"you are so dead, cooper!"
deborah cooper was your average high schooler. straight a student who could do no wrong by day, publisher of scathing articles alongside cousin betty by night. despite her cousin's numerous attempts and warnings to stop he...
"looking forward to it." chapter one -- where did you go?
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
As a child, Deborah absolutely hated snakes. Her uncle Hal was forced to turn off National Geographic when even anything slightly resembling the scales or silhouette of the animal was in sight, or else face the wrath of a furious seven-year-old with a loud set of pipes. Betty and Polly couldn't care less, though they did find it quite weird. If Alice had a problem with her odd fear of snakes considering her parents' past, she didn't show it, rather, she encouraged it with her strong anti-Southside vendetta and even stronger unexplained hatred against one of the gangs. Once, she had pointed out the father of one of her friends, bearing a jacket with a snake and they left immediately without another word.
But while Debbie shared a fascinating dislike of snakes with her, her aunt couldn't stop her fascination towards the Southside and its residents. Her curiosity mixed with her ability to charm the lollipops off of people made for a dangerous combination, and sometimes Alice hated how much the girl had taken after her, most particularly when she was younger as well, though it was undeniably endearing. The two grew close, almost closer to Alice than her actual husband.
In time, she had noticed that her aunt and uncle argued a lot, but never in front of her, always in hushed whispers or out of her sight. Never did she actually hear the words come from Hal's mouth, but she was sure they were fighting about her stay with their family. It had to have been, with his usually cold demeanor towards her discreetly hidden behind a supposed fatherly smile and reluctance to actually spend time with her in an attempt to "connect," as her aunt had called it.
Debbie was mature enough for a seven-year-old to conclude that the reason he was hesitant about her prolonged stay might've been because of her parents and their sudden disappearance out of the blue, adding to that, mysteriously dropping off their only child with their picture-perfect family. Curiously, she heard that Hal had never even met her parents, but instead, it was Alice who was close to them. The reason was that they had gone to high school together, but her aunt never told her which high school (When she became older, she would find out why.)
Hal made up for his hostility with almost daily trips to Pop's, ordering a single black coffee for himself and a strawberry milkshake for Debbie. It was something her aunt had suggested in order to ease her into the family. Then, they'd sit in silence until he supposed it was a proper time to come back home and Alice deemed it long enough to consider they "bonded."
Debbie never told her that the only time they bonded was when she would hand him some sugar packets from the basket of condiments nearest to her.
Unsurprisingly, Debbie would grow bored during these trips, which was normal for a seven-year-old. The strawberry milkshakes were always amazing, but with Hal preferring silence while he wrote new articles for the Register, it was easy to lose interest quickly. Sometimes he'd give her some quarters to change the music on the jukebox, but that was as interesting as it gets. Maybe she'd get another milkshake, if she was lucky. However, beyond the window, when she finished her drink and stopped picking up stray straw wrappers by her table, she would look to the other side of the tracks.
