In the fall of your senior yer of high school, one of your closest friends lost his older brother, billy, to brain cancer. And you've said that the cruelty of his law scared you ably and put you in something of a nehalistic mood. How has that impacted the trajectory of your life? Well, hugely. In the book, it's fictionalized slightly, though. My body timmy did lose his older brother to cancer,. A few years after he lost his father in an absolutely freak accident in indianapolis.