And Other Collisions
by Raptorlily
❤ Raptor Recommended Playlist:
Ross Copperman - Holding On and Letting Go
4.
On Monday morning, Kevin skipped down the steps into the kitchen where he was surprised to find his father sitting at the island reading the paper. Dressed and fully pressed in his khaki uniform, Sheriff James Keller was taking meditative sips of his coffee out of the 'I donut care' mug grandma Tandi got him last Christmas as a joke. Since his father's sense of humor was usually as dry as a stale wafer on a doily-laden coffee table, Kev figured that was his mother's attempt at levity before she left for her shift at the hospital this morning.
Given the grisly turn of events over the weekend, Kev didn't blame her.
"Dad," Kevin greeted hesitantly. "Hey. You're actually home. And functioning."
"Barely." Sheriff Keller removed his glasses to massage the bridge of his nose. There were huge scooping bags under his eyes and he look in desperate need of some R&R. "Got in at four am last night and slept on the couch so I wouldn't wake your mother."
He then let out a noise of exasperation and slapped down the copy of the Riverdale Registrar on the counter for Kevin to see. The front page read: 'JASON BLOSSOM MURDERED – HIS KILLER ON THE LOOSE.' Underneath it was a sub-header, innocently asking: 'are we still safe in Riverdale?'
Kevin cringed.
"Dawg nabbit, them Coopers." His father declared. "Been to three world fairs, a goat rodeo and ain't seen such irresponsible journalism anywhere."
"It's a small town, dad," Kevin said, smiling at the resurrection of his father's old Southernisms. He poured what was left of the coffee into two travel mugs—one for him and one for Betty—then rooted around the cupboard for the Splenda. "It's the most exciting thing that's happened here since Mariah Carey's tour bus broke down and somebody posted an Insta-story of her buying candy-bars at the 7-Eleven."
At his father's look, he shrugged. "What? The girl was up on stage for seven hours at a time. She's entitled to a damn snickers if she wants one."
Sheriff Keller rolled his eyes.
"Well, whole town's riled up enough as it is," he muttered. "Damn phone has been ringing off the hook and Blossom's been on me like a fat tick."
"It's been a busy weekend for everyone," Kevin agreed nervously.
He and Moose spent Saturday night and the better half of their Sunday at the station for processing. If Kevin thought it would've been awkward to explain to his father what he and Moose were doing at Sweetwater River at 11 o'clock at night, it was nothing compared to Moose and Colonel Mason. Thankfully, Kevin's quick thinking saved the other boy an unscripted tumble out of the closet. He explained that Moose was only showing him the Hell Week exercise that Chuck and the other boys had made him, Archie and Reggie perform the other week. Moose was the only one who hadn't made it across the river and asked Kevin to spot him while he practised.
Which wasn't an ideal explanation—as it still earned them both a lecture on how stupid and dangerous it was to try and swim a river at night, given how Jason was previously thought to have drowned—but it was ballsy and manful enough to pass the Colonel's muster nonetheless.
Bonus, Moose could also save face at school and have something to tell his girlfriend, Midge, come Monday.
Of course, Sheriff Keller knew his son better than that, and while he'd been busy all weekend heading the draft work on a new investigation, it was only a matter of time before that subject came up.
And spending longer than five minutes in a room alone with his dad only increased the chances of it coming up by 100% and he did not need that drama in his life.
It was time for a swift exit.
Kevin pulled out his iPhone from pocket to check the time. "All right, I'm off. And Mom just texted me to ask if you'll be home for dinner—she's making pork chops tonight."
"I'll let her know later," his father replied and then, before Kev could bound out the side-door and into safety, he drew himself up, reaching for his Stetson on the far end of the counter. "Hold up a second, son. I'll drive you to school. I'm heading there right now anyway. Damage control."
Kevin froze. He looked down at the two travel mugs in his hands. "Actually, Dad—I-I was just about to go meet with Betty."
"You can talk to your friends at school, bud. I've got a minute now and if this weekend was any indication, I'm not going to have too many of those in the next few weeks. I want to talk to you about a few things."
Dawg nabbit, Kevin thought. He picked up his phone to text Betty.
Sorry, Dad's running interference
Nothing says 'Happy Monday' like murder and uncomfortable conversations with your gay son
If you see Buffer & Hotter Ed Sheeran, cross the street, avoid eye-contact. Do not engage. I repeat, do not engage
Then, after debating it for a moment or two...
#staystrong
He got into the passenger side of cruiser and seeing no room on the humped electronics of the dashboard, awkwardly set the tumblers down on the floor in front of him to buckle himself in, before retrieving them. When he settled himself back comfortable, his father was staring at him.
That was not good sign.
"What?" Kevin shifted in his seat, feeling his neck flush in guilt and embarrassment. His father didn't start the car yet and he was wearing what Kev's mother called his 'concerned interrogation face.'
Definitely not a good sign.
The Sheriff leaned on arm on the wheel and his bushy brows furrowed. "You doing all OK?"
"Yeah, dad. I'm fine."
"You sure?"
"Um, yeah?" Kevin nodded and looked to the side. He felt like he was missing something obvious or something unseemly on his face. "Why—why wouldn't I be?"
Sheriff Keller frowned.
"You discovered the dead and decomposing body of one of your one of your classmates this weekend. Discovered he was murdered instead of drowned like we all thought. That—that isn't something you want to talk about?"
Unbidden, the memory of Jason's waterlogged corpse sprang to mind and Kevin felt something cold and electric skate up his spine. That was Jason Blossom. Or once had been Jason Blossom. A living, breathing teenage boy that Kevin used to see walking down the school hallways or sitting at a booth at Pop's or laughing on the bleachers with his friends. He was Cheryl's brother. Polly's boyfriend. Someone's friend and son and student. He had a smile like a Cadillac—timeless, cherry, and could make you hyperaware of your own heartbeat.
Kevin shoved that down and shook his head.
"Honestly, dad. I rather not."
"Weatherbee has gone ahead to have some uh, grief counselors available at the school," Sheriff Keller pressed. "You can take advantage of that service, but if you don't like any of 'em, there's also Mrs. Klump that helps with some of our officers sometimes."
Mrs Klump was Midge's mother—Midge who also happened to be Moose's girlfriend. That wasn't even six degrees of separation. That was just three degrees of 'hell to the no.'
"Ahh—I appreciate the concern, dad. I really do. But I'm good." Kevin looked out the window. "I didn't even know Jason that well."
They might've spoke once, after P.E. Jason came over and complimented Kevin on his throw. 'Good arm,' he had said and then asked if he thought about football. Kev wasn't sure what he said back, he was so flustered, but it must have been suitably snappy and clever because Jason grinned and said, 'ok, but if you change your mind…'
He remembered reporting back to Betty and calling her sister's boyfriend a regular, red-headed Shane Falco—right down to the Keanu Reeves' wooden delivery.
Thinking about it now, Kev felt a twinge of guilt in his chest. Maybe Jason should've waited to be found by someone with more of a personal connection and reverence for him in life.
Or maybe, it was for the best that he wasn't.
It felt oddly like being chosen.
Sheriff Keller was still talking. "Son, it honestly wouldn't be any trouble to—"
Kevin groaned impatiently and held up his hand. "Can we just drop this? Please?"
"All right, all right," the Sheriff relented and sat back to start the car. "Your mother and I are just concerned about you. Ever since this Jason hurricane blew in, we don't get to see much of each other and we want to make sure you're taken care of."
There was a pause. Keller took his eyes off the road to momentarily glance at his son, and then fixed them forward again.
"There was something else I wanted to talk to you about. You and that Mason boy, Moose—"
"—Oh my God!"
"—Given all that paper work we had you two filling out, I'd say that was punishment enough for putting that funny twist on skinny dipping," Keller went on, a ghost of a smile playing along the hard lines of his mouth. "But you know, there's nothing wrong with going to the movies or the drive-in with a nice boy. While Riverdale ain't so conservative anymore, the backwoods is still too sordid a place for any people of principle."
"Are you calling me trashy, dad?"
"I'm telling you to act like you had some raisin'." His father's face turned serious. "The spotlight is now on me and therefore, on this family while I work on getting this whole mess sorted. My term is up next year and with all the mud slinging going on down at county, we gotta keep our noses clean. My boy being the one to find the body raises enough eyebrows as it is, you hear?"
"Yeah," Kevin muttered under his breath as they pulled up in front of the school. "God forbid they start questioning your good name again."
"What'd you say to me?"
"Nothing." He unbuckled and picked up his coffees again. "Thanks for the ride, dad. I guess I'll see you at school."
Most of you already know the details, but your classmate Jason Blossom's body was found late Saturday night. So as of the weekend, Jason's death is now being treated as a homicide. It is an open and ongoing investigation…
It was impossible not to think of Jason Blossom.
His heartbreaking conversation with Betty on Saturday night had dragged Archie Andrews through the emotional ringer, but the news of Jason's body washing up in the shallows of the Sweet River that same night was a push over the goal line.
There was no avoiding the orbit of flowers, notes, photos and flags and other colourful tributes that had sprung up around Jason's locker on Monday morning. Archie's own locker was two units down and the memorial pile only seemed to grow after each class. By third period, some of it encroached on his standing space and he had to be careful where he put his large, white sneakered feet. He almost crushed a small teddybear when getting his books for study hall.
Bending down, Archie picked up the stuffy. The synthetic fur was deep brown, with black buttons for eyes. Apart from the blue and gold jersey it'd been fitted with, there was nothing Jason-like about it. But for a moment—for the briefest of moments— there was a flash and it was something else.
Startled, Archie dropped it.
When he had taken that second swim for Moose across the Sweet Water River for his Hell Week initiation, he had seen it. Jason's corpse. Down in the reeds. Archie convinced himself it was his imagination—a trick of the moonlight—some hallucination from the near black-out exertion of swimming four widths of the river, 100 yards across each way. It was dark, the water was murky and his adrenaline was in the alps. On the opposite shore, Reggie had been hollering at him for being an idiot, hollering at him to keep swimming and he was fighting to keep on.
'Football is a physical game. We need to know you're tough enough to be a bulldog.' Chuck Clayton's words punched his eardrums. 'Jason did this to keep his jersey. You'll have to as well!'
But Jason was captain of the waterpolo team, Archie thought as the water closed over his head and his muscles burned from the cold. 200 yards was nothing for him. And he drowned in this river.
But even back then, when he saw what he thought he saw in the watery gloom, he wasn't so sure.
'Fireworks,' Geraldine had insisted in the car after they scrambled to pack up their things and Archie remembered thinking to himself that people didn't scramble to pack up their things for fireworks. People didn't set off fireworks at 6 am on July 4th. People didn't abruptly end relationships, no matter how forbidden or taboo, for fireworks. 'What we heard wasn't a gunshot. It didn't sound like a gunshot.'
'It sounded like one to me,' Archie said. He played enough videogames and watched enough movies to at least recognize the difference. He also shot a gun, once, one summer on his uncle Sherman's ranch in Arizona. 'If you don't think it was a gun, why are we running away?'
'Because it means someone else was at the River with us!' Geraldine slapped the steering wheel with her palms and she looked at him with such terror in her eyes, Archie shrunk away. 'We shouldn't be doing this. You—me—it's wrong." She looked simultaneously younger and older with her face scrunched up like that. "I can't keep looking over my shoulder, Archie! I can't keep worrying about who will see us!'
'It was fireworks,' she said again, and this time, with more authority. 'Or maybe a car—old cars do that. When unburned fuel gets into the exhaust. Mine does that sometimes, remember?'
It was true, he'd heard it. And that old jalopy Betty and her dad used to fix up in the garage used to do that too. It was possible. Geraldine was older and a teacher, besides. It was her job to know and de-mystify things. Archie had long ago made peace with the fact that he'd never been the smartest bulb in the utility box.
Maybe he was dramatizing. Maybe he was wrong. His heart and his mind would race so fast, his thoughts fumbling and tripping over themselves whenever the subject came up. He couldn't trust himself to think.
'You can't tell anyone about this,' Geraldine had warned him. 'About us—about what you think you heard. You cannot discuss it with anyone, ever. It's better if you forget this—us—happened at all.'
But Archie couldn't forget. He didn't know why it affected him so much, but something fundamental inside of him had collapsed when she pulled away. He spent all summer in a war of nerves. What was true, what wasn't true; if they did the right thing not saying anything about it. The urge to tell someone—talk about it—rose like bile in the back of his throat and he had to swallow it down, letting it work through him like a slow poison instead. It left him broken and confused and listless for weeks.
Alone. And guilty.
Always guilty.
When he told Betty that song-writing had kept him sane, he hadn't been lying.
…If you know anything that could help us find and apprehend Jason's killer, or anything about what happened to him on July 4th, I strongly urge you to come forward immediately …
Archie sucked in a stressful breath.
It was a gunshot. He and Geraldine—they had heard Jason's killer that day at the River.
It calcified into a flinty certainty that scraped against his lungs with every inhale.
The sound of a bang somewhere behind him almost made Archie jump out of his skin. He whirled and spotted Jughead pulling out textbooks from his locker and stuffing them into his messenger bag. Apart from a few baby-faced freshmen loitering down the hall and an upperclassman stapling notices to the bulletin board, the two of them were relatively alone.
Another pang of conscience rocketed through Archie. After his exchange with Betty in front of her house and then news of Jason, he hadn't made any additional efforts to reach out to Jughead. Just one text, hey man, you ok? and then no other follow-up. He debated typing something more personal, but he already felt like a dick. Not just about the summer or even before then, but also because Jug was there to witness the whole fiasco with Veronica and how it had hurt Betty.
As if Jug needed to add to his list of reasons why his former-best-friend was an grade-A asshole.
And Betty—Oh God. This was the longest they'd gone not speaking to one another since they argued about the direction of their lemonade business in the fourth grade. If Archie wasn't thinking about Jason, he was thinking about the look on her face when he told her he didn't think he was good enough for her, wishing desperately that he could take back that entire evening and have a do-over. The thoughts swirled in his head again, disjointed, panicked—needing to do something, anything, to fix this immediately. Maybe he didn't feel that way about her now, but maybe he should've given them a chance? They'd been best friends forever, after all. It wouldn't be that far of a leap.
But then, his thoughts would wander back to Geraldine, back to Veronica, back to the confusing void in his life that was left behind by Jason Blossom and while he went as far as to write, 'I've done some thinking…' he promptly deleted it and wrote, 'can we talk?' instead to buy himself some time.
But that text, just like all the others, went unanswered and the curtains on her window remained drawn. She sailed right passed him in homeroom that morning, chin forward and pony-tail swinging and it killed him to feel relief that he hadn't followed through on that impulse.
She didn't look at him once.
Archie glanced down at Jason's memorial again. At least he could do the right thing some of the time, even when it felt like a grenade to the chest.
Before he even realized he was making the decision, his feet took him across the hall to lean on the locker next to Jughead's.
"Hey," he greeted.
"Hey," came the flat reply.
Archie rubbed the neck of his neck. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting. Jughead was a stone-wall when he was cobbled up in his own self-righteousness.
"You—uh, you didn't respond to any of my texts this weekend."
"Yeah, I know. I was busy." Jug didn't spare him a glance. "This whole Jason-didn't-drown-thing was a real game-changer for my novel."
Archie frowned. "Is that all it is to you? Material for a story?"
"You know me, I'm Mr. Sensitivity," Jughead retorted dryly and continued to root around in his locker. "It's not like I had any love for the guy, but… some things just… choose you, y'know?"
Archie folded his arms uncomfortably. "Yeah, I guess I get that."
He glanced over his shoulder at Jason's memorial again. "Listen, man, about this weekend—did you talk to Betty?"
Betty being Betty, she was probably beating herself up about what happened too. And that was on top of the things they'd said to one another. He didn't know much about how Jughead and Betty had been fairing lately in the friendship department, but Jug had always been her sounding board when he wasn't around. And with Veronica reporting that Betty wasn't speaking to her either and Kevin finding dead bodies, he hated the idea that she had no one to turn to.
It made him want to kick himself again.
"No," said Jughead.
"Do you plan to?"
"Maybe."
Archie glanced towards the ceiling, growing exasperated with former friend's persecution complex. "Look, you can hate me all you want but Betty—it was just a stupid game. She didn't mean anything about it."
Jughead snorted. There was an edge to his smile. "Oh, I know."
"I really hurt her, Jug." Archie slumped against the locker wall, his cheek against the cool aluminum. "Like, bad. I had no idea that she felt like that."
"Jesus. Do you work for the government or something?" Jughead slammed the locker door shut, hoisting his bag up onto one shoulder. "You seriously had no idea? Like half the town knew."
Archie felt the tips of his ears grow hot. "If half the town knew and you knew, why didn't you say anything?"
Although it was never said, the words 'you're an idiot' lit up like a flash fire under his nose. This was exactly the type of smug bullshit that he had been wearing on him for years.
Something chased across Jughead's expression, but in a blink, it was gone. He chewed his lip and looked down and then back up again.
"Would it have made a difference?" he asked seriously. "Would you have given her a different answer?"
No, Archie thought and the fight immediately left him.
He looked away.
Jughead heaved a sigh through his nose and shook his head. He sounded tired. "Look, Arch. One of the perks of us no-longer-being-friends is that I don't have to listen to any more of your drama. Yours or Betty's. So, whatever you two need to figure out, you figure it out with her. I'm done with this."
He turned to go.
"You still should've told me," Archie said and Jughead paused. He looked over his shoulder.
"Yeah, well, I guess you can add that to the pile of secrets between us."
"What's that's supposed to mean?"
"You damn well know what I mean."
"You shut me out," Archie said bitterly.
"No, you shut me out." Jughead rounded on him. "I'm tired of being the cut-rate friend you turn to when Betty or any of your bros aren't around to entertain you. But you want to have a conversation? Fine." He stepped closer, his face a menace. "Why don't you start with your whereabouts on July 4th? The weekend you bailed on me at the last minute and told me your dad needed you for a project."
He shook his head his head in disgust and continued. "You know, I went to your house when you didn't answer any of my texts. Your dad was confused to see me at the door; he said you'd already left to go with me and I covered for you. I don't even remember what I cobbled together on the spot, but your dad bought and you got off the hook with him. But you're not off the hook with me."
He took another step closer under the two of them were nearly eye to eye. "So I'm asking you now. Where were you the day Jason Blossom disappeared?"
The blood was rushing between Archie's ears and his whole face was red—he couldn't decide if he was more ashamed or angry. He didn't like the insinuation in the least.
"Are you asking because you care or because of that novel your writing?"
Anger, then.
Jughead's smile was a jackknife. "What do you think?"
The bell rang and Archie pulled away in disgust.
What do you guys think? Do you have any thoughts/reflections as to what you'd like to have seen the series expand on more, canon-wise?