“So it’s your death suit.” “Correct. Don’t you have a death outfit?”“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a dress I bought for my fifteenth birthday party. But I don’t wear it on dates.”His eyes lit up. “We’re on a date?” he asked.I looked down, feeling bashful. “Don’t push it.”

“Hazel Grace,” he said, my name new and better in his voice. “It has been a real pleasure to make your acquaintance.”“Ditto, Mr. Waters,” I said. I felt shy looking at him. I could not match the intensity of his waterblue eyes.“May I see you again?” he asked. There was an endearing nervousness in his voice.I smiled. “Sure.”“Tomorrow?” he asked.“Patience, grasshopper,” I counseled. “You don’t want to seem overeager.”“Right, that’s why I said tomorrow,” he said. “I want to see you again tonight. But I’m willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow.” I rolled my eyes. “I’m serious,” he said.“You don’t even know me,” I said. I grabbed the book from the center console. “How about I call you when I finish this?”“But you don’t even have my phone number,” he said.“I strongly suspect you wrote it in the book.”He broke out into that goofy smile. “And you say we don’t know each other.”

“He’s not that smart.”“She’s right,” Augustus says. “It’s just that most really good-looking people are stupid, so I exceed expectations.”“Right, it’s primarily his hotness.”“It can be sort of blinding,” he said.“It actually did blind our friend Isaac.”“Terrible tragedy, that. But can I help my own deadly beauty?”“You cannot.”“It is my burden, this beautiful face.”“Not to mention your body.”“Seriously, don’t even get me started on my hot bod. You don’t want to see me naked, Dave. Seeing me naked actually took Hazel Grace’s breath away,” he said, nodding toward the oxygen tank.”

“The venn diagram of boys who don’t like smart girls and boys you don’t wanna date is a circle.”

“Look, you’re right. Maybe I don’t like you the way someone should like you. I don’t like you in the call-you-and-read-you-a-poem-every-night-before-you-go-to-bed way. I’m crazy, okay? Sometimes I think, like, God, she’s superhot and smart and kind of pretentious but the pretentiousness just makes me kind of want her, and then other times I think it’s an amazingly bad idea, that dating you would be like a series of unnecessary root canals interspersed with occasional makeout sessions.”

“I can only hope,” Julie said, turning back to Gus, “they grow into the kind of thoughtful, intelligent young men you’ve become.”I resisted the urge to audibly gag. “He’s not that smart,” I said to Julie.“She’s right. It’s just that most really good-looking people are stupid, so I exceed expectations.”“Right, it’s primarily his hotness,” I said.“It can be sort of blinding,” he said.“It actually did blind our friend Isaac,” I said.“Terrible tragedy, that. But can I help my own deadly beauty?”“You cannot.”“It is my burden, this beautiful face.”“Not to mention your body.”“Seriously, don’t even get me started on my hot bod. You don’t want to see me naked, Dave. Seeing me naked actually took Hazel Grace’s breath away,” he said, nodding toward the oxygen tank.“Okay, enough,” Gus’s dad said.”

“How about I call you when I finish this?”“But you don’t even have my phone number,” he said.“I strongly suspect you wrote it in the book.”He broke out into that goofy smile. “A nd you say we don’t know each other.”