Prologue
Riverdale is known as "the town with pep!" but things aren't always as they seem. If you stay in town long enough you will see just how many of the fake smiles are hiding closets as big as the Sahara desert filled with mischievous skeletons. Yes, small towns all have hidden secrets. But those who have lived here all there lives are still shocked at what has come out of Pandora's box known as Riverdale.
Somehow everybody in this crazy town I call home has a way of intertwining with one another. Some call it fate. Others call it a coincidence. I call it a giant headache.
Riverdale is also a town full of traditions: the midnight pancake banquet in late winter and frost lacing the Town Hall windows. There is also the Riverdale High School Homecoming weekend. Football, dancing, and small-town pride fill the town the whole weekend.
My favorite of the traditions is the annual Fourth of July Summerfest carnival. It's the only tradition in the town that has ever really meant anything to me. I usually wind up tagging along with my older brother Archie Andrews and his two best friends Betty Cooper and Jughead Jones. (I've known Betty and Jughead as long as I can remember and they have become close friends to me. But they are still his friends first and I'm the annoying little sister who follows them around.) The four of us spend the carnival stuffing our faces full of cotton candy and hot dogs. Throughout of time there testing our skills at the games. Each one of us trying to do better than the others. By the evening, Archie and Jughead would hit the road to check out the fireworks in Centerville. Betty would hang back with her older sister Polly and her recent attached to the hip boyfriend Jason Blossom. Leaving me to wander to the library till it closed then walking home.
Summerfest is what the four of us do. What we've always done. Thanks to our parents Archie, Jughead, and I have been going since before each of us could walk. Then Betty began tagging along when they were in the first grade and I was in kindergarten. Then it just became our thing.
Or I should say Summerfest was our thing.
Like promises, traditions break. Everything fell apart this summer. I came back from living in Chicago with my mom at the beginning of June. Like I do every summer the past couple of years since my parents split. But Betty was off in Los Angeles, California perfecting her writing skills at an internship. Not to mention Polly and Jason had a very public break up right at the beginning of summer vacation. It was the talk of the town for weeks. Archie has been working at our fathers' construction business day and night. Leaving just Jughead and me.
Honestly, though I haven't really seen much of Archie since I've gotten back in town. The two of us use to be close practically inseparable especially when I came back from Chicago. But this time he's been really distant and hardly around.
Like usually Jughead has been spending his summer nights so far working at the Twilight drive in. One of my favorite places in Riverdale. The drive in is my escape to enjoy a movie and away from all the drama in town. Jughead works there to make some cash along with staying out of his house (well trailer) and out of his fathers way.
As for me? Since I've been home I've been spending my days working at Pop's Chock'lit Shop. I got a job there to keep me busy and earn some money too. After my shift or on days off I spend my time wandering around town either taking pictures of the town, drawing a scenery I find interesting, or writing in my journal. I like to escape from my life in my art or writing. Keeping to myself is what I'm good at.
Meanwhile, we didn't know it at the time but off in New York City was a young socialite named Veronica Lodge. She was off living her own version of Gossip Girl with other rich snotty teenagers. All thanks to her father Hiram Lodge's vast bank account. Veronica's parents had a complicated history in Riverdale - but that's for another story.
The butterfly effect suggests small causes can have unpredictable effects. One action. A chaotic ripple. An outcome nobody could have predicted.
That was us that summer. Archie, Jughead, Betty, Veronica, and me. The day was July third. People getting ready for the next day to celebrate. If only we knew all of our lives would change forever the next morning. All of us were separate doing our own things. Each with our own secret we held close hoping never to let go. But our separate lives were all intertwined together without us even realizing it. Small stupid butterflies flapping their wings messing with our lives.
This is our summer of secrets.