Looking for Alaska

by John Green

“Y’all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.”

“When Fillmore was dying, he was super hungry. But his doctor was trying to starve his fever or whatever. Fillmore wouldn’t shut up about wanting to eat, though, so finally the doctor gave him a tiny teaspoon of soup. And all sarcastic, Fillmore said, ‘The nourishment is palatable,’ and then died. No truce.”

I wanted to be one of those people who have streaks to maintain, who scorch the ground with their intensity. But for now, at least I knew such people, and they needed me, just like comets need tails.

“So why don’t you go home for vacations?” I asked her. “I’m just scared of ghosts, Pudge. And home is full of them.”

So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.

People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn’t bear the idea of death being a big black nothing, couldn’t bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn’t even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn’t bear not to.

“Is everyone here?” “No,” I said to him. “Alaska isn’t here.” The Eagle looked down. “Is everyone else here?” “Alaska isn’t here!” “Okay, Miles. Thank you.” “We can’t start without Alaska.”

That is the fear: I have lost something important, and I cannot find it, and I need it. It is fear like if someone lost his glasses and went to the glasses store and they told him that the world had run out of glasses and he would just have to do without.

How will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering? —A. Y.

She taught me everything I knew about crawfish and kissing and pink wine and poetry. She made me different.

and you can’t just make me different and then die.”

So I let her go, too. And I’m sorry. I know you loved her. It was hard not to. Takumi

But the not-knowing would not keep me from caring, and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.

Thomas Edison’s last words were: “It’s very beautiful over there.” I don’t know where there is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful.

It may be cliché and unmemorable, but I would be very grateful indeed if my last words were of love to those with whom I have shared this brief and wondrous flicker of life.