Cassie

Cassie is the first person narrator and protagonist in Ripe. She moves to San Francisco, a year before the narrative present, for a job in the tech sector at a startup called VOYAGER. While she is not a Believer, who thrives off of digital screens and green juices, she is there “in an attempt to heave [herself] up out of [a] dying town, out of in-state college, out of [a] lower-class past and into the upper strata of wealth” (7). However, she struggles to feel a sense of self in the city where she is “surrounded by all of the signs of money crushing the life out of a place: the rich live inside tall townhomes, the poor live in faded dirty tents if they are lucky” (6). The narrator wants to feel a sense of purpose and belonging, but she is haunted by a black hole. It sits next...