Cassie

Quick Facts

• Role: Best friend and primary confidante to Becca Hart; comic relief and catalyst for the plot
• First appearance: Bursting into the Harts’ apartment after an “SOS” text, cupcakes in hand
• Age/Status: A year older than Becca; high school graduate working full-time at Hart’s Cupcakes
• Occupation: Employee at Hart’s Cupcakes, the bakery run by her mother and Amy Hart
• Key relationships: Becca Hart, Amy Hart, Brett Wells

Who They Are

Bold, funny, and fiercely loyal, Cassie is Becca’s external courage—the voice that says “Try it” when Becca’s instincts say “Hide.” Older and already beyond high school’s daily anxieties, she’s the stable friend who nudges Becca toward risk, romance, and vulnerability. As a foil, her extroversion throws Becca’s reserve into sharper relief, and her unwavering cheerleading becomes the energy that powers Becca’s first steps into the unknown. Through her, the novel’s theme of Coming of Age and Self-Discovery lands not as a solitary journey but as something friendship can spark and sustain.

Appearance

• Brown hair; usually in her pastel-pink “Hart’s Cupcakes” polo—bright, playful, and unmistakably on brand.
• The photo on Becca’s profile shows her and Becca “smiling together in a kitchen,” dusted with flour and frosting—an image that captures both her vocation and her joyfully messy approach to life.

Personality & Traits

Cassie’s personality is designed to energize every scene she enters. She cuts through Becca’s hesitation with wit and warmth, using humor to lower the stakes and blunt honesty to raise the bar for what Becca expects from herself.

• Loyal and Supportive: When Becca texts “SOS,” Cassie shows up immediately, cupcakes first, questions second. Her instinct is to be present and practical, the kind of friend who arrives before you’ve even decided what you need.
• Outspoken and Bold: She once told her entire graduating class she hated them in a speech—an audacious detail that establishes her as anti-performative and immune to high school politics. She refuses to cultivate likability; she cultivates honesty.
• Humorous and Eccentric: Her “weaponized cupcake” jokes—threatening to spit in bullies’ frosting—turn aggression into comedy. The humor isn’t just quirky; it’s protective, channeling her fierceness for Becca into an absurd, low-stakes fantasy of vengeance.
• Insightful: Beneath the jokes, she diagnoses Becca as a “hermit” and reframes the fake-dating plan as practice in being seen. She notices patterns Becca can’t and converts them into actionable advice.
• Food-Motivated: She gleefully admits she works more for free dessert than pay. It’s a comic beat that makes her feel lived-in and also underscores how thoroughly the bakery—and by extension, the Hart family—anchors her daily life.

Character Journey

Cassie’s arc is intentionally steady. Already graduated, she isn’t searching for herself so much as using what she’s learned to steady someone she loves. That constancy matters: Becca’s story needs a fixed star, and Cassie plays it—showing up, reframing problems, and pushing Becca toward experience over avoidance. Her influence is catalytic rather than transformational; by championing the fake relationship and normalizing risk, she models a lively, low-fear way of moving through the world. In short, she doesn’t change much—but she changes the conditions around Becca, which is the point.

Key Relationships

• Becca Hart: Cassie is the best-and-only close friend Becca completely trusts. She’s the first to hear about the fake relationship and the first to endorse it—not to manipulate Becca into popularity, but to make her life bigger. Cassie’s boldness gives Becca permission to experiment with visibility and intimacy without shame.
• Amy Hart: Because their mothers are business partners, Cassie treats Amy like extended family—comfortable enough to barge in, grab cupcakes, and tease. The easy domesticity (she has a key; she raids the kitchen) shows how entwined the families are and why Cassie feels like a fixture in Becca’s home life.
• Brett Wells: Cassie doesn’t need a personal bond with Brett to see his narrative function in Becca’s life. She supports the fake dating not as a stunt but as practice: a safe, structured way for Becca to risk being known.

Defining Moments

Cassie’s scenes are compact bursts of momentum—each one pushing Becca toward action.

• The “SOS” Cupcake Intervention: She storms into the apartment, cupcakes first, energy second. Why it matters: It establishes her as a first responder in Becca’s life—someone who will always show up and lighten the mood while taking the problem seriously.
• Championing the Fake Relationship: After the Brett kiss, she reframes the plan as a chance for Becca to stop hiding. Why it matters: Cassie translates fear into opportunity, shifting the story from avoidance to experimentation.
• The Graduation Speech Anecdote: Admitting she told her class she hated them turns her into an unapologetic truth-teller. Why it matters: It clarifies her foil function—where Becca avoids attention, Cassie courts it on her own terms.
• “Have fun with your boyfriend!” Exit: She shuts the door in Becca’s face with a kiss blown in the air. Why it matters: In one comic beat, she normalizes Becca’s new reality and refuses to let her backtrack into shyness.

Essential Quotes

“Cupcakes this morning!” she yelled, grabbing one in each hand and taking a bite. “Can you believe it’s been two years and I’m not sick of these yet?"

This line fuses character and setting: the bakery is Cassie’s playground, fuel source, and love language. The exuberance turns food into friendship—she brings sugar as comfort and comic relief, signaling that joy is part of how she cares.

“Then leave out the whole fake part. It’ll be nice to have someone, don’t you think? Like, to be with at school? You’ve been a hermit ever since I graduated last year.”

Cassie reframes the scheme as emotional exposure therapy—less deceit, more practice at connection. Her blunt “hermit” diagnosis carries affection, not judgment, urging Becca to build social muscles she’s let atrophy.

“Violence is not my weapon of choice, dear Becca. Cupcakes are.” I raised an eyebrow. “Sometimes students stop by Hart’s Cupcakes after class... So send me some names and I’ll spit in their frosting.”

The joke is outrageous on purpose. By imagining vengeance as sabotaged frosting, Cassie channels protective instinct into absurdity—defusing Becca’s anxiety while promising, in her own way, that she’s got her back.

Cassie blew me a kiss, yelled, “Have fun with your boyfriend!” then shut the door to my apartment in my own face.

Playful, bossy, and gently coercive: Cassie stages a threshold moment. The slammed door becomes symbolic—closing off retreat and nudging Becca into the performance of a new, braver self.