"Forsythe, why don't you go to the nurse's office with Betty?"
I looked up from my math paper, my stomach sinking. I'd been waiting all day for my teacher to get the call that it was my turn to get a tetanus shot. I'd missed the day the whole third grade got their shots, so the nurse was fitting me in after her morning appointments.
I felt my face get hot because everyone was looking at me. They all knew why Mrs. Willis was sending somebody with me; they'd all been there the last time we'd had vaccines at school, and I'd gotten so panicked the nurse had called my mom and sent me home. Shaking, crying, the whole nine yards—I'd been a basket case. The nurse said I had a needle phobia, that it wasn't my fault. But I hated drawing attention to myself, and I hated not being perfect.
"Sure." Jughead was a tall kid, even in third grade. He stood up from his desk and stretched. "Come on, Betts." I followed him out of the room, but I felt bad. I figured the only reason Mrs. Willis had made him come with me was that he was finished with his work. He always finished before the rest of us, because he was the smartest kid in our class, not that he made a big deal about it or anything.
The school hallway was long, and I heard my Mary Janes echoing on the ugly beige tile. I tried to be brave. My mom had looked up some deep breathing techniques, and I tried to do them, but I really just wished the floor would swallow me whole.
"It's okay if you're scared." Jughead walked along beside me, slouching in his hoodie and jeans. "I don't like heights. My dad took me on the roof of the water tower once, and I almost threw up."
I looked over at him, and he smiled his lopsided half-smile. Even back then, he didn't smile a lot, but he smiled at me.
The pathway from Jason's room through the rest of the Blossoms' creepy, gothic horror house was too long. I wanted to get away, but I knew if I didn't show back up, everyone would wonder where I'd gone, and my parents would freak out.
"Betts, are you ok?" Jughead was at my elbow, walking beside me, not touching me.
"Of course I am," I snapped, and my voice sounded a little too fast and a little too brittle.
"If you say so," he mumbled, clearly not believing a word of it.
"Sorry," I said quickly. "I'm sorry, Jug."
"Don't be." He held out his arm, and I put my hand under it, just like in old-fashioned movies when the men escort the women in to dinner. But it felt like more than a hand on an arm. It felt like a lifeline.
"I'm ready to administer the shot now. Hold Elizabeth's hand, Forsythe." Miss Paulsen, the nurse, looked at Jughead through her horn-rimmed glasses. She could see that I was on the verge of another breakdown. My eyes were filled with tears, and I was willing them not to spill over.
Jughead wrapped his right hand around my left. "Look at me, Betty. Tell me what you're going to study for our history test next week."
I focused on his warm, long fingers and the smile hovering around his greenish blue eyes, and I made myself think about social studies. "The United States has three branches of government," I said, "Executive, legislative, and jud—" Miss Paulsen plunged her needle into my right shoulder, and the breath was knocked out of me.
I went silent, but instead of a full-on panic attack, I just had a couple of tears fall down my cheeks, and I wiped them away as quickly as I could with the back of my hand. "You did really well, Honey," said the nurse, cleaning up her supplies. "Thank you, Forsythe. That was very helpful."
Jughead didn't let go of my hand until I stood up on my own. "Come on, Juggie," I said, trying not to cry more. "Let's get out of here."
"This house is so freaking huge," I said. I was holding onto Jughead's arm with a vice grip.
"We're almost there," he answered, pointing up ahead, toward the room where everyone was gathered for the creepy after-memorial get-together.
"I miss Polly," I finally said, softly. It was a non-sequitur, but I didn't care. I couldn't stop thinking about my sister, not now that I knew she'd been engaged, that her story was even sadder than I'd ever realized. I prided myself on my self-control, on never being the crazy one, never being the problem. But my head was swimming, and I couldn't get my equilibrium back.
Jughead stopped me in the middle of the hallway, facing me and cradling my face in his hands. "Betty, look at me." I blinked hard, trying not to cry, forcing myself to meet his eyes.
"It's okay not to be the strong one every time."
I closed my eyes, breathed hard, tried to push my out-of-control feelings out of myself and into the big, warm hands against my face. But it was too late. The sobs wouldn't stop coming.
"I'm sorry for being such a baby," I said, still a little teary. We walked back down the long hallway to Mrs. Willis's classroom, and I tried to calm down.
"I don't think you were a baby," Jughead answered, shaking his head emphatically. "You were really brave." He stopped in the middle of the hallway and hugged me. It was the quick, awkward hug of a third-grade boy and a third-grade girl, but he was a couple of inches taller than me, and it felt kind of nice.
"Thanks, Juggie," I said. "I—couldn't have done it without you."
He smiled, and I smiled, and I wasn't anxious any more.
As soon as I started really crying, Jughead pulled me into his arms, right in the middle of a weird hallway in the weird house owned by the weird Blossoms. He hugged me, and I expected him to let go, but he didn't.
"Let it out," he said, patting my back with one hand and cradling my head against his shoulder with the other. "You've been holding it in for way too long."
He wasn't letting me go, and I really didn't want to get away, so I closed my eyes and focused on the sensations of the rough fabric of his jacket against my cheek, the sound of his calm breathing underneath my ear, the feeling of finally being held that I realized I'd needed for so long.
I wanted to ask when he'd gone from being a couple of inches taller than me to half a foot, when he'd gotten strong enough to make me feel like nothing could hurt me in his arms, how he'd somehow gone from being a kid to being a man overnight. But I didn't know how to say any of it, so I just let him hold me.
"I'm sorry, Jug," I said after a while, my voice a whisper muffled against his shoulder.
"None of that, Betty Cooper," he answered. "You're the bravest person I know."
Just then, I heard someone coming toward us. I couldn't see who it was, but I heard a voice say, "Poor thing; she must be so cut up about that Blossom boy. I see you're still doing your job well, Forsythe."
"Yes, Mrs. Willis."
Mrs. Willis, our third-grade teacher, long since retired and pretty much out of the loop of anything going on in Riverdale. I figured the Blossoms must have invited her because she'd been Jason's teacher too.
Once she was long past us, headed for a bathroom somewhere in the environs of the mansion, I finally extricated myself from Juggie's arms, my calm restored. "Thanks," I said, trying to wipe my eyes without completely wrecking my makeup. "But what in the world did she mean about your job?"
Jughead smiled his lopsided smile. "You remember that time in third grade, when we had tetanus boosters?"
I nodded. "Yeah, you were so good at keeping me calm that the teachers made you my shot buddy after that."
He shook his head shyly, lowering his chin and glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. "They—they didn't make me. After you had your panic attack, I told Mrs. Willis I wanted to be the one who always went with you. I volunteered, Betts."
"Of course you did," I said, unable to help the grin that broke across my face.
"Of course I did," he answered, grinning back.
The two of us finally rejoined the somber memorial party for Jason Blossom, shoulder to shoulder and side by side. Like always.