A growing up kinda drabble.

Sk8r-Hater Jughead Jones

Betty was mad at me and I rolled around on my skateboard, flipping it beneath my feet trying to ignore her madness but it wasn't working because she stood in front of me with her hands on her hips and her glare burning hotter than the sun in summer. "What are you doing?" she asks me. "Why are you here?"

I was flipping in front of her house trying to act like I wasn't here for her but I was. I jump off and snap my suspenders against me. "Came to see Archie," I tell her and now I feel like rolling away because she reads right through me.

"Archie and them have gone on holiday, Juggie, don't lie."

I didn't want to lie. I wanted to tell her the truth and tell her I felt like crap for shoving her off all week. I still remember the look on her face when she came up to me at school and I told her I was too busy to come to her birthday. The boys laughed but I think I saw glitter in the corner of her blue eyes, glitter as in tears. "I'm not lying," I mumble. "I thought he was here…"

"You know he's not here, Juggie. That's why he didn't come to my birthday."

"Your turn to tell me a lie, Betts, come on, tell me a lie."

Betty pouts and taps her foot. "I'm not mad that you didn't come to my birthday."

I gulp down a funny feeling in my throat. "Ok," I say sighing. "I'm a shit friend, I know it."

"Don't swear," she hisses, looking behind her in case her mom was hovering like she always does these days. "You shouldn't swear."

The look on her face with her pouting lips and glittering eyes made me laugh. She was covered in cotton kind of growing up and it made smile. I was turning into my dad these days, all snark and sniggers mom describes it. She's always yelling at me because I'm snark and sniggers but Betty was biting lips and pink kind of grown. "I won't swear," I say zipping my mouth shut. It makes her smile. "But I wanted to say happy birthday."

"You could have told me if you had come to my birthday," she says with her happy smile dropping that I don't want to look at. It makes me feel bad, it makes my skateboard feel heavy under my feet. "You know, the one you were too cool to come to?"

I shake my head and I feel weird in my chest, like it's too tight, like my heart is heavy or something like that. Something too hard to describe. "I wasn't too cool, Sunny Betty," I say exhaling. "Have you ever thought that maybe your birthday was too cool for me to come to?"

Betty looks mad at me. Like bone shaking, hair pulling kind of mad. The same sort of mad when mom watches dad walk through the doors late kind of mad. "You are too cool, Jughead," she says, saying my name perfectly and sourly. "You're too cool these days. You won't even hang out with me any more, you don't come and sit with me at lunch any more – you didn't come to my birthday because you're too damn cool!"

She's huffing and she's got her hands on her hips again. I wasn't too cool, I was just busy. We have different friends now and she's always laughing with her friends that are all girls who think I smell weird and hate skateboards. "I'm sorry," I tell her though because I was. I don't want to lose my friends. "I'll come and have lunch more often, I'll come and sit with you. I'll even sit at the front of the class with you sometimes."

She still looks mad. She doesn't look like she believes me but I wasn't going to back down on this, we've been best friends since the beginning of time. It's always her, me and Archie and maybe I should have just gone to her birthday. Then she wouldn't be fighting me. Her shoulders drop a little bit though and maybe she's forgiving me a little bit. "You promise?" she asks me.

"When have I ever broken a promise, Sunny Betty?"

She smiles a little. Or maybe it was a smirk. She flips her hair over her shoulder and I see it's grown longer in the summer time. "One day you have to stop calling me Sunny Betty, you've been calling me that since we were eight!"

"And now you're twelve and you're a whole lot older than eight," I say shrugging. "We'll be eighty before I stop calling you Sunny Betty!"

She laughs at me and I see her real smile coming through. "You think we'll still be friends when we're eighty?" she asks me.

I think about it. We would be friends forever. "We've been friends since we were six years old, what's another sixty-four years?"

"You mean seventy-two?"

I chuckle. "It's all the same when you're old, and you're really old now!"

"You're older than me!"

I kick my skateboard and flip it up to my hand. "Dad says time flies when you're having fun, have you ever heard that before?"

She nods. "Yeah, maybe it's true because it feels just like yesterday you started coming around here. You'll come by more, right? You'll be here with me?"

"I'm here, Betts, I'll be here."

"Good."

It felt like a long six years but she's right, it's gone by so quickly and now we're twelve and we're still hanging out. "I miss Archie," I tell her. "He was supposed to leave me his bike out but he hasn't and now I only got the board."

She eyes my board and looks up to me, her blue eyes shimmering still. "You never gave me a birthday present," she tells me with a frown.

I feel my cheeks going red again because I didn't have any money to buy her anything. "Sorry Queen B," I mutter, kicking the board again. "I can't get you anything."

"You should have just come to my birthday, then none of this would have mattered," she smirks.

I feel my heart feel funny again. I drop the board and I look at Betty, holding out my hand to her. She stares at my hand and grabs it gently. "You're not going to dance with me, are you?"

I almost choke. "Me? Dance? I don't think so."

I pull her hand and point to the board. "You want me to jump on your precious board?" she asks. "I remember when this was brand new!"

I laugh and rub my face, still holding on to her with the other hand. "I'll let you have a ride."

"But I can't ride!" she moans.

I shake my head. "Just hold my hands, I'll pull you around."

She's shaky on the board and she's concentrating with her lip between her teeth, biting down and holding onto my hands like she's going to fall. "Be careful!" she whines.

I laugh at her and pull her slowly, she's not holding on so tight any more though and she looks like she's having fun but she shakes. "Don't worry, B, I won't let you fall."

She smiles at me and the sun starts setting. "This is so much fun!" she tells me. "No wonder you love it!"

She watch her under the sunlight, "Sorry about the birthday, Sunlight," I tell her.

She frowns at me but it quickly changes as she shrugs on the board. "Don't worry, Juggie, this is a great present."

More young Bughead to come