Damn it.
Dilton squinted in frustration, breath coming in quick pants. Ethel wasn't looking up. He didn't dare rap the glass. Damn it…
"Hey!" The rent-a-cop was coming his way, flimsy night stick in hand. "What're ye peepin' at, son!"
With reflexes that Kenneth himself might have envied, Dilton swept up his overloaded backpack with one arm and ran, leaving the overweight guard panting in his wake and shouting uselessly.
The racket outside barely penetrated Ethel Muggs' cocoon. The detention monitor, after reading off names of students who had never before crossed her path, determined that this afternoon was an anomaly and allowed her charges to talk to each other as long as their voices remained low. Most of the class took advantage of this leniency; she, odd one out as usual, read a book.
"Ethel," a voice behind her murmured. She knew what would come of listening, and he didn't want it. Deliberately, she turned the page.
"Ethel," the voice said in a slightly louder tone. Mrs. Denford looked up with a frown, and a head of wavy brown locks shrank back abashed. The other students noted this failure and tittered.
Kenneth sulked for a moment or two before scribbling furiously on a scrap of paper and cautiously nudging Ethel's arm. Several pairs of eyes watched for her reaction; fingers hovered above cell phone keypads, ready to type shorthand gossip. No matter what she did, it would be all over school in no time flat.
Betty waited until the salesclerk's back was turned—it didn't take very long—and smuggled Jughead into the deserted dressing room with a whole assortment of dresses to try on. She already knew that Ethel preferred slinky lounge singer numbers to fairy-tale ballgowns, but part of her hoped that she might find the perfect dress hidden and unwanted on the sale rack, an unassuming combination of satin and taffeta that would transform her meagerly-proportioned friend into a true tour de force and force all of the boys to helplessly witness what they had missed in passing her up. The other, more mischievous side simply wanted to see Jughead in a goofy prom outfit.
"What are you going to wear?" he asked as she carefully sorted the dresses amongst the cubicle's five hooks.
"… hmm? Probably something midnight blue. Mom found a beautiful corset and she's working layers of netting back into the skirt. I thought that it would be cheaper for me to simply buy a new dress, but she's just determined to get this one together for me." She smiled affectionately. "I'm sure it'll be beautiful, but I wish she wouldn't give herself so much trouble. But she's a mother and that's what they do." She held up the gold lamé with the Grecian neckline and high waist. "Why don't we start here?"
Betty, as usual, had been quite right in pointing out that his physique was very similar to Ethel's, and they had both admired the cut and fit of the Grecian dress. The plunging neckline was daring, but hardly racy; built for a small bust, it was designed to show off breastbone more than breast. The cinched waist was perfectly suited to minimize a long torso, which Ethel had in abundance; the redundancy of shimmering pleats accentuated long, slim legs. Betty looked in the three-way mirror, eyes locked on his body as he shuffled into the fabric. "My god. I can't believe it. It's … it's perfect." And then her gaze drifted down to his dirty sneakers, back up to his red face, spiky hair, and crooked crown, and they had both laughed.
"So we can go, right?"
"Well, no … let's do a few more. Maybe we'll see something else that really works."
But so far the something else had failed to materialize, it was growing late and Jughead was starting to nod off a bit. At his last count, they were on dress twenty-three, and none had fit quite so suitably as the very first one.
There was a subtle pressure against his lips, one that was unfamiliar, but not at all unwelcome. By the time he actually woke up, he was holding Betty very close and her eyes were closed and her ponytail was a mess and the store intercom was blaring that the store would be closing in fifteen minutes. Please bring your purchases to the nearest sales counter.
Veronica Lodge lay idly on a silken champagne-colored divan, some new ergonomic wonder from Scandinavia. It was supposed to help her father with his mildly arthritic back. He sat down once, rose immediately and found better things to do with his time, such as driving his Alfa-Romero. The sofa was tossed into an unused sitting room and forgotten until Miss Lodge found it and decided that it complemented her room. It didn't, but none of the servants were foolish enough to risk her wrath, and the heavy couch was dutifully carried upstairs and arranged just so near the foot of the canopy bed.
Her cell phone was ablaze with messages, all of them vague. OMG! Ronnie, call me … it's about ur man! Ron, tlk 2 ur d8 … he's a slut! Who knew what that meant. She cleared the inbox and yawned. There was probably homework or something she could be doing … but Tivo beckoned with promises of soap operas and lurid love triangles—
She snorted, sourly amused at herself. Why, here she was in the middle of one of the worst love triangles she had ever seen, except everyone was refusing to play their part!
Beep! Girl u better check ur guy he's tlking 2 some1 else!
Her fingers lingered on the phone. She could call Archie … say something vaguely resembling an apology … and it would all be over and done with. But that would require some degree of humility. And she hadn't felt less humble in her life. Besides, the one she wanted to break was Betty.
She closed the phone, disconnecting the call. Archie could stew in his own juice for a while. Maybe he'd think twice before daring to try something like this again.
"Hello?" Mary Andrews shook her head at the dead signal. "What's with these kids nowadays? Was that one of your friends playing around on the phone?"
"What friends?" Archie asked bitterly.
She didn't answer immediately, busy with ladling soup into three bowls—"Fred, dinner!"—and placed one in front of Archie, feeling an ache at heart when he didn't even make a move towards it. "Do you mean to say that you still haven't made up with Jughead? Archie, honestly. What's wrong with you? You've never been this upset over a dance."
"What's wrong? What's wrong?" He slumped even further into his seat. "What's wrong is that I can't stop thinking that it's not just a dance anymore. Somehow, this dance is taking over my whole life. Over all of our lives. Before, it always felt like a game. Now, it feels like it's for keeps."
"Maybe some of you are growing apart," Fred Andrews said, carefully wiping his moustache. "It's not unusual for people to outgrow their friendships and their relationships as they age. Or maybe," and he looked at his son pointedly, "this is your smarter side telling you that you're not going to have too many friends for much longer if you don't change the way you treat them."
"I knew you were going to say that."
"Well, if you want me to stop, do something about it and stop dragging around the house like a spoiled brat. If you're not going to eat, go to your room."
Archie went, silently sitting on his bed and staring at the phone, which hadn't rung for him for days. His powder-blue tuxedo hung in its dry-cleaning bag on the closet. He couldn't stand to look at it.
Simple decisions, really. Little things here and there had started this. A careless decision to switch dates at the last minute. A little lie to get him out of one girl's house and over to the other's. Foolish flatteries and broken promises. How could he have known that payment would be due, and so soon?
Keep your date, Ronnie. They were words he had never thought he'd heard. And he never imagined how much they could hurt. Or how a sweet pair of blue eyes could flay him alive with a glance. Or how much he had come to rely on his best friend's presence, and how much he might suffer without it.
He looked at the phone again.
And then he finally called Betty.
