I remember being at school during morning meeting and looking around at everybody 350 kids saying a prayer. We're all very young and no one knows what it means and I remember feeling strange that people were just repeating words that they didn't understand. I refused to participate. For some reason I always rejected it but respectfully.
We don't tend to write about disease in fiction - not just teen novels but all American novels - because it doesn't fit in with our idea of the heroic romantic epic. There is room only for sacrifice heroism war politics and family struggle.
