Quote 7
I hadn't been in proper school in three years. My parents were my two best friends. My third best friend was an author who did not know I existed. (1.62)
What's Hazel's tone in this passage? Is she bummed that her best friends are adults, who are either related to her or whom she's never met? Or is she okay with it?
Quote 8
But three years removed from proper full-time schoolic exposure to my peers, I felt a certain unbridgeable distance between us. I think my school friends wanted to help me through my cancer, but they eventually found out that they couldn't. (3.61)
Are Hazel's old friends to blame for this? Should healthy young people be expected to understand what their cancer friends are going through?
Quote 9
"Well, to be fair," I said. "I mean, she probably can't handle it. Neither can you, but she doesn't have to handle it. And you do." (4.91)
Isaac suffers something a typical teenage woe—first heartbreak—because of his disease. Talk about a double whammy. Does Monica have the right to pull that?