Dear Peter,

I suppose I could start by saying that we are all side effects. But you already know that. You told me that. However, it feels like an appropriate beginning to my story. It feels right. So I will say it: We are all side effects. Life itself is a side effect of death. All things must come to an end. I suppose the only reason we start is because nothing can end before it begins.

Having made my statement- your statement, really- I will begin the action. It really all began with a book. Yes, it was your book. An Imperial Affliction. I read it constantly, hardly touching other books. My mother called it an obsession, but to me it was more like a friend. A friend who understood me fully and completely. The main character's struggle against cancer was my struggle (also against cancer). I could only hope that my story wouldn't end in the middle of a sentence, as hers had. It was this "obsession" that landed me in a Support Group.

My mother was worried that I was depressed, and talked to my doctor. My regular doctor, not my cancer doctor. They agreed that Support Group was a good idea, so a week later my mother dragged me off to the Episcopal Church so I could sit in the basement with other sick kids and listen to a guy named Patrick talk about his own struggle (which ended when he lost both his balls) and Jesus. The people were generally nice, but I only had one real friend there, and even we didn't talk much. That's Isaac, by the way. He had blond hair that fell over his left eye, which wasn't even there. He had lost it about a year earlier, but he's still wasn't done. His right eye had become threatened by the same cancer that took his left. Which was too bad really. Even I would be sad if he lost his sight. Not just because I felt sorry for him, although I did, but because our friendship consisted mostly of sighs. There is plenty to sigh about at Support Group, since people talk about things that don't matter, and don't make sense, and bore us to the bone. But if you're heard sighing, it's rude. Our solution is to mime sighing, not enough to be noticed by people not watching for it, but enough to say, "I agree. This is boring and useless, and I too would rather be at home acting depressed and doing nothing else at all." It is amazing, when you think about it, how much one can communicate with a single, slightly exaggerated rise and fall of the shoulders.

Without eyes, Isaac will never see another sigh.

One bright, sunny day last May, I was on my way to another session of Support Group. It was too nice a day for anyone to want to sit in the basement of a church and talk about the disease that many of us would eventually die from (myself included, it's a side effect), but not especially cheerful or full of expectation, not like the kind of day that could change a life. And so I walked down the steps and took a cookie and some lemonade and a chair across the circle from Issac's usual seat, and waited for monotony. Instead, I got a surprise.

Isaac came, as usual, but he wasn't alone. There was a girl with him, and it wasn't even Monica. Monica was his girlfriend, but she never actually came in. I'd never seen this girl before. She had light brown hair, poker-straight and soft as snow, and almond-shaped green eyes beneath dark-lashed single lids. And I couldn't stop staring at her. At the light spray of freckles across her smooth, pale-bronze skin. At the way her hair was falling out from behind her ears in light brown cobwebs. At everything about her. And what's more, she was staring right back at me.

The girl sat down next to Isaac. Her eyes caught mine and held my gaze. It made me uncomfortable, and I looked down, blushing. A moment later Support Group began. We all went around and said our name, and what sort of cancer we had, and how we were doing. As usual, I said I was Hazel, thyroid originally but with mets in my lungs, and I'm okay. I said okay because it is a word that people rarely question, and because it's true. I had an oxygen tank that I wheeled around behind me, so I could breathe just fine.

I pretty much just zoned out until we'd gotten most of the way around the circle. Few people gave honest answers that revealed their true condition: some, like me, gave vague answers, others pretended to be more cheerful than they really felt. Isaac was in the latter group. It had been confirmed that he would lose his other eye, he told us, trying hard to keep his voice from cracking. We all responded that we were "here for you, Isaac". And then it was the new girl's turn.

"Will you introduce your friend to us, Isaac?" asked Patrick.

"I think that was a rhetorical question," said Isaac. "Uh, this is Augustine, so, yeah."

"Is she your girlfriend?" someone asked.

"No," said Isaac.

"Would you like to introduce yourself, Augustine?" asked Patrick.

"Okay," said the girl. Her voice was low and musical, like poetry waiting to be written. "I'm Augustine. I have lymphoma, but I'm doing very well. Considering."

And Support Group meeting continued from there, with nothing else unusual happening in any way, shape, or form. It was just boring old Support Group. I could almost forget that Augustine was there...

Almost.