The Noble Grove pizza was too greasy for Cheryl to stomach more than two pieces, she knew. So, she stacked two slices on top of each other on a too-small white plate, their edges hanging dangerously over the radius.
Halfway through her first and her body was still humming with nerves, so she stood from her bed and opened the mini-fridge.
"Hey, you're blocking the TV," Betty whined. Of course, she actually cared about whatever movie they were watching on one of those basic cable channels.
"For a good cause," Cheryl said as she pulled a tall bottle of champagne from the fridge. "I say we treat ourselves." When Betty didn't say anything in response, Cheryl laughed. "What, have you never had a drink before?"
"No, I have…"
"Communion with your family Sunday mornings doesn't count, church mouse."
"We actually only go to church on Christmas and Easter... Also, I didn't like it one bit, but I had a few at Jughead's birthday. You remember that."
"Well," Cheryl plopped down next to Betty, "Jughead's birthday sucked."
"Your fault," Betty pointed out.
"So let's pretend it's Christmas."
"Fine."
Cheryl smiled and opened the bottle with her teeth.
She expected it to come away with red lipstick turned purple on the green glass rim, but she'd without makeup on… It was that day at Sweetwater River, the day before the Black Hood first struck, Cheryl realized, and felt suddenly self-conscious.
As if reading her thoughts, Betty said, "Your face is all sunburned."
It was true, Cheryl could feel her face was hot and red, but Betty's was equally so. "You are, too." She passed the open bottle over. "Here, you take the first sip."
"We're not using glasses?"
"Hell, no; this way is so much more fun than using those lame little plastic cups they give us."
Betty rolled her eyes but took the bottle and hesitantly put her lips to it.
"Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!"
"Shut up." She took a mouthful. "Oh. That's not bad."
"I know."
"Drink this vodka, yo, down the hatch!" Betty quoted as she took another swig.
"Good. Now quit hogging it, I want some of that action." Cheryl snatched back the champagne and took a generous amount. It was cheap stuff—dry and overcarbonated—but she didn't say anything because Betty seemed to like it. Instead, she turned to the television and picked up her half-slice. "Okay, help me out with what's going on in this movie because I have not been paying any attention whatsoever."
"Okay, that girl?" Betty pointed to the young brunette on screen. "She's an angsty preteen, I think because her mother's dead."
"Okay."
"And that guy's in love with her," Betty pointed again as a scruffy black-haired boy appeared on screen, staring lustfully across an open field.
"Ugh, of course."
"But she's in love with a blonde guy from school whose name is I think Matt."
"Let me guess: Matt is a huge douchebag."
"He is indeed." Betty took a drink. "Also, her father is really overprotective because of what happened to the mom."
"How did you get all this information in the ten minutes the TV's been on?"
Betty shrugged with a smile.
"Dear God, have you seen this tawdry cornball movie before?"
Betty said nothing, then admitted quietly: "My mom really loves the Hallmark channel…"
"Oh, of-freaking-course she does," Cheryl laughed. "Well, no spoilers, Cooper. I want to be surprised when everyone gets everything they've ever wanted."
When they turned back to the television, the angsty preteen was dramatically stroking the snout of a massive black stallion.
"Oh, shit," Cheryl cackled, "of course it's a horse movie."
"I know you told me not to spoil anything, but the horse ends up solving all their problems." Betty giggled and took another slug.
"God, Betty, way to ruin the whole movie." Cheryl grabbed the bottle back. "So I'm guessing Blonde Douchebag—what did you say his name was?"
"Matt."
"Matt. Okay, so Matt's going to finally take an interest in Angsty Preteen but he's going to disrespect the horse and Angsty Preteen will realize she's worth more and deserves better. And that's when the pasty white guy is going to meet the horse and Pasty White Boy will be, like, the only person the horse respects outside of Angsty Preteen herself, thus proving her to be worthy of her love?" Cheryl guessed. "Oh, also, at some point, the horse will save the Angsty Preteen's life so the worrisome surviving parent will feel okay about Angsty Preteen horseback riding." She took a long drink. "Am I right?"
Betty was silent, then: "Are these movies really that predictable?"
"I've seen my fair share of horse movies in my day. I know what to expect."
"You have not."
"I have."
"You don't really strike me as the type to have ever had a horse girl phase."
Probably not, because Cheryl knew for a fact that Betty had had a horse-heavy childhood and didn't tend to think they could have anything in common. "My parents had a couple horses on the farm. I thought they were cool as hell."
The pizza and the champagne sat warm in her stomach, and as the night crept on, as Angsty Preteen (whose name actually turned out to be Erica) got everything she ever wanted, Cheryl grew drowsy and comfortable.
She was almost asleep, head back on Betty's bed, when Betty stood up and the mattress shifted. "Okay, we've gotta bush our teeth," Betty announced. "My mouth feels furry."
She was right—between the pizza and the fact that they hadn't brushed their teeth since they were back in Riverdale, they were probably disgusting.
"They might have brushes and toothpaste at the front desk," Cheryl guessed.
"Okay, I'll go down. I have to take our clothes out of the dryer downstairs anyway."
And Betty left.
Cheryl sat up and stared at Betty's phone, daring it to go off, to explode with hundred frantic texts and voicemails like it had when Betty was in the shower. She felt a pang of guilt, remembering that moment. Everyone had been so genuinely concerned, so afraid for Betty's well-being.
And Cheryl had known that Betty wasn't the type to let people worry about her for too long.
So, when she heard the shower turn on, heard water hitting porcelain, she snatched up the phone and deleted a few texts, the really heart wrenching ones from her mother and Veronica and Jughead and Archie and even Betty's long-lost brother Chic.
Because screw them; Betty was having a good time out here and there was no reason they should be guilting her into coming back.
Deleted, deleted, deleted, deleted, deleted…
But the texts had kept coming.
And Cheryl couldn't bear the thought of Betty caving and wanting to go home early or turn the car around or, worse, asking someone to come pick her up. So, with just a few more taps, she blocked Betty's whole ridiculous posse and her family from hell.
Cheryl knew, staring at the mute phone, that it was wrong, but she also knew that it would keep Betty close. It would keep Betty with her.
That was all that mattered.
Cheryl returned to her own bed and stared at the ceiling, fiddling with the spider brooch she'd attached to her robe.
The door clicked and Betty swung through the opening, holding a bag of clean clothes, two horrifically cheap toothbrushes and the tiniest tube of toothpaste Cheryl had ever seen. "I got the goods!" Betty called.
Less than an hour later, with minty fresh breath, Cheryl was staring at the ceiling again. It was dark now, Betty breathing heavily in the bed beside Cheryl's, sleeping off her first-ever buzz.
Voices in the hall, probably another sparse group of travelers settling in for the night, and Cheryl became overly aware of the fact that her bed was closest to the door. If anyone were to break in, Cheryl mused, she would be the first one killed.
A flash of light from the hall as the door opened, a silhouette rushing in, a gunshot or a knife slash sending blood flying, and everything would be over.
Cheryl bit her lip, hard, as the grainy image from the Whyte Wyrm's security footage surfaced in her brain. One gunshot and Jason's head flopped and he died and he was gone forever.
She couldn't breathe.
Cheryl got up from bed, grabbed the key card from the side table, and snuck into the hall, trying to steady her breathing. She paced the hall, the dirty carpet scratching her bare feet, the fluorescent lights far from comforting.
They buzzed endlessly and reminded her of the police station back in Riverdale.
Her father shooting her brother played again in her head.
Again and again and again, every time the same outcome: Jason's lifeless head staring at his lap, his body kept upright by the brutal ropes around his wrists and ankles.
She sat against the wall and let the murder happen behind her eyes until the loop retreated and made way for a dozen other gruesome images: her father's body hanging from the noose in the barn; Jason's corpse, bloated from river water on a cold metal table; Archie and Veronica and Jughead and Betty watching from the shore as Cheryl fell through the ice into Sweetwater River; that awful, irrevocable hole staring at her like the Devil's eye from atop her brother's forehead…
She scolded herself for brooding, tried to stop it by telling herself she was being absurd, overdramatic, self-indulgent. Somehow, it left her wondering why the hell Betty had agreed to come with her the other night.
Betty.
Asleep in the other room, peacefully, removed from whatever demons everyone could see had been haunting her as of late.
She was good. She always had been. Perfect. She didn't deserve to live in Riverdale or to have Blossom blood.
Cheryl crept back into the hotel room. Betty was asleep on her side, her face to the wall.
Cheryl climbed in next to her. She was still closest to the door, but they were so close it probably didn't matter. They'd both be killed if someone came in with a weapon. That was fine, she guessed.
Betty shifted, put her hands under her head like a renaissance painting of a child sleeping. And Betty was good, Betty was good.
Cheryl lifted her own hand and started tracing the details in the fabric of the back of Betty's robe. The zigzagged patterns gave way to letters, and then Cheryl was writing out words, confessing every awful thing she'd done since Jason's death to the robe, which was the same as the robe Cheryl was wearing.
She wrote out that she'd failed to protect her beloved twin, that she'd tried to kill herself, that she'd done awful things to Josie McCoy for God-knows what reason, that she'd cut Betty off from her friends back home, that she was terribly, terribly sorry but she couldn't stop.
She hoped the words would sink through the fabric, onto Betty's skin and into her blood (which was the same as Cheryl's blood) and that Betty would grant her forgiveness, like a Catholic sinner begging for God's mercy in confessionals.
She might have written all night.
/
Sunday morning, sunshine was coming through the drapes in one fat beam, the room smelling thick of cheese and grease from their leftovers haphazardly dropped by the door.
She slipped out of bed, the skin turning cold as she emerged from the blankets, and opened the window enough to let a breath of fresh air in. Betty was still asleep, which Cheryl envied deeply, so she turned the television on and muted it.
It was a news report, and Cheryl thought for a moment they might see a report about two missing girls in Riverdale, like runaways always did in television and movies. But, as it happened, two unhappy teens who decided to up and disappear miles away was irrelevant and unexciting in Ohio.
The newscast did make itself useful, though: Cheryl now knew that the weather was going to be nice that day, that it would be another sunny day on the road.
"Hmm, where I am I?" Betty mumbled from the bed.
"Ohio."
"Oh."
"-Hio."
"Right." Betty sat up and looked to the bed where Cheryl hadn't turned her eyes from the television screen. "Did you… um… did you sleep in my bed last night?"
"Just a little bit."
"Okay." Betty stood up. "Why?"
Cheryl wanted to explain about the bed closest to the door, but it felt stupid in broad daylight, so she said nothing and probably looked stupid anyway.
"Okay…" Betty was visibly troubled by the silence. Stupid piece of shit. "Well, we should get moving, then. If we want to make it to California."
"Yep."
"Great. I'll change in the bathroom."
They redonned their clothes from Friday, now clean and fresh, ran flimsy complimentary combs through their too-thick hair, and brushed their teeth. Every consumable or disposable amenity the hotel had provided them went in Cheryl's backpack, except for the bathrobes because Betty said that that was stealing.
Their bill was excessive because of the champagne, but Cheryl begrudgingly paid and told herself it was worth it because Betty really hadn't had a drink, ever, before the previous night.
"We have to stay at cheaper places in the nights to come," she told Betty.
"Okay."
Cheryl wished Betty would say something other than "Oh" or "Okay".
"Do you want to drive or should I?" she asked.
"You're probably a better driver," Betty said honestly. "Probably safer if you drive."
"Fine." The word sounded cold, unintentionally, but Betty didn't seem to care once they were back on the road.
She was smiling in the passenger's seat, staring contentedly out the window, until, periodically, she'd take out her phone and distinctly frown.
"What's everyone back in Riverdale saying?" Cheryl finally got up the courage to ask. A pit took form in her stomach as she hoped Betty hadn't noticed any of her contacts had been blocked.
"Nothing," Betty said with a scoff. "They're not saying anything."
"Oh."
Cheryl's thoughts turned to her own phone, which she'd left face-down on her bedside table. She wondered who was texting her, who had tried calling her, if she had more or fewer missed messages than Betty.
Selfishly, she wanted more, but she knew that that probably wasn't the case.
But only one contact mattered: Josie McCoy. She thought hungrily of Josie sending her a hundred anxious texts, worrying over Cheryl. She wondered if Josie was begging Cheryl to come home, if she was scared for her. If Josie missed her.
Cheryl hoped she was in pain.
It was an awful thought, she knew, but, God, it would be nice if it were true.
/
The sun was starting to set as Betty and Cheryl waltzed out of another gas station, whose interior was eerily similar to that of every other convenience store they'd been to in the past couple of days.
They had been travelling mostly in silence, making small talk only over breakfast and lunch, the sound of several different radio stations the only thing between them, which Cheryl blamed on her senseless inability to lay alone in the bed closest to the door.
It was getting dark again, and so Cheryl wondered if her reasoning would sound any more practical.
"Triple C says that you shouldn't drive for over eight hours and that you should take breaks at least every three hours."
"What?"
"Triple C says that you shouldn't drive for over—"
"No, I heard you. I'm just not entirely sure what you're insinuating."
"Well, we've been driving for ten hours. And we've only taken three breaks."
"So, we almost made the mark."
"Do you want me to drive?"
"You can do what you want." Cheryl tossed her cousin the keys.
"Great."
Back on the road, Betty making good time through the first frontier of Indiana and Betty dared to ask: "Did you sleep well last night?"
"Not especially," Cheryl said tensely, "which is to say no. I did not." Her fingers were all knotted together like they always were when she got nervous, red acrylic nails digging into her knuckles.
As if on cue, the streetlights flickered on and Betty switched the headlights on in response.
It was getting dark and the trees on either side of the road were turning into tangled masses of twisted souls, so Cheryl blurted out, "I couldn't be in my bed because it was closest to the door and if, say, a deranged murderer or an overzealous robber were to burst in, I would be murdered first and without any warning."
"What?"
"Stabbed. Or shot. Blood all over the sheets. No warning. No time to escape. Maybe strangled, who knows?"
"Oh."
They moved forward, always moved forward.
"That's messed up."
"What?"
"The bed thing."
"I know I should have woke you up, but I—"
"Not that, the fact that you were even thinking about that at all," Betty said, face all twisted in resolve. "I mean, that's just not something that's going to happen anywhere but Riverdale." She spat the name with such disgust, Cheryl would have thought she was someone else besides good-sweet Elizabeth Cooper. "That place is so wrong in every way. I never want to go back."
"Why not?" Cheryl asked. "I mean, besides all the usual reasons?"
To her surprise, Betty pulled over the car. "You're probably the last person I should be telling about this, but I did something…" she took a shaky breath. "I did something bad."
"We all have, Betty."
"No. Like, a monumentally awful thing that probably ruined lives." Betty's mouth was drawn in solemnity, and Cheryl held her breath. "The night before you found me in the bathroom, I…"
"Stop," Cheryl held a hand up, because she could tell Betty was going to say something truly awful. "Stop, don't tell me, I don't want to know."
"What?"
She wanted to keep living in a world where Betty was good and nice despite everything that had happened around her and everything she was made up of, so Cheryl repeated, "Do not tell me. Do not tell me the horrible thing you did. I don't want to know."
"Oh."
Betty pulled off the shoulder and back onto the road.
"We should stop soon," she whispered to the dark. "I'm tired."
"Or I could drive for a while," Cheryl offered. "We could make it to Illinois by morning."
"No, I want to sleep. In a bed. With blankets and pillows. And eat dinner."
"Next exit, then."
/
At dinner, Cheryl watched Betty's fork dance around an oversized hamburger. They were in a road stop diner that was horribly Pop's-esque, all neon lights on white walls and the smell of grease rising from the kitchen.
"Why would we go back?" Betty asked without looking up.
"To Riverdale?"
"To Riverdale. Where everything awful happened. Where, apparently, no one misses us?"
Cheryl's stomach turned. "They miss us."
Betty's fork scraped her plate with a screech.
"And we can't just run away," Cheryl restated, "because nothing good ever happens to runaways. And we can't hide. Everything will follow us."
"What do you mean?"
Cheryl thought about Thornhill and the night she'd doused it in gasoline and how quickly fire had spread from room to room, the moment the ancient glass windows blew out from outside. She thought about the moment her heart skipped a beat when her mother—her awful, abusive, now-prostituting mother—had rushed back inside. She thought about the first night in her bed at Thistlehouse. "Betty… We could burn every inch of Riverdale to the ground, the school and the diner and the trailer park and the streets that connect everything in between, and everyone would still be the exact same."
/
A/N: Hooray, Cheryl perspective! Leave me a review and I'll love you forever, as always.