CHARACTER
Slammedby Colleen Hoover

Eddie

Eddie

Quick Facts

  • Role: First friend and confidante to Layken Cohen; comic relief and emotional ballast; a focal point for the themes of Family and Found Family and Grief, Loss, and Acceptance
  • First appearance: History class in Ypsilanti, where she immediately takes charge of Layken’s day
  • Key relationships: Layken; boyfriend Gavin; foster father Joel; Layken’s teacher/neighbor Will Cooper
  • Distinctive look: “Slinky blond hair” in an asymmetrical chin-length cut; nails painted in different colors; roughly 15 bangles per wrist that clatter when she moves; a simple black-heart wrist tattoo that matches Gavin’s

Who They Are

Bold, buoyant, and disarmingly sincere, Eddie is the friend who arrives like a gust of fresh air and quietly becomes the story’s moral center. She’s the first to welcome Layken, the first to notice what others don’t, and the first to crack a joke when the room gets too heavy. Beneath the sparkle—rainbow nails, rattling bracelets—lies a survivor who refuses to be defined by the foster-care trauma that shaped her childhood. Eddie’s presence reframes what “family” means: not a fixed inheritance, but a love you build and choose.

Personality & Traits

Eddie wraps hard-won wisdom in humor and candor. Her directness is never cruel; it’s a bridge. She reads people quickly, meets pain with presence, and uses laughter as both a pressure valve and an invitation to intimacy.

  • Forthright and bold: On day one, she grabs Layken’s schedule, switches lunch, and programs her number into Layken’s phone—then caps it with, “if you call me Eddie Spaghetti I’ll kick your ass!” The audacity signals safety: she’ll initiate when others hesitate.
  • Loyal and discreet: She sees Layken’s turmoil over Will, keeps their secret without prying, and even skips class to sit with her. Eddie offers a boundary-respecting loyalty—support first, judgment never.
  • Resilient: After a mother who tried to sell her and years in foster care, she maintains a buoyant, energetic outlook. The brightness isn’t denial; it’s a defiant reclamation of joy.
  • Perceptive: In detention and beyond, she picks up the unspoken currents between Layken and Will, intuiting stakes and context that others miss. Her empathy is active and situationally smart.
  • Humorous: From Chuck Norris jokes to deadpan quips, she salts heavy scenes with levity, modeling how humor can coexist with—and even dignify—pain.

Character Journey

Eddie begins as the quirky classmate who fast-tracks friendship, then deepens into a portrait of survival. Her courtyard confession reframes her as someone who has had to construct stability from scratch, making her joy a choice rather than a given. The “Pink Balloon” slam distills that history into art—turning a single stolen moment of childhood happiness into a symbol of lost innocence and reclaimed narrative. On her eighteenth birthday, the balloon ritual Gavin and Joel plan becomes a ceremonial release of transience. Joel’s adoption offer, the “DAD” balloon in hand, transforms Eddie’s lifelong contingency into permanence. Her arc moves from motion (home to home) to rootedness, embodying the book’s thesis that family is forged by devotion, not DNA.

Key Relationships

  • Layken Cohen: Eddie is Layken’s anchor in an unfamiliar city and a crisis-tested confidante. She balances humor with gravity, giving Layken a safe place to process grief and complicated feelings about Will while modeling acceptance rather than advice.
  • Gavin: A steady, attentive partner who understands Eddie’s history without centering himself in it. Their matching heart tattoos signal mutual belonging, and his orchestration of her birthday surprise shows love as action: he helps her translate pain into ritual and hope.
  • Joel: The foster parent who becomes a father, Joel offers the reliability Eddie never had. His adoption request is less a rescue than a recognition—of who Eddie is and the home she’s already made with him.

Defining Moments

Eddie’s milestones reveal a pattern: she turns vulnerability into connection and ceremony into healing.

  • Meeting Layken in history class: She commandeers logistics—schedule, lunch, contact info—to make belonging immediate. Why it matters: Eddie’s take-charge warmth collapses the distance between stranger and friend, establishing her as catalyst and caretaker.
  • The courtyard confession: “I’m on my seventh home in nine years.” Why it matters: She reframes her humor as armor and honesty as intimacy, deepening her bond with Layken while reshaping our understanding of her brightness.
  • The “Pink Balloon” slam: A poem about a fleeting childhood joy violently taken, rendered through the symbol of a pink balloon. Why it matters: Eddie alchemizes trauma into art, asserting authorship over her story and inviting the community to witness without pity.
  • The adoption at eighteen: Balloons representing past homes give way to one that reads “DAD,” as Joel asks to adopt her. Why it matters: The moment literalizes chosen family and closes the loop on instability, turning memory into meaning and movement into home.

Essential Quotes

“I know. It’s a family name. But if you call me Eddie Spaghetti I’ll kick your ass!”

This line introduces Eddie’s comic edge and personal boundaries in one breath. The joke disarms; the threat sets terms. It’s her ethos: playful, direct, and self-protective without shutting people out.

“I think what was happening at lunch yesterday was more than just a slap on the wrist for inappropriate verb usage. I don’t know how much more, and honestly it’s none of my business. I just want you to know you can talk to me. If you need to. I’d never repeat anything, I don’t have anyone besides Gavin to repeat stuff to.”

Eddie names the subtext without invading it, offering trust instead of intrusion. The promise of secrecy—and the wry nod to having only Gavin—frames her loyalty as both principled and personal.

“It wasn’t death that punched you, Layken. It was life. Life happens. Shit happens. And it happens a lot. To a lot of people.”

Blunt but compassionate, this reframes grief as part of living, not a singular catastrophe. Eddie’s realism steadies Layken, shifting her from isolation to solidarity with a wider human experience.

“My name is Olivia King. I am five years old... My name is Eddie. I’m seventeen years old... I better not get any shitty ass pink balloons!”

The poem stitches past and present, renaming herself from “Olivia” to “Eddie” as an act of self-definition. The profane refusal of “pink balloons” is both gallows humor and a vow: no more performative, fragile happiness—only the durable kind she chooses.