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/Romance
Timeline: Post-Season One. Depending on the events of Season Two will depend of whether it's incorporated into this story.
Pairing: Betty/Jughead
Rating: T
A/N: A longer chapter than usual because I owe you guys. Sorry for the wait, it takes time to write this nonsense. This is not an understatement when I say comments and reviews really do make a difference. They keep me going and motivated to bring you the next chapter and the next and the next.
Chapter Nine
Interview
In the early hours of the morning, the world is dead. It is an empty wasteland, the only light it holds encased in dull streetlamps and a moon misted by cobweb clouds. It is as if nothing can exist alive at this hour. In sleep, Riverdale is deafeningly lonely.
And Kevin Keller is awake.
He can't sleep. His mind is too wild. It is here where his thoughts are the messiest.
Thoughts of her drip in his mind. Like an inconsistent leak in a tap, flicking sharp icicles of water onto the crown of his head.
Betty haunts him in black and white. The flickering fuzzy quality of a CCTV camera.
The last digital memory of her is trapped in that screen. Mundane and empty. An image sitting in his father's office, gathering dust.
He'd watched it. Caught sight of her stand up from her booth at POP's. Pick up her bag from the seat. Pace across the checkerboard floor. Pull her collar up against the weather. He'd been convinced, terrified, that she would suddenly jerk to a stop, crank her head round like a marionette and stare right at him.
Like she knew he was there watching her.
Like her soul hadn't quite disappeared. That it was trapped in this digital version of her.
In the semi darkness, between the sheets of his bed, the pages of Betty's diary crinkle open.
This feels invading. As if he's flicking through her thoughts like it's an encyclopaedia. Like he's playing a game of Operation and getting dangerously close to her heart. He brushes his thumb over the black inked words, indented with the pressure she wrote them with. The pages dusty and creased and hold a world of secrets.
He finds the first happy entry he can. Something to cling onto before this endless night of no sleep.
It's a page of dreams. Large, bold letters of New York invade the top of the page, a stream of bullet points flowing out from underneath it. A meticulously planned out future – full of opportunities and excitement – that had involved both him and Veronica. One that they had all contributed to with careless imaginations.
What had become of those dreams? Veronica had left for the city, Betty had left everything, and Kevin had barely left his house.
The window shudders. The breeze rocks the glass. Kevin shivers, tugging the duvet of his bed up to his neck. He's always taken the silence of his apartment as comforting. Now it feels hollow and exposing. His eyes flicker around the bedroom, watching shifting shadows. He wonders if he's ever really been alone.
Kevin had found this apartment not long after he'd left high school. It was ideal; small enough to fit just him, large enough to store all his secrets.
It had been his way of separating himself from his father; distancing himself from the 'Sheriff's Son' label. Finding himself beyond that.
It was a decision to become something more than that.
And yet he still finds himself standing in front of a mirror, incessantly combing his hair to a glossy sheen, hoping to live up to his father's expectations.
Kevin blows out a breath, his eyes collapsing back to the diary. He should close it. Forget about Betty's thoughts and discover his own. Place it on his night stand, roll over into his duvet and fall asleep.
His fingers twitch.
He folds over the next page and begins to read.
There is a distinct moment between being asleep and awake that dreams seem deceptively real. Which is why, for the briefest of moments, I'm convinced I'm waking up next to Betty.
Her blonde hair is the loose threads of an unravelling tapestry on my bare shoulder. Her cool breath on my neck is the breeze creeping in through a mysterious crack in the wall. Her hands reaching out for mine are the twisting creases of my duvet.
I want to linger in it just for a second longer. To breathe it in as if it's real.
Instead, my dry eyes open. They're raw and tired. And awake.
The moment passes.
The trailer is empty and void. There is not a whisper of Betty.
I roll over on the bed. I imagine it to feel oddly warm.
Groggily, I push myself up onto my elbows. The digital clock flashes 05:54 am. Its red glow illuminates the ink stained missing poster hanging limply from a makeshift washing line over a nearby radiator. It had been my vain attempt to dry it overnight. Betty, red ink seeping into her hair, stares unblinking back at me.
It's as if she knows all my secrets. I scoff. It catches in my throat.
I let out a grunt, scrunching my face up as I fall back against the pillow.
My cell phone jolts. It rumbles on the nightstand. Starting, I let out a low growl, swearing at Kevin for phoning my so early and I fumble to grab it, so I can tell him that myself –
It isn't a phone call. Instead the harsh, bright screen declares that it is 6 am therefore time to get up. I grunt, my fingers too weak to keep a hold of the phone. It slips from my hands and thumps on the mattress.
In all the plans to return to Riverdale, I had forgotten to disengage my work alarm.
This time I swear at myself.
In a couple of hours, my boss will probably be ranting, forgetting that he'd granted me compassionate leave. In my hazy, half asleep state, I wonder how long it will take him to overheat without someone there to organise his files for him. I drag out a slow, lazy smile.
It's cut short by the alarm blaring even louder.
"Fine," I grumble hoarsely, grabbing for it. Defiantly, it slips off the side of the bed, thudding to the floor. Typical. Never making things easy for me. With a low sigh, I drag myself out of bed, my bare feet thumping on the cold, wooden floor. Snatching my phone to shut it up, I fumble through to the living room, kicking a stray beer can into a corner on the way.
The living room is just as eerie. The table is sprawled with the mess I had made last night; photocopies of newspaper reports flipped over to be repeatedly inked on the backs with copies of the cypher. I'd spent all last night imitating it onto what spare paper I could find, analysing a pattern, searching for familiarities in the curve of the symbols.
I swerve into the kitchenette, swinging open the fridge. A stench smacks me in the throat. I recoil, slamming it closed. Amid all my distractions, I had forgotten to replace all the rotting food.
Gagging, I stumble back through to the living room.
There is something so nostalgic about the pen strokes of the cypher. The shapes. Like I've seen it before.
I chew on the thought, dropping down onto the couch. Aimlessly, I thumb my cell phone, thinking of an excuse to go to POP's and get breakfast. My stomach grumbles.
My phone beeps with a reminder.
Phone Fred.
I blink at it. "Have I ever told you that you're a genius?" I praise, simultaneously thanking my former self for imputing the reminder and forgiving the phone for it's previous alarm. And I swing myself up from the sofa and stab the call button.
The hamburger crunches with satisfying delight as I bite into it. It's juicy and crisp and I wonder how I've lived without these so long.
POP's is dim with the early morning glow. It casts its shadow through the shutters, a ladder of lines streaming along the booth tables and dripping onto the floor. There's a swish of a mop behind me as Pop cleans the floors, his eyes ever so occasionally flicking over to his only customer this early in the morning. I feel his gaze trained on my back.
I sniff once out of habit and take another bite out of my burger.
There's a faint, running melody churning through the air. I wonder if Pop has turned on the old jukebox in the corner. The tune grinds as the record catches.
I look up from my burger. It almost slips from my hands. Betty Cooper sits across from me, her hair tugged into a ponytail, a smile wilting from her lips.
"Betty?" I almost choke. This place has done this to me before. I resist the urge to believe it's real.
I wish we could just leave.
The voice I hear isn't hers. It's soft and broken and an overused version of my own. It sounds like the record player.
Just hop on a motorcycle and just leave Riverdale.
Betty's ghostly hands reach out to fall through mine. She flickers like the memory she is. My fingers stretch out to touch her arm. All they feel is the cold, worn table.
She dips her head. Her ponytail is limp. She fuzzes and fades like a static radio wave.
Maybe she did leave Riverdale. Just like we'd wished in these whispers. Between held hands and stolen kisses. Maybe she'd just forgotten to take me with her.
Like Romeo and Juliet but we live happily ever after instead.
There's a shudder behind me. The napkins on the table flutter as the door swings open.
A dribble of grease escapes down my chin. I barely catch it with the back of my hand.
I snatch a glance back across the booth. It's empty. Betty's gone.
My shoulders droop with weight. Reality is so lucid here.
"Hey," a calm voice swings past me, a figure thumping down into the booth across from me. He smiles slowly, a trace of warmth caught in it. For the past six years, he must have been using up all the warmth in his body. It's resorted to draining the colour from the tips of his hair. "Sorry, bad timing," Fred Andrews motions to my half-eaten burger clearly questioning, with a quirk of his eyebrow, my choice of diet this early in the morning.
"No," I shake my head once, blinking away my momentary delusion and taking a large bite out of the burger before plopping it back onto the plate. I rub my hands together to wipe the grease off Fred leans back into the chair, the leather sighing as he sinks into it as if it's a mattress. His eyelids are drooping. I'd almost forgotten how early it is.
"Sorry for calling you here this early," I chew and swallow.
Fred scoffs kindly as if I couldn't have said anything more untrue. "Don't mention it." He looks on me as if I'm a second son. I cough uncomfortably. It's not something I'm used to.
"How's retirement going?" I ask casually, finding the instant need to change the topic.
Fred raises his thick eyebrows slowly, casting a heavy glance past the blinds and through the window. "Not as easy as everyone would let me to believe," he says cryptically, before he returns his gaze back at me, his eyes gentle and creasing with laughter. "How about you? How's the big city?"
I shrug jaggedly. "You know, work is work." The words spill out of my mouth too quick. "Actually, there was something I wanted talk to you about-"
"Oh, right, the funeral," Fred sits up a little straighter, weaving his worn, rough hands together, resting them on the edge of the table. Clearly his son hasn't let him in on the world's worst kept secret yet.
"Well, see," I chew on the inside of my cheek aimlessly, casting my gaze away thoughtfully, "We've decided to go in a different direction." This sounds like a job interview. "It's better if he's cremated. Less trouble." My voice trails off.
Fred nods understandably though his eyes simmer with confusion. The skin on his forehead creases in conflict. Or maybe that's just old age.
"I actually wanted to talk to you about something else." Instinctively, I shove my hand into my backpack and snatch out a wad of paper, my sharpie clipped to the top of it. I slide the pen off, unclipping the lid with my mouth and poising it onto the top sheet of paper.
Since I haven't been prepared enough to acquire my recorder back from Kevin yet, this is going to have to be old school.
I spit the pen lid out of my mouth.
"Can you tell me what happened the day Betty disappeared?"
"I was driving," Fred mutters, his fists flexing as if he's still holding onto the steering wheel six years later. "It was after a meeting with a client. I was heading home late."
The room sinks around me, swirling and twisting into a memory. It shifts and swirls, walls morphing into trees, the floor being replaced with tarmac. It glistens with wet puddles of moonlight in the darkness. We're seated in a booth near a bus stop at the edge of a forest.
A cold figure stands under the bus shelter, arms wrapped protectively around herself.
"It was, what, eight? Eight thirty?" Fred recounts, his greying hair caught in a brief breeze. It flutters like papers.
I nod silently, this information sounding familiar, as I scribble it down in fat, bold letters. A car zooms past on the opposite side of the road, its headlights scanning over us like searchlights. It kicks up a wind that tries to steal my note papers. I grip onto them sternly.
"I remember seeing Betty standing on the side of the road, at the bus stop," Fred hums in a minor key. His gaze is cast away from me, eyebrows knitted tightly together. "I thought it was odd she was out so late. I pulled up and asked her if she was okay."
"What was she wearing, do you remember?" my voice asks as my hand is preoccupied with taking notes.
Fred lets out a short, disheartened sigh. It's as if he wants to remember more than he can. "Oh, I don't know," he mutters, unsure. "A coat? Pink maybe? Red? It was dark."
The figure is pacing up and down the sidewalk, counting her steps, counting the time. She's wrapped up in her pink trench coat, hands buried in their deep pockets. She looks anxious.
Across from me, Fred's eyes, illuminated by a set of slowing headlights, glance up at me. It's as if he has just remembered a flicker of information. "She was looking at her phone."
The figure pulls out her cell phone from her pocket, the bright screen alighting her face with a cool glow.
Her phone. She had her phone with her.
She'd texted me from her phone.
An insistent thought snips at me. I repeatedly press the nub of my sharpie on the page, the ink soaking out like a drop of blood. "If it was dark," I say slowly, my voice deep and raspy. "How did you know it was Betty?"
Fred laces his fingers together, tapping one thumb on top of the other. "I guess," he says thoughtfully, "when I got close enough, I recognised her. My headlights were on." It's logical. Reasonable.
And yet he doesn't remember the colour of her coat.
I take one last glance up at the figure on the side of the road, her painted fingernail rapping anxiously on the back of her phone case. Her blonde hair swishes behind her. It's tied up in a ponytail.
Then the booth slips back into its usual surroundings like a glove is being put back on. Pop is still churning unusual music in the corner, the shiny floor is still glistening with patches of the early morning. My half-eaten burger still sits limply on my plate.
It's probably cold now. I mourn it.
"Thanks," I mumble satisfied as I finish the rest of my notes. I don't look up at him. "I think that's everything."
It's not everything.
Fred doesn't respond. Instead, he shifts back into his seat. I can almost hear him flick through his thoughts in his mind like an archive, like his organised filing cabinets. Mulling them over.
"Are you working on an article about this then?" Fred asks, curiously.
"Something like that," I mumble. I don't tell him the truth. He doesn't need to hear it.
Fred breathes out. Clearly, he knows he's not going to get any more information out of me. He shifts out of his seat, stretching, yawning. "Well, if you don't mind, I think I'm going to head-"
"Hey," I bob my head up, the thought springing in my mind. I cut him off. Fred looks at me, surprised. I don't react. "You didn't get any codes or photographs in the mail recently, did you?"
Fred's eyes crease with bewilderment. "No," he says slowly as if he has to think about it. That he may have mistaken something important like a photograph for junk mail. He still proceeds to shake his head. "No, I haven't."
I smile up at him. It's tight and strained. I don't know whether to believe him.
As Fred Andrews retreats out of POP's, I heave my eyes up, twisting around to call for an order of another hamburger from Pop. My gaze snags on a sheet of paper stuck on the wall beside the counter. A clean, pristine MISSING poster. Betty's eyes shine out.
A smile tugs on my lips. It's hopeful. Hope for the good left in this town. The good that is hidden in Pop.
He must have seen what I had been working on the last time I was here. He must have found the poster outside. Ripped it up. Pinned it up here.
Riverdale isn't as dead as it might seem.
Gazing, I focus on the picture, memorizing the familiar curve of Betty's face, the sweep of her blonde hair, the arch of her smile. And then I imagine it bleeding with red ink. My smile freezes on my face.
Wait.
I count my breaths. My eyes glaze over. Memories sift themselves through my brain.
Of photographs and missing posters and cyphers.
A scoff escapes from my mouth in one swift motion. I shake my head over and over again, shocked at my own stupidity.
Well, I've been idiotic.
Swiftly, I tug my phone out of my pocket. With a buzzing insistence in my brain, I whirl to my contacts and begin typing up a fervent text to Kevin.
Library. Ten mins. Bring the recorder.
