Chapter 1

Hazel is a 16-year-old girl with cancer, which she calls a "side effect of dying" (p.3). Another side effect of dying, according to Hazel, is her depression, and though she sees this as normal and incurable, her mother talks to one of her many doctors and gets her set up with antidepressants and a regularly meeting support group for youths with cancer. Hazel tells the reader about herself and her diagnosis through her interactions at Support Group - she introduces herself each meeting along with the fact that she has thyroid cancer that has spread to her lungs, always saying that she's "okay." She doesn't like anyone in the group, including the leader Patrick who once had testicular cancer, besides a teenage boy named Isaac who lost his eye to cancer and may be losing another.