Two: Piranha
Jughead hadn't wanted the affair between Archie and Miss Grundy to end the way it had. While he believed Grundy – or whatever the hell her real name was – leaving Riverdale forever was for the best, and while he considered the woman predatory, he hadn't wanted their break-up to come at the cost of the woman's job, her house, and the life she had built for herself. He hadn't wanted Archie's heart to be so painfully ripped from his chest and trampled underfoot. He certainly hadn't wanted to involve Mrs. Cooper – the craziest and scariest woman he knew – or Betty.
Despite what Archie might think, Jughead had not and would never break Archie's trust. Although he knew of the affair and had strongly disapproved (no, "disapproved" wasn't a strong enough verb; "rejected" and "condemned," "deplored" maybe. He had been utterly disgusted and, if he was honest with himself, a little frightened) of it, Jughead hadn't spoken of it to anyone. Betty, he figured, had figured it out for herself. Once she started digging, her curiosity could not be quelled; she was relentless.
Jughead had hoped Archie would take the necessary steps to end the affair himself, separate himself from her grasp, halt their clandestine meetings, before the situation spiraled out of control. Exactly like it had. Jughead had anticipated, nay he had known, something like this would happen. The other shoe always falls off. The shit always hits the fan. It's inevitable and inescapable. Life just screws you. Why didn't anyone ever believe him? Why did they always brush off his warnings as the hyped-up paranoid ramblings of a cynic?
And why, despite his superior wisdom and advanced-functioning teenage brain, did Jughead find himself trapped in the same difficult situations over and over again? Why could he never seem to free himself from Fate's grasp? Why did he always have to struggle just to keep from drowning?
Archie Andrews, for all his moronic tendencies and refusal to listen to his best friend's sage advice, possessed a remarkable knack for being able to get himself out of trouble relatively unscathed. It was a trait Jughead envied and desired for himself.
But Jughead Jones III had no such luck.
If he had to choose a date when his string of misfortunes first began, he would have to say it was around the time his father lost his job. There had perhaps been other moments before that, other signs that catastrophe was approaching: the prevalent stench of beer, the wads of cash that mysteriously appeared and then disappeared, the shady characters hanging around the trailer park (okay, shadier characters than usual; strangers), the unexplained absences at night - nights Jughead now knew his father had spent in jail. Fred Andrews firing FP was simply the straw that had finally broken the camel's back, the defining moment that threw the other events into motion: his father's continued failure to provide for his family, FP's increased drinking until he spent more time drunk than sober, Jughead's mother taking Jellybean and leaving, the late nights and the assimilation of the Southside Serpents into his life, his own inability to stay with his drunken father and spending his nights holed up in the drive-in. All of this, plus Archie's sudden dismissal of him. The unprecedented severing of a friendship, so that Jughead suddenly found himself homeless and friendless, alone and adrift in a cold, dark world he was too proud to admit he was frightened of.
He found solace in the drive-in. The theater, with its old-school projectors and reels, was a landmark from a simpler, happier time. With his few possessions, tattered sleeping bag, and trusty pillow, he had created an out-of-the-way space for himself. A fortress of solitude, amidst his happy memories and the canisters of film. Those first few weeks, he fended off the loneliness by telling himself that the atmosphere was romantic, a perfect place for a writer to nurture his inspiration and creativity. La Flâneur – the urban explorer.
But the novelty and sentiment soon wore off, and he longed for his own bed, his own four walls, for security and safety. He had become a light sleeper, his ears attuned to every sound, every footfall. The nerve-wracking life of the fugitive. He had become an anxious creature in hiding.
Then the town council, the mayor at the helm, had decided it was in Riverdale's best interest to demolish the old drive-in. Whose best interest did it serve exactly? They called in making way for progress; Jughead thought it was just another dollar-chasing agenda, sacrificing the old and familiar, the out-dated and misunderstand, for 'profit' and 'development,' bullshit about improving the local economy. The story of Jughead's life. Creativity, passion, conviction, stability, assurance, family, his very self – they meant nothing in the face of a few dollars. Despite his efforts, despite the way he protested and labored, he could not halt demolition. The most he could hope for was one final movie, one final night when the residents of Riverdale could gather together and for one moment forget their lives, their troubles, the murder of Jason Blossom, and be united in escapism and innocence. They could be one.
Jughead was alone again, cast out, with nowhere to go. But he would take care of himself; he always did. No one else was going to take care of him. His father had assumed he was spending his days couch-surfing, and he didn't enlighten him otherwise. FP couldn't help him. There was only one thing Jughead wanted from his father, and his father wasn't able to give it to him.
He spent a couple of nights after the closure of the drive-in at the mission downtown. He pulled an all-nighter at Pop's, claiming that he needed a quiet place to study and it was too loud at home. He spent two nights on the couch of his old friend Tilly, who had grown up three trailers down in the same trailer park, until Tilly and her crazy mother had gotten into a huge fight, which resulted in a black eye, a gash needing sixteen stitches, and the appearance of the police. Jughead had snuck off before the cops showed up; the last thing he needed was Sheriff Keller or one of his deputies asking questions. He wouldn't have been able to come up with a suitable explanation as to why he was there in the first place.
It was pure coincidence – whether lucky or unlucky – that he ran into Dale Welch, commonly referred to as Piranha, though Jughead wasn't sure why. Jughead was stocking up on a few staples – chocolate bars, Twizzlers, and mini boxes of cereal – at a local convenience store where Welch frequently purchased his two daily packs of Marlboro cigarettes. He was a tall, stocky man with a loud, booming voice that didn't seem to match his slight appearance. "Jug, my boy!" he practically shouted, throwing an arm across the teen's shoulders, nearly startling him into a heart-attack as he unassumingly browsed their selection of granola bars. "Look at you! You're so tall! How old are you now? 15?"
"17," Jughead mumbled, shifting his bookbag higher onto his shoulder. The cashier behind the counter was watching them. Jughead wished Welch would speak quieter; he was drawing too much attention. Avoiding attention was Jughead's specialty.
"Wow, that old! Time flies, especially when you're an old man! I remember when you was just knee-high to a grasshopper. Had a big head, ya did! You've grown up right fine now. Right good looking, like your daddy. Bet you're just beating the girls off with sticks, ain't ya? How's your old man doing?"
"He's fine."
Piranha took a step back, considering the pitiful groceries in Jughead's basket, the bulging bookbag, the slumped shoulders, the closed expression and definitive statement, offering no invitation for further conversation. "Trouble at home?"
Jughead decided his best defense was silence.
Piranha nodded. "You got a place to stay tonight?" Jughead maintained his muteness. Piranha nodded again. He slapped the boy on the back. "That's it. You'll just have to stay with me until you're back on your feet. I'm afraid all I got's a couch, but it's better than sleeping in the park, now ain't it. And, while I'm at it," the middle-aged man took the groceries from Jughead, "I may as well help ya stock up on some stuff." He examined the items Jughead had chosen, and shook his head in bemusement. "How do ya stay so thin with all this sugar?" Welch laughed and patted his significant beer belly. "You'll have to tell me your secret. I'll do anything, except diet, quit smoking, or give up drinking." The man guffawed again, amused by his own joke. He guided Jughead through the store, grabbing a couple cases of Bud Light and a jar of Jif Creamy Peanut Butter.
Jughead followed obediently, though he wasn't sure why. He barely knew Welch. He knew the man was a Serpent, and that he lived alone on Bellemont. He didn't have a wife or children, but he had a nephew who had once lived with him, but was rumored to have run off to New York City. He had come to their trailer a few times to speak to his father and drink beer.
Yet he allowed Welch to pay for his items and lead him out the store to an old El Camino with rust three inches thick and fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror. He climbed into the passenger seat and watched as the neighborhood grew shabbier and dirtier. Inside Piranha's home – a dilapidated storey-and-a-half with peeling paint and sagging front porch – he made a nest for himself on the couch. It was the first offer for shelter he'd received. Of course, Archie didn't know about his situation, or he might have offered his floor – how many nights had he spent sleeping over at casa de la Andrews? – but they weren't exactly back on best-friendly terms, and he was too proud to admit he couldn't go home. Jughead was tired of always looking over his shoulder, of having to be sneaky. A couple of nights in a house – even as filthy and poorly tended as this one – would be a welcome change. Security, safety, warmth. How long had it been since he had known these things?
He helped Welch make Kraft Dinner at a rickety old range stove from 1986. They ate the cheesy mess with a can of Spam and Heinz ketchup. Welch offered him a beer, but Jughead declined. He wasn't a fan of alcohol. After supper, the dirty dishes piled high in the kitchen sink, they spent the evening watching television, like most American families. There was a kind of comfort in mundanity. Jughead watched without interest, thankful for an excuse to numb his mind, if only for a few hours.
During Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, Welch shouted out answers. Most of the phrases, surprisingly, he got correct; nearly all of Alex Trebbek's trivia he got wrong. Jughead internally answered Alex's questions before the contestants buzzed in, but he did not speak aloud. The Serpents said and did a lot of things, but one thing they did not value was a genius. He didn't want Welch thinking he was a freak: "Look at FP's son, acting like his shit don't stink." He could never seem to win: the virtues he valued most – intelligence, wit, perception – were met with scorn and suspicion by his father's crowd, and yet at school, where among his peers such qualities should have been valued, he was the outcast, the loner, the freak. The boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Another victim born into a white-trash family.
After the game shows came the prime time line-up. Cop shows, doctor shows, superhero shows, sitcoms, dramatic shows starring far too many beautiful people to be realistic – Jughead lost track. The characters and plots blurred together, a low soundtrack underlying Welch's words as he told stories of his younger days, pivotal moments when he was at the forefront of the Serpents. Tales of the glories of sex, drugs, and violence, punctuated by the occasional burp and guffawing laugh, the hiss of a new beer can being opened. Jughead's eyes grew heavy and his head dipped, lulled by the steady rhythm of Welch's voice.
He must have fallen asleep, because one moment he was listening to Thomas Gibson lay out the facts of the case, and the next he was standing behind a contestant's booth on the set of Jeopardy! Alex Trebbek smiled upon him, like a magnanimous grandfather, but when he asked his questions they came out in a jumbled language Jughead couldn't tell from Koine Greek. He pressed his buzzer, but no sound emerged. He turned to his fellow contestants and was surprised to see his father and Mrs. Wilcox at his side, but instead of buzzers they were holding snakes. He looked down at his own hand. His buzzer too was a serpent. The reptile released a raspy, foreboding hiss and barred its teeth. Amber venom dripped from one sharp fang. He tried to drop it, but was too late. The snake coiled itself around his arm and plunged its fangs into the thin flesh of his veins.
Jughead was alerted back to reality by the sudden quietness in the room. Images continued to flick across the screen in the dark room, a dizzying array of light and too-bright colors, permanent hues of blue. The volume had been turned down so low it was barely audible. He was curled up against the arm of the couch and was aware of the presence sitting at his feet. Welch was perched on the edge of the couch, his hand on Jughead's knee.
"Did ya know," Welch was saying, his voice seeming to come from a space that was both distant and close, "that piranhas travel in packs, like gangs? Makes 'em stronger sure, but it's safe too. Why you think a man dies when he's cast from his gang? Cause he's alone. Ain't right. A man needs his gang for protection. And ya see, the other thing about piranhas is, when their backs is against the wall, they'll turn cannibal. They'll take a chunk out of each other, just to survive. They'll do what they have to. Cut their razor sharp teeth right through ya just to see the color of your blood. Serpents and piranhas ain't much different, when it comes down to it. Piranhas is just the serpents of the seas." What the hell was he talking about? Jughead was still caught between planes of consciousness, and couldn't make sense of his surroundings. "A man to be completely a part of his gang, close as his own skin. Can't keep nothing from 'em. But FP, he don't always understand that. He's too reckless, and he's too secretive. Keeps to himself what could benefit the whole gang. What kinda proud man doesn't initiate his own son into the fold?" As this strange slurred soliloquy was spoken, Welch's left hand took the liberty of traversing up the teen's thigh.
The last of the sleepy fog instantaneously evaporated from Jughead's brain. No. No, no, no, no, NO! He pushed himself upright, and tried to swing his lanky body off the couch. Welch grabbed his arm and yanked him back down. The man's beefy hands enclosed around Jughead's wrists, pinning him down into the cushions with his hulking mass. A spring dug into Jughead's back, and stuffing spilled from a tear near his elbow. The stench of beer and body odor was overwhelming. The sweat beading the Pirhana's brow glistened in the flickering of the television.
Jughead was shaking. He could feel the tremors vibrating from deep inside him and rippling to his outermost extremities, the very tips of his fingers and toes, stalled against Piranha's body as the man pushed against him. Newton's first law of motion: an object in motion stays in motion until acted upon by an external force. A large, formidable, excitable force bearing down upon him like a grizzly bear.
Jughead quaked as his heart beat picked up dangerously – adrenalin? Heart attack? Good old fashioned fear – each sensory nerve extra-violently alert. God, how could he have been so stupid? "What are you doing?" he asked, though he knew perfectly well what the Piranha was trying to do, but hoping against foolish hope that he was wrong.
"FP's been holding out. By the time my nephew was your age, I had been tricking him out to Serpents and drug dealers for years. Ya don't get something for nothing, kid. Gotta earn your keep."
Jughead fought against Welch, the musty couch groaning underneath him. He wondered vaguely, in a brief moment of clarity breaking through his escalating panic, how many other down-on-their-luck teenagers had 'slept' on this couch. Had they all been as incredibly and moronically naive as him?
Welch wrenched the boy's arms above his head, hindering his struggles. He maneuvered both Jughead's wrists to one hand, and with the other stroked the exposed skin of Jughead's arm, down his chest and hips, to the waistband of his jeans.
Coherent thought was lost, but if he had been able to contemplate a course of action, Jughead might have decided he was in principle utilizing Newton's third law of motion: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Jughead was simply using an equally violent and necessary course of action to react against the assault occurring against him. Instead, there was no thought, only fear, as Jughead freed one of his legs and kicked with all his might. His knee came up, and landed a blow to Welch's tender regions. Overtaken by pain and shock, the man temporarily relaxed his hold on the boy. Jughead took the opportunity to wrest his arms free, knee the man again, and punch for good measure. His fist connected sickeningly with an eye socket. It was the first time the non-confrontational Jughead had ever struck anyone. Words were his preferred weapon of choice, but all the words in all the languages of the world couldn't save him now.
Welch didn't fall so much as lose the ability to hold himself upright. Jughead leapt from the couch, grabbed his stuff, neatly piled at the base of the coffee table, and bolted out the front door without a glance behind him. He ran, and he didn't stop running until he was several blocks from the house. He slowed his pace only long enough to don his jacket and swing his backpack over his shoulder, and then he crept along, keeping to the shadows in case Welch should follow him in his car. Jughead was shivering severely, but couldn't seem to make himself stop.
What the hell had he been thinking? Why had he thought sleeping in the house of a man called Piranha was a good idea? He hardly knew the man. Just because he had seen the man hanging around his father, he had decided he could trust him? Idiot, idiot, idiot. He knew what kind of men his father associated with. Drunkards, crooks, fighters, and thieves. All manner of creeps. Was Jughead really so desperate that he would take shelter in the home of a stranger?
Yes, aparrently, he was.
What had his life become? When had he changed? Morphed his shape, resembling more and more the statistic he feared becoming, until he didn't recognize himself anymore. His life was spiraling out of control; he was quickly devolving into one of those after-school specials. He was becoming exactly the type of person everyone had always expected he'd be.
Why him? Why did people like Welch and Mrs. Wilcox target him? Did they know something he didn't? Was it a scent they could smell - piranhas and cougars - like the sickly animal in the herd? A stench of brokeness, easy prey. A flashing neon sign: devour this one.
Jughead wanted to talk to someone; wanted to hide; wanted to find a hole somewhere and break down and never resurface again. His feet guided him along familiar paths, and he soon found himself standing in front of the Andrews' beloved homestead. All the windows were dark except one. A faint yellow light glowed out, accompanied by the sweet strumming of a guitar, but the light did not make it to the sidewalk. To Jughead, standing alone, truly and utterly alone, covered in darkness.
It was a fatal failing in his own personality, he thought, to have worked to build himself into a figure of independence and non-conformity, not giving a damn about anyone's opinions, and yet to crave friendship, affection, home. Love.
Jughead kept walking. The night was chilly, and he huddled inside himself. But that was pointless. His own body was an empty, traitorous shell offering him no warmth. If he wasn't so committed to uncovering the mystery and discovering Jason's killer, to completing his novel, he'd throw himself into Sweetwater River now and let himself be carried off downstream in the sweet, blessed silence of the churning waters.
Liar, a voice within said. You're too much of a coward. You're too weak.
He needed to find somewhere to spend the night. There was only one safe place left. The high school: the very building he dreaded above all others, the place he couldn't leave fast enough at the end of every day, was now his last refuge. The balance of their love-hate relationship had shifted to an emotion stronger than either love or hate to necessity. The place he had first encountered Kira, that selfsame stairwell, was now his haven and sanctuary, his temporary home.
Breaking into the school wasn't hard. He had done it before, with more dubious intentions. The administrators were cheap, and had not forked out the money to install a proper alarm. Instead, the doors were chained and padlocked at night. The hallways patrolled by an ancient janitor who by 1am had usually given up on cleaning and slunk off to the teacher's lounge for a stale donut and a nap.
Jughead thought again about Archie as he unrolled his sleeping bag and arranged his meagre possessions. What would he think, if he could see him now? What would he think if he learned about the Piranha? About Kira Wilcox? Would he still believe Jughead was a friend worth having? Was worthy of anything at all? Or would he, and everyone else, think Jughead was garbage? Just another kid from the wrong side of the tracks who deserved what he got? Who had brought all this misery upon himself?
Worse yet, what if no one out there cared what happened to him at all?