Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Betty thinks if she’s going to have a reputation, she might as well earn it. She might as well truly deserve it.

She just needs a willing candidate. The right willing candidate.

It’s harder to pick than she’d anticipated.

The entire football team is out, and with it her easiest prospect—Archie Andrews. Reggie’d probably beat to pieces anyone who so much as looked at her twice, even if he’d also mock them for enjoying his sloppy seconds. It’s too bad, really; Archie’s sweet. She’s known him since she was a kid. He just can’t keep a secret, even if his life depended on it, and it would only make his life difficult.

She thinks—she knows, really, that Chuck Clayton would like to get under her skirt. She’s not an idiot; she knows how to read his glare, and even though he always looked down his nose at her when she was under Reggie’s arm, she also saw how his gaze lingered on her as she walked away.

But Chuck and Reggie are a pair. Chuck would sooner spit on her than agree to what she’s contemplating asking.

Her chin rests on her fist and she thinks. Her milkshake slowly melts in front of her.

And then he walks right through the door of Pop’s, plops down onto a stool at the counter, and orders his usual.

Aha, she thinks: Jughead Jones.

Perfect.

Earlier, before she decides she’s going to seduce Jughead Jones, Betty makes another decision.

She tucks each of the little books into a cardboard box she’s taken from the alley by the corner store. Digging under her bed, she finds, after some grasping, the lighter she hides there.

Outside she kicks at the patchy grass with her heel, attempting to clear a spot in the dirt. She stares down at it for a moment, before she abandons the box to return to the kitchen, returning with a sopping wet dish towel.

Methodically she begins to stack each of the diaries, creating a small structure just short of a foot tall. She twists the lighter open, dripping lighter fluid over the books, staining the pink and ecru and white cloth of their covers with spots.

Reassembling the lighter, she clicks the flint; once, twice, a third time. She stares at the pile of books before crouching down beside them.

The edge of paper catches easily and she steps back, snapping the lighter shut and slipping it into her pocket. She crosses her arms over her chest, the air of the night chill against her arms, and she watches as twelve years of her life—or what she once thought was her life—is reduced to ashes.

In the morning, there will be a simple patch of ashy darkness across this dirt, in a forgotten corner of this yard in the little house on Sycamore Street, this place she’s lived with her mother for just over a year.

In two days' time it will rain, and then all the ashes of the past will wash away into the gutter on the street, through the sewer system underneath the town, and out into Sweetwater River, where they’ll flow wherever the river takes them.

For a moment, Betty wonders where that is—one of the lakes maybe, or perhaps as far as the ocean.

Then she shakes her head; it doesn’t matter.

The substance of Betty’s existence is very different from how it was a mere year earlier.

It’s night and day, that difference, when she really thinks about it.

Mostly, she tries not to think about it.

But now she’s also got a freedom that is unfamiliar. Her mother works now, and she works a lot, mostly over at the hotel in Centerville, cleaning.

There are some people who haven’t turned their backs to Betty Cooper, and chief among them is Veronica Lodge.

Her mother never liked the Lodges, but now she merely nods absently when Betty mentions the name.

She isn’t really friends with Veronica’s friends, not truly, but they’re a little group nonetheless.

They’re all outcasts in a way.

Now she lives on the Southside. It’s not so far from the big white house on Elm Street with the red door. Riverdale isn’t that large. She even still lives on a street named for a tree.

But she’s not suddenly a gang member, despite the whispers she hears behind her frequently. She’s not a Serpent—none of them are, women aren’t allowed. “It’s bullshit,” Toni had once spat, eyeing the boys in their leather jackets through the window at Pop’s.

So she’s not a Serpent, but that doesn’t stop someone from painting the words Serpent Slut in blood red paint across her locker.

Betty stops short when she sees it, gulps. Then she steps forward, spins her lock though its combination. When it opens, she places her Chemistry and European History textbooks on the top shelf, exchanging them for Jane Eyre and a notebook.

She closes her locker with a click. She can feel the eyes on the back of her neck as she turns, as she walks away without a second glance.

So now this is her life.

Betty Cooper, the girl next door: now just a Serpent Slut. Just one of the bad girls, one of those girls who will get what’s coming to them. Like Veronica; like Polly.

Fuck them, she thinks. Fuck them all.

She’s known Jughead Jones as long as she’s known Archie, if not as well. He’s Archie’s oldest friend, and she thinks that’s still true, even if she hasn’t seen them together much since they all started high school. Archie's always been a little girl-crazy; Jughead never seemed the type to have much patience for that kind of thing. She’s not even sure he’s ever had a girlfriend. She’s never seen him at a school dance.

He’s from the Southside, and now she’s from the Southside, too—he’s probably not a snob.

He’s a loner. He’s a little weird, actually. She doesn’t know that much about him, not really, and no one else seems to either. But maybe that’s to her benefit. He’s an iconoclast. And she thinks he probably has his own secrets he’s keeping.

Maybe he’ll keep hers.

When Reggie picked me up before Homecoming he played the part of Respectable Young Man perfectly, I can’t even describe how completely Mr. and Mrs. were charmed by him. Dad obviously knows him because Mr. Mantle is always asking for Dad’s mechanic expertise, and Reggie works there during the summers, and Dad advertises the lot in the Register—but still. He’s taking their youngest to the big dance. They’re always suspicious.

(He’s going steady with their youngest, but they don’t need to know that.)

He shook Dad’s hand and complimented the house to Mom, and within ten minutes they let us leave, thank god.

We parked far from the door of the gym and I kissed him, and did so for a little while because we’d gotten there plenty early enough in my opinion, for this very reason. His hand was on my knee and (Alice, if you are somehow reading this despite every effort I’ve made to hide it, this is just fiction, it’s fantasy, I’m being creative!) I took it and pushed it under my skirt and god. Send me to hell now, that felt nice. Nothing got too far though, because of the girdle and the dance and we were in a parking lot for goodness’ sake—oh Reggie Mantle, shame, shame! Getting handsy with sweet Betty Cooper before the dance! What would the neighbors think?

(We’ll never know because Fred and Mary Andrews aren’t neighborhood watch hawks like the Coopers are.)

It was nice to see everyone dressed up in their best. I found myself wishing Polly was there, even though she graduated last year. She used to love school dances. But now all she really cares about is sneaking out with Jason Blossom.

I can’t blame her (obviously, after the car, and Reggie. I’m not a hypocrite!) but I can and do worry about her. A man was found dead at Sweetwater less than four months ago, and nobody knows who did it, still. There might be someone dangerous out there. It can’t be safe crossing through the woods at night to meet up with anyone, even someone as sainted as a Blossom (I write with great sarcasm, to be clear.)

The girls are far less sanguine about the graffiti slashed across Betty’s locker.

She learns this during French—not in class, but instead cutting French class, when all four of them are below the bleachers near the baseball field, sharing a cigarette and an expression of incredulity as Betty confirms the rumors that have already spread through the halls of Riverdale High, about what happened to Betty Cooper’s locker.

She exhales smoke into the air and nods, shrugs a shoulder, and passes to Josie. “Who cares?”

Josie looks at her askance. “Uh-uh, no.” She shakes her head. “These boys think they can get away with anything in this town, like they walk on water.” She ashes the cigarette and rolls her eyes, the afternoon light falling across her face in stripes. “They’re not Jesus.” She shakes her head at the sky.

“She’s right,” Toni reaches to take the cigarette from Josie.

Veronica interjects. “I bet it was Clayton,” she spits out. Betty’s eyes flick up, surprised at the confidence in her voice.

Veronica’s smile is bitter. “Remember the ‘sticky maple’ incident?”

Betty rubs her lips together, while Toni and Josie erupt, decrying Chuck Clayton and Moose Mason and every boy at Riverdale High who plays varsity football and stalks around in his letterman like he’s a gift from God.

Veronica is oddly silent. Betty turns to look at her, but she gazes out across the field.

“I have an idea,” she smiles.

The bats aren’t even behind lock-and-key. It’s easy to waltz right into the boys’ locker room after school and pull four from a bucket in Coach Kleats’s office.

Chuck Clayton’s car is parked out of sight of the windows that line the front of Pop’s Diner, in the side alley, where the light from the streetlamps is obscured by the building, where they are only illuminated by the red neon glow of the Pop’s sign.

Something scuttles through the trash barrels, and Betty thinks the cameo of a rat makes a perfect metaphor. It’s almost too on the nose.

“See,” Josie insists, “like it was meant to be.”

They encourage Betty to take the first swing. She hasn’t held a baseball bat in her hands since she was little.

It makes her think of her father.

Heat rises in her chest, up her neck. She circles the bat once through the air, aims, and the driver-side mirror shatters to the ground.

They take turns after that, laughing with every success, until each of the windows—driver and passenger, front and rear—are spiderwebbed with cracks, if not shattered. The tail lights hang by wires; glass crunches under their heels.

Toni brushes her hair over her shoulder and leans over the windshield, brandishing a lipstick.

In large, swooping letters, she writes Get Fucked Charles Clayton.

A thought crosses Betty’s mind. She accepts the lipstick Josie hands her, running it thick over her lips. She can’t help but smile.

She leans down, presses her lips to the window below Toni’s screed, the girls giggling and behind her, egging her on.

She pulls back and leaves a picture perfect red lip print in Seduce Scarlet, a kiss-off if there ever were one.

So Betty’s never spoken much to Jughead Jones, if at all. Maybe when they were all in elementary school. But even then, the girls naturally segregated themselves from the boys. Even Archie became less of a presence in her life around that age.

“Young ladies do not play with boys, Elizabeth.”

Nor did they play baseball with the neighborhood kids any longer, or wear blue jeans outside of the house, leave their bedrooms without a brassiere, go on a date until they were sixteen, never with a boy who hadn’t meet her parents and been approved by them, because they already knew his parents from church and the PTA and the Garden Society, and a girl never, ever, ever, upon pain of death and shaming and the threat of hellfire and getting in trouble and ruining her life and ruining her very self, never did a girl go to bed with a boy.

Betty’s life has already gone to hell. She’s torn on whether ruining herself had anything to do with it.

Maybe it’ll be a test, she thinks. How much worse could it get, really? She’s willing to make the trade off to find out.

She doesn’t tell the girls her plan—it’s not much of a plan at all, really. It’s an idea, and she doesn’t really know how to execute it. It happened differently, before.

For two days she watches Jughead Jones out of the corner of her eye.

They share a single class together, literature. He speaks up only occasionally; still, it’s more than she does now. When she raises her hand in class, the only encouragement she gets is the subtle nod Miss Lovett offers as she shares her piece on whatever great work they’re studying that week. Her classmates ignore her.

Jughead doesn’t seem like an idiot, so there’s that.

She also notices that he seems to spend some time in the music room, especially when Mr. Fluteweed isn’t around.

She peeks through the window once. His back is to her, and he sits at a drum set, arms waving through the air with two skinny wooden sticks that land against the drum skins with an unexpected variety of forces and cadences. She leans her ear against the wood. The noise he makes is cacophonous without other instruments to accompany it. It makes her wonder what he hears in the silence that surrounds him in an empty room.

So all of this—and the fact that he’s seemingly always at Pop’s—is the sum of what she knows about Jughead Jones.

She decides academics lends her the best approach.

“That was interesting, what you said today. About ‘Bartleby.’”

Jughead’s head lifts and his neck turns to look over his shoulder. He’s ordered what she knows he always does: cheeseburger, fries, Coca-Cola.

He’s chewing, and his eyebrows rise in question when he sees her.

She raises her own brows in the direction of the stool that stands empty next to him. He nods, still chewing, and she delicately slides onto it, turning to face forward, staring at the pie case behind the counter.

She folds her hands atop the counter in front of her, swallows. “Although I worry Miss Lovett might report you to the administration as a Red.”

She tilts her head to peer at him with seriousness. He finally swallows his bite. She lets the corner of her mouth twitch upwards, and something seems to imperceptibly ease in the set of Jughead’s shoulders. He sips from his cola and narrows his eyes.

“Lovett will? Or is this a threat?”

Betty feels herself smile true, and she turns her head to face him properly. “I’m not a snitch,” she claims.

“Mm,” he nods. “That’s what an informant would say, wouldn’t they?”

Betty internally shakes herself: she’s here for a reason. She shifts.

“I haven’t read anything else by Melville. Have you?”

Jughead pops a fry into his mouth and nods. He chews and swallows before speaking (Polite, she thinks.)

“Billy Budd. Moby-Dick.” He shrugs a shoulder, almost like an apology. Betty wonders for a moment if he’s embarrassed.

She nods slowly, taps her fingernail silently against the edge of the formica counter. She runs her nail slowly along the gap between the countertop and its edge. She wonders for a moment what minuscule scraps of food, of spittle, of cleaning fluids have fallen into this little gap. The thought grounds her as much as it unsettles her; she presses the nail of her ring finger into the fleshy part of her thumb.

“What would you recommend?”

When Jughead finishes his meal, Betty stands and follows him out of the diner.

They walk slowly; Jughead stuffs his hands into his pockets. He moves as though he’s merely strolling, like he has no place to be, like his time is his own. Betty wonders about this, but she is distracted by their conversation.

They shift to Melville’s friend, Hawthorne. Jughead doesn’t like him, thinks he’s overrated and self-obsessed with his familial legacy, by the weight of it, the shame.

Something in Betty feels compelled to defend him. She remembers reading The Scarlet Letter in sophomore literature class—before.

“Maybe,” she says. “Do you think he felt like he was Hester?”

This topic leads them around the perimeter of Pickens Park, crossing the railroad tracks and into the Southside proper.

They talk briefly about Archie—she carefully avoids the topic of growing up next door to him; that feels too much like a lightning rod to her—and a bit about school.

They’re strolling down the sidewalks of the Southside, when Jughead suddenly pulls up his pace. He tilts his head to the left, toward a little house, not so different from the one Betty herself lives in.

“That’s me,” he says. His eyes squint against the late afternoon light. The sun will begin to set soon.

Betty nods. She does not know what to say next. She’s been distracted by this conversation about books, hasn’t made much progress in what is supposed to be an attempted seduction.

Jughead looks toward the cracked cement of the sidewalk, before his eyes rise to the little house and then back to Betty again. “Would you like to come in?”

This is how Betty finds herself inside the Jones house.

The place seems deserted—tidy, but sparse. No one is around. Perfect, she thinks. She can do this.

Jughead asks her, politely, if she wants a glass of water. Betty shakes her head.

Jughead’s bedroom is as small and as compact as her own. There’s a narrow bed, a little desk, and a three-tiered shelf of books—some comics, but mostly paperbacks, the titles of which she recognizes from class, and others—Player Piano, The October Country, Our Man in Havana. Some sound familiar but are yet unknown to her. She feels drawn to his bookshelf, but instead leans against his desk and tries to remind herself that she is here for a reason, that she cannot let herself be distracted.

He hands her a small, compact, and weighty little book: The Piazza Tales.

She runs her thumb over the edge of the pages, feeling the ridges’ subtle resistance against the swirls of her fingerprint.

“Can I use your bathroom?”

The bathroom is small, but clean. Betty leans her lower stomach against the cold edge of the porcelain sink and peers closely at her reflection. She removes a few flecks of mascara from underneath her eyes, but her eyeliner hasn’t budged.

With her hands wrapped around the sides of the sink she pulls back, turns her head left and right, regards herself. She cups a hand over her mouth: breath fine.

She fiddles with the top button of her cardigan, toying with an idea. She hesitates only a moment, but then moves quickly to unbutton it before she can second guess herself.

She’s picked her bra with care; it’s one she hides from her mother in a shoebox of other contraband at the back of her closet: her eyeliner, her lipstick. The switchblade Toni gave her.

The bra is black and lacy, but she twists her arms behind her back and unclasps it, folding it carefully in half before tucking it into her purse and donning her cardigan again.

Betty hears Veronica’s voice in her head: Boys always struggle with a clasp.

She glances at her reflection one final time, and then turns to leave the room.

Betty sits on the edge of Jughead’s bed, her spine straight, her head turning to take in the room. It’s small, but tidy. Jughead’s sock-foot scuffs against the edge of the carpet, his hands dig into his pockets. He avoids her eyes.

“It’s not much,” he says.

Betty’s head turns to him and she finally catches his gaze. She gives him a small smile and nod. She shrugs a shoulder. “It’s a bedroom, Jug.”

He huffs a laugh, but his shoulder seems to drop just a bit.

Betty wonders if she should ask him to sit. But this is his bedroom, she doesn’t need to play hostess here. Why is he fiddling with the spines of the books on the small shelf beside his bed, though? How can she get him to look at her again? She wants to feel that heat again, that warmth in her abdomen when he looks directly at her, like she’s the only person in the room.

She is the only person in the room, she reminds herself.

“Jug,” she says quietly, and finally—finally—he looks up at her again.

Betty’s breath is shallow but steady. She keeps her eyes on his face as her hand reaches once again to the top button of her cardigan. She pops it open, observes how minutely Jughead’s eyes seem to widen and dilate at once. The change gives her the confidence to let her fingers drop down to the next button.

Unclasping this one causes his Adam’s apple to bob.

The fourth button is when his mouth opens like he’s going to speak, but no sounds come out, and before long she’s unbuttoned her entire cardigan.

She pulls it off her shoulders and down her arms. She tosses it lightly toward the foot of the bed, not really paying attention to where it lands, and leans back onto the palms of her hands, letting her back arch just slightly.

Is this attractive, she wonders for a moment. The room feels a little cold, but Betty feels warm, so warm.

“Betty—” Jughead’s voice sounds choked. She’s hyper aware that Jughead, a person who has so often avoided her gaze, has not yet averted his eyes from her. She ducks her chin, peers up at him through her eyelashes. Boys like it when you look up at them, Veronica echoes in her brain, and Betty can practically see Veronica ash her cigarette as she says it.

“Will you sit with me, please?” She asks him quietly, and he swallows.

“You can touch me,” she tells him. “I’d like you to touch me, I mean.”

His hand on her breast is cold. Betty instinctively inhales at the feeling, and arches herself into his touch. Jughead seems to sense a change, and his eyes suddenly appear apologetic. Quickly, Betty’s hand comes to cover his, and the contact makes him jump a little. She feels herself smile.

She nods at him, pushes his hand to mold more firmly to her breast, presses the edge of her thigh to his: warm. “Will you kiss me?” she whispers.

His eyes flit up from their hands, look directly into hers, and even though she has asked him to kiss her, she leans forward and presses her lips to his.

His lips are warm, too. Betty feels the ruching of her nipple under his cold fingers and it makes her breathe more deeply, makes her chest ache a little inside.

The feeling is strange; it’s different from the last time she did this—but she doesn’t really like to think about that. But in the past, when it wasn’t something she tries to forget, it was something about the strangeness of hands upon her that were not her own. This heat had been there, certainly. But Betty can feel the ache in her breast migrate down her torso. She can feel the warmth between her legs, the warmth she’d felt only in specific circumstances: when Veronica had kissed her that one time. Watching East of Eden, James Dean in the field. When she’d let her own hands touch herself, when she could do so without feeling foolish or embarrassed or hear her mother’s voice echoing in her brain, telling her she had to be a nice girl.

Betty doesn’t want to be a nice girl.

She parts her lips and pulls on Jughead’s lip with her own. She wants him to open his mouth to her, to encourage him to kiss her more deeply, and though it takes a few moments, he seems to understand and follow her lead.

She keeps one hand over his still, to keep him close to her. She thinks that were she to let it go, his hand might flutter away like a moth. Her other hand travels down his neck until it’s tucked into his collar.

Her neck aches from stretching to meet his lips, but she hesitates before she makes her next move. She doesn’t want to scare him. Jughead is timid. She likes that he is timid.

Boil the frog, she thinks. Slowly.

But then he squeezes her breast and she pants into his mouth, and thoughts of moving slowly flee her brain.

She’s on her knees, and then she’s on his lap, and all the while she’s managed to keep their lips attached. She leans forward, and when he finally falls backward she feels him grunt softly as his back hits the mattress.

There, Betty thinks. Stay here. Don’t push. She pushes her pelvis down, licks into his mouth, and that’s when she feels him hard beneath her.

Right, she thinks. Perfect timing.

She risks it—lets his hand continue to move over her breast without her guidance, and lets her own snake south down his torso. She palms him and—

Suddenly she’s standing, because Jughead is standing.

She’s half dizzy from the speed of shifting orientation, and for a moment she feels the residual heat of their bodies, before quickly the chill of the room ices her bare skin. She hates herself a little when her arms instinctively move to fold over her chest.

“I—”

“Betty, I—I’m sorry, I—”

Her eyes widen and look up to meet his, and she feels a flush through her body, one so different from that previous heat. This is the flush of shame. She hates this feeling.

She ducks her head and whispers, “Sorry.” She drops to pluck her cardigan from the floor. Jughead’s hands reach out toward her, but do not make contact. His cold hands. She shrugs the cardigan on, her shoulders hunched.

“Betty, I reall—”

“It’s fine,” she interrupts him. She needs to leave. She feels heat deepen in her cheeks.

She’s a tramp; she’s exactly what her mother has warned her against becoming.

She avoids Jughead’s eyes and grabs for her purse. “I’m gonna go,” she says.

“No, I—”

“Bye,” she says, and plucks her coat from where it hangs over his desk chair.

And then she is outside, in the cold early evening air. The sun has set. She doesn’t raise her eyes from the concrete of the sidewalk until she’s home.

By the grace of God, Betty doesn’t have literature on Monday, and so she’s able to avoid Jughead entirely until Tuesday.

Still, she swings into class with mere seconds to go before the bell rings, seriously contemplating skipping, even though she rarely skips literature, her favorite class.

She holds her chin high and her books hard against her chest. She keeps her eyes on her destination: her desk, the desk that is behind Jughead’s, one-over.

The pressure of the books against her body makes her think of Friday again, and she wishes on anything that the heat of embarrassment will stay in her chest and not show on her face.

She’s a fool. She tries to push the thought out of her mind, fixes her eyes forward toward the blackboard, even though out of the corner of her eye she can see him turn his head toward her as she sits. She pins her eyes to the chalked words of the board, unable to parse them into sentences and meanings.

Well it happened.

God help me if my mother ever finds this diary and finds out her precious baby daughter let Reggie Mantle get past first base, let alone make it all the way to home plate and then back around some.

Polly always talks about it so obliquely, so around the topic, all flowery language and feelings and love—but it wasn't like that. It wasn’t bad. It hurt a little, but some of it actually felt very nice. I don’t think I’ve ever felt closer to a person than I did in that moment, and I think Reggie might have felt that way too, because he was acting the way he only acts when we’re alone, and he becomes a softer person. He’s almost gentle.

And it felt good to have his hands on me—his hands are large and warm, and they felt something against my skin, something I don’t really know how to describe, but that I think I liked, really liked. We were in his bedroom; their housekeeper on her day off, Mrs. Mantle at the Garden Society. Mr. Mantle was presumably at the Register (the man they found under the bridge: they still don’t know who killed him, it’s been on the front page since it happened, always above the fold. Alice doesn’t like when we bring it up at dinner.)

I’ve never been naked in a bed before, I can’t recall. But that felt wonderful, cotton against skin, and being kissed, and feeling desired. It’s something different than necking, that’s for sure.

At first I thought things might proceed like Midge had mentioned (I remember her words exactly, “It’s not a sin if he doesn’t put it in there.” Ginger didn’t get it. “Where else would he put it?” The expression on her face when she realized what Midge meant!) I was almost resigned to that, even though the argument doesn’t really hold water (the Klumps are Catholic, and her mom is really strict), though maybe if I thought about it the way Midge did, it could be easier hiding it from my mother, lying by omission: “Of course I’m still a virgin, mother!” But before I could even pose the question to Reggie, we’d followed a different direction, to say the least (I’m so afraid of being more explicit! If anyone could find this diary, despite my truly ridiculous hiding spot, it’d be one Alice Cooper.) And then before I knew it, there was a rubber, and then it was happening, and then it was over.

So that’s that. I think I might like it to happen again. I think I liked it, or that I might come to like it. It made me feel almost powerful, which isn’t what I expected from the way Polly had talked about it, or anyone else. Reggie asked me afterward how I was feeling (he looked so worried!), and I said I felt wonderful, and I think it was the truth.

“Betty!”

He calls her, but she doesn’t look back. She keeps her eyes forward and moves through the crowded corridor, intent on making it out the double doors of the school.

She’s just cleared the steps when she feels the hand on her elbow. She spins out of his grasp and faces him.

“Jesus, Jones! What’s the idea?”

His hands raise in apologetic supplication. “Sorry, I—I didn’t mean—” He shakes his head.

She shakes hers right back at him, her eyebrows pulled together, before turning away from him once more, starting back on her path down the sidewalk.

Her books thud against her hip with each step. At the corner she looks over her shoulder covertly; he’s still there, still walking behind her, just a few feet back. His hands are in his pockets, and he looks nonchalant in a way that angers her, for reasons she cannot quite put her finger on.

She’s halfway home when she finally spins on him, stopping him short.

“What do you want, Jughead?”

“I wanted to apologize.”

She shakes her head again. “Why?”

“Well—” Her question seems to stump him. She crosses her arms over her chest. For a fraction of a moment she wonders if his eyes drop below her face, but it’s so fast she can’t quite be sure. Maybe she’s just thinking of the last time they were alone together. As much as they’re not really alone right now, not even four in the afternoon on the corner of Chauncy and Burdick.

She makes a noise in her throat to encourage him. When he says nothing, she nods. “Right.” She starts to turn again. “I get it, you can leave me alone.”

“Betty, I don’t want to leave you alone.”

He’s beside her now, keeping pace with her as she stalks down the sidewalk. He’s taller than her. His legs are much longer. This is easy for him. Bullshit, she thinks. It’s always easy for men.

“Betty, I’m sorry, I just—I got—nervous.”

She feels her eyebrows pull together, but she doesn’t turn to look at him. He keeps talking.

“I like you, Betty. I liked talking to you, and I just…I panicked.”

That makes her stop walking. For a moment she looks forward, but then finally turns to look up at him. “What do you mean?”

He seems startled she’s even looking at him, but he rallies quickly, as though if he dawdles he’ll miss his moment.

“Oh, well—I…like I said.”

She shakes her head a little, a little confused. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“That I like you?”

She rolls her eyes, runs her tongue over her teeth as she looks for her words. “That you—if you like me, why did you run away from me, Jughead?”

His chin ducks and his eyes shift away from her face once more, this time toward the ground. “Well, I…I’ve never…” He trails off and looks up at her.

She shakes her head. “You’ve never touched a girl?”

Jughead huffs a sound, something between a laugh and an abashed sigh.

Oh, she thinks. Perhaps she should have known this. She just didn’t expect…well. Maybe she shouldn’t have expected anything. People expect certain things of her, and look where she is now.

“I’m,” she begins before pausing. “Sorry,” she says. The back of her neck feels warm again, she feels embarrassment flush over her chest.

Jughead shakes his head. “No! No, please don’t apologize, I’m apologizing! You have nothing to apologize for.” He shakes his head again. For a moment his hand hovers, like he’s going to touch her shoulder, but he lets it fall to his side once more. He meets her eye again. “Please don’t apologize.”

Betty pulls her lip between her teeth. She feels she should say something to that, but nothing comes to her throat. After a beat, Jughead speaks again.

“Can I?” He gestures at her books under her arm.

Betty looks down, and he reaches out to take them from her, tucking them under his own arm. His head tilts toward the sidewalk before them, an invitation.

Betty begins to walk.

He leaves her at her door, handing her the books and giving her a small salute.

Then he’s off and down Sycamore, his hands in his pockets, unhurried and seemingly carefree.

There’s a roadhouse out by the turnpike that Toni says will serve them drinks without question.

“You’ve got money, then you’re a customer,” she says.

The Whyte Wyrm is a place Betty’s only heard of, a place she knows belongs to the Serpents—whatever that means.

What it means to her, however, is that it’s a Southside place. It is somewhere she might be able to escape.

Toni puts several coins into the jukebox and a song begins to play. Veronica stands, holding her hand out to Betty, and Betty lets herself be pulled out toward the center of the sticky boards that make up something like a dancefloor.

She knows she’s being watched, but she doesn’t turn to meet any of their eyes. Instead she holds Veronica’s hand and begins to dance, swaying against the beat and smiling as Josie steps out onto the floor to join them, as Toni follows.

Maybe this is what her mother means when she tells Betty not to make a spectacle of herself. But then, Betty never let herself dance in the middle of a dodgy roadhouse, never accepted alcohol from a stranger, never let the airyness of a drink go to her head, never let her inhibitions begin to fall away in such a public place, in view of so many eyes.

But she decides she doesn’t care. She lets Veronica swing her out, twirls under her arm and lets her hips follow the music, her skirt brushing over her thighs, smiles when Veronica then holds her hand out to Josie in turn.

Betty lets her body sway, lets herself turn slowly. That’s when she spots him, and when he seems to see her too.

He’s carrying a stack of pint glasses, fuzzy with the remnants of so many pulls of beer, and his eyes are wide on her.

She looks up as his face, sees his mouth form her name like a question. But she can’t hear his voice over the music. She averts her eyes away from him, pretends she hasn’t seen him, despite how obviously she reacted to the sight of him.

But she’s not able to let her body move unconsciously after that point. When the song ends she leaves Veronica and Josie on the dancefloor, joins Toni in leaning against a table, rubs her hand against the spot where her neck meets her shoulder, like she’s overwarm from dancing.

Toni eyes her sidelong, but doesn’t say anything, just watches the people around them.

Betty keeps her eyes forward, but she spots him out of the corner of her eye. He moves through the room collecting glass after glass, until he brings them behind the bar and through a door that swings to reveal a glimpse of some mysterious backroom.

She doesn’t know how to explain Jughead Jones’s presence in this bar. When Veronica and Josie retreat from the floor, the eyes of more than a few other patrons on their backs, their legs, Veronica fans her face with her hands, smiling with the exertion.

Betty leans back from the table, stands tall again. “Let’s go somewhere,” she says to the group.

“What?” Josie asks, swallowing a gulp from her glass. Betty looks up from her purse, nods. She paints a smile across her face, teasing.

“It’s a little creepy,” she says, tilting her head to indicate the crowd, their audience, the Serpents in leather jackets, the old bartender with the single front tooth. Jughead Jones is nowhere to be seen.

It doesn’t take much to convince them, and soon the door is swinging behind them, but not before Betty spots him again, his neck craning over the crowd, like he’s trying to catch her eye.

The first time Betty gets drunk it’s with the girls.

It’s also the first time she kisses anyone besides Reggie.

The two instances are absolutely related.

Betty follows Veronica home after school. Alice is working late at the hotel in Centerville, and though previously she’d frowned whenever her daughter mentioned the name Lodge, today she’d only nodded silently when Betty asked her if she could stay at Veronica’s that evening.

Veronica doesn’t live in a house like the rest of the people Betty knows in Riverdale; but even though it’s an apartment, it’s still much nicer than even the old house on Elm Street.

Toni and Josie arrive shortly after them, Toni carrying a bottle of bourbon under her jacket.

Betty doesn’t know where Veronica’s mother or father are, and she doesn’t ask. She’s heard a rumor that Hiram Lodge is in prison, but she tries not to listen to rumors any more. She’s following Josie and Toni’s lead.

The bourbon burns going down her throat, but she still shakes her head when Veronica offers to cut her glass with a little water. Shakes her head and swallows another gulp, lifting her chin to show off. Josie coos in approval, and even Toni smirks a little.

She’s not sure how they get onto the topic of romance, but then Veronica asks her if Reggie was her first, and Betty feels her cheeks flush. She ducks her head and the girls erupt in a cacophony of teasing.

“Oooh, Elizabeth, did you let him put his—” Toni mimes a vulgar gesture “—in you? How was that?”

When they get it out of her that Reggie participated in all her firsts, beginning with a simple kiss, and in fact was her only, Veronica shakes her head.

“That’s unacceptable,” she says. She shakes her head again: the pearls around her neck clink with her movement, and she sips briefly from her glass before placing it aside and rising upon her knees. “He cannot be your last kiss, B.”

She inches toward Betty until she’s towering over her, until her hands are on Betty’s cheeks, and Betty feels frozen until Veronica’s lips are on hers.

From somewhere far away, down a distant tunnel, rooms or even buildings away, she can hear Toni and Josie hollering with mirth, but Betty can’t focus on that. She can only feel the heat of Veronica’s hands, her lips, her tongue as it coaxes itself into her, the heat it stirs in her stomach.

She doesn’t know how long it lasts, but when Veronica finally pulls back, Betty feels a little dazed. Veronica’s cheeks are pink and she’s laughing, and Betty has to laugh too.

Veronica sips her drink, winks at Betty over the rim of her glass. She swallows with a flourish and a pop of her lips. “You know,” she tells them conspiratorially, “Sweet Pea told Fangs he thinks you're gorgeous.”

Betty’s cheeks flush, and she buries her nose in her own beverage. Thankfully, Josie picks up this thread, and carries the conversation forward.

Still—she thinks about it later, when she isn’t expecting to—about Veronica’s lips and about Veronica’s hands resting on her shoulders, about looking up at Veronica through her lashes. It flashes through her mind when she’s in bed at night, when her hand slips up the hem of her nightgown, when she feels like she’s so full she might burst if she doesn’t make herself feel something.

She finds him loping down the back stairs of the school after classes have ended for the day.

She isn’t looking for him but she spots him, hands in pockets again, sauntering from the music room to the double doors of the exit. She’s curious, so she follows him.

She doesn’t speak to him, doesn’t alert him to her presence, until his feet hit the bottom steps.

“What’s your rush?”

Her voice makes him spin around, facing her with his hands still in his pockets. He leans back in such a specific way. She’s not sure she’s ever met anyone quite like Jughead; he has an insouciance that piques her curiosity.

“Off to walk a dog,” he smiles at her.

Betty, at the top of the stairs, looks down at him and feels compelled to follow, a feeling she can’t quite understand. It comes from her chest, like a string pulling her toward him. She tries to shake it off.

“What kind of dog?” she asks him instead.

A lab, it turns out.

The Andrews labrador, Vegas, in fact.

Betty walks with Jughead all the way to Elm Street to the Andrews house, the one with the porch that sits right next to the white house with the red door where she grew up.

She doesn’t look toward her old home; instead she keeps her eyes forward or on Jughead, anything but on that place she doesn’t want to remember or think about or feel sad over, the place where her father tracked her and Polly’s heights on the frame of the door to the cellar from the time they could stand.

“Why are you walking the Andrews’ dog?” she asks him.

Jughead shrugs. “Because Fred and Mary are out of town tonight,” he offers.

“And Archie can’t?”

“Archie has practice.”

“Right.” Her response comes out short. Jughead seems to peer at her from the corner of his eye as digs into his pockets, searching for something.

“The Andrews are good people.”

“No, I agree—sorry, I didn’t mean to imply they weren’t. They were—they’ve always been kind to me.”

Jughead pauses, key now in hand, hovering above the doorknob at the rear door of the Andrews house. He looks down again before he answers her.

“Me too,” he offers, and then the door opens and he’s suddenly very busy, arms full of a yellow lab that is excited to see him and to escape house arrest.

Betty walks with him.

“Archie can’t take care of his own dog?” She’s half teasing, but really just searching for something to fill the silence between them as they take a walk around the block, from Elm to Maple to Oak to Holly and back to Elm again.

Jughead laughs. “Of course he can,” he tells her, “but I don't mind helping.” He shrugs, pulling on Vegas’s leash to keep him from trampling Mrs. Wyndham’s flower bed. He’s silent for a moment, watching the dog. His eyes flick upwards to meet hers.

“The Andrews are good people.”

She understands.

When she had to drag her boxes out to the curb and load them into the car one-by-one, Fred and Archie had been there, had helped her despite her insistence that she was fine, that she could handle it.

They didn’t look at her any different than they had before. She remembered that. She remembers that now, talking to Jughead.

Vegas returned to the house, freshly relieved and eager to bed down in a patch of sun across the hardwood of the family room, Jughead asks if she'd like to see his pride and joy.

“Well,” she offers, “if you put it like that,” she teases him, and he smiles.

Jughead’s pride and joy, it turns out, is a set of drums that has its home in the Andrews garage.

The space isn’t too large: a sofa, a place for tools and hammers and wrenches—so familiar to Betty that she turns her head away quickly—and a set of drums in the corner, next to a guitar propped against an electrical amp.

“We like different music,” Jughead tells her. “But it’s still a place to make some noise.”

His expression is conspiratorial, and she suppresses a smile.

He sits behind the drums, runs his fingers over the skins. Betty sits on the sofa and watches, but he doesn’t pick up the drumsticks, doesn’t tap or hit them against the drums—he just admires them.

“Why are they here?” she asks him.

He shrugs, doesn’t turn to face her when he responds. “More space.” His finger brushes against a drumstick. “No place to keep them where I live. And Archie likes to play his guitar alongside, sometimes.”

They’re silent for a bit. She thinks if she speaks, she might break something she cannot quite understand nor see. It isn’t tangible. She thinks she might be a little fearful of it. What does she have like Jughead has this drum set? Not the physical object, but the clear attention and desire he seems to direct toward it? She’s reminded briefly of her diaries, of the river of ashes flowing through Sweetwater, before she shakes the thought from her mind.

She breaks the silence.

“I read The Piazza Tales,” she says quietly.

Jughead looks up at her. “Really? What’d you think?”

Betty shrugs a shoulder. Jughead stands and crosses the garage. He settles onto the couch, his torso turned toward her like his whole body will listen to her. She feels something clench tightly in her abdomen. She breathes in and out before she continues.

Nodding, she tells him. “‘Bartleby’ was the best”—he nods in agreement—“but that first one…I liked that one a lot.”

“‘The Piazza’?”

“Yes.”

“Me too.” He nods and smiles. “‘Some happy one.’”

She raises an eyebrow. “Grass is greener, isn’t it?”

Jughead bobs his head, equivocating. “Yeah, but…I don’t know.”

She feels her brow pull together. She had not anticipated this discussion. “What do you mean?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing.” He’s silent a beat and then—“I really like ‘The Bell-Tower.’”

Betty’s mind lights up. “You would!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She shrugs a shoulder. “Just that you seem to like those kinds of stories. Judging from class. Poe, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ ‘The Cask of Amontillado,’ you know?”

Something seems to flash across Jughead’s face then, but Betty only glimpses it, because then he leans forward and kisses her, and her stomach swoops.

She kisses him for a while, and he kisses her back.

He doesn’t seem hesitant this time. This might actually happen, she muses. When Jughead’s hand moves from her shoulder blade down to the small of her back, she practically purrs.

Yes, this is going to happen.

She pulls back from him just a little, licks her bottom lip and feels her cheeks flush when she notices his eyes, a little hazy, follow the movement.

“Do you have a rubber?” she whispers, pressing her lips to his cheekbone. She feels his eyelashes flutter against her cheek.

“Yeah,” he nods. She nods as well, and this time he leans down to press his lips to hers.

Slow, she thinks. She doesn’t want to startle him—again.

But as soon as she thinks this, Jughead’s hand meets the warm flesh of her midriff. She hadn’t even felt her sweater come untucked. She smiles into his mouth and kisses him harder.

He gets the message, she thinks, judging by how his hand wraps around her waist, how his thumb trails back and forth over her ribs.

The kissing continues, and Betty loses track of time. This is nice, she thinks. She could just keep doing this; this could be enough.

No—she catches herself. She’s decided to do something, and she’s going to see it through. Onward.

That’s when she pushes against Jughead’s shoulder, just a bit. She expects to have to do it again, with a little more force, but he pulls back from her lips almost immediately, breathing heavily and looking down at her. When had they leaned so far backwards? She’s nearly horizontal against the cushions of the sofa.

Betty breathes out a sigh, and her hands move to the top button of Jughead’s shirt, pulling it gently through the buttonhole. His hand follows hers and she bites against her smile. But then he leans back and pulls his shirt off entirely without even unbuttoning it further, and Betty lets herself smile with teeth.

She begins to undo her own sweater, and then he’s kissing her again—hungry this time, messy, and wet. Her hands shake from it, but she manages to finish the row of buttons down her front, and then he’s kissing her neck and—that’s quite nice. His lips moving over her breast is quite nice, too.

She doesn’t want to stop him, doesn’t want him to take his lips off her skin, but she’s on a mission here, she has a purpose. With some awkwardness she reaches past where his hands grip her waist, for the hem of her skirt, and with a shimmy begins to hike it up her hips.

He seems to notice the movement, because he leans back just a bit, and cool air of the garage flushes over her chest with the distance. She watches his eyes, how they track the hem of her skirt ever higher.

She’s likely a mess, she thinks, disheveled. Her mother would rage if she saw her now. The thought tickles something in her abdomen, and she smiles up at Jughead. “Can you help?” she asks him.

His eyes go a little wide, but then his hands meet hers at the waist of her underwear.

Well, there’s no hiding herself now, she thinks: might as well own this awkwardness. When her panties clear her curled toes, she lets her legs fall wide, leans up on her elbows to look at him.

He’s breathing heavily, so heavily Betty can see the rise and fall of his shoulders from the air that moves through his lungs. He’s looking at her, and Betty suddenly feels powerful.

Jughead Jones wants her.

She is wanted.

She finds that makes her want him even more.

He meets her lips in the middle, lets her pull him down into the cradle of her thighs, does not startle when she reaches for the buttons of his trousers, when she pushes past his own underwear and grips him in her hand.

He does groan a little though.

She finds she likes that too.

Then it’s just a rush to pull the rubber from his back pocket, to wait as his shaking hands roll it over himself—Betty feels herself staring but does not avert her eyes—and then his body is covering hers.

Her arms wrap under his and press against his shoulder blades, and then he pushes into her and she says loudly, on a gasp, “Ow!”

“Shit—sorry, sorry—” Jughead begins to lean away, to pull back and out of her and she grasps for him, to keep him close to her.

She pushes her heel into his thigh, tilts her pelvis just a little, and he slides deeper into her. “It’s—fine,” she grunts, pushing her palm against his lower back, “keep—” she gasps, “going.”

Betty presses her lips against the side of Jughead’s throat and he pushes himself slowly into her again and this time it feels better. She’s—this is right, this feels okay, she thinks.

She can tell he is holding back, or trying to, and her heart begins to beat faster. She presses her heel lower, widens her legs just a little bit, and puts her mouth to his ear. “Harder, please,” she whispers.

Jughead groans into her hair, and she likes that sound, so she tries to incite it again. “Jughead,” she says, her lips grazing the whorls of his ear, fingers in his hair, “harder.”

“Oh god,” he says, like he’s pained by something, and that makes her grin. Something in him seems to snap, because he listens. She feels the bones of his hips against her thighs, pressing into her. The flat of her head suddenly meets resistance—he’s pushing her up into the sofa’s arm, and she reaches a hand over her head to push back against it.

“Sorry—” he gasps into her neck, “I—” He seems to lose his words, but his hand comes to cushion her head and something stirs in her stomach at that, something she isn’t expecting. She feels her back arch just a little, and he pushes himself into her once, twice more—and seizes, groaning into her neck. She feels him inside of her, feels him finish, and when his body begins to loosen, to deflate over her body, she begins to catch her breath.

She feels like she’s on the edge of a cliff. She wants to jump. She cannot jump.

She must look completely wrecked. Jughead certainly does. His trousers aren’t even fully off. Her skirt is still around her waist, sweater hanging off her left shoulder, her arms still trapped in the sleeves. She looks down at her ankle socks, white against the dark brown of his pants.

“I…” he says.

Betty laughs. She tilts her head backward, closes her eyes, and laughs. When she opens her eyes again, Jughead is staring down at her, eyebrows pulled together. She reaches one arm over her head and rests back on her forearm. She breathes a sigh.

“Thanks,” she says. Jughead’s eyebrows go sky-high.

He pulls back from her, lifts his hips to pull his trousers up again, and Betty shifts uncomfortably, tugs her skirt down a little so she isn’t so naked. She moves to sit up, and Jughead leans back to accommodate her.

He looks surprised when she moves to kiss him again, but he lets her lips meet his.

When she pulls back, he watches her. She pushes her hair behind her ears, feels for her ponytail—a mess. She pulls the ribbon out, combs her hair with her fingers. He simply observes.

“What?” she asks, pulling her hair tightly into a tail at the crown of her skull.

“I’m sorry,” he says a little softly.

She tilts her head, feels her brows pull together. “Why?” She shakes her head.

His eyes roam over the garage before landing on her again. “I…I don’t know if you—enjoyed that.” He pauses. “As much as—me, I guess.”

Betty finishes tying her ponytail. She runs her tongue over her front teeth.

“I had fun.” She realizes this is the truth when the words leave her mouth.

His eyes jump to hers. She keeps his gaze as he watches her, his face confused. She shrugs a shoulder.

“But…”

She shakes her head. “What?”

His cheeks flush. “You didn’t—you know.” His head tilts. “Right?

Betty feels a lick of heat curl around her spine. She begins to button her cardigan. She winks at him. “Next time.”

That’s when she hears them outside.

“Shit,” Jughead says under his breath, and then they’re both up and dressing rapidly.

The voices grow louder, and Betty knows they’re headed for the garage. She and Jughead both make for the door at the same moment, even though her cardigan is still unbuttoned and his shirt is only half on.

The doorknob begins to turn before Jughead can grasp for it, and Betty quickly ducks behind the frame, into the corner of the garage.

Jughead’s hand catches the edge of the door before it can open fully and squash her against the wall. She holds her breath.

“Hey, guys,” Jughead says. He’s far too casual, a hand on his hip, his cheeks still flushed. It’s too obvious.

She hears Archie through the thin wood of the door, less than two feet away. “Hey, Juggie.” Who’s with him though? “Are you…what’s up, man?”

Jughead shakes his head, his hand still on the edge of the door. “Nothing, I—nothing. What are you guys doing?”

Betty closes her eyes and leans further into the corner. She shrinks away from the glass of the door’s high window, hoping her hair can’t be seen over the edge.

“Got company, Jones?”

Reggie.

Betty’s heart plummets to her stomach. She holds her breath. Jughead shakes his head. “Not—fuck off, Reggie.”

Reggie laughs, and Betty even hears Archie chuckle. “Alright, Romeo, geez—tell Ethel we said hi. Actually—hi, Muggs!” Reggie yells over Jughead's shoulder. “Hope you used prophylactics!”

Jughead moves to close the door, and the boys laugh a little louder. “Alright, just—go away.”

“So sensitive, Jones! Hope you were gentle. Let us know if he wasn’t, Ethel,” he yells, “we’ll take care of him.”

“Goodbye!” Jughead insists, pushing the door further closed. Thankfully, Reggie and Archie take the hint, and Betty lets out the breath she is holding when the door clicks shut. Jughead rests his palm against it and looks to his right, where she stands leaning into the corner.

She smiles at him, tries to tell him with that smile, but can feel the stiff set of her cheeks betraying her: it’s alright.

He looks down and nods.

It just so happens that the mere second time I go to bed with my boyfriend, feel the most amazing things, I come home only to discover that my sister is in trouble, capital T, in the family way, etc, etc.

(Alice hasn’t found this book yet, so I’m throwing caution to the wind even writing these words down.)

That brought me down to earth again pretty quickly. We locked ourselves in the bathroom and ran the water and talked. Polly isn’t sure what she wants to do. What IS there even to do? It’s not a question of how they find out, it’s when.

I still haven’t told Polly about Reggie and me. For a moment I wondered if she could see it on me, like it was an aura I had or something—“Betty Cooper is a sinner”—but then I realized that was ridiculous. Polly wasn’t thinking about me in that moment, and I couldn’t blame her. I wouldn’t be either.

I asked her if they’d used anything, and she said she’d once gone to a doctor in Seaside who fitted her for a diaphragm (!!! putting a pin in that was hard, I had so many questions I wanted to ask), but that she hadn’t always taken the time to “put it in.”

She’s worried about Dad. “I can handle Mom.” That’s what she said, and I think I understand what she means.

But Dad.