Deliverance (Lucious/Cookie, Anika/Malcolm)

Chapter Six: Going to the Chapel

Summary: "Do you still love me?" Over 30 years later, Cookie's summer secret finally comes to light.

Notes:
- CAPA High is the Philadelphia High School for Creative & Performing Arts.

References:
"What have I told you..."  From Déjà Vu.

___

Curtis Institute of Music
June 1984

"Lori?"

"Dwight?" Cookie scowled up at the gorgeous, light-skinned boy who had gotten her into so much trouble in the first place. "What do you want?"

Dwight Walker smiled and flashed his assistant instructor badge. "I'm your warden for lunch and dinner detention for the next three days." He held up stacks of music theory books and blank sheets of music paper. "Might as well get started."

"Are you serious?" Cookie tossed her fork in her chicken-fried steak so hard that gravy splattered onto her camp t-shirt. The brilliant sophomore from CAPA High who worked as an assistant instructor to cover his tuition first spotted Lori Holloway on the third day of camp. She was singing and dancing to Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough" in the square outside of the cafeteria during lunch. 

Cookie was at her boldest then, mesmerized by this older boy as he effortlessly played along with his acoustic guitar. Cookie lifted her shirt up to show her navel as she gyrated her hips as seductively as a 13-year-old could. She got hit with three days' lunch and dinner detention for her trouble. "First of all," Cookie corrected, all Badlands teen girl attitude, "nobody calls me Lori except these white teachers. My name is Cookie."

The boy nodded. "Well...my name isn't really Dwight," he admitted.

"It's not?"

"Nah. It's Lucious. Lucious Lyon. And I'm not really a sophomore at CAPA like everybody thinks I am," he admitted. "But don't tell anybody, okay? If they knew who I really was, they'd never let me stay."

Cooke couldn't have handled Dwight Walker, the college-bound 10th grader from Chestnut Hill. But Lucious Lyon from south Philly was a hustler who had done what he had to go to get where he wanted to be – into Curtis, into dinner detention as Cookie's sight-reading instructor, and later into Cookie's dorm room. He'd even paid money to have Cookie moved from a double dorm into a single one. There was only one way a guy like Lucious could make that kind of dough.

The first time Lucious snuck into Cookie's dorm, they laid on their backs side-by-side in Cookie's bed and talked about their love for music and their plans for the future. Cookie told Lucious about how she hated school at the Franciscans and how she got into Ursuline and wanted to be an engineer, and even how she cried when some kids at school ruined her science fair project two months prior. "That's messed up," Lucious mused, taking Cookie into his arms for the first time. "You work hard and jealous-ass people wanna mess up your stuff. What was it about?"

"What, my science project?"

"Yeah."

"Hydroponics."

"What's that?" Nobody had ever asked Cookie before, because nobody ever cared.

Temperatures grew hotter as the summer went on, and so did Lucious and Cookie. Lucious always brought cold treats for Cookie – ice cream or a cold soda or a Tas-T-Freez – and they would work on music together. Every night ended with a frustrated Cookie sweeping sheet music to the side with tears in her eyes. "I don't need to learn this shit!" she cried one night, then snatched Lucious's mini-Casio keyboard from his hands and played a complicated classical piece with great flourish.