The Shippers(59)

“She won’t give me specifics. But I know she had to get a restraining order.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I’m not like that, by the way,” Cooper said, like I might think less of him now.

“Of course you’re not!” I said.

“I’ve spent my whole life working very hard to not be anything like my dad.”

“Have you?”

“And I’m a great boyfriend, by the way. Ask anyone.”

“Cooper,” I said. “That’s a given.”

“All I have to do is think what would my dad do in any situation—and then just do the opposite.”

I was still taking it in. “That’s how you wound up moving to our street? You were on the run from your dad?”

“Not ‘on the run,’ exactly. Maybe just more like in hiding. A little bit. My mom worked really hard to make things feel normal after that. But yeah—when we moved, she changed our last name to Watts, after her favorite music teacher in high school. And she started calling me by my middle name.”

“So your dad wouldn’t find you?”

“That was the idea.”

“So the situation was … really bad.”

Cooper thought about it. “The situation had the potential to be really bad. If he’d come after us, it could’ve been really bad. But he never did. Either he couldn’t find us or he didn’t try. I never saw him again after that.”

“So your real name isn’t Cooper?”

“It’s my real middle name,” Cooper said.

“What’s your first name?”

“Teddy.”

Teddy? In no way did Cooper look like a Teddy. “Teddy what?”

“Teddy Franklin. Theodore Cooper Franklin.”

“Your original name was Teddy Franklin?”

“Sounds weird, doesn’t it?”

“You don’t look at all like either of those things!”

“I’m not. Anymore. I got rid of the Theodore officially when I got rid of the Franklin.”

“Why?”

“Because Teddy was also my dad’s name.”

I thought about that little kid in the red T-shirt and how much he’d been through, and I felt so glad that I’d pulled him right into our gang. “Cooper,” I said. “This breaks my heart.”

“You know what, though?” Cooper said. “It’s a story with a happy ending. My mom took her life back. We moved to a better town—with a better school, and a better street. My mom got all the moms in the neighborhood, and I got you—all of you. My mom got a new job working at a foundation that gave out grants to artists—and she loved that job. So, yes … my parents’ marriage was bad, and leaving my dad was no doubt a nightmare for my mom, but once she got free, everything got better.”

“Is that why your mom gave up her dream of being a singer? Is that why she threw away all her records?”

Cooper nodded. “Yeah. You can’t be famous when you’re hiding.”

We both took a second to appreciate what a bummer that was.

Then Cooper said, “If I could go back and rewrite her life, I’d make it so she never even met my dad.”

“But then you wouldn’t exist.”

“That’s fine. I wouldn’t know.”

“I can’t support that idea.”

“But given how bad things got … things turned out better in the end than she ever hoped for. Her words, not mine.”

“Does she still worry he might come after her?”

Cooper shook his head. “He died a few years ago.”

“Oh,” I said. “How was that for you?”

I expected Cooper to tell me he either felt sad about that or didn’t. But Cooper just shrugged. “I kind of hoped it might cure my cleithrophobia, but it didn’t.”

“Why would your father dying cure your cleithrophobia?”

“Oh,” Cooper said, like he’d almost forgotten. “Because during the whole kidnapping thing, he made me stay in a closet.”

“He made you stay in a closet?”

“I guess, more accurately,” Cooper said, “he locked me in a closet.”

“What! He what? For how long?!”

“I think it was four days?”

“Four days?!”

“He put a TV in there, though. And blankets and pillows. And he let me have all the Froot Loops I wanted.”

“Cooper! Are you defending him?”

“I’m just saying—it wasn’t that bad.”

“Yes, it was!”

“It was a long time ago. I’m fine now.”

“You’re not fine! You have cleithrophobia.”

“It’s mild.”

But I was so outraged on his behalf. “I can’t believe you went through all that! I can’t believe that happened to you—and all this time I never knew about it!”

Cooper gave a little what-can-you-do shrug.

I said, “I want to give you a hug right now—but I can’t touch anything or be touched.”

“It’s fine,” Cooper said. “You’re in your underwear, so that’s probably best.”