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Alacoque's entire personality has a vague tinge of early This American Life episodes--a sort of well-intentioned but condescending and patronizing "normal people are so interesting!" openness to experience, coupled with a general crunchy granola personality and a mind that is perhaps not so much open as entirely without sensible doors.

One of those people on a constant quest for "authenticity," whatever the hell that means, the somewhat-naive Alacoque (Cokie, as she's known to her friends) is forever restlessly attempting to free herself from, like, the shackles of materialism and expectation, or whatever. She wants to do something important--not something that will make her famous, but something substantive, something vital, something insightful and interesting and horizon-broadening.

As the result of a chemically-fueled tarot reading earlier in the year, Cokie has refocused her efforts away from things like backpacking in Peru and protesting in Tibet and towards learning to expand the horizons she has right here in Ashdown. To this end she's started a blog--Voices of Ashdown--that is--well, let's be blunt, it's a rip-off of Humans of New York, fueled by her love of talking to "normal people" (the suggestion being that she isn't, of course) and her hobby in photography. She also publishes the occasional "local interest" story, and is a moderately-talented writer.

So far results have been mixed, and she's beginning to grow obsessed with the project and its failure to yield some kind of enlightenment, and her restless, flighty tendencies are starting to manifest and suggest that she will pursue something else altogether. There's gotta be something she's missing--right?

Cokie always manages to show up when someone accidentally makes an extra cup of coffee or the bakery employee is about to toss this last lonely doughnut. She's never gotten a free meal, but she has certainly gotten perks.


Cokie's relationship with her parents is somewhat strained but generally-decent, although there is always the thorny fact that her aggressive anti-fashion bent is a rebellion against the child beauty pageants she was made to compete in as a child.

She lives with a handful of roommates in a somewhat-overcrowded and rundown old house near downtown Ashdown known to its residents as The Broiler (a years-ago incident during a hot summer; don't ask), the rents and meagre incomes offset with an excess of tenants. The turnover is high, and Alacoque with a mere 24 months of residence under her belt now occupies the enviable position of House Superior, a joke title from several cycles of roommates ago that is now semi-official. This does not mean that she gets a room to herself, but it does mean that she has to collect all the money and pay all the bills, which kind of sucks but has taught her a lot about deadlines and general responsibility.

She has an older sister, Margaret, who is a model citizen and, in Alacoque's opinion, obscenely boring.