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: I just wanted to say a massive thank you to all my readers, commenters and followers. You have made writing this worthwhile. If I don't respond to your comments, please know that I still appreciate them so much!

On another note, I have released a coda to TDOBC entitled The Reappearance of Riverdale. It is/will be a collection of oneshots and short stories from the perspective of characters not told in this story. Currently, Veronica's first oneshot has been released to quell all the theorists who believe she is suspicious.

Later important chapters WILL be released on TROR as plot points are introduced in this story. Believe me, you're not going to want to miss it.

Otherwise, enjoy this extra long chapter!

Chapter Ten

The Library

The library door thuds behind me as if it's replicating my heart beat. It swings with a steady two beat rhythm. My feet thump to the same bass drum as I purposefully stride into the room, wooden floorboards aching under my weight.

The librarian, a silhouette of a woman, lifts her head from where she's shielded behind her desk. Her dark, tired eyes widen in suffering at the sight of a customer only five minutes after she's opened the door. With a pained expression, she shifts in her chair, the plastic creaking as she sighs into an attempted smile. Her computer churns loudly as it struggles to start up. No wonder she's not the perkiest in the morning. Somebody should really replace that machine. Then again, nothing new ever exists in Riverdale.

She passes me a weary glance, cracking her lips open; "Are you wanting-?" She nods her head lucidly in the direction of the door to the archive room, hand hoisting up a small pair of keys and swinging them between her fingers.

"I'm good," I say shortly, shaking my head once before swerving away. Clearly, she remembers Kevin and I from the other day. Or more accurately how much paper we used up in the photocopier.

Thankfully for her, I pride myself in being unpredictable. I don't plan on destroying any more trees.

Determined, I divert my attention back to my task at hand and I dive into the first aisle. The bookshelves swallow me whole. They're like a constricting cave, dark and unassuming. Towering above my head. Shadows lurch from the gaps between books, destroying every inch of dim light that manages to spill over the edges of the shelves. I stride forward, adjusting the backpack on my shoulder and thoroughly scour my eyes across the line of books on the nearest shelf, thrumming my index finger along each spine.

They're cracked and creased with sticky tape and not one of them is the book that I need.

I let out a sharp sigh.

A gentle, ethereal laugh follows me.

My head whips back sharply. There's nothing. Just two walls of dusty, worn books and the librarian sitting at her desk a distance away from the mouth of the aisle. Her head is bent and she's clicking away at her computer keyboard, clearly engrossed in something far more important than my sanity.

A breath shivers from my lips. I only let it linger for one moment before I scoff and grit my teeth.

And I spin back around.

A pair of glossy, opal eyes stare back at me.

They glisten out from behind a shelf, peaking from above the tops of books. A lock of golden hair falls seemly in front of them.

I shudder where I stand. I blink. I breathe.

They're gone.

She's gone.

My hand goes limp. We used to dance between these bookshelves; Betty and me. We'd hide away in here, originally with the plan to research for a Blue and Gold article or study for an exam. Except we'd end up being swept away into these exact aisles. Chasing each other between the shelves, peeking through cracks above novels, hiding behind pages, catching flirting glimpses of each other amongst it all. A smile. A dip of her eyelashes. A laugh. A sigh of satisfaction of living in this exact moment.

Of having each other to share these moments with.

Then she'd round a corner, I'd trace after her, and I'd scoop her up into my arms and kiss her.

My fingers feel numb. Useless I lift them up to pull out a heavy, hardback book, popping it open to any insignificant page. Here I am, left to scoop up any fleeting remains of her stored away within these books.

I stare down at the book, harsh lines of words printed across sharp, white pages. I read a few sentences with fleeting eyes. When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

How ironic. A Sherlock Holmes collection.

Any advice on finding a missing girlfriend, Mr Holmes? No, I didn't think so.

I slam the book closed, a puff of dust coughing out into the air, and I shove it back onto the shelf.

I don't have time for any of these books when it's not the one I'm looking for.

Irritated with the mystery fiction section, I manoeuvre my way through the shelves like it's a maze, tugging on misleading books as I pass. Because they're tall and narrow and tucked away enough to façade as the title I'm looking for.

They're not.

Instead, they're a trail of breadcrumbs like in the story of Hansel and Gretel. Scattered tatters of disappointments assuring a pathway back to my sanity.

I tap into my mind, trying to locate the book in my memory. The time Betty had brought me here, led me to the exact location and snatched the book directly the shelf. She'd clutched it to her chest like it was a gasp of oxygen. The memory is dark in my mind, shaded by a black hood. It obscures details.

But I remember Betty in that moment. She was coarse and determined, knowing completely her mind and willing to open even a sliver of it up to me to share.

Passing by shelves upon insignificant shelves, searching for something recognisable, I pull myself into the children's section. The wall of books stops being ominous and starts to resemble something familiar. I pluck at the tall, picture books, searching for a worn colour; blue and chipped.

They're all frustratingly clean; with sharp edges and glossy covers. The newest things in this whole building.

I swear.

The door thumps again.

My head lifts. I tighten my shoulders, casting a glance across the aisle to the librarian who still sits at her desk. But instead of staring harrowingly at her computer, her body as shifted to look towards the direction of the obscured door. She smiles politely, her skin taught and tired, as the creaking of floorboards accompany echoing footsteps.

I angle myself against the shelf, plucking a book from it and popping open the pages, using it to camouflage my face. An artistic interpretation of an elephant stares back at me. It asks me if I want to share some cake. I sneer mockingly back at it.

"Can I help you?" The librarian hums in question, clearly addressing our new company. I scoff. If only she had afforded me such a luxury.

I scold myself for overreacting. It's probably just Kevin.

My phone buzzes violently in my pocket. I curse, hanging my hand down to grab it before it starts bursting with the dreaded theme tune.

I stab the answer button before I have a chance to check the caller's name.

"What?" I hiss into the cell phone, manoeuvring myself away and out of earshot from any prying ears.

"You're very cheery this morning," Kevin sounds disconcerted on the other end of the line.

I sigh sharply. He acts as if he doesn't hear it.

"Anyway," Kevin mutters, clearly aware he isn't going to get a response from me. "I'm going to be late. Sorry. I- got caught up with a lot of things." Basically, he slept in.

"Okay," I mutter thoughtfully. I'm distracted. The footsteps in the library have stopped. It's hauntingly quiet once again.

Kevin's voice is the starkest sound in this place. "I thought I'd better call. Make sure you don't do anything irrational."

"Like I would," I scoff back sarcastically. It's drained of colour. Preoccupied. My mind is fleeting over other things. There had been a part of me that had hoped the footsteps had belonged to Kevin. That he had miraculously arrived on time.

But if those footsteps didn't belong to him, then-

"Hi, Jughead," the voice is lilting and young. It rings with an air of melancholy. An animated smile.

I spin around, the hand holding my phone slipping from my ear. Kevin's voice on the other end of the line is a distant noise. I stare. There, standing in front of me, at the edge of the aisle is a girl with glossy, dark locks, unseasonably ripped jeans and a pair of oversized neon green headphones swung around her neck.

A smile crashes out onto my face.

"Jellybean!" I grin wildly, impulsively catapulting towards her and scooping her into a crushing hug.

She splutters out a breath of air as if I've winded her, breaking it up with a cockled laugh. Tensing, she winces and groans, the way any sibling does when they cringe at any form of affection, complaining in a strained voice that she can't breathe. After a suitably long embrace, I concede and drop my arms from around her and instead clutch her shoulders.

"Nice to see you too," she bites on a smile, shoving my hands away defiantly and sticking hers instead inside the pockets of her hoodie. Yet her eyes are alight with a glow. "The guy at the diner said you'd be in here."

"Why didn't you text me?"

Jellybean shrugs; "I wanted to surprise you."

"Mission Accomplished," I coo playfully, which earns me a violent cringe from my sister.

Smiling, I gaze down at her, feeling a foreign lightness in my chest. It bats away at my uneasiness, flinging it across the court like it's a tennis racket. For all the time we'd missed spending together, when she'd been shipped off with Mom and I'd been trapped in Riverdale, we'd made up for it when I'd moved back in. Mom saw my appearance as an opportunity to use me as a babysitter, to fit more work hours in. So, Jellybean and I had filled our evenings with classic movies and adventurous popcorn flavours and throwing them at each other across the room.

She had been the perfect distraction, the perfect remedy to the wound that was still left behind. The reminder of Riverdale, and Dad, and Betty.

"Stop growing," I spout, smirking and reaching forward to ruffle the top of her hair.

Grimacing, she ducks under my hand and slaps it away. "You saw me at Christmas," she glares, trying to keep her pout straight and unbroken with a smile.

With a laugh, I scoop an arm around her shoulder and swing us around to pace out between the bookshelves. The librarian smiles gently at us, clearly averting her attention back to her ancient computer screen so that we feel like we have some innate form of privacy. A fleeting thought skips over my mind. I should ask her about the book. If that computer system is good for anything, it better be excellent at finding desperately needed books for a six-year-old missing persons mystery.

But another question, persistent in its niggling, takes over.

"Where's Mom?" I ask suddenly, tightening my arm around Jellybean's shoulders and glancing around as if Mom will be lurking in a corner somewhere, her face buried in a book about parenting.

"Oh," Jellybean grumbles quietly, her once cheery demeanour diminishing. I feel her shoulders sad; "She didn't want to come. Said she couldn't get the time off work."

I snort. Of course, she didn't come. She just let her sixteen-year-old daughter travel here all by herself to partake in her recently deceased father's funeral. How responsible. I'll be making a forceful call to her later.

"Don't worry about it, Jug, I'm fine," Jellybean tries to sound cheery again. "Anyway, the funeral's tomorrow and I got here in time so-" There's nothing to worry about, is what she wants to say. I can hear it in her tone. The hopefulness that's trying to chip through.

But her voice cracks before she can finish.

Because Jellybean didn't spend as much time with Dad. And as much as she might try and deny it, as much as she might put a brave face on for Mom, she misses him. She misses him to her core and I'm not enough of a father substitute for her.

She shields her face with her waist length hair, trying to force on a smile. Her cheeks are reddening with threatening tears. I can see the thought of Dad's death dawning on her, creeping up again like an unwanted weed. My hand twitches. I could dig into my wallet and pull out a twenty-dollar bill and tell her to treat herself with something at Pop's. Or I could hand her the key to the trailer and tell her she can just chill out or sleep or try out the motorbike.

Because I have things to do. I have Kevin to meet and a book to find and my sanity to sift through.

But my hand halts. For the briefest of moments, inside the face of Jellybean, I see Betty. Young and alive and the same age as my sister. And I instantly know. The feeling plummets to the bottom of my stomach like a foundation stone. A universal truth.

There's a sixteen-year-old girl that needs me more than Betty does right now.

And so, I cup my hand on Jellybean's shoulder and say, as bravely as I can, "I miss him too, kid."

Her smile wavers, turning to look at me as her eyes are glistening. Then, with the strongest of voices she can manage, she sparks back, "I'm not a kid."

We laugh. It cracks and shakes but it's still a laugh. And I'm glad for it.

Jellybean throws her bulging red rucksack through the door as soon as we reach the trailer. It collides with the cold, hard floor with a thwack. What has she got stored in there, illegal guns?

"Make yourself at home?" I suggest bravely as my younger sister pieces her way into the trailer and I flick on the light. It quivers like a buzzing firefly. Stepping into the groaning trailer, I close the door behind me, trying to soothe its aggressive creak. It really needs to be oiled.

The room is wistfully quiet. I can almost hear the dust whistling in the air.

"What is this, Jug?" Jellybean suddenly says, her voice slow and hushed.

I turn around quickly, finding my sister standing stalk still, staring at the suspect board, photographs and names crudely pinned on the wall. I'd added Archie's polaroid and kept a space for the one I'd managed to snap of Fred this morning. Notes have been scrawled jaggedly on crumpled lined paper and stuck to the wall, as well as blood red yarn tying every clue together like a primitive spiderweb.

I pace forward, scooping up the streams of paper crowding the table and plucking the infamous cypher photograph to pocket it to a safer, less out in the open place. "Just a project I'm working on," I say rapidly, forcing it to sound as casual as possible. I snap my gaze to her, my eyes dark and deliberate, "And not something you're going to get involved in, okay?"

Jellybean sighs an okay and thumps down onto the couch, lolling her head back against a cushion.

I breathe out, moving my collected papers to a corner of the kitchen counter. "I know it's pretty much junk," I call out to her, busying myself with straightening up the pages and tucking up underneath a cabinet, "But if there's anything here of Dad's that you want – like as a memento or something – you can have it."

I hear her hum from the other room. It's wilted and in a minor key.

I pace back through to the living room, fully prepared to offer her something to eat or drink. But she's collapsed on the couch, her eyes glazed over, her eyelids drooping. A second later, her breathing has become calm and steady and I can tell she's fallen asleep.

Feeling a gentle smile tug on my lips and the innate feeling that I desperately care for my sister, I piece my way quietly through to the bed, pull up the duvet cover and carry it over into the living room. As silently as I can, I tuck it over Jellybean, the cover streaming over the sides of the sofa and step back. She must have had a long trip.

As soon as I'm sure she's firmly asleep, I turn around, digging in my pocket for my cell phone and pacing across the floor to open the door to the trailer. Scrolling through my contacts, I step outside the trailer, close the door behind me and I stab Kevin's name.

The phone rings hollowly in my ear. I'd texted him as I'd been leaving the library with a brief note of the change of plans. My mind had been distracted. Jellybean was kicking at her boots at the front door of the library while I had taken the chance to catch the librarian in a conversation.

It hadn't gone exactly as planned. I'd stood there, asked politely and as briskly as I could whether the library stocked a Nancy Drew Secret Code Activity Book. The librarian had smiled grimly back at me, the thought of using the computer to search anything clearly torturing her. And maybe she just made up her answer. But she had clacked her fingers on the keys, hummed for a period too long, and then said the book was on loan. It had been on loan for the last six years.

In that exact moment, my mouth had dried like sandpaper.

Because if that was true, if the cypher on the back of the photograph matched the symbols in that book, then it is very likely Betty really could have written them.

And if she wrote them, I need to know what they say. I need to find out what she felt the need to tell Archie and not me. The feeling gnaws at me like I'm a raw fish.

"What is it?" Kevin answers the phone, his voice drowsy and tired.

I blink, scoffing. His voice pulls me back in to reality. "Have you been asleep?"

Kevin yawns on the other end of the line. "Wouldn't you be if your ridiculously early morning plans had been cancelled?"

I don't answer.

"What do you want, Jughead?" Kevin groans. It isn't harsh.

I thrum my fingers on the pocket of my jeans, toying with how to word it. Because I need more than the recorder from Kevin now.

Lowering my voice, I cast my harsh gaze around the trailer park in case of any unwanted passer-by's. And I say, as clearly and as hushed as I can; "I need you to break into the Cooper's house."