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Guest Character Profiles > Cassie Nicholls Lisa Marie Shaw

Cassie Nicholls 2013
Parents: Gary and Jennifer Nicholls

After moving to Erinsborough, from Mount Isa in country Queensland, Amber Turner made a few friends, including Cassie Nicholls, who she also became friends with on Facebook and, after starting to use it, Twitter. Unfortunately, during the school holidays, Amber replied to one of Cassie's photos on Twitter, but her comment 'You look pretty' was autocorrected to 'You look pregnant', leaving Cassie furious, and with Amber completely unaware of what she'd done. Back at school, Amber found the word 'Troll' written on her locker, with Cassie and her friends refusing to speak to her. In class, Cassie brought in a rat and put it in Amber's bag, watching as it escaped and making a remark that it must be one of Amber's friends from the country. It was Amber's friend Chris who realised what had happened, and Amber quickly tried to apologise to Cassie, who thought she was lying and turned down her attempts to repair their friendship.

Cassie continued to target Amber over the incident, making cruel remarks on Twitter and getting most of the school to side with her. When student teacher Kate Ramsay found out about the online bullying, she put both girls on litter duty as punishment, giving them each a sun hat - blue for Amber and red for Cassie - little realising how much worse this was about to make things for Amber. As the day went on, word began to spread on Twitter and soon some of the kids were wearing red or blue ribbons to show which 'team' they were on, upsetting Amber as she realised that almost all of them had a red ribbon. However, as work continued to go around the school, by the next day, everyone had taken a side, and Amber was shocked to find that they'd all sided with her. Although briefly delighted that everyone had seen through Cassie, Amber started to worry when Cassie failed to turn up for school, having heard about everyone siding against her. Later that day, Amber received a message from Cassie, saying that Amber had won and wouldn't need to worry about Cassie anymore. Her guilt worsening, Amber then received another message from Cassie saying 'CU L8R' along with a photo of some trees, which Amber thought she recognised. She tracked Cassie down, who was simply sitting and moping, believing that everyone hated her and wouldn't care if they never saw her again. Cassie made her see that the ridiculous Twitter war didn't matter and that, if nobody cared about her, then they wouldn't all be so worried, and Amber wouldn't have bothered coming to find her.

Amber took Cassie back to the school, where she was reunited with her worried parents and, along with Amber's parents and various other students from year 11, they had a workshop about online bullying in which Amber spoke up about everything that had happened, and the students all read and signed a contract promising to be more responsible with their use of social media. A couple of weeks later, Cassie attended a pool party to celebrate Amber's 17th birthday. There, she spoke to one of Amber's neighbours, Kyle Canning, whose girlfriend Georgia had been sacked from her job as a nurse after being accused of stealing drugs. Kyle was desperate to find out the identity of the real thief, and followed a lead from Cassie, who suggested that a kid at school, Lachie, was known to sell prescription medications from his locker. Unfortunately, having roped in Kate to get him into the school, Kyle searched Lachie's locker but found nothing.