Augustus sets up Dutch-themed picnic at Funky Bones

On a Saturday in early April, Augustus Waters arrived at Hazel Grace Lancaster’s house with a bouquet of bright orange tulips just beginning to bloom and wearing an Indiana Pacers jersey under his fleece—a wardrobe choice that seemed utterly out of character but looked quite good on him. He asked her to go on a picnic, and after Hazel’s father engaged him in a basketball conversation about Rik Smits, they drove off together, Augustus insisting on driving so the surprise could remain a surprise. The destination was a park behind the Indianapolis Museum of Art, where a sculpture called Funky Bones—created by the Dutch artist Joep Van Lieshout—rose out of the ground like a child’s drawing of a skeleton, its waist-high bones inviting children to jump from rib cage to skull.

The Dutch-Themed Picnic

Augustus had prepared an elaborate picnic that saturated every detail with the national colors and symbols of the Netherlands. He spread an orange blanket on the grass, produced a pint of orange juice, and unwrapped sandwiches of Dutch cheese and tomato (the tomatoes, he admitted, were from Mexico). Hazel, catching on to the theme, asked if he could have at least gotten orange tomatoes. They ate in silence for a while, watching children play on the skeleton sculpture, the unblemished sunlight rare and precious in their hometown. Augustus held an unlit cigarette between his fingers, flicking at it as if to get rid of ash, then placed it back in his mouth. He pointed out two things he loved about the sculpture: first, that the bones were just far enough apart that children could not resist jumping between them, and second, that the sculpture essentially forced children to play on bones—the symbolic resonances, he said, were endless.

The Soliloquy and the Revelation

Hazel, hoping to steer the conversation toward the many Dutch symbols at the picnic, prompted Augustus, who responded by launching into a memorized soliloquy. He told her that like so many children before her, she had spent her Wish hastily on the cold and artificial pleasures of a theme park—Disney World and Epcot Center—when she was thirteen and facing death. The real heroes of the Wish Factory, he said, were the young men and women who waited stoically for their one true Wish to come along, even if it never did. He then revealed that he had saved his own Wish, which he had received in exchange for his leg. He had an interest in meeting Peter Van Houten, and it would not make sense to meet him without the girl who introduced him to the book. The Genies, he said, were in total agreement and had proposed leaving May third and returning May seventh. Hazel, overwhelmed, asked if he was serious. He reached over and touched her cheek, and for a moment she thought he might kiss her, but her body tensed, and he pulled his hand away. He told her he had found his Wish, and she told him he was the best. He replied that he bet she said that to all the boys who financed her international travel.

The Emotional Aftermath

When Hazel returned home and told her mother about the picnic, her mother initially objected that they could not accept such a gift from a virtual stranger. Hazel insisted that Augustus was easily her second best friend, behind her mother. Her mother agreed to ask Dr. Maria about the medical feasibility of the trip. That night, lying in bed, Hazel replayed the picnic and found herself troubled by the moment when she had tensed up as Augustus touched her face. She realized that the gentle familiarity felt wrong, that the whole orchestrated event—the metaphorically resonant but terrible-tasting sandwiches, the memorized soliloquy that prevented conversation—felt Romantic but not romantic. She worried that she would have to make out with him to get to Amsterdam, which struck her as perilously close to prostitution. She texted him to say she could not kiss him or anything, that when she tried to look at him like that, all she saw was what she was going to put him through. He responded with a simple "Okay," and then, when she replied with the same word, he teased her for flirting. She was very tempted to respond "Okay" again, but she pictured him at her funeral, and that helped her text properly: "Sorry."

Thematic Significance

The Dutch-themed picnic at Funky Bones represents a pivotal turning point in Hazel and Augustus’s relationship, where Augustus’s grand romantic gesture—using his Wish to take Hazel to Amsterdam—simultaneously proposes a shared adventure and exposes the fundamental asymmetry of their situations. The picnic is a carefully constructed metaphor, from the orange tulips and Rik Smits jersey to the Dutch cheese sandwiches and the skeleton sculpture that forces children to play on bones. It embodies Augustus’s belief in metaphor as a way of making meaning, but it also reveals the tension between his desire for a heroic, Romantic narrative and Hazel’s fear of becoming a grenade that will hurt everyone she loves. The picnic ultimately sets in motion the trip to Amsterdam that will lead to their confrontation with Peter Van Houten, their kiss at the Anne Frank House, and the revelation of Augustus’s cancer recurrence—the moment when Hazel realizes that she cannot protect him from the pain of loving her, and that she would not want to.