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Just when Jughead was beginning to feel optimistic, when Betty's determination and enthusiasm had fed the dying flames of his own need for justice … Penny Peabody came back to town, telling all the Serpents how Jughead had sliced the Serpent tattoo off her arm. She was a lawyer, and a good one. She promised to stall the evictions indefinitely if she was let back into the Serpents—and if Jughead was removed.
FP was in an impossible place, and, yet again, Jughead had put him there.
Jughead was sent home while the rest of the Serpents deliberated. When his father came back, it was clear the conversation hadn't gone well—the Serpents had decided to put it to a vote. Jughead vs. Penny. The loser was cast out of the Serpents for good.
His father—his own father—accused him of being the source of all the Serpents' problems, because of the article he had written on General Pickens. Could FP not see, could none of them see, that the Serpents had been getting slowly squeezed out of Riverdale long before Jughead had written that article? It was an excuse, an emblem, being used to justify actions that were already well underway.
But FP didn't see it that way. He pointed his finger at Jughead and said, "You … will be the death of us."
And while he was wrong, and Jughead knew he was wrong—there were ways that he was right, too. And Jughead didn't know how to live with that.
He couldn't imagine anything he wanted to do less than go to Veronica Lodge's confirmation today. Not that he blamed Veronica for the current situation in Riverdale—but he'd bet his favorite hat that her parents had quite a bit to do with what was happening to the Serpents.
Only Betty's text reminding him that since everyone would be there, it would be a good place to get info on the statue's missing head convinced him to put on a suit and go.
Sitting there in the church next to Betty, he wanted to reach for her hand, just to feel her touch and know that she was there. But he couldn't, and the reasons he couldn't were his own fault. And the reasons he couldn't be with the Serpents were his own fault, too.
It was a lot easier when the silence and stillness of the church service gave way to the pounding music and loud laughter of the party afterward. At least it was easier to slip away and be by himself when no one could see him leave.
He should have known Betty would find him, though. She came up the stairs to where he stood alone, brooding unashamedly, saying lightly, "Hey. It's not like Jughead Jones to neglect a free buffet. You okay?"
He hadn't intended to tell her—but this was Betty. Betty whom he still loved, and to whom he always wanted to tell everything. "No. It's the Serpents. They're meeting to decide if I'm getting kicked out or not."
"What? Why are they doing that?"
"I broke a code. I messed up bad." It was the first time he had admitted that, even to himself. "Really bad." And once he had told her that, he found he wanted to tell her the rest, too. No, that he needed to tell her the rest. "There's this person who suckered me into delivering drugs."
Betty looked at him in shock, and he couldn't hold her gaze. She'd be ashamed of him; she should be ashamed of him.
"And my dad, too," he admitted in a small voice. "He got roped in. So a couple of Serpents and I, we … found her, grabbed her …" The words were coming more slowly now. He didn't want to see this image of himself reflected in Betty's eyes. "And I cut her."
"Cut her?"
"The worst part is, none of it even matters. 'Cause she's back. It's like, every decision I've made since we broke up, including our break-up, just makes things worse and worse."
Betty came toward him, her hand on his arm, but whatever she was about to say was interrupted by the ring of her cell phone. Her hesitant response turned to enthusiasm, and she shook Jughead's arm excitedly as she spoke into the phone. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're the ones who put up the flyers." She listened a moment, then said, "Okay, yeah. We can be right there." She ended the call. "They know something, Jug. Maybe we can find this statue's head and … and start to put things right."
There was something in her eyes … Maybe they were one of the things that could get put right. "Betty—"
But she was already turning away even as he reached for her, hurrying down the stairs. "Come on, Jug. Let's go!"
The phone call led them to a junkyard. As they approached the man who ran the place, he called out, "You the kids looking for a head?"
"If only we lived in a town where the answer could be no," Jughead answered.
"We are," Betty added. "And you called to say that you have it?"
"I've got nearly ten acres of scrap out there, and I come across weird stuff all the time. But this is the first time I've found a bronze head." He lifted a duffel bag onto the tailgate of a truck near where they were standing. "It was stashed in an old refrigerator."
Jughead unzipped the bag. It was Augustus Pickens, all right. He and Betty exchanged a look of triumph. "You didn't happen to see who dumped this?" he asked. "Has anyone suspicious been around here?"
"Well, I get scavengers all the time, but there was a guy come in last week, I'd never seen him before. Claimed he wanted to get some bike parts, but he didn't buy anything."
"Well, did you get his name? What did he look like?"
"Low-life type." He pointed at Jughead's Serpents jacket. "Had on one of those jackets."
"By any chance, was this gentleman tall?" Jughead asked.
"Sure was."
Tall Boy. He had set Jughead up. He had put all the Serpents in danger. And then he had brought Penny Peabody back among them.
Betty came with him when Jughead took the head to his father, explaining everything to FP. She was still there at his side when he returned to the White Wyrm, where the Serpents were gathered to make their vote.
And she stood there while FP confronted Tall Boy about what he had done.
Instead of answering the questions put to him, Tall Boy glared at Betty, who admittedly stood out in her pink coat in the midst of the black Serpent jackets. "What's the Northsider doing here? This is Serpent business, it's on Serpent land."
Jughead didn't hesitate. She belonged with him, he knew that now, once and for all; and if he belonged here, then Betty belonged here. He couldn't fight that any longer. And he didn't want to. "She's here because she's one of us."
"You haven't answered my son's question," FP said. "Why'd you do it?"
"'Cause I am tired of seeing the Serpents goin' soft under your rule. Then Hiram Lodge came by, wanting to stir up some trouble. He said if I took the head, he'd get McCoy and the cops to swarm all over us, cause some chaos."
"So Hiram Lodge asked you to start a mutiny, and you helped him. Why?" Jughead asked.
"I figured it'd be my chance to get rid of you, sunshine." He looked at Jughead's dad over his shoulder. "And if I got rid of him, I could get rid of you, too, FP."
"And then what, you'd become leader?"
"He and Penny," Jughead clarified. "You're a Judas, Tall Boy, and an idiot."
"You betrayed your own kind, Tall Boy," FP declared. "You broke Serpent Law. What should we do with this lowlife?"
"Strip him of his jacket. Exile him."
FP raised his voice to be heard in every corner of the room. "All those in favor."
The vote was unanimous—including Betty, which seemed to amuse FP.
Jughead's dad had taken the responsibility of driving Tall Boy out of Serpent territory. The rest of the Serpents had dispersed soon after. The events of the evening had been too shocking for them to want to celebrate.
And Jughead found himself walking with Betty, feeling the peace that only ever came when he was with her.
He wanted to talk to her, to tell her everything he'd been thinking all this time, to know what was really happening inside her head. Where Betty Cooper was concerned, there was always so much under the surface that no one could see. For a brief, shining moment, Jughead had been the one who she showed those depths to. He wanted to be that person again, to know her again, but he couldn't seem to find the words to tell her what an idiot he had been, how much he had missed her. All his many words seemed to have flown right out of his head.
In silence, they returned to the trailer, sinking down on the couch. Jughead reached for the TV remote, out of habit, and they sat, still in silence, watching something so meaningless Jughead wasn't even sure what it was.