CHARACTER
Slammedby Colleen Hoover

Layken Cohen

Layken “Lake” Cohen

Quick Facts

Who They Are

Bold, aching, and newly dislocated, Layken “Lake” Cohen is a teenager caught between who she was in Texas and who she must become in Michigan. Her voice—funny, sharp, and raw—filters the novel’s grief and desire through slam poetry’s rhythms, transforming private pain into performance. Layken’s defining struggle is learning to hold two truths at once: that love can feel immediate and absolute, and that duty can demand restraint. She is a character who grows because circumstances won’t let her stay the same, embodying grief, loss, and acceptance as she confronts a relationship that shouldn’t be pursued (forbidden love and obstacles) while stepping into adult burdens far too early (responsibility and premature maturity)—and discovering, onstage and off, the power of poetry and self-expression.

Personality & Traits

Layken’s wit is her armor, but her intensity is her engine. She feels in absolutes—love, anger, fear—and then learns to translate those absolutes into choices. Early on, she protects herself by being guarded and sarcastic; as crisis compounds, she channels the same fierce energy into caretaking and courage. Even her appearance mirrors her transitions: the fading Texas tan in the Michigan cold, and a slam-night makeover that makes her “look just like my mother,” visually marks her turn toward adulthood.

  • Witty, defensive humor: She inherits her father’s “dry sense of humor,” sparring playfully with her mom and Will; the levity masks rawness she isn’t ready to name.
  • Bitter, grieving teen: “Believe me, I’m already dead.” The move and her father’s death harden her, and she tells her mother, “I’m going to hate Michigan,” before experience complicates that certainty.
  • Passionate and all-in: Her love for Will arrives “immediate and all-consuming,” and even she recognizes the exposure it creates: “I feel like I’m up on the stage… and it scares the hell out of me.”
  • Guarded, then disarmed: “I never divulge information so freely, especially to people I barely know.” Will’s presence breaks her rules, signaling both danger and possibility.
  • Resilient caretaker: She chooses Michigan and legal guardianship for Kel, shifting from self-protection to protection of others—an earned maturity, not a personality pivot.
  • Loyal (to a fault): Her anger at Julia for planning guardianship alternatives springs from fierce devotion, which the novel reframes into responsibility rather than control.

Character Journey

Layken’s arc moves from refusal to integration. She arrives in Michigan resentful, her fading tan a small emblem of the life she’s losing. Meeting Will cracks that bitterness: the first slam at Club N9NE gives her language, and his presence gives her permission to feel joy again; she even tells her mother, “I love Michigan.” The hallway revelation that Will is her teacher detonates that joy. Her poem “Mean” becomes both retaliation and confession, a public attempt to purge private chaos. Then the story’s true center of gravity shifts: Julia’s terminal cancer reorders Layken’s priorities. Romantic pain becomes secondary to immediate family crisis, and Layken learns to regulate her own grief to anchor Kel—an education in love that demands patience, sacrifice, and discretion. By the final performance, “Schooled,” she has synthesized experience into perspective, honoring everyone who has formed her while reclaiming agency over what comes next.

Key Relationships

  • Will Cooper: Attraction arrives before information; once Will is revealed as her teacher, their chemistry becomes an ethical quandary. Will introduces her to slam, turning emotion into craft, and his restraint—painful in the laundry room scene—models the difference between wanting and choosing. Their endgame feels “hard-won” because she learns to love with boundaries, not just intensity.
  • Julia Cohen: What starts as typical mother-daughter friction deepens into a partnership once Julia shares her diagnosis. Julia’s mantra—“Push your boundaries, Lake. That’s what they’re there for”—teaches Layken that growth requires risk, not recklessness, and that courage sometimes means staying rather than running.
  • Kel Cohen: Kel is both responsibility and compass. Loving him clarifies Layken’s priorities; choosing his stability over her nostalgia for Texas marks the moment she stops being just an older sister and becomes a guardian in practice and spirit.
  • Eddie: As Layken’s first friend in Michigan, Eddie blends comic relief with hard-won wisdom from foster care. She normalizes vulnerability and offers Layken a peer-model of resilience, turning the town from exile into community.
  • Her father: Though absent, he is everywhere—his humor, his music, even the “magic” purple hair clip. Remembering him doesn’t keep Layken stuck; it gives her a standard for love that she eventually extends to herself, to Kel, and to Will.

Defining Moments

Layken’s most important scenes turn emotion into decision. Each forces her to translate feeling into action—and, crucially, into restraint when necessary.

  • The first date at Club N9NE: Will’s performance “Death” and the slam’s energy show Layken a form that can hold the size of her feelings. Why it matters: Poetry becomes her safe container; love and language enter her life together, permanently entwined.
  • The hallway revelation (Chapter 3): She discovers Will is her teacher. Why it matters: The truth reframes their chemistry as a test of ethics, not a thwarted fairy tale, and sets the novel’s central tension in motion.
  • Julia’s cancer disclosure (Chapter 10): Mortality replaces romance as the urgent plot. Why it matters: Layken’s priorities sharpen; caretaking becomes her measure of maturity.
  • The laundry room scene (Chapter 18): Passion surges; Will stops it. Why it matters: His refusal teaches her that love sometimes says “not yet,” distinguishing desire from devotion.
  • “Schooled” at Club N9NE (final chapter): Layken catalogs what each person taught her and declares her love. Why it matters: She reclaims narrative control, transforming grief lessons into a life philosophy and earning the reunion by who she has become.

Essential Quotes

“Believe me, I’m already dead.” This early declaration captures Layken’s defensive nihilism—if she declares herself “already dead,” nothing else can hurt her. The line sets a baseline from which the novel must resurrect her, emotionally speaking.

“I don’t not fall in love with him. I don’t not fall in love with him a lot!” Layken’s double negative dramatizes her loss of control; language itself stumbles to keep pace with feeling. The humor softens the admission, but the urgency is real: she is past the point of choosing whether to care.

“She’s not trying to prepare us for her death. She’s trying to prepare us for her life. For what she has left of it.” After Will’s poetry lesson, Layken reframes Julia’s plan—from morbid preparation to intentional living. The shift proves she’s internalizing poetry’s lesson: perspective is a craft, not an accident.

“Well you’re certainly not the martyr, anymore.” Spoken in the laundry room fallout, this jab reveals Layken’s hurt and her misread of Will’s boundary-setting. The moment exposes her growing pains: she equates denial with rejection, not yet recognizing restraint as love.

I got schooled this year.
By everyone.
By my little brother…
by The Avett Brothers…
by my mother, my best friend, my teacher, my father,
and
by
a
boy.
a boy that I’m seriously, deeply, madly, incredibly, and undeniably in love with… “Schooled” is Layken’s thesis statement: education through relationship, art, and loss. The broken lines mimic the stops and starts of her year, turning fragments into form—and claiming love as something learned, not merely felt.