Chapter 2: the hope of all we might have been that filled me with the hope to wish impossible things

Betty felt shattered. Drained.

She'd been working herself to the bone for the last three weeks, each day the same routine. Waking up around 7 am when the twins started screaming and running up and down the stairs. Drinking coffee as they ate breakfast. Making them snacks for the school day. Watching them play on their tablet as Alice and Hal showered and got ready for their day.

Things quieted at 8:45 when her parents drove Juniper and Dagwood to school and went to the Register's offices. She'd try to relax in front of Law & Order reruns for an hour before forcing herself to get dressed in a rotation of loose jeans and faded t-shirts and pack a sandwich or salad for lunch. By 10:30, she was on her way, walking the 15 minutes it took to arrive at the apartment complex where Polly had lived. She had pretty much inherited Polly's car and could have driven if she wanted, but she enjoyed the walking. Putting in her headphones and tuning out the world for a quarter of an hour each way was the bleak highlight of her day. She was going through the contents of her sister's one-bedroom, hoping to get it all cleaned out before April was over, so her parents could officially stop paying rent. She'd made good headway, mostly by devoting herself to a painstaking five straight hours of work every weekday.

Not to say the task was easy. Polly had been slovenly to begin with, but in the last few months of her life, it seemed like she'd completely lost it. The apartment was filthy when Betty arrived the first time, trash everywhere and dirty dishes mildewing in the sink. It boggled her mind that her parents hadn't bothered to come over and take stock of things when Polly was in the hospital and the twins first started living with them. As usual, cleanup had fallen to her, months late.

The first thing she'd done was pick up all the trash from the floor, which, unfortunately, consisted primarily of dozens of empty box wine containers. Too many for Betty to count. She dragged as many of them as she could carry at a time to the trash compactor chute down the hallway, back and forth, ignoring the tears burning in her eyes. That had taken most of her time the first two days. The next few days were devoted to dealing with her sister's personal things. The closets were virtually empty, dirty clothes strewn all over the floors and furniture. She even found baby clothes the twins had long since outgrown. She bagged them all up, filling tens of garbage bags with the old clothes, putting aside in a small pile the few articles she nostalgically wanted to keep. In truth, she took very little for herself. Some purses stacked in the closet (Polly's obsession), a few pieces of jewelry she found strewn around, a silver mirror compact engraved with Polly's name. The rest she boxed up to be donated or thrown out.

After clearing everything off the apartment floor, she cleaned, obsessively. Vacuuming the carpeted living room and bedroom. Mopping the linoleum floor of the kitchen. Scrubbing the bathroom. Emptying the fridge. Throwing out unsalvageable dirty dishes. She felt maniacal, her brain racing two steps ahead to the next thing she needed to do. The work was physically exhausting, but it kept her focused on anything and everything but the searing ache of belatedly witnessing the truth of Polly's pathetic existence. She was almost done now, a professional company called to remove the furniture the next week and that was it. She could already feel the anxiety creeping in at the project being completed, knowing she'd be left again in an empty void and in search of yet another temporary chore to fill it. She knew she needed a job or something to do long-term (especially if she wanted to move out and get her own place to live at some point), but she felt so unmotivated, so ambitionless. She was struggling her hardest to keep it all together as it was.

When it was nearing late afternoon, she'd call it a day, walking back to her parents' house. Then it was the same evening over and over playing with the twins, helping her mother make dinner, reading them a story before bed. Occasionally, she'd drop by Archie's after Juniper and Dagwood's 7:30 pm bedtime for a hot drink, but even though they were always warm and welcoming, she still felt as if she were disturbing his and Veronica's peaceful domesticity with her immense sadness. She fell into bed most nights at 10, utterly exhausted. Not to say she was sleeping well at all. She tossed and turned restlessly, shaking awake multiple times a night, pieces of vivid dreams clinging to her memory and then falling out of reach. She woke up every morning feeling even more tired than the day before.

Weekends, too, were their own kind of hell. Two days with everyone home, trying to occupy the twins with things to do and listening to her parents' grumbles at how difficult the situation was for them. Luckily, some teenagers from the neighborhood usually came by on Saturday afternoons to take Juniper and Dagwood to the playground at Pickens Park for a few hours of respite. It was during this quiet that Betty finally worked up the courage to power up Polly's phone. Her parents had only collected it from the hospital after Polly died, and even then, had been so technology averse they had given up trying to access it when the charger didn't immediately start working. Betty finagled with the wire, twisting it until it gave power. After the phone filled up on some battery, she started going through texts, social media, even emails. Polly really hadn't been in touch with much of anyone, Betty thought sadly. Close to a hundred (mostly unanswered) emails from their dad about things related to the apartment or the kids' school. Texts every few days between Polly and Sweet Pea, the man her sister claimed to be seeing. It seemed real enough, although probably more of a sexual relationship than anything else. She opened the camera app, but stopped herself after swiping through a few pictures of cheesy selfies Polly had taken with her kids. She couldn't bear to go through more.

She nearly closed the phone, but then, out of curiosity, she opened Polly's web browser and search history. An almost tyrannical need had come over her to go through every detail she could find about the last months of her sister's life. But the results twisted a knife in her stomach. Two weeks before she'd checked herself into the hospital, Polly had already been researching symptoms of liver disease. Betty clicked through the links in a haze, reading as much as she could handle about jaundice and missed periods without gagging. She exited the browser, moving to her sister's Drizly app. She saw orders for wine every three or four days going back months, ending only a few days before she went into the hospital. Betty could feel the fury start to course through her. Polly knew. Her sister knew she was sick. And not only had she ignored the symptoms for weeks, but she'd continued to order alcohol and poison herself. The room started spinning around her. "How could she? How could she? How could she?" ran like a mantra in her brain. Betty felt big, wet tears filling her eyes, unable to stop them. She paced around her room, trying to calm herself down, trying to think of something else, anything else to grip her, to balm the avalanche of anger and hate toward her sister starting to overtake her.

She sat on her window seat, her head falling. Her left hand spread over her face, fingers interwoven in the strands of her hair and her palm grasping the skin of her cheek. She needed to get out. Worse, she needed a drink. She really did. Betty had avoided alcohol for weeks now, nauseated for obvious reasons even by the thought of the substance, but right now she was desperate. All she wanted was endless glasses of sweet inebriation, anything to ensure a mental escape, the power to temporarily run away from herself.

She fumbled for her own phone, pulling up her text message chain with Kevin. She knew Archie would try to talk her out of doing something stupid like getting drunk and trying to drown her debilitating sadness in white wine, but Kevin would understand. He was the more sensitive-minded friend, prone to taking risks and acting on emotional impulse.

Betty: Can we get drunk tonight?

Kevin: Gah, I have a date ? But meet me at the Whyte Wyrm before?

Betty: Please.

Kevin: 8 okay?

Betty: Perfect.

Betty tossed her phone down. She could still viscerally feel the fury and desolation running through her nerve endings, but at least her breathing had become slightly more balanced knowing she now had a concrete avenue for dealing (however poorly) with the massive emotional wallop she'd just been hit with. She couldn't tell her parents what she'd discovered. It would only hurt them. But being able to pour it out to Kevin, while simultaneously pouring drinks down her throat, might dull some of the pain, at least for tonight. She loved Archie, she really did, but it was hard to really go full dark no stars with her emotions in front of him. His reactions and capacity for understanding the darkness stirring inside her always left something to be desired. Kevin was a better option, especially with how much emotional disarray she was feeling now. She'd tried to keep it together this last month, to cope even, for the sake of her parents and her niece and nephew. But it was too much, even for her. Holding all of it in. She yearned for just a moment of self-destruction.

Seeking distraction for the time being, she turned on her laptop, which had sat mostly unused in the few weeks she'd been home. She thought about putting on a stupid teen rom-com from her childhood on Netflix, but she didn't really feel like it. She opened a blank Word document and stared at it for a moment before just moving her fingers and typing the first thing that came into her head.

Write now

when the emotion is still raw

when the grief inside you

is a ball

bouncing from side to side

and you can't hide it.

Write it now.

She re-read her words several times and let out a strangled laugh. It was crap, but it still felt like a small victory to put something real down on paper.

She'd written poetry throughout high school and college, and had even minored in Creative Writing at Yale, where she now vaguely recalled winning its main literary magazine's villanelle contest her sophomore year. At one point, Betty had strongly contemplated going to get an MFA. But that was before Adam changed the trajectory of her post-university life. Since then, her writing had been virtually dormant. Despite the swirls of loneliness she experienced in England, she'd never truly felt inspired and had barely practiced her craft, or written at all. Just another part of herself she'd given up to be with him, she thought ruefully. What a waste.

She heard the doorbell ring then, followed by the twins' overly excited voices rising from downstairs as they chattered to her mom about the new slide at the park. She glanced at the laptop screen. It was already after 5. She yawned and stretched her arms, mentally preparing herself to make her way back downstairs. She closed the laptop, placing it down on the window seat, and reached out to grab her phone and put it in her pocket. Soon enough, her mother was calling her. "Betty, Juniper and Dagwood are back. They want you to sit with them before dinner."

"Be right down," she called back, not really caring if they could hear through the closed door or not. She headed into her bathroom to wash her face, making sure no stray tears were visible. Her eyes were still a little red and puffy, but otherwise, she looked normal enough.

"Betty, Betty," the twins exclaimed in unison as she took the final step down the stairs, clamoring to her. "We played on the slide."

"That sounds fun," she said, walking to sit down on the couch, Juniper and Dagwood trailing after her and each taking a seat beside her. "What else did you do?"

"I swung and Woody tried to go on the monkey bars, but he almost fell," Juniper laughed.

"I didn't fall, Junie," Dagwood protested.

Betty cracked a smile. "How about next time I take you and we can practice climbing the monkey bars."

"Yeah, yeah," Dagwood said excitedly. "Can we go now?"

"Maybe tomorrow, kiddo," Betty said, stifling a laugh.

"Okay," he said, deflating slightly. "But can we watch TV now?"

"Sure," she replied, knowing they were probably going over their allotted time for watching television in a day, but also not having the energy to really entertain them with some game or toy. She clicked on the television to their kids' channel and sat back, her mind glazing into nothingness as the twins watched fixedly. After a few minutes, she pulled out her phone, letting out a small giggle when she saw Kevin had sent her a GIF of two friends dancing and falling over. If nothing else, she knew her old friend would try his best to make her laugh tonight.

She glanced at the kitchen where Alice was fiddling around. "Do you need any help, Mom?" she asked. The soft hum of classical music gave away her father was, as usual, in his study working.

"It's alright, sweetie. Just heating up leftovers from yesterday."

A half hour later, they sat down to dinner. Betty spooned the twin's portions onto their plates and poured them juice, only half listening to her parents droning on about town gossip and old films. She'd gotten her love of classic cinema from them, and was grateful for it, but at age 25, she already knew all their stories and Hollywood tidbits backward and forward and could recite them in her sleep. Trying to tamp down her annoyance at their inhuman capacity to repeat themselves, she picked at her baked chicken, roasted potatoes, and green beans relatively silently, only humming in agreement every so often when Alice or Hal looked to her for acknowledgement. After dinner, the kids ran back to the living room to color with their crayon set and Betty quickly excused herself, not allowing her parents the opportunity to task her with watching them for the 45 minutes that remained before bedtime.

She shut her bedroom door behind her, surveying the propped open suitcases she still hadn't unpacked. She'd been wearing the same casual clothes for the last few weeks, but tonight she wanted to actually try to make some semblance of an effort. Back in high school, the Whyte Wyrm had been a dingy biker bar, but when she'd gone for a drink with her sister on a visit two years ago, she noticed the place had been cleaned up quite a bit, attracting a more upscale clientele. She pulled out a pair of black skinny jeans and a glossy black three-quarter sleeved shirt, hoping the clothes wouldn't be too big. She'd lost weight in the last month and a half, not out of any necessity or desire, purely a physical reaction to mourning, and she felt a wave of insecurity about her body wash over her. Betty tucked the shirt into the jeans and examined herself in her full-length mirror. While not low-cut, the shirt's rayon material clung to her body, just a tad baggily, adding a whiff of sexiness to the outfit. It would do. She slipped on black ballerina flats and rummaged through her suitcase for her cropped black faux leather jacket. She placed it on her bed as she entered the bathroom to fix her hair and makeup. She ran her hands through her hair, removing the loose ponytail and letting the wavy blond strands fall freely. Her hair had grown long in the last few years and it nearly reached her waist. She moved on to her face, dabbing concealer onto the light purple bags under her eyes and small pimples on her chin and then applying a coat of mascara to her eyelashes. She finished herself off with a swipe of peach chapstick, sticking the tube into her front jean pocket for later.

Back in her bedroom, she found her American credit card and some loose cash and stuffed them along with the keys to the house into her jacket pockets, before placing it on. She grabbed her phone and opened the door, shutting the light off behind her, nearly colliding with her mother ushering the twins up the stairs for bedtime.

"Where are you going?" she asked, noticing the way Betty was dressed. The kids ran past her giggling to the hallway bathroom presumably to brush their teeth.

"I'm meeting Kevin at the Bijou for coffee," she lied, relieved she'd remembered the movie theater had opened a cafe. She knew she was an adult and her parents couldn't tell her what to do anymore, but if the way her mother had freaked out about finding her father's half-empty bottle of scotch in the house and near the twins last week was any indication, it was better not to say she was going to a bar. She didn't need the lecture or the pained, disappointed faces.

"Oh," Alice replied. "Do you need the car?"

"No," Betty fibbed again. "He's picking me up." Truth was, she'd already planned to order an Uber, purposely intending not to be anywhere near a state in which she could drive home after.

"Okay," Alice said. "Have fun."

"Thanks," Betty murmured, heading down the stairs and ordering the car on the way.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she was finally out the door, inhaling the cool air as she waited a few minutes for the driver to arrive. They passed the 15-minute ride in silence, Betty staring out the window, taking in the streets of Riverdale she still knew like the back of her hand despite not having passed them in years. Her phone beeped and she saw a message from Kevin that he was waiting for her in the bar's parking lot. She texted back she was a few minutes away, watching as the car crossed over to the town's southside and approached the Whyte Wyrm. She stepped out and was immediately assaulted by the smell of Kevin's cologne as he rushed over to her.

He enveloped her in a bear hug and Betty sank into the embrace. She had seen him a few times at impromptu get-togethers at Archie's house since she'd been back, but this was the first time they were alone, and it felt so good to let down her guard for a moment and just be comforted by her friend. Kevin let her go after a minute or two and studied her face.

"How are you, babe?" he asked. "I'm sorry I have this date later. I really wanted us to hang out longer."

"It's okay," Betty said, shooting him a small smile, as they walked past the crowd of tables outside and headed into the bar.

Kevin found a table and ordered a bottle of pinot grigio for them to share. They chit-chatted about Kevin's job teaching biology, drama and sex-ed at the high school as the waited. After the wine arrived and Kevin poured them both glasses, he confided in her he still harbored ambitions to leave this life behind and try his hand at being an actor in New York City, but he didn't know if he had the courage or will to actually go through with it.

"I always thought my life would be more than just this," he said, glancing around, Betty recognizing the sound of disaffection in his voice.

"Yeah, I know what you mean," she said sympathetically. "Riverdale is not exactly the pinnacle of civilization."

Kevin chuckled and took a deep gulp of his wine, Betty following, the chill of the alcohol creating a warm buzz in her stomach. "So not that I'm complaining, B, but did something happen that you asked to hang out tonight? You've been sort of aloof since you've been back. I don't blame you, of course," he said, his hand lifting up slightly from the table, so she'd know he was just asking and wasn't trying to rib her for not being more social since she'd returned to town.

Betty sighed, swallowing down the lump in her throat with another quick sip before answering him. "I'm struggling, Kev," she admitted. "I miss her and I'm mad at her and my parents are impossible but I also feel bad for them and it's just a lot."

"I know, sweetie," he said, squeezing her hand quickly over the table.

"I went through Polly's phone today," she said, turning away from him to wipe away the tears she could already feel forming in her eyes. "She knew for weeks she was sick. Didn't do anything about it. Just sat on it and kept ordering more liquor. Until I guess it was too late."

Kevin's hazel eyes widened in shock. "Jesus, Betty, I'm sorry."

"Yeah," she said, taking the napkin out from under her glass and starting to rip it in small strips and creating a small pile of white paper flakes. "It's so fucked up," she added, a bitter laugh escaping from her throat.

"It's just dark. Like really dark," Kevin said, shaking his head. "I wish there was something more profound I could say, but wow."

Betty gave him a lopsided half-smile and took another sip of her drink. "No, you're right. It's just dark. And I'm sorry for putting it on you, but I couldn't hold it inside. It just wrecked me, you know?" she said.

"B, no," Kevin said, taking her hand again. "Don't apologize. I want you to share with me. You shouldn't have to carry all this alone, and I know you can't tell your parents that."

"Thanks, Kev," she said, exhaling another deep breath. "Sorry, I know I'm not exactly a fun date tonight."

Kevin rolled his eyes and then laughed at her self-deprecation. "Betty, we could make this a therapy session over wine, which, by the way, is my favorite kind, and we can also just get fucked up and be stupid. Whatever you want."

"Oh my God, the second please," she replied.

Downing another gulp, Kevin attempted to divert her attention with reminiscences about high school, recounting old house parties and the boneheaded stuff Archie and Reggie had done to one up each other. Betty started to relax, the tension slowly leaving her body with each sip of wine and each giggle some silly story elicited. The conversation soon shifted to gossip about their classmates and what they were doing with their lives.

"You know Midge and Moose are married now, with two kids," Kevin said, snorting with laughter, referencing the so-called golden couple of their high school class.

"How!?" Betty exclaimed, feeling officially tipsy now as Kevin refilled her empty glass. "They were always so dysfunctional."

"Beats me," Kevin said, still chuckling.

"Does she know you guys were hooking up in secret for months junior year?" Betty asked.

"You know what," Kevin responded, his eyes exploding in glee, "I still don't think she does."

Both burst out laughing uproariously. Other patrons of the bar started to look at them like they were crazy, which just made the pair laugh even harder. Betty felt this inexplicable sense of weightlessness and she rubbed her eyelids with her fingertips to ground herself. On the one hand, it made her feel guilty to be having such a good time, to deviate for even one night away from the persistent melancholy. On the other, she knew she desperately needed the release.

"What about you," Kevin asked, when they'd quieted. "What's going on with Adam?" he asked more seriously.

Betty sighed, the mixture of anger and sadness she felt toward the man she'd spent five years with rising inside her and swirling with the discomfort at not having been completely honest with Kevin before. She knew she'd have to come clean about this eventually. It obviously made no sense to her friends that Adam hadn't come with her or didn't at least have plans to visit at some point. She reached for her glass. "It's…over?" she admitted, downing another drop. "I don't even know, Kev. It honestly has never felt the same since college and I just thought that was what being in an adult relationship was. Less passionate, more routine. But then everything with Polly happened. And he just wasn't there. Disappeared like a fucking ghost. And I realized it had been like that for a long time. Too long."

Kevin shook his head sympathetically. "Men are such imbeciles sometimes."

"You're a man," she pointed out with a smile.

"True, but I am not afraid of emotional support," he humble-bragged, and she giggled again. "Screw him, Betty. I mean it. If he couldn't man up and find it in himself to be there for you when you're going through something like this, then he doesn't deserve you." Betty smiled up at him gratefully, and Kevin then continued, the naughty, drunk half of his brain now clearly taking over for the sensitive friend part. "And you know what you need to do now? Get laid."

"Okay, Kevin," Betty said, rolling her eyes good-naturedly.

"Come on, when's the last time you had sex?"

Betty closed her eyes, feeling awash in shame, not at Kevin's question, but at the true answer to it. She'd been something of a mess the night before she'd left England that she'd gone along with Adam as he prodded her into weirdly pitiful goodbye sex. She hadn't really wanted it, didn't even feel like being touched by him knowing they were over, but he had cajoled and cajoled and she'd given in. It made her feel dirty thinking of it now. "We slept together the night before I flew back," she confessed quietly, trying to calm her agitation with another sip of her drink.

"Okay, correction: when's the last time you had an orgasm?"

"Kevin!" she exclaimed, a bright red flush taking over her body. Her friend truly knew no bounds sometimes.

"What?" he whined innocently. "It's a valid question. I know straight men and I know you and from what you're saying, I doubt he was bothering to try to satisfy you."

She took a sip of her drink, wiggling her eyebrows at him over the rim of her glass. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of telling him he was right, but she didn't have to. It was pretty obvious the answer was too long ago. Not that she felt particularly inclined to any sexual activity right now. Sure, there were times she craved physical comfort, for a warm body beside her to wrap her in solace and tenderness, but not from some random guy. She knew she was a monogamist through and through. The thought of a one-night stand or meaningless sex did nothing for her, which was probably why recalling the last time she'd been intimate with Adam so repelled her. It had just been one more example of him squeezing out whatever he could from her, until there was nothing left to give. There hadn't been true affection there, only a sense of obligation. Shaking away the depressing thought, not in the mood to let it put a damper on the good time they were having, she smiled at Kevin. "I am going to the bathroom, you sex maniac. Try not to get into trouble while I'm away," she said, rising from her chair. She wobbled slightly, acutely feeling the alcohol in her bloodstream as she stood up.

Betty strolled the length of the pub, noticing the small stage area and sparkling, redecorated bar. The Whyte Wyrm had really dressed itself up since she'd last lived in town. Even the bathrooms were relatively clean. Betty freshened up, relieving herself and washing her hands. She reapplied her peach chapstick and fluffed her hair, the two glasses of wine in her system giving her normally pale skin a rosy flush. She liked it. She felt pretty. She felt like a normal girl out with one of her best friends on a Saturday night.

When she returned to the bar floor, she saw a tall, thin, dark-haired man she didn't recognize standing next to her table, chatting amicably with Kevin, who had also stood up. She approached closer and Kevin slung his arm around her in a half-hug. He glanced between her and the stranger. "Oh, you two should meet. You'd get along. You both like literature."

She turned to look at the man face-on, her tongue feeling like it was stuck to the roof of her mouth as she was met with his intense gaze. He was attractive. Really attractive. Not statuesquely handsome in the way Adam had been, and like most of the men she'd previously been interested in, but edgy—dark and mysterious. He was dressed simply in a thin black sweater and jeans, a small hole nearly imperceptible on the stitching of the left shoulder. His soft black hair fell in waves over his brow and his olive skin was littered with beauty marks. But it was his eyes, their inky midnight blue, that really drew her in. He immediately sparked a curiosity in her that she couldn't remember feeling for months, not since the numbness of loss had overtaken her. It was the desire to press deeper, to know him, for him to know her. She slowly smiled up at him, the strange unexplainable current of energy running through her body only growing stronger as he smiled back, small dimples appearing in his cheeks.

"Hi, I'm Jughead."