The Naturals

In Chapter 1, readers meet Cassie Hobbes, the teenage protagonist who works at a diner in Colorado. She lives with her father’s mother because he is stationed in the military around the world, while her mother is missing and presumed dead. Cassie recalls growing up with her mother before she went missing. Her mother was a con artist who pretended to be a psychic by studying people’s behavior, personality, and environment, what she called “the BPEs.” Cassie has learned to do this as well, remarking that studying people is not something she can “just turn off” (9). She accurately predicts the behavior of two of her customers. When another customer comes in, an attractive boy she assumes is wealthy, he confidently prompts her to guess his egg order. She does, and when he leaves, he leaves a business card on the table. It has the name and number for an FBI agent named Tanner Briggs.

After work, Cassie has Sunday night dinner with her large extended family, who tease her good-naturedly. She recalls being dropped off on her grandmother’s doorstep five years ago after her mother disappeared. Although her grandmother and family are kind, Cassie still does not feel connected to them after growing up with only her mother for the first 12 years of her life.