~Happy's POV~

My large oxygen tank bounces behind me as I stumble across the parking lot leading to an abandoned museum, which is now a retarded Cancer Support Group. My crazy foster parents force me to go every Wednesday and Saturday for the same old stuff: talking about sickness; talking about hospitals; talking of remission; talking about being terminal; imagining death. I really can't see how this is a "Support" Group, it's a group of sick, depressed, and dying kids and teens that explain their life situations and treatments with happy-go-lucky high school students. There's a total of twelve sick people, five high school students, one adult over 21, and sixteen lives lost from cancer.

I go up a few flights of stairs to the meeting area. Everyone else is already talking and socializing. As always, I sit in the circle of tiny plastic chairs, waiting for this to start so it can end. Slowly, everybody sits down. We go around the circle and announce our names and our types of sicknesses.

"Happy Quinn, anaplastic thyroid cancer," I always say.

From the corner of my eye, I notice someone I've never seen before. He has green eyes, a stubby chin, and is wearing a black fedora on his head. He's not sick, from what I can tell, but he's not one of the high schoolers. He seems more sophisticated. His eyes meet mine and he stares. I scowl at him, which makes him smile. I look away and listen to my only friend announce himself.

"Um, hi. My name is Sylvester Dodd and I'm leukemic." He sits down and cleans his hands with anti-bacterial wipes. When I first met him, he told me he became very precautionary after he was diagnosed with leukemia.

Paige, one of the high schoolers, stands up. "Everybody, I'd like you to meet Toby. He's running a study on the different behaviors of kids and teens with ranging types of cancers." She points to the person wearing the fedora. She then dismisses us to do what we want, so I go over to Sylvester.

"Sly," I say. I came up with that nickname the day we became friends. Even though he's younger than me (he's 14, I'm 16), he is way taller than me. And no, my shortness is not caused by cancer.

"Hi, Happy. How have you been doing with everything?" He's not asking about my cancer, but my life overall with foster parents, moving around, school.

"Just the norm," I reply. "How about yourself?" We mostly have to catch up on each other's lives at Support Group because we never have the time to call on the phone between school, treatment, and personal issues.

"I've been doing pretty well. Megan told me Walter is Paige's boyfriend, but he won't admit it." Megan is a volunteer at the hospital Sly goes to. She is very special to him, vice versa. Walter is her brother and a friend of ours. He isn't sick. We met him when we went to the local science museum. Right now, he's in Ireland, visiting his parents because Megan forced him to.

"That's great. Do you think you'll be able to meet me at Kovelsky's tomorrow?" I ask

Sylvester nods. "I won't miss it. Remember to bring your math homework, too." Sly really likes math. I can do it, but he doesn't really have access to it because his parents took him out of school when he was diagnosed. I bid goodbye to my friend and leave. Just before I step off the curb outside, I feel a hand touch my shoulder. I turn around to face Toby.

"Can I help you?" I ask him.

He grins. "No, but may I help you?"

"No. I don't need help from anyone." I shrug his hand off me and start walking.

"See you Wednesday!" Toby yells.

I open the car door and pull up my tank and close the door. I fasten my seat belt.

"How was it?" My foster mom, Moriah, asks.

"Fine."

"Make any new friends?"

I stay silent and look out the window. When we get "home", I exit the car before it even stops, and head inside. I pull my oxygen tank up the stairs and into my room. My room is pretty big, but there's nothing in it besides my clothes, toiletries, a few personal items, and cancer related stuff: more oxygen tanks, pills, liquid medicine, spare cannulas, etc. I kick off my boots and lay on my bed. I pick up my phone and read articles from Popular Mechanics until someone knocks on the door.

"Happy," Steven, my foster father, says, "dinner is ready." I follow him downstairs as fast as I can. He slows down and picks up the cart my tank is on.

"You don't need to do that, I can do it," I tell him.

"You're right, I don't need to do it, but I want to."

It feels great to use stairs normally for the first time in three years. I sit down at the kitchen table. We eat and Moriah and Steven talk about work and their family.

"Tomorrow, Happy, we'd like you to meet some friends of the family." Steven says.

"I can't. I'm meeting Sylvester at Kovelsky's," I explain.

Moriah smiles, "Sweetheart, it's great that you're making friends, but you need to meet the family at some point."

"What do you mean by 'family'? I don't have one!" I snap. I quickly stand up and start to walk away. But someone pulls the cannula from my nose. I can't breathe.

I gasp for air, "My...cannula..."

Steven immediately puts the nubbins up my nostrils and the tubing around my ears. But before that, he took the cannula from his wife. I "run" up the stairs and slam my door shut. I collapse on my bed. My head is pounding, heart racing, lungs stinging from only a few seconds without the cannula. I pick up my phone and speed dial Sly's number.

"Hey, Sly," I say when he picks up.

"What happened?! Why does your voice sound so raspy?!"

"Moriah pulled out my cannula. My body is aching everywhere. I'm fine, though."

"You really need to get out of there, Happy. If Moriah had it any longer, you could've died."

"I'm going to die anyway, Sly. I know you know there's a five year survival rate, I've already been like this for three. You need to remember that."

There was a long pause on the other end. "I don't want you to go. You are the only real friend I have, because my Super Fun Guy collection doesn't count." I hear him sniffle.

"I'm sorry, I have to go. See you tomorrow at Kovelsky's."

I hang up and go to sleep.