Three weeks later she gives us the news.
-- Topher (Topher)

Importance: Ms. Bixby is everyone’s favorite teacher at school. When she announces she has a kind of pancreatic cancer, everyone is stunned and upset. No one has been expecting this. However, it is Ms. Bixby’s diagnosis that sets the stage for the rest of the novel.

Just because it can doesn’t mean it will. Things are never as bad as they seem.
-- Steve (Steve)

Importance: When Ms. Bixby announces she has pancreatic cancer, Steve is stunned. Steve, who has been learning about poisonous snakes, is asked by Ms. Bixby about the moral of them. Steve explains that just because a poisonous snake can kill, does not mean it will. Here, the snakes become a metaphor for the cancer Ms. Bixby has.

…I have something I need to tell her. Something she already knows, but I feel like I have to say it out...
-- Brand (Brand)