Chocolate shake
"I can't believe you didn't tell me!" Jughead was working overtime to keep his volume under control, trying to prevent any of Pop Tate's other patrons from hearing him. But as quietly as he spoke, even he could hear the frustration, the anger and betrayal in his own tone.
"You transferred schools without telling me, Jug," Betty said just as quietly, but in a flat tone that was somehow more chilling than anger. "And now you're mad at me because you didn't know one of my extracurriculars got cancelled?" She huffed a breath of disbelief, turning her gaze away from him and staring unblinkingly out the window as she did.
"Six weeks ago, Betty! Six. Weeks." Jughead's voice was still quiet, but his emphasis was unmistakable. "And the Blue and Gold wasn't just 'one of your extracurriculars.' It was your baby… your creation… you brought that thing back from the dead.
"You used it to crack a murder case that had the entire Sheriff's department baffled. You used it to find your voice – to stop saying what everyone expected and start pushing dialogue on hard issues. Not to mention, of course, the fact that it's probably the one thing you did purely because you loved it – genuinely loved it – rather than because your mother thought it conferred status or would look good on your college applications.
"God, Betty," Jughead's voice actually broke and he paused before he continued. "It's bad enough you didn't tell me Weatherbee canned the Blue and Gold, after all the hours we spent on it together. Like you don't know that it meant something to me, too? Like you don't remember it's how you and I got together in the first place? Or like I'm not even part of your life anymore now that I'm at South Side High?
"But don't – don't – make it worse by pretending it's no big deal! 'One of your extracurriculars?' That's bullshit, and we both know it."
Jughead was panting now, his chest heaving with righteous indignation and the effort of keeping his voice to an angry hiss that wouldn't carry beyond the confines of their usual booth at Pop's.
But when Betty finally looked back at him, when she actually met his gaze, his panting stopped. His breath stopped… entirely. The sheer rage in her eyes punched him back in his seat, frozen the breath in his lungs, turned her into a stranger.
"You know what, Juggie?" she spat in a tone he'd never even imagined Betty's voice could produce. "You're absolutely right. It was a big deal. It was a huge deal… six weeks ago.
"When Weatherbee shut me down, I was devastated. Gutted. I felt like he was murdering my child. And just as bad, I felt like he was lying about why. That was what really killed me… the hypocrisy of it… the unfairness.
"I mean, Weatherbee said he was pulling the plug because it wasn't fair to expend school resources on an activity that only one student participated in. But he didn't tell me that, and give me a deadline to get more people working on the paper. I begged him to give me a week… a day… hell, I asked him to give me a few hours to find more participants. But he never gave me a chance. He just confiscated the computers, locked the Blue and Gold office, and took away my keys… all in the space of five minutes.
"And it just so happened that it all went down 40 minutes after I sent out the e-version of my special report on Clifford Blossom's drug ring, and the Sheriff's department's utter failure to make a single arrest – or even put any resources towards investigating anyone other than the Serpents? Like I wasn't supposed to notice the 'coincidence'?"
Jughead's mouth was dry. This was worse – far worse – than he'd imagined when Betty let slip, just minutes ago, that she wasn't working on the Blue and Gold anymore. He'd asked what she was working on for the paper – they hadn't seen each other in days, and he was trying to get caught up – and had been shocked when she told him the paper was no more.
But he'd never imagined that it had been dismantled so ruthlessly, and on such blatantly transparent grounds. A part of him – the part that was proud of his own contributions to the paper, and grateful for the way his writing had evolved under Betty's editorship – felt physically ill at the destruction of something he'd been proud to be part of, at the injustice of it all.
But a much bigger part was hurt – raw and wounded and bleeding – to think that Betty had undergone such a major event without breathing so much as a word to him. And somewhere between that gaping wound inside and his mouth, his pain turned to bitter anger.
"Well, it's instructive to know how little I matter to you," he hissed, his tone as poisonous as Betty's. "What is it, Betty? You don't need my help when things get hard? I guess I really am your charity case after all… your stupid little project. It's fine as long as all the shit going down is mine, and you can be the rescuing angel. You can work out your need for salvation on my problems. But when your own shit hits the fan, I don't even get a phone call? Because obviously, I don't have anything to offer."
Jughead barely recognized himself through his own fury. He'd spent years listening to his parents fight, helplessly watching them turn every disappointment of their tragically disappointing lives into ammunition against one another, watching each hurt turn hostile, toxic. But he'd never imagined he'd live out the same pattern… least of all with Betty.
And if he was unrecognizable, Betty was… terrifying. The rage he'd seen in her before was dwarfed by the seething volcano that seemed to crackle beneath her skin, even before she spoke. For the first time, he found himself able to picture her drugging and torturing Chuck in vengeance for his exploitation of girls from their class. He'd known before that she'd done it, of course. She'd told him as much… after Chuck had told half the school. But he'd never really been able to picture it… to picture Betty turning violent and destructive…
Until right now.
"Shut up!" Betty snapped at him in a voice that didn't sound like hers. "Just shut UP!" This time, she was loud enough to turn heads around the diner, but she didn't seem to care… or even to notice. "You don't know anything," she seethed, "anything about what I need!
"Betty," he began, some of his own anger fading slightly in his concern.
"I said 'shut up'!" she interrupted.
"Weatherbee shutting me down was a big deal," she said. Her voice was low now, barely audible, in fact, but intense… and at the same time, unsettlingly expressionless. "I was devastated and I was angry and I was lonely.
"Which is why," her voice was a hiss now, "I called you, Jughead. Repeatedly. For hours. I sent texts. I left a message at the Fosters'. I even left a message in the office at South Side High. And the White Worm.
"You didn't answer, and you didn't call back. So I sat under the bleachers with Kevin and I cried until I threw up all over his shoes… which he did not love, by the way." For a moment, in her aside, Betty looked and sounded almost like herself. "And then I cried some more, until after curfew, and Kevin took me home.
"Where I called you again. And texted you again. And you still didn't answer.
"I didn't hear from you for three days, Jughead. Three days. And by the time you finally surfaced after your little Serpent expedition that you'd never mentioned to me… I was coping."
"I have a commitment to the Serpents," Jughead began, hating the defensiveness in his own tone, hating himself for trying to justify his own neglect. "They're my family now. And just because you don't like them…"
"Shut. Up." Betty said again. Her brief return to normalcy was over – her unprecedented use of the "shut" word would have made that clear enough, even if her glassy-eyed expression hadn't signalled it. She was, once again, fury personified. "You are not going to make this about me, you snivelling coward! I have defended the Serpents, at great personal cost. I have maintenance some of their bikes. And I have said not a word against them or your involvement with them. Ever.
"I have not flipped out on you for disappearing for days at a time, for mountains of unanswered texts, for cancelled dates.
"I have stood by and supported you while you're building your new life on the South Side and I haven't once complained about it.
"And now you have the audacity to be angry with me for not sharing enough of my life and my pain with you? I've got life and I've got pain a-plenty, Juggie. It's right here. The trouble is, you're not. And when I call you on it – because you're reaming me out for not 'sharing' enough – you try to make it about me not liking your new friends?"
She paused, as if waiting for Jughead to answer, but he honestly couldn't think of a single thing to say. After a beat, Betty rolled her eyes and snorted in disgust, sliding out of their booth and grabbing her purse as she did so.
"I'll settle up, and take a chocolate shake to go, Pop," she said to the man behind the counter who was all-to-obviously trying to pretend he hadn't overheard any of that.
"Chocolate?" Jughead echoed, striving for a light tone as he rose and stood behind her at the counter, cringing inwardly when she shook off his hand on her shoulder. "My image of you as the vanilla vixen is irrevocably shattered."
Betty didn't laugh as he'd hoped she would. She didn't turn to look at him, or even soften her posture. "It's funny how fast an image can slide out of focus," she said in a tight little voice.
But it didn't feel funny to Jughead at all.
Betty stubbornly paid their tab, not waving off his wallet so much as she ignored both it and him. When her shake was ready, she grabbed the red and white cup and stalked out the door as if completely oblivious to his presence.
Jughead's stomach hurt, and a vicious headache was building behind his eyes. He felt a little panicky, a little disjointed. He'd seen his parents fight like this more times than he could begin to count – no holds barred, no quarter given. But he'd never, ever seen them come through the other side of it together and he realized with a sick, sinking feeling that he didn't have the faintest idea how to fix this… or even whether it could be fixed.
He was damn well going to try, though, so he followed Betty into the parking lot.
"I screwed up, Betty" he called after her retreating figure. "I get it. I blew it. I've been busy trying to make something of my life on the South Side and I haven't been here for you very much. And then I got mad at you because your life didn't stand still until I had time to check in with you."
Betty was still walking away from him. He hoped it wasn't just his imagination that made it seem as if she were slowing down. He decided to at least pretend it was real, and he kept talking.
"I know nothing I can say is going to fix this…"
"And yet, you keep talking," she interrupted him, her back still turned. Without reading her facial expression, he couldn't tell whether this was her usual, deadpan humour, or whether she was blowing him off. "Just give it a rest."
"I can't," he countered. "Betty, I'm so sorry… for all of it. The Blue and Gold and the unanswered calls and the God-awful things I said to you tonight…"
"And I can't do this right now," Betty said. "Please, Juggie? Just… give it a rest. I can't… I can't take anymore right now."
And before Jughead could think of another thing to say, Betty tossed her untouched chocolate shake into a nearby trashcan and walked away.