This Star Won't Go Out

This Star Won't Go Out by Esther Earl





THIS IS A STORY about a girl that went through a life changing experience known as Thyroid Cancer. It’s not one of those dramatic “based on a true story” cancer things, especially since Thyroid Cancer is not as bad as cancer. It’s a story about me, Esther Earl, having a sickness that’s pretty scary.

MR. CANCEROUS LUMP

Esther Earl,

“Cancerous Lump” journal





To all who long to live fully and love deeply no matter the obstacle or length of days





INTRODUCTION


by John Green

bestselling author of THE FAULT IN OUR STARS and co-creator of the vlogbrothers channel on YouTube




Abigail and Esther with John Green,

LEAKYCON, 2009


My friendship with Esther Earl began, as so many great love stories do, at a Harry Potter convention. My brother, Hank, is a wizard rocker, which means he writes songs about the Harry Potter universe, and so he’d dragged me along to LeakyCon 2009, a celebration of all things Potter in Boston. The first night of the conference featured a banquet and concert, which of course meant quite a lot of dancing.

The great thing about the Harry Potter fan community is that no one judges you. Being a nerd isn’t seen as a character defect. Unironic enthusiasm is celebrated, and never more so than on the dance floor. At a Wizard rock concert, it doesn’t matter if you’re a great dancer or a terrible dancer so long as you are committed to your dance moves.

Which I am not. I find it impossible to dance as if no one were watching, even when no one is watching. So when everyone rushed to the dance floor, I hung back. My strategy at a dance event is to lean against a column or wall and stare thoughtfully at the musicians and the dancing crowd as if I am thinking Extremely Intelligent Thoughts, so that anyone who happens to glance at me will hopefully feel that I shouldn’t be interrupted.

But I was interrupted by a small voice saying, “Are you John Green?” I turned and saw a girl wearing a nasal cannula and a nearly identical girl—her sister, I gathered—holding an oxygen tank. “Yeah,” I said. “Hi.” What followed was pretty standard: The girl—her name was Esther—liked the videoblog Hank and I make and wanted a picture. Her sister took the picture, and after a quick conversation, I went back to leaning against the wall.

A couple minutes later, a friend grabbed me and tried to pull me onto the dance floor. I spun around in panic and saw Esther and her sister Abby sitting at a table behind the dance floor and said, “I, uh, need to go. I need to go talk to those girls.”

This was the first, but not the last, time that Esther Earl saved me from catastrophe. I sat down next to them and began chatting. It turned out that Esther wasn’t just a viewer of our videos—she was a hardcore nerdfighter. (Nerdfighters are people who fight for nerds and celebrate intellectualism; the community grew out of the videos my brother and I started making in 2007.) Esther had been watching us for years. She would later help to maintain the biggest nerdfighter fan site, effyeahnerdfighters, with a small group of friends who called themselves Catitude. Catitude also helps run an annual nerdfighter charity project called the Project for Awesome. Hank and I have frequently turned to Catitude for advice and assistance. So it turned out that Esther and I already sort of knew each other.

We talked that evening in Boston for quite a while, boring the hell out of Abby I’m sure, about nerdfighter injokes and Hank’s music and our favorite Wizard rock bands.

I kept tabs on Esther after meeting her. We’d sometimes have brief Skype conversations, and I’d jump into the Catitude chat every now and again to discuss the fan site they ran, or their moderation of the forum, or just to hang out. It’s impossible to describe the speed at which people typed in those Skype chats: Ten or twelve people could produce thousands of words a minute, and Esther, although she was one of the youngest members of Catitude, kept right up.