DRAMA NOVEL ONLINE The Fault in Our Pants: Chapter 16
The next morning I tried to distract myself from obsessing over the missing notebook pages by watching TV. A news story came on about how a kid in our neighborhood was paralyzed when an old swing set his father recently got for free on Craigslist collapsed. It was really sad.
I was flipping through the channels looking for something else to watch when Mom came in, smiling and excited. “Hazel, do you know what day it is?”
“My one hundred and ninety-eighth monthday?” I said.
“No…”
“My seven hundred and eighty-ninth week-birthday?”
“No…”
“I give up,” I said.
“It’s the two week anniversary of Augustus’ passing away!” Mom shouted. “I’ve prepared a special anniversary picnic for us to eat at the cemetery. We’ll celebrate it with Augustus!”
“THAT’S IT! Mom you’re a genius!” I said.
“I am pretty good at coming up with celebrations,” she said.
“No,” I said, “that’s where the missing pages are! Inside the pocket of Augustus’ Death Suit!”
Without even showering or changing I jumped in the car with Mom and we headed for the cemetery.
***
The wait seemed like forever as the cemetery workers dug up Augustus’ coffin. When they were finally done, I checked every one of Augustus’ pockets four times. Nothing.
Mom hugged me, and began to set up the picnic next to Augustus’ grave. “Maybe those pages weren’t meant for you after all,” she said. “Maybe they were written for someone else.”
VAN HOUTEN!
Why hadn’t I thought of this before? I took out my phone and quickly composed an email to Lidewij asking if she could check Peter Van Houten’s fan mail stash.
***
I kept refreshing my email all throughout the picnic, but nothing came in. Then, after we’d packed up our stuff and Mom had placed a bunch of brightly colored “Happy Anniversary!” balloons on Augustus’ tombstone, I got an email from Lidewij. She’d found the pages and attached them to the email. I tried opening them on my phone, but the writing was too small to read on my phone’s screen. I’d have to wait ‘til I got home.
***
I brought my laptop out to the middle of the backyard and sat down. My whole body was shaking. Nervously, I opened the laptop, went to my email, and clicked the attachment.
Augustus’ handwriting was messy, and sometimes crooked, and the color of the pen changed every few lines. He’d clearly written this during his last couple of weeks.
I started reading.
What up bro bro!
Dude I was wondering if you could do me a solid: I’m trying to write this eulogy for Hazel. I have notes and everything, but I’m having a hard time putting it all together. I know you’re a master at taking what other people have written and making it into one single awesome thing, so could you do that for me? I will owe you big time. Anyway, here are my notes:
Most people – myself included – are obsessed with leaving a mark on the world. They want to outlast death. Bequeath a legacy. Be remembered. I wanted all this, too.
I wanted to leave a mark.
But most people end up leaving just scars. You try to do something with your life, something special, in order to leave a mark. But ultimately, the legacy you leave is just a legacy of pain and hurt.
Hazel is different. Hazel realizes that the only way not to hurt people is to not actually try to do anything with your life. She’s figured out that doing nothing with your life is the most noble life of all.
An outsider might look at Hazel’s life as very ordinary, perhaps even less than ordinary. It consists solely of watching TV and wasting time with a boy and texting during Support Group. But I ask those observers: what life is better?
Hazel’s also sorta hot sometimes, and pretty good at hooking up. Not the best, mind you, but pretty frickin’ good.
The big choice you make in this world is not what to do with your life. The biggest choice is who to do nothing with your life with. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers too.
I do, Augustus.
Except that you’re missing a leg.
But aside from that, I do.