Chapter 29
Jughead didn't consider himself much of a dreamer. Until very recently, he'd have said that his life thus far had proven to him that dreams were the fastest road to disappointment… and he always seemed to get there plenty fast as it was. So he was a realist by choice… a survivor… maybe even a bit of a cynic.
But sometime very recently, a few dreams must have snuck in without his noticing. Maybe they'd crept into his head while he was crafting his articles on the Jason Blossom investigation, imagining a career of work just like this, somewhere far from Riverdale. Maybe they'd lodged in his gut when his dad started showing up for work, cleaning the trailer, reading Jughead's manuscript. Or maybe they'd stolen into his heart when he'd opened it to let in a girl so sweetly ferocious, so fearlessly kind that she probably counted as a dream in her own right.
He didn't really know how it happened, or when… and he supposed it didn't much matter now; no matter when or how, it was abundantly clear that he had been harbouring at least one or two dreams. Because right at this moment, he could feel them falling to pieces all around him.
It had been bad enough listening to Ms. Weiss, from Social Services, dance euphemistically around his mother's unwillingness to parent him, to have any involvement in his care, even in his current extremity.
But when Archie confidently asserted that Jughead could keep staying at the Andrews house, one quick glance at Fred's face had been enough to assure him the solution wouldn't be that simple.
To do Fred justice, Jughead could tell he'd tried… could see how humiliated he was that Social Services hadn't deemed him fit to foster Jughead. Honestly, if one DUI and a "cash flow problem" were enough to disqualify caregivers, Jughead was amazed he and Jellybean had been allowed to stay with their parents beyond the age of three.
But the news was deeply unsettling, and not only because it threw his own immediate housing situation into jeopardy. From his perspective, Fred had always seemed like the perfect father… loving and steady and reliable. And, despite some recent setbacks, Jughead had always felt a certain security in the idea that Fred would provide that stability for him, too. DUIs and failing grades from the Social Services authorities did not fit that image. Staring, stricken, at Fred now, Jughead saw, not the source of all safety, but… a man… a good one, to be sure, but still just a man. Fallible and, in this situation, powerless. Confronted with that reality – had he seriously believed himself a realist? – Jughead felt more profoundly alone, more exposed and vulnerable, than he'd ever been in his turbulent life.
"There's a family on the south side that's agreed to foster you," Ms. Weiss was saying. "They're good people. They've worked with us before."
Foster care. The spectre that had loomed in the shadows of Jughead's life from his earliest recollection, the threat that had induced him and Jellybean to hide empty lunch boxes and make excuses for school absences when there wasn't gas money – or a car – to get them there. "Don't tell anyone, or they'll put you in foster care" had been their most important house rule from the time he could talk. And even though he knew that foster care wasn't the threatening boogeyman it had seemed to him in those days, the thought terrified him, adding to his rising sense of panic.
At the same time, he could see the Fred was feeling just as bad as he was at the moment. And, devastated as he was at the discovery of Fred's feet of clay, Jughead desperately wanted to make all this better for the only adult in his life who'd never let him down.
"It doesn't sound…" he swallowed, willing his voice not to break, "completely horrible," he said. It wasn't a ringing endorsement, but it was the best he could do; he hoped it was enough to lighten Fred's burden, because he just didn't have the strength to do any more right now.
"It does mean you'll be in a different school district, Jughead, and you'll have to transfer schools," Ms. Weiss told him.
Jughead leaned against the door frame into the kitchen, focusing his gaze on a spot in the middle distance, willing himself not to cry, not to show by so much as the flicker of an eyelash that he was bleeding inside, his own desperation threatening to choke him. Everything was slipping away…
His mother had been the first to leave him, taking a tearful Jellybean with her. Then FP had become impossible to live with, even before his incarceration. Now Fred, his last refuge, was being pulled off the field of defence… unwillingly, but inexorably… along with his town… his school… his friends…
Dimly, he heard Archie protesting in the background, heard the social worker answering him. But all that really registered was her conclusion.
"… You'll be on the south side by the end of the week."
