Throughout the novel, Zoe feels an obligation to prove her capabilities to herself, her peers, and especially her parents. Mack uses Zoe’s desire to be taken seriously as a developing pastry chef, her insistence that Mom allow her to have an open relationship with her father, and her quest for justice for Marcus to examine how increasing self-sufficiency and independence are crucial parts of growing up.

Zoe wants to show others like her parents and Ariana that she is highly capable and mature, and she is frustrated when others do not share her confidence in her own abilities. She eagerly accepts the internship at Ari’s Cakes, then is disappointed to be assigned menial tasks like folding boxes. She is further frustrated when Vincent hesitates to let her fill cupcake tins, when Ariana takes control of her rolling of the fondant, and when she is unable to complete her last day of the internship. In the library she must ask more than once for directions to the adult nonfiction books, as the library aide assumes she wants the children’s section. Through Zoe’s frustration at being treated like a child, Marks explores the experience of transitioning from childhood to adolescence, and the corresponding desire to be taken more seriously by adults.