The Fault in Our Infinities

Chapter 1: Beautiful Redemption

I was not looking forward to going back to college.

Sure, I was seventeen, had good grades and an amazing family. In the first twelve years of my life, I had won multiple hockey awards, participated in three different debating societies and received an award that stated me as the most enigmatic girl in school.

That was before the Cancer.

I'd spent most of my teenage years fighting it off; I had spent four of my birthdays in hospital, two of which unconscious, and I had never been out drinking with my friends, never been to a pool party, never been-

Normal.

Like them. Like everyone else. Like the girls that walked around college like they owned the place, as though the horrors of the world couldn't touch them, as though they were invincible. They wore highly revealing clothes and tossed their hair once every 0.0003 seconds. They went to the bathroom, not to pee, but to reapply their already inch-thick makeup and pull their bras up. They talked about who they slept with that weekend, what test they didn't revise for ('Oh, I'll just show Mr. Michaels a good time and then he has to give me an 'A', right?') and what girl had topped their hit list for that week.

They were vapid and hostile. I avoided them. Or they avoided me. Seventy-five percent of the time, I was ignored, and I was happy about that. Ten percent of the time, they shot me pitiful stares with their botox-filled lips jutted out, as though I was a dog they'd just witnessed being kicked.

The other fifteen percent of the time, they played buddy-buddy with me, buttering me up to see if they could gain some Cancer perks. They didn't have a signed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. They didn't have Theo James' signed poster. They didn't have Emeli Sande's signed selfie. I did.

But I'd trade it all to be healthy again.

"Hazel Grace Lancaster!" Mum's voice echoes around the house. "We have to leave in five minutes!"

"I know, mum." I call back and then sigh, looking around my room. It seems bare without my few possessions. Everything I own is packed into two suitcases. All the posters are gone, my reading lamp is gone. My dog-eared copy of An Imperial Affliction is no longer sitting on my bedside unit. My bed is stripped and now resembles a hospital bed. I shiver and turn away, not liking the memories that resurface.

"Hazel?" Dad pokes his head around the door. "Come on, sweet, your mum's growing stressed."

"I know, Dad, I just..." I shrug, silently mourning the death of my old room.

"It's hard, huh?" He says, and I know he understands. I nod and he pulls me into a warm embrace. "Hey...It'll be fun." He croons, when I start to cry into his chest. "You love English Lit, right? And you'll make loads of new friends."

"Don't be stupid. I'm a grenade." I say. He sighs, and I know he is rolling his eyes. This is a common argument between us. I'm a grenade – the girl with the cancer. One day, I'm going to blow up, and I don't want to take others with me. Mum and Dad – they've already invested so much into my life; they're already attached. I can't save them. "Besides, the term has already started."

"People won't judge you by your cancer."

"They'll be too afraid to like me." I wipe my tears angrily, my fingers knocking my cannula, the very thing that keeps me alive. I sigh and change the subject. "Can you take my bags downstairs, please?"

"Of course, sweet." He ruffles my hair and I growl and dodge his hand. He picks up my bags while I attempt to flatten my pageboy haircut. He yanks my bags down the stairs and I follow morosely with my oxygen tank. I glance back into my old room and exhale.