It was not an eventful day. I should have done extraordinary things. I should have sucked the marrow out of life. But on that day, I slept eighteen hours out of a possible twenty-four.

I opened the door. He looked down at my shirt and smiled. "Funny," he said. "Don't call my boobs funny," I answered.

But pizza was originally Italian, although, Italian pizza doesn't taste much like this because this pizza is fortified with sodium. Which is a mineral...or a vitamin. All I know is that it's good for you.

Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.

And as paralyzing and upsetting as all the never agains were, the final leaving felt perfect. Pure. The most distilled possible form of liberation. Everything that mattered except one lousy picture was in the trash, but it felt so great. I started jogging, wanting to put even more distance between myself and school. It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.

Here's my answer to the very real existential crisis that grips me midway through everything I've ever tried to do: I think stories help us fight the nihilistic urges that constantly threaten to consume us.

Compromise is when you do what I tell you and I do what I want. ~Tiny Cooper