Betty
Diary
The way you talk about him makes me fall in love with him too.
You wrap him up in words like a blanket cradling a new born child. You compare the blackness of his hair to a glossy night sky, the freckles on his skin an endless constellation. He must be a universe to you.
You have scratched his name in my pages endless times. From childhood chattering to the growth of a friendship to the slow bloom of a romance. I could build a dictionary from all the words you've used to describe him.
I sat on your shelf the first time he kissed you. Balanced between a copy of Shakespeare's complete works and a childhood book of Dr. Seuss classics, I heard about the way he calmed your frazzled nerves and soothed them with his lips. The same lips he has since caught your tears in and used to utter the secret feelings of his heart.
Tonight, I feel you pull me from the shelf, my pages creaking as you open me and rest my spine against the cold wood of your desk. My paper creases with anticipation, excited for the words you will write about him this time. My cover tingles with the need to fall in love with him even more.
Your pen scrawls madly across my page. I feel your anger in the wild angles of your wrist. You write his name with a fierce aggression. Your tear slides from your chin and hits his name on my page like a bullet, the black ink bleeding into my paper like blood.
I ache as you tell me of how he broke your heart. I feel the coldness of the carpark, the coldness of his eyes, the coldness of his footsteps pacing away from you. It shivers up my spine.
I grow limp underneath your pen. Your words turn from anger into pain into heart break. I want to curl my pages around you and comfort you, but with how many words my pages hold of him it would be no comfort at all.
Instead, I let you take your pain out on me, scratching permanent scars into my paper. A tattoo of words. A reminder of how he took your heart and let it be shattered on a carpark floor.
Amid all this pain, I know one thing.
He doesn't deserve all the words you've given him.
Jughead
Hat
For all the times he's thought himself intelligent, he's incredibly stupid.
Of all the heads I've ever been sat on, his is the most braindead. Albeit, I've only ever been worn by two people. But the other person was his sister and she was a baby at the time so that should say something.
I sit limply on his dark hair, feeling the sweat of frustration pool at his hairline. He tugs me further over his ears and hangs his head down as he trudges through the street. I feel the light from the moon sliver over my grey wool and drip onto damp sidewalk.
Perhaps if he had been wearing me an hour ago when he'd broken up with her, his common sense might have been caught up in my fabric as it tried to escape, and I could have shoved it right back into his brain.
His head jerks as he shoves his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. I can feel his thoughts thrum inside his ears. They beat like a heartbeat. Replaying the falling folds of her expression.
Wisps of his thoughts have often been captured in my fabric. Drifting ideas plucked from the studying of people; fleeting lines of words he'll sometimes remember to record in his laptop later. And endless thoughts of her.
I wish he'd stop thinking of her. It clogs up so much of his brain.
When he was a child, he chopped up my fabric to make me look like a crown. He took his mom's pair of fabric scissors and hacked at my fabric, chopping out triangle shapes. It had stung, the ends of my fabric fraying, unravelling every time he wore me.
That's when I had met her. Betty Cooper.
Her hands had been so delicate as she'd taken me from his limp hands and slowly examined the damage. She'd been just a child then, but she'd started learning sewing in class and her needle was so cautious, pulling in and out of my fabric, curling in my fraying ends. I felt precious in her hands.
It's no wonder that he fell in love with her.
I grumble as I stay latched onto his head, guarding him from the cold wind, as he trudges into the depths of Riverdale. I know that's what I am to him; a shield, a comfort blanket. Something he only took off around her.
He's worried about her. Terrified something will happen, terrified that a crown beanie won't be enough to protect both him and her. And he loves her; I can feel it in the pulse thrumming through his ears.
He loves her, and he broke her heart.
He deserves to be called stupid. He called me the exact same thing once.
Betty
Mirror
I am the first to see your tear stained eyes in the morning. You gaze into me, unsteady fingers snatching at stray hairs, trying to rub away the mascara shadows underneath your eyes. I want to tell you that you don't need to, that you're beautiful as you are. But you persist.
I wonder if a broken heart feels like a broken mirror. Will it banish you to a punishment of seven years bad luck? Will it cut your fingers like glass, blood trickling from underneath your skin?
I have already begun to see the evidence of it on your face. It cuts your soul like real glass.
With a sweep of your hand, your fingers trembling for a brief moment, you gather your hair up and scoop it into a ponytail at the base of your skull. Your face is on stark display, the curtain of your hair pulled back. I can feel the way you stare at it, wishing it were different; creased with laughter lines instead of painful ones.
I want to promise, to whisper to you that those days will return. But I don't know. My glass is not made from a crystal ball. It is not crushed fairy dust or enchanted from a fairy-tale. Instead I only show the truth.
If only you could see it.
Jughead
Jacket
He throws me across the room, my leather colliding with the musty fabric of a sofa. I feel his weight slump down next to me, the metal of the trailer creaking around me.
Frustration is not a good look on him. It creases his forehead, puckers his skin, leaves permanent scars.
I used to make him feel important. When he slid on my leather for the first time, his shoulders perfectly fitting into my tailored fabric, I could feel the energy course through him. The exhilaration. His heart had thumped through me, swelling with pride, blooming with the acceptance of who he was.
Yet now he throws me aside like a piece of old laundry, as if his association with me, with the brand on my back has betrayed him.
I let my fabric sink into the lumpy cushions of the sofa, feeling his frustration in his nearby breaths.
I am not the reason for his downfall.
Betty
Dress
I had hung from the back of your bedroom door as limply as your ponytail. Your fingers, feathery and unsure, had brushed over the seams of my wispy, pink fabric.
You pulled me out of your wardrobe after you'd been invited to your friend's confirmation. The fresh air outside of the wardrobe tickled my fabric, gently brushing away whispers of dust.
In front of me you had stood, wondering if you should ever go at all.
I had felt your heavy sigh brush my fabric as you had slipped my shoulders from the coat hanger and gently unzipped my back. Your skin was cool as you'd step into me and slid me up your body. In that moment I had wanted to comfort you, to let my gentle fabric soothe you.
You wouldn't let me. Your skin was still prickled with nerves, knowing you were going to see him again.
Now he is in front of you, his eyes catching yours across the length of a sofa. Your body is rigid under my cloth, your chest tight, hands clasped resting on my skirt.
I feel your chest heave as you utter words, shifting to move, to leave.
Then he mutters words back to you, his breath dancing on my fabric. I feel you stop, you look at him. Your skin prickles again but this time for a different reason.
My fabric creases and ruffles as you shift to move yourself over to him. I feel the heat of his body under you, his hands roaming over me. Warm, gentle hands that know the intimate curves and falls of your body even more than I do.
You kiss him, and I feel it. The gentle thrumming of your heart reigniting, the tension of your muscles relaxing into his touch. It is a comfort that no fabric could give.
It is a love that I will never truly know.
And then his fingers reach behind you for my zip and unfastens me, letting me collapse around your hips.
Betty
Diary
I wonder what words you'll write about him tonight.