The first time Archie sees Veronica was when his group session lagged over its usual 2pm finish, the same time her parents dropped her off in the clinic for her 3pm one.
She's walking slowly, shoulders slouched and fingers brushing the hem of her heavy brown coat, dwarfed adorably next to the ever tall Jason Blossom as he briefly shows her around. Archie vaguely remembers one of the boys in his group talking about a new girl joining the clinic, she's not supposed to be staying in the hospital like the rest of them; still "well" enough to live at home but not well enough to be left alone. Archie knows it's only a matter of time until she's admitted fully.
Moose wants her to be one of the daughters of the Korean family that moved into his neighbourhood a few months ago and Reggie agrees, laughing about how he's never fucked a Korean chick. He tuned them out after that, because Moose has always been a bit of a dick and Reggie has always wanted to please someone.
This girl isn't Korean. She's made of long limbs and slender skin, her eyes round and lashes nearly brushing her cheeks every time she blinks, no defiantly not Korean. Her skin stands out a soft caramel against her white crop top and he's so distracted by it he barely notices the slight indent between each of her ribs, she's tiny, not in height but just in being, the type of girl who sits in the back of the classroom without anyone knowing her name. She's possibly smaller then Betty and yet taller than Cheryl. Her hair tumbles around her shoulders in luscious black curls, a nice contrast to the dyes and tones plagued by the other kids in the rehab. She catches his eye the second before she's stepping into room 332 and Archie doesn't even notice he's staring until she's slipped through the door.
Veronica likes to think of her body as a metaphor, tangled deep within poems and novels. It stretches as high as she wants and retracts into hidden meanings, it melts into river fronts and slips below gardens and trees.
Yes, her body is a metaphor, it exists in comparisons, good for referencing to something else, good for talking about.
She's barely 17 when her parents sign her up to a rehab for troubled teens with rich parents, it's in the middle of a town just south of her home city New York. It sits in the middle of large maple trees and looks entirely wrong against its serene background. It promises something about aiding troubled teens, something made to help in addiction and illness.
Her parents seem to forget it's the same place her cousin was sent a year ago, the same place that six months after her release saw her OD on a deadly cocktail of drugs
She's stuck in the back seat of her father's Rolls Royce and her mother is talking to her, instructing her on the etiquette of places like this. Veronica tries to ignore the rapidly emptying wine glass in her mother's left hand as she agrees to her slurred instructions, tries to ignore the resentment rising in her father's eyes as he glares at them both.
Veronica knows she is an image, a statement during the 90's when having a kid was a fashion. She is an idea, a fantasy for them both. She doesn't really remember making a decision for herself; her clothes, her actions, her personality, all carefully orchestrated to benefit her parents.
She wants to resent them, wants to resent the empty houses she was left with on Saturday nights, resent the lack of care when given meals, but that was her control, her power laying in emotions embedded deep into their dynamics. She doesn't get to make the decisions, but she gets to pretend she does. She is aware of what they want and what they need and it is her who gives it, her who throws the loud house party, her who chooses to skip lunches and dinners. She is a problem they wanted, and that means a problem that they need.
The driver warns them the clinic is a minute away as he swerves down a road barely thick enough for two cars to pass, her dad schools his expression into concern and love whilst her mother begins to tear up.
Veronica herself does nothing. She stares forward, She is an idea.
She sits, she waits, as she has done for 17 years.
She doesn't really need her parents to instruct her now, she knows what they want.
Twenty minutes later she is situated in a room on the third floor of a hospital, she tries to forget if it's Tuesday or Wednesday, if it's December of January.
She does know - it's the 3rd Tuesday of January, 6 days after her 17th birthday. Her parents got her a card with a glitzy 18 on the front and she didn't correct them.
Her mum told her to not worry about dates, about minutes and hours slipping through her because they've sent her here to help, she doesn't need to worry, and so she tries to forget. She's trying to wipe the names of months from her memory and erase the days they're filled with and so she sits there between a girl who looks like she's weighs less than a feather and a boy who has sleeves down over his fingers and tries to forget.
The room is filling slowly, Veronica doesn't know what time it is, restricts herself from counting the ticking of the clock in the corner and instead focuses on the large window to the left of the room, it's long, stretching from the ceiling to the floor and is so clean it almost looks as if it isn't there. She wonders idly if birds try to fly in or even possibly people try to fly out.
A girl sits in front of it, interrupting her musings and shoots Veronica a dangerous smile. She's short, snowy limbs and fiery hair wrapped together to make a parcel of teen angst, broken apart by dark tattoos. Veronica smiles back, lifts a hand to send her a wave and smiles larger when the girl waves back.
Veronica knows her, remembers sandy afternoons and waterlogged mornings with her. Her name is Cheryl and she was caught in a nightclub bathroom snorting lines 4 months back. Her mum told her it was amazing over afternoon tea, amazing that she just so happened to be caught at the same time her family was opening a new maple factory and vaguely mentions the latest accusation against her father, Hiram. Veronica catches the glint in her mother's eye and files it away, stores it between the silent requests and needs her parents want from her.
She smiles again at each person who walks in, she recognises a majority of them from acquaintances of her parents, they're all around the same age and she feels less special being in a room full of people born from the same craze, but she still sits silent and happy. This is what her parents want, and so this is what she wants.
The first time Archie actually met Veronica was on a Sunday, 2 months after he first saw and 1 month after he forgot her. He's walking to his dorm, the thick smell of smoke clinging to his jacket and he's laughing with Reggie and Moose about some fight Cheryl had with one of the new girls – she's supposed to be tall and the perfect girl next door, her parents own several newspapers publications and want to debut a new one next month. Moose calls her Midge with a new spark in his eyes and a twist to his smirk.
They're slowly ascending the stairs as she's descending and Archie recognises her instantly. She looks smaller now; Paler. Her hair is tied up in a bun and she's wearing some designer dress that he's sure Betty was looking at last week.
She stops when she sees them, sending them a small smile and slightly bowing her head. Archie remembers Cheryl whispering a faint Veronica to him between puffs of a cigarette when he asked for her name all those weeks ago.
"Hello" she starts to talk, her smile is soft and warm and doesn't quite reach her eyes. "My name is Veronica Lodge and I'm moving into Dorm B4."
Archie knew it wasn't going to be long until she was fully admitted.
Moose snickers next to him and moves forward, standing directly in front of the girl and lifting her chin with his ring finger.
"You're a pretty thing aren't you" He states loud and clear, forcing her to look at him. Reggie laughs too and moves from his side, cornering her against the wall.
Archie stays back and watches. He's used to this, used to Moose's weird need to prove something and Reggie's for approval.
Archie was 5 when he first met Moose, they had been at the same nursery and their dads owned rival construction companies. Archie remembers the boy's name being tossed around their home the day before he started and the following weeks afterwards.
"Befriend Moose Mason" His dad told him over dinner one night, his eyes not straying from the heavy laptop next to him.
Archie tries to recall Moose, he vaguely remembers a small boy who sits in the back of class who has the same Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle lunchbox as him. Archie doesn't like him, he's too loud and he gets angry too quick when the teacher tells him no. He doesn't want to be his friend. He already has a friend; a quiet french boy named Henry who didn't speak much English and Archie didn't really mind that much because he didn't speak much French either.
But still in the following days he finds himself moving away from the pale boy and sitting next to this Moose kid. It was difficult at first, they didn't really have anything in common, where Moose basked in the limelight, Archie shied away from it and where Archie was more prone to keeping silent when he got upset Moose could throw tantrums that could be heard through the whole nursery.
But almost as if he had received the same demand as Archie, Moose made reluctant efforts to talk back to him, at lunch there would always be a seat next to the notorious Moose Mason for him and every science project they found themselves paired together. Archie could tell that Moose hated it as much as he did and he found a sort of solace with it, there wasn't any pressure to make a good impression, any pressure to find a common interest. It was a perfectly planned friendship that neither party wanted to be in.
It took years for them to find some sort of mutual understanding, despite countless sleepovers and days out with their au pairs. Memories that always felt forced to Archie.
That was until Reggie, a pretty boy from Singapore who snuck in a pack of cigarettes to their middle school on his second day and offered one shyly to the two boys. Reggie was like a missing piece for the two, he was a bridge between them, Perfect parts Moose's recklessness and Archie's hopefulness, but something entirely different from the two as well.
"Hey Arch, come over her and say hey" Moose calls over to him, his fingers still gripping the girls jaw.
Archie shrugs and shuffles over, Punching Moose in the arm on the way
"Don't treat girls like that, you jackass" he mutters ignoring the glare Moose sending his direction. He's probably going to get a lecture later about not embarrassing him in front of pretty girls, but Archie's heard it before and there's no doubt he'll hear it again.
"Hey Veronica -" He smiles down at the girl and he's only slightly endeared by how much smaller she is than him " - I'm Archie, we stay in the dorm next to yours." He keeps his hands in his pocket, restraining himself from touching the reddening area on her cheeks where Moose had gripped her earlier, he had never been able to be gentle.
She smiles back at him, the same dead smile she offered them earlier and it doesn't sit quite right with him.
"It's nice to meet you Archie, and your friends. I look forward to getting to know you all" She smiles again and bows her head, not giving him a chance to reply before she's striding off.
The three boys stand in silence for a second, Archie doesn't know quite what to make of the girl; she's different that far he can tell. Moose starts to laugh making some snarky comment about her attitude and Reggie wraps his arm around his shoulder to continue dragging him up the stairs, he laughs along with them but he can't drag his eyes from the figure walking away from them.
He decides, rather reluctantly, that the she interests him.
Veronica interests Archie in the same way the stars do – he doesn't spare her much thought when he's with Moose and Reggie, or when he's in his scheduled group meetings, or even when the 30 or so kids that live in the institute are all sat in the cafeteria.
It's at night that he wonders; he wonders if perhaps she had eaten that day as he recalls Cheryl complaining how she stays so thin because she just doesn't eat, or if she finally had the chance to get outside as he overheard the nurses talking about how she won't leave her room.
She's so unattainable and distant and yet Archie craves to look at her, to count the constellations that fill her eyes. He wants to reach out and touch her when he gets really bored and the high from the pill Betty gave him is slowly deflating. But she's too far away and she's too beautiful and Archie is lost.
"Veronica?" Cheryl laughs as Archie perches on the metal railing that runs across the top of the roof, inhaling from an imported cigarette and trying to blow the smoke out in little rings, eager for any information he could gain.
"Veronica Lodge, yeah" he confirms "the girl who got admitted here a couple of months ago, the one who replaced Ginger"
Cheryl laughs at that, flicking the ash of her fag onto Archie's jacket and ignoring his muttered complaints.
"Some replacement, at least Ging would speak to us" she sighs and sends Archie a smirk. "I don't know what to tell you, she's probably one of the most fucked up people I've ever met and I've had the unfortunate displeasure of meeting Moose"
Archie laughs because he feels like he has too and drops the topic. He lets Cheryl complain about the new girl Midge and ignores her wandering hands across his thigh. This is a game he is used to playing with her and for once he isn't up for it.
She huffs and leaves after a few more minutes and he can't bring himself to feel guilty about it. Instead he is left to stare at the stars, and he can't help but think that maybe between the two brightest stars he can see the shadow of Veronica's eyes staring back at him.
