Synopsis: It has been six years since Jughead Jones set foot inside Riverdale. A month before he left, his girlfriend Betty Cooper vanished without a trace. And her case has gone cold. Now that he's back, he's determined to find out what happened to Betty Cooper. And whether he's one of the reasons she vanished in the first place.

Genre: Crime/Mystery/Romance

Timeline: Post-Season One. Depending on the events of Season Two will depend on whether it's incorporated into this story.

Pairing: Betty/Jughead

Rating: T

A/N: Although this chapter was originally an incoherent mess, I'm actually really proud of it now. Hopefully, it will fulfil all your needs after that mess of a last episode. I'm still reeling.

Please enjoy!


Chapter Seven

Diary

The wipers wrestle in vain to swipe the rain from the parked car's windscreen, rubber squeaking against glass. I can barely hear myself think over the sound of a million raindrops hitting the windscreen all at once.

"My mom always told me never to get into a car with strangers," I say pointedly, decidedly staring straight ahead out the window, smothered with water as it is, instead of at Archie.

I feel him shift beside me, fingers flexing on the dormant steering wheel.

"I'm hardly a stranger, Jughead," he laughs under his breath but it's hollow and cracked. I still don't look at him.

"It sure feels like you are," I mutter under my breath, keeping it as low to my chest as possible. Yet, in this small, empty space, I'm so sure he can still hear it, echoing.

The night paints the trees black as if it is an artist brushing the world in a shade of darkness suiting its mood. Currently, the night is clearly resentful.

He acts as if he hasn't heard it.

"I know what you're up to, Jug," Archie sighs, his stiff fingers finally dropping from the steering wheel only to roll up and down his thighs. It's clear that the stiff fabric of his suit is itching his skin. It doesn't suit him.

Ever since I bumped him again, Archie has felt so distant. As if my eyesight has grown blurry when it used to be so clear. He used to be so readable, so predictable; a boy who wore his emotions on his face like a newspaper headline. Now here he is, a man, seated here in his car at the edge of a forest, doing something I'd never expected him to do; confronting me.

And I'd thought he was gullible and oblivious. How naïve of me.

"How did you find out?" I finally ask, voice low and abrasive, barely shifting my eyes to catch a glimpse of his shoulder. He's kept the lights inside the car switched off. I wonder what he's trying to hide.

Water soaks from my sodden clothes into the leather of the car seat. Droplets from the ends of my hair drip down to join them. It feels like I'm melting. I wonder if this is what the Wicked Witch of the West felt like when she melted at the end of the Wizard of Oz. I wonder if Riverdale sees me as its villain.

Archie rolls his eyes towards me, gaze dark, and for the first time he smiles. "I always notice when something's missing from my cork board."


"September 5th, 2018"

Kevin Keller chokes on the words as he barely manages to make them audible. Polly leans in anxiously to hear him, hands taut on the table, expression both conflicted and steadfast. She knows she has to do this for Betty. She doesn't know if her heart can take it.

He raises his voice. Just a fraction. Just enough that it won't break.

"Last night, I had a dream. It was weird. Archie was just standing there, stalk still in his garden. I was trying to talk to him. I couldn't get any reaction out of him, his eyes were this hollow colour and his skin was pale. It was as if he was dead."

Kevin takes a breath. He can almost hear the pen scratching against the journal's paper as Betty writes these words. Her voice swells in the air around him, forming the words that he speaks.

"Then I turned around and everyone else was there. Mom and Pop and Veronica and Jughead and Polly."

He hears Polly hitch in a breath. Her fingers look ice cold. He debates on whether he should reach out and hold them.

"They were all just standing there. Just like Archie. Frozen still and dead-like. I think my stress is getting to me."

He doesn't. Her fingers curl in on themselves, the ends of her nails biting into her skin. He distracts himself with the diary, wrinkled paper and all.

"I'm going to head over to POP's. I need a milkshake."

"She used to have dreams all the time," Polly interrupts. Kevin's head bobs up to look at her. She's smiling wistfully, looking down at her half worn nail polish. Blonde streaks of hair fall in front of her face. "She'd mention them to me," Her eyes glaze over as they bounce over to the window, rain streaking down the glass. Her reflection is mournful and smeared. "She said she was recording them to publish into one of those dream diaries." A little bubble of a laugh chokes from her throat. It rolls down her skin like a tear.

Kevin looks back at her, the remnants of a sister that used to exist. Is she no longer a sister if there is no one left to be a sister to?

"Wait, no," Polly's face flashes towards him, expression falling. His feelings must be so vivid on his face. "Please don't take it personally. She didn't tell many people about it. I think it was a personal thing for her." Polly's eyes droop. A lot of things were personal to Betty. Even now, even how she disappeared. It's all personal. It's all secret.

Without asking Polly's permission, Kevin dips his head back towards the diary thumbing the page towards the next entry, the paper crinkling as he turns it.

"September 6th, 2018"

Kevin's voice freezes.

"What?" Polly sounds panicked. "What does it say?"

He hesitates. Slowly, he looks up at the girl with the blonde hair and the life that Betty could have had. "Nothing," he croaks. It's as if Betty disappeared in the middle of a sentence. Stood up from her desk, diary fluttered open, and vanished; leaving the journal permanently agape never to be closed by her again. "It's empty."


Was this what it was like? If Betty had gotten into a car that night instead of choosing to run into the forest?

Archie's car rumbles underneath me as he drives through Riverdale. He shifts in his seat as he reaches forward to flick the radio on. It crackles and splutters to life, a spewing mess of white noise, before he resoundingly switches it off.

Would Betty have gotten into a car with someone she knew or were her secrets so precious that she'd be more inclined to accept a ride from a stranger?

I glower in my sticky wet clothes and dripping hair, studying the car's window and the rain that claims it.

A blur of buildings pass us, figures of people running in the rain with hoods pulled up and collars yanked over their heads. They're all black and dust, a smearing across the horizon. We whiz past them, Archie clearly breaking the speed limit for the town, wheels crackling against the road and-

There's a wisp of blonde hair. A flash of bright green eyes. A swing of a ponytail.

"Stop the car!" I croak.

"What?" Archie gawks, glancing back at me in a fit of shock. He doesn't move towards the breaks.

I slap him on the arm, frantic. "I said stop the car!"

"Okay!" he grunts. With a violent shrug, Archie slams on the brakes, the car shuddering to a stop. Even before it's wheels have halted, I snap off my seatbelt, push open the door and tumble out.

The rain drenches me.

Betty. I glance around wildly, my eyes a mess in their sockets. I saw her. I saw her somewhere.

In a distracted burst of conviction, I leap into a run. My feet slap against the drenched road. I dance around, throwing my gaze this way and that, desperately looking for her. Begging to find her.

"Betty!" I yell out, searching for that familiar flash of blonde hair.

Stray heads, those of whom are daring the wet weather, yank towards me. As if I've just uttered a forbidden word.

"Jughead!" Archie's car door slams closed as he climbs out, his red hair soaking into a deep auburn as the rain claims in. "What are you doing?"

My breathing sharpens, just for a moment, as the world blurs into its usual grey. And there is no spark of blonde in sight.

My shoulders droop. I look down at my hands. "Betty," I breathe out, a crumbling mess. What the hell am I doing? Of course she's not here. She's never here. She's not just been stashed away for six years, just to come striding out in her seventeen-year old skin, as perky and as beautiful as usual.

"Are you alright?" Archie's voice is close to me.

I glance up into his face. He's squelched his way from the car towards me without making a sound. Or my ears have been so clouded with my own thoughts I didn't here him.

"I'm fine," I growl under my breath, more at myself than at him.

His eyes flicker at our audience before returning to me. "Are you sure? Because you just-"

"I said," I say slowly, bitterly, spitting at him, "I'm fine."

And I swivel back towards the car, half deciding to walk home-

When there stands the flash of blonde.

"Jughead?"


Kevin rewinds the cassette again, worried that the old, recording machine will eat away at the tape inside it.

"Do you remember?" he hears his own voice, crackling and cautious. He's always hated his voice in recordings. It makes him cringe. "Did she take anything with her the day she-"

"Your dad asked the same thing," the recording of Polly sighs. He can hear her breathing, slow and broken, even in this poor quality. "I don't- If she took anything, she didn't take much. Her phone?" She offers, as if that's obvious.

Betty would never leave without her phone.

Her phone has never been found.

"It's just," Kevin's voice is emboldened, "if this really mattered that much to her," he glances down at the diary on POP's table, the one he'd held up at just that moment, "You'd think she would have taken it with her." If she was planning to run away.

Polly had had to leave. She'd only given a set time limit for the babysitter and didn't trust them to stay even until then. She'd packed up her things, offering some of the photos to Kevin – who'd refused – and had left with a promise that she'd speak to her dad. Convince him to speak.

She left the diary behind too.

With a sigh, Kevin presses down the rewind button, churning it further back.

"Was it torn out? Is it missing?"

"I don't think so."

He shakes his head. Not the right part.

He stabs down the button again. Voices sound so odd backwards.

"She didn't tell many people about it. I think it was a personal thing for her."

He flicks the rewind button further back.

"I found this."

He stops. Listens. Sets the portable recorder against the booth table, hesitating. This was the moment Polly showed him the diary.

Kevin, with a breath of resolution, reaches forward. And, decidedly, he rewinds further back, just before Polly's words about the diary were uttered.

And he hits record.


"Polly," I croak out, staring at the sister of Betty Cooper.

The young mother stares back, mouth tipped agape, strands of blonde hair soaked and clinging to her cheeks.

"Jughead," she breathes out. The knuckles on her hands whiten. She looks alarmed.

Before I can crack my mouth open to respond, to explain, to beg for- for something, her eyes harden and bubble and she sweeps past me.

I swivel to go after her but Archie's arm blocks me.

"Come on," he mutters under his breath warningly. He ushers me towards the car. As much as I want to resist him, I have no energy. I stumble through his orders. "We need to talk."

"You make it sound like we're going to break up," I sneer. My tone is lacklustre.

I'm still distracted by Polly.

Archie doesn't respond. Instead, he pats me on the back, steers me towards his vehicle and hurries me inside.


POP's is empty as Kevin paces, approaching the old man busying himself behind the counter.

"Hey there, Pop," he smiles calmly. The greying man glances up from his wet cloth, catching site of Kevin's eyes. He acts as if he hasn't heard a single word that has been uttered in this place.

"Kevin," he smiles back, eyes wrinkling with his usual kindness. "Can I get you something? Milkshake? Burger?"

"Actually," Kevin tries carefully, mincing his words. "I was looking for an answer to a question."

Pop looks anxious as he tries to cover it with one of his signature smiles. Kevin takes that as encouragement. Behind his back, he flicks on the portable recorder's switch. The tape swirls into life.

"Was Betty in here the day before she disappeared?"