The Phan in Our Stars

I

Late in the summer of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death...

"Dan!"

"I'm on the toilet!"

"Ugh," Phil sighed, running his fingers through his tousled black hair, "Come here!"

"Phil, I am on the toilet!" Dan repeated, exasperated.

Phil smirked, "I know you're just in there playing iPhone games," he called back. Silence. "Would you just hurry up?"

"I'm coming." Dan finally yelled back. Phil chuckled to himself, leaning back against his bed's wicker headboard. Dan was always hiding out in the toilet at the most inconvenient times.

"Yeah, Phil?" Dan asked, poking his head through the bedroom door after a few minutes.

"Why are you always hiding out in the toilet when I need you?" Phil asked through a smile.

"Hiding?" Dan asked, putting his hand to his chest in a faux moment of shock, "Are you suggesting that I hide out in the bathroom to avoid answering your every beck and call?" Phil glared at him. "Phil!" Dan exclaimed, suppressing giggles, "How dare you accuse me of such things! That is absurd!"

"Then why are you always there every time I need you?" Phil asked, a little exasperated despite the smile which was breaking across his face. It was so hard to be annoyed when Dan was being dorky.

"I dunno, maybe I just have really inconvenient poos!" Dan laughed, plopping down on Phil's green and blue checked duvet, "So what'd you want anyway?"

"I can't do it," Phil said, holding up the teal book.

"Aww, Phil.." Dan said, his tone quickly dropping to a more serious note, "Phil, you have to."

"Dan, I'm like one sentence in and.."

"Phil, you promised," Dan said, trying to sound disappointed.

"I know!" Phil said, sitting up, "but it's... I dunno, I just can't.. I mean, it's just not my thing."

"We're going to the movie in three days, Phil. You promised you would finish the book before we saw the movie," Dan pleaded, leaning back against the headboard next to his friend.

"I know what I said, but I just can't! I've seriously gotten one sentence in and I just.. I dunno!" Phil whined.

"Phil!" Dan said, faking disappointment through a smile, "You promised."

"I know but--"

"You promised not just me--"

"Da-an!"

"You promised... the fandom." Phil covered his face with the book as Dan continued, "Remember? On your live show you promised the fandom you would read the book before seeing the movie. C'mon, do it for the fandom."

"I just can't," Phil chuckled, poking his face out from behind the book.

Dan looked at Phil, a little irritated, but still laughing "Fine," he said, squinting his eyes in mock disgust, "but give me that!" he snatched his copy of The Fault in Our Stars from Phil's hands, "I don't know what your problem is, Phil," he said, turning the book over in his hands, "this is one of the best books I've read in a long time."

"Well then maybe you can re-read it before we go see it on Tuesday." Phil suggested.

"Whatever," Dan said, rolling his eyes.

"I'm sorry, Dan! I'm just not into romances or whatever," Phil said awkwardly, "Plus, I don't really read unless I'm on holiday, you know that."

"No, no it's it's fine!" Dan said in a tone of false exasperation, getting up off the bed and heading for the door.

"Da-an!" Phil called, "Hey--"

"No, no, go play your disco zoo or something!" Dan teased, shooting back a smile to assure that all was well before leaving the room.

Phil sighed, reaching over and grabbing his laptop from his bedside table. He propped it up against his knee and typed "osteosarcoma" into his search engine. Even though Phil was refusing to read TFiOS, he had read some summaries online and he knew that osteosarcoma was the type of cancer that Augustus Waters had. From what he'd seen on the TV commercials (and the gifs which were taking over all of Tumblr), Augustus Waters was the guy who Ansel Elgort played in the film adaptation he and Dan were going to see on Tuesday. Even though he wasn't reading the book, he did find it intriguing.

The more Phil thought about it, the more he realized that it wasn't so much that he was disinterested in the book as much as it was that he simply didn't want to cry. It sounded stupid, even in Phil's mind, but it was true. He hated crying, especially in front of Dan. and He was already cringing at the thought that he would cry next Tuesday when they actually went to the movie, and when he finally told Dan that--

Nevermind.

Phil was a little jealous of Dan when it came to things like that. Dan had read TFiOS on an airplane. He had been crying in front of not only Phil, but an entire plane full of strangers, and Phil didn't even want to read it alone in his room if there was a chance of Dan seeing him.

Oh well. Phil shook it off and returned his focused to browsing. "Osteosarcoma," according to its Wikipedia page, was, "an aggressive malignant neoplasm arising from primitive transformed cells of mesenchymal origin." Phil had no idea what a "malignant neoplasm" was or what most of the article meant. He skimmed through the article until reaching the section titled "Symptoms".

"Many patients first complain of pain which may be worse at night, and may have been occurring for some time. Teenagers that are active in sports tend to complain about pain in their lower femur, or right below the knee. If the tumor is large, it can appear as a swelling..."

Phil read the article for a few minutes. Apparently, the death rate was fairly low, and declining, but still, it killed hundreds of people in the U.S. alone every year.

"How comforting," Phil mumbled to himself, closing his laptop and returning it to its place on the bedside table.

"Phil?!" Dan's voice could be heard from downstairs, "Could you come down here a minute?"

Phil smiled as he called back, "I'll be down in a minute, Dan!"