Character Analysis
Mobius Strip
Cherise sounds a lot like "chemise," which is an article of clothing Cherise might wear for about 2.5 seconds before seductively pulling it off. Because she's a stripper.
More importantly, Cherise is a single mom doing what she can to support her son, and she falls into the "stripper with a heart of gold" category.
Cherise is overprotective and inconsistent, telling Nick she never wants him to grow up to be like his terrible father one minute, while telling Nick not to talk badly about the same terrible father the next.
Men objectify Cherise at her work, and the plot objectifies her in a different way. Cherise is a goal, like a princess in another castle. Nick must protect her from kidnapping, or worse. We know that in an alternate timeline, Ambrose's timeline, Cherise is dead, and Ambrose is trying to go back in time and change that.
Cherise does highlight a certain hypocrisy among the other characters, too. On the subject of the kids bullying Nick, for example, we find out that "[m]ore than half their dads were regulars at the club where his mom worked, yet they were called decent while he and his mom were considered trash" (1.51). It's an infuriating double standard, where men are allowed to be "respectable," even though they go to strip clubs, but the strippers themselves are trashy.
It just goes to show you that money sure can't buy class.