Looking at Caroline Mathers's online profile and the comments left for her makes this reality suddenly more immediate, and Hazel begins describing herself as a “grenade” that will inevitably blow up and hurt everyone close to her. She finds herself in a paradox: She wants to be close to her parents and Augustus, but she doesn't want to hurt them, and she thinks being close to them will do just that. Her reaction is to push them away in order to keep them safe. She realizes that's why she tensed up when Augustus touched her at the sculpture park: She was afraid of him kissing her, which would bring them closer. She even goes a step further by texting him to tell him they can never kiss. She also has an angry emotional outburst at the dinner table, which is a way of creating opposition, and therefore emotional space, between herself and her parents. (Notably, in the game he played with Isaac earlier Augustus threw himself on a grenade in a heroic sacrifice, or at least a simulated one. With the grenade symbolism this section establishes, that act suggests there's something heroic in being willing to get close to someone and get hurt for the right cause.)