The Cool Parent

In my next manuscript, I'd like to make the antagonist one of the cool parents.

You know the type. Their kids get to have parties with alcohol because the parents figure the kids are going to drink anyway so better they drink at home, right?

With that kind of adult supervision, it's easy to envision something bad happening, which the protagonist can then make right while befriending the cool parents everyone else hates, thereby bringing the neighborhood together and it's a happy ending.

Here's the scene: a warehouse in a toney suburb. Let's say, Highland Park, Illinois.

Plenty of money there. Plenty of parents wanting to be cool, to be friends rather than the bad guy in the family circle.

The warehouse has become the venue for late night parties. Cool parents rent it out and hire a disc jockey to provide music. Their kids get to invite everyone, making them more popular at the high school.

Word spreads. Teens show up, invited or not, because that warehouse party is the place to be on a Saturday night. Cool parents drop their kids off at the door, never bothering to verify how many adults are supervising. That wouldn't be cool.

Teens know that vodka looks like water and it's easy to fill a water bottle with vodka and sneak it in when the few adults supervising the party are lost in the crowd and can't check everyone at the door.

So there's drinking. The cool parents have arranged for bottled water to be sold at the venue so they can say there's no drinking, but these kids are being groomed for Harvard and Yale and Columbia. They're too clever for mere mortal parents.

Which way might the plot go? In one scenario, a not-so-cool mom might insist on meeting the parental host, only to find a warehouse packed beyond its capacity with gyrating bodies and underage drinkers. She busts the party and is cast into social limbo. The rest of the novel revolves around her re-acceptance and the ostracism of the cool parents.

Something for Jodi Picoult? Maybe. She might go with the tragic drunk driving accident leading to community breakdown scenario, though.

The police in Highland Park busted up the party, by the way. A parent went to drop off Junior and was alarmed by the crowd of 800 teens inside and 150 teens waiting to get in.

No word yet on whether that parent is viewed as a hero or a pariah.