Was it hard for Hal to say goodbye to his parents when he was going off to college or was he eager to get out of the house at that point? What was the biggest adjustment he had to make after he left home?
Hal’s senior year was a really rough time for the Coopers. Hal expressed his and Alice’s interest in going away to school the summer before and you better believe Prudence and Lewis were less than thrilled. Their daughter was already across the country in LA (and look at how one year had changed her! coming home talking about not believing in god and driving out to greendale to buy avocados. avocados! what happened to her?) and the last thing they wanted was to loose their son too. They were especially skeptical that no matter what post high school plans came up, they always seemed to center around Alice.
There were many talks that summer about how Hal maybe needed a little space and needed to look at Alice as something going on right now and maybe not forever… But Hal was a boy in love and he told his parents time and time again that Alice was part of his future and that was that. Of all the places that came up, Emerson College in Boston was the one that they all seemed to agree on. Boston was so much further than NYC, but it was also quieter. Safer. And Emerson had such an excellent journalism program! Hal had no interest in majoring in journalism, but he’d cross that bridge with his parents when he came to it.
And then homecoming happened and everything fell apart.
Alice went to stay at the Sisters (on the Coopers dime, of course) and for the first time ever, Hal was in the doghouse with his parents. His father was colder than normal. His mother stopped asking about his day, stopped showing concern for him. He was sure they hated him. He disappointed everyone around him - Alice, his parents, his sister. All those dreams he had of his future were out the window. He wrote to Alice weekly about how maybe, just maybe, they could still have it. Still go along with their plans. But he knew deep down they were just pipe dreams. Alice never wrote him back.
Months passed. His parents slowly warmed back up, but their relationship never went back to what it once was with either of them. And when Alice came back to Riverdale, she came to live with the Coopers. Alice didn’t want to go back to her dad and she was sure her dad didn’t want her back either.
He got into Emerson somewhere along the way, but without Alice there was no point. She was waitlisted and if she didn’t get in, Hal would burn his acceptance letter. But then it came. At the last possible minute, Alice got in. And much to their surprise, Prudence and Lewis gave the two their blessing to go.
The summer was a crazy mix of shopping and day trips to Boston and sneaking around. Alice and Hal were supposed to dorm, but they realized how much cheaper they could live if they got an apartment together instead. They both picked up jobs and they knew they could make it work. And hell, if they survived the first year, they’d come clean to his parents and tell them.
Living together wasn’t a huge adjustment after the months Alice had spent in the Cooper’s home, but there were a lot of little things Hal had to learn. Prudence never let him cook, hardly let him touch laundry or clean the house. Meanwhile, Alice was all too used to taking care of her dad, so everything was much easier on her.
Hal trying to cook for himself? A nightmare. Not having his father to ask questions? Having to figure out things like paying rent and managing money and all that stuff? Yikes. He had Alice and thank god she had such a better head for these things than he did.
And even though Hal missed his parents, he was thrilled to be away from him. Alice always told him his mother coddled him and he never really understood it until those few months she was hardly speaking to him. He needed time away from them, he needed space from them, and college was the perfect excuse to do so. And even though he loved Riverdale - was proud of the town that raised him - he was glad it was in his past. Sure, he’d go back for holidays, for visits. But he and Alice were never going back there for good.