel Grace,” he said. “You spent Isaac’s wish on us.”
Behind us, I heard high heels running up. It was Lidweij.
“Oh my gosh, I am so happy I found you,” she said. “I am so so sorry for what happened.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “Let’s just forget it ever happened, okay?” I started walking away.
She took my arm. “No, I want to make it up to you,” she said.
“It’s not necessary,” I said.
“It is necessary,” she said. “You came all this way to have a dream trip. But so far it’s been nothing but a nightmare. I want to give you some of the dream trip you came for. Are you guys ready for some awesome Amsterdam fun?”
I looked at Augustus, and he shrugged.
“Ok, sure,” I said.
“Well then get on the Lidewij Party Train to…THE ANNE FRANK HOUSE!”
Augustus and I jumped around screaming and high-fiving like little girls.
***
While Lidewij stood in line for tickets at the Anne Frank House, I sat with my back against a tree, looking out at the houseboats in the Prinsengracht canal. It was hard for Augustus to sit, and even harder to stand back up, so he stood, lazily rolling my oxygen cart in circles. “Okay?” he said, gently touching my hair. I reached for his leg and leaned my head against it. But then with horror I realized my head was leaning against an artificial leg. I went back to leaning against the tree.
Lidewij returned holding the tickets, but her lips were pursed with worry. “I am very sorry,” she said. “There is no elevator.”
“It’s okay, I’ll deal,” I said. But Lidewij still looked worried.
“Also, the building has a special air filtration system to protect the furniture, which removes ninety percent of the oxygen from the air,” she said. “I am very very sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said. Augustus started to say something, but I interrupted. “It’s okay. I can do this.”
We began in the room with the famous sliding bookcase that hid Anne Frank, her family, and four others from the Nazis. The bookcase was half-open, and revealed a steep set of stairs behind it. The stairs were only wide enough for one person. I began slowly walking up them, and soon after I could see the traffic backing up behind me.
“If everyone could please be patient,” said Lidewij.
“They should send her to the gas chamber,” muttered one of the people waiting.
Finally I made it up the stairs. I leaned against the wall, telling my lungs it’s okay it’s okay calm down. I didn’t even see Augustus come upstairs, but he came over and said, “You are a true Anne Frank All Star.”
After some more wall-leaning, I headed into the next room, which was Anne’s bedroom. This led to another steep set of stairs, even higher than the last one.
“Let’s just go back,” said Augustus.
“No, I’ve gotta do it,” I said. I was thinking I owed it to Anne Frank, because she’d suffered so much and been killed by the Nazis. The least I could do is go up the steps and see the rest of her house. So I started climbing. But then about halfway up, I realized I didn’t owe Anne Frank anything at all. Sure, she’d suffered a lot. But I had cancer. She, on the other hand, was cancer-free. If anything, she was the one who owed me.
But it was too late to stop, and an hour later I managed to reach the top. I slumped to the ground and just laid there. I had a vague awareness of people stepping over me as they continued the tour. Finally, when I felt strong enough, Lidewij and Augustus pulled me to my feet.
From there, we entered a long narrow hallway that showed pictures of each of the house’s residents and described where and how they died.
“Anne’s father Otto was the only member of the family who survived the Holocaust,” Lidewij said. She took a few steps away to watch a video of Otto Frank, while Augustus and I continued into the next room.
“Are there any Nazis we could hunt down and bring to justice?” Augustus asked me.
“I think they’re all dead,” I said.
“But there are other people we could bring to justice,” he said.
“Like people who don’t actually write their own novels and instead have them written by unemployed English PhDs,” I said.
“And people who read pirated copies of John Green books rather than purchasing them new and not used,” he said.
“And people who actually participate in Support Group,” I said.
“And people who build secret hiding places without an elevator,” he said.
“Augustus Waters,” I said, looking up at him, thinking that you cannot kiss anyone in the Anne Frank House, and hearing Otto Frank’s voice saying in the video, “My one wish for the Anne Frank House is that no one ever kisses in it. I beg you to honor the memory of the Frank family by respecting this wish.”
And then we were kissing.
My hand let go of the oxygen cart and I reached up and grabbed his neck. For a moment, I completely forgot about my cancer, my lungs, everything I’d had to endure in my sixteen-plus years.
“Okay?” he said between kisses.
“Okay,” I said, thinking that you cannot give anyone a bj in the Anne Frank House. But then I thought about how Anne Frank herself probably gave someone a bj in the Anne Frank House. She did, after all, write that she kissed a guy there, and we all know what a girl really means when she writes that she kissed a guy. Anne Frank would probably love it if her home, which had seen so much misfortune, could become a place where people gave people bjs. Who knows, she might even watch from wherever she is and get turned on.
And then I was giving him a bj.
I realized my eyes were closed and opened them. Augustus was staring at me with his big blue eyes, and a crowd of people had circled around us. They must be super-angry, I thought. But then they started clapping.
It made sense: this was Europe.
Augustus bowed, and I curtsied. Some of the crowd even gave us tips.
And I’m not positive about this, but I swear I saw the photo of Anne Frank give me the thumbs up.
***
Lidewij drove us back to the Hotel LaBoof. Outside the hotel it was drizzling, and Augustus and I stood on the sidewalk in the rain.
Augustus: “You probably need some rest.”
Me: “My mouth is a little sore, but whatevs.”
Augustus: “Ha, I meant your lungs.”
Me: “Well they’re always sore, so whatevs.”
Augustus: “Okay.”
Me: “We could go to your room.”
Augustus: “You naughty, naughty whore.”
***
We squeezed into the tiny old-style elevator and pulled the door shut. The elevator started creaking slowly up to the second floor. I was sweaty and dirty and had bj hair, but even so I kissed him in the elevator.
Finally the elevator lurched to a halt, and Augustus pushed the door open. When it was halfway open, he winced in pain.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Must’ve strained a muscle climbing those stairs at the Anne Frank House.” He opened the door the rest of the way, and we got out.
He just stood there in the hallway, not leading me to his room or anything, and I became convinced he was trying to find a way out of hooking up with me.
“What is it?” I said.
After what seemed like forever, he replied, “My leg.”
“What about it?” I asked.
“Just so you’re prepared,” he said, and he rolled up the pants-leg that covered his artificial leg and the real half-leg above it. On his thigh above the stump was a giant tattoo of Caroline Mathers, with the words “Caroline M. – BJ Queen”.
I shrugged. “Guess I’ll just have to try to make it onto one of your other limbs.” I grabbed him and kissed him hard as he fumbled for the room key.
***
We crawled into bed: Augustus, me, and the oxygen tank.
We tried to take each other’s clothes off, but he couldn’t figure out how to navigate my tubes and I couldn’t figure out how to undo his leg, so we each took off our own clothes and legs and got under the covers.
The whole affair was the opposite of what I thought it would be: slow and patient and quiet and mellow.
And yes, we had stump sex.
***
I lay there, my head on Augustus’ chest, listening to his breathing as he slept. After a while I got up, put on my clothes, grabbed the pad of Hotel LaBoof stationery, and wrote him a love letter:
Dearest Augustus,
yrs,
Hazel Grace
***
The next morning, our last day in Amsterdam, Mom, Augustus, and I walked to the Vondelpark, where we found a cafe. Over lattes, Augustus and I told of our encounter with Peter Van Houten, and our visit to the Anne Frank House, leaving out the bj.
“And after?” Mom said, raising her eyebrows.
Augustus didn’t even give me time to blush. “We just hung out at a cafe,” he said.
Mom smiled. “A cafe in your penis,” she said. “Listen, I’m gonna go for a walk and give you guys some time to talk,” she said, looking at Augustus like this had been planned.
“Um, okay?” I said. Mom stood up, gave me a much longer than usual kiss on the head, left a ten-euro note under her cup and walked away.
Augustus was silent for a while, then motioned toward the shadows of the branches on the sidewalk, which intersected and came apart as the wind blew through the elms.
“A great metaphor, isn’t it,” he said.
“Of what?” I asked.
“Things coming together ever so briefly, then being blown apart,” he said. And then he just kept staring sadly at the shadows.
“Augustus, what is it?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”
He nodded back in the direction of the hotel.
***
I originally thought he wanted to go back to the hotel so we could have sex again. I was totally down.
But when we got to my room, Augustus sat me under a premiere poster of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and informed me that his osteosarcoma had returned much worse than before, and that he was rapidly dying of cancer.
“I’m so, so sorry, Hazel Grace,” he said.
“It’s not fair!” I said. “It’s just so goddamn unfair.”
We sat there for a while, just holding each other and crying.
“Would it be ridiculous if we tried that strap-on right now?” he said.
“There is no try,” I said. “There is only do.”
