Cady is an 18-year-old girl who lives with her mother in Burlington, Vermont. She has an ironic way of seeing the world. She does not suffer fools, as she puts it. Her sense of realism is caused by pains she has suffered and inflicted. She caused the death of several close friends, and it takes her years to recover and to come to terms with what she did. Cady's motives are and were good: she wants to make the world a better place. When she provoked her friends to do something that ended in their deaths, she did so to cure what she considered to be "evil": the greed of her family. Cady is at odds with her family because she is an idealist, and they are very wealthy and very unaware of how fortunate they are. Indeed, as Cady sees it, they are reckless and do not care what harm they do, so long as they enjoy themselves. They value property over human relationships, and this pattern of behavior angers Cady. With time, she learns to be more flexible and forgiving.