Chapter 1 – Rebel Without a Cause
Summary:
If there's one thing Jughead Jones knows, it's this—he wants to be a writer. (Technically, there are two things he knows, he is a writer and he is passionately in love with Betty Cooper.) Without a doubt he knows this is what he's suppose to do with his life. Wield his words to make a difference in the world (and hopefully a living). But, what happens when the words won't flow? When they're blocked just beyond reach and he's facing the unyielding tyranny of the blank page and looming deadlines?
That's right. Jughead has writer's block. He doesn't have time to be stymied by the blank page. If he can't work around it, than he just has to push through it. And maybe learn something about his writing along the way…
Or,
Five times when Jughead suffers from writer's block and one time he didn't.
Author's Note:
The horror of the blank page refusing to be filled struck me with an all too familiar tension. Struggling with my own form of writer's block (mine tends to employ a few more words on the page, but none of them are useful), I sympathized with the palatable tension and frustration Jughead was feeling at the beginning of the season five time jump. When the camera focused on Jughead's computer screen and the two ultimately meaningless and useless words - 'Chapter One' - and nothing else, I knew there was a story there-at least for me.
After all, the agony is real—you have the desire, the time, the need to write, and…the words won't come. So, I ended up pondering the practice of writing, the frustration of writer's block, and the reasons for writing in the first place. Then the whole exercise ended up wrapped in a fanfiction shaped package. I hope you enjoy! Thanks for reading.
Jughead yanked the flyer off the bulletin board at school. A corner remained behind, caught on the staple. He stuffed the neon orange paper in his pocket before anyone could notice him abscond with it. No one would probably care, but with the way his luck had been going lately, the moment he showed interest in something, everything around it tended to implode.
Reaching the student lounge before the others, he pulled the paper from his pocket and checked the deadline to make certain it hadn't already passed. Satisfied that the contest was legitimate, he returned the pilfered flyer to his pocket for safe keeping. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. This was the best news he'd heard all day. A writing contest. First prize won $100 cash. Second prize was $50, not as good, but anything would help.
When Archie and the others joined him in the lounge, they filled the time between classes complaining about their parents and comparing after school schedules. It wasn't like he had anything he wanted to add to the conversation, so he simply listened and observed. He would nod along or fill the pauses in conversation with a noncommittal 'yeah' when appropriate; he didn't want them becoming suspicious and start asking questions. They didn't need to know he was as good as homeless. He didn't want to see the knowing sidelong glances, overhear the whispered conversations. The ones loaded with unspoken derision. Of course Jughead Jones was homeless, he was Southside scum after all. He didn't want to see the pity in his friends' eyes—especially hers. From the corner of his eye, he studied Betty Cooper. She was beautiful and smart and inquisitive, a ray of sunshine in his otherwise dreary life. But, she was in love with Archie Andrews. What could he offer her that Archie couldn't?
Despite his attempt to feign engagement in the conversation, he couldn't help but start dreaming about what he could do with the prize money. Laundry. And toothpaste. Socks without holes in the toes. He could pay Pop some of what he owed him. If he had enough left over, he wanted to send Jellybean the Tracy True novel he found at the local used bookstore. He didn't want his little sister thinking he'd forgotten about her or think that he didn't care. The money would go fast and with the drive-in closing, he didn't know how he'd be getting more. It would be a good idea to set some aside for when things became really desperate.
Jughead scoffed. Like things weren't already desperate. He was 15, living anywhere but home. Home. What did that even mean anymore?
Was it a place? The trailer? He hadn't lived there for months. It hadn't offered any semblance of home for longer. And the last time he'd been there, the place reeked of stale alcohol and despair. It was FP's domain and Jughead wanted nothing to do with his dad in his present state.
He'd heard people say that home was people. Relationships. But what did that even mean for him? His mom had left. She took JB, leaving Jughead behind to fend for himself. Like he didn't need a mom anymore. And while his dad was still here, his presence was honestly in name only. FP was spiraling, getting worse. Most of the time, dad was either too drunk or too hung over to care about what Jughead was doing or where he was sleeping. Even when FP was sober enough to 'work,' it was obvious he didn't care what his son was up to or what was a important to him. If his dad had even an inkling of paternal concern, he wouldn't be so brazenly leading the vandalism of the Twilight Drive-In. Furthermore, it wasn't like Jughead was overflowing with friends to fill in the void. Archie, his supposed 'best' friend, had blown him off since the beginning of summer, which really wasn't all that surprising. The only other person he considered a friend was Betty and things with her were...complicated. As for the rest of the student population, they tolerated his presence for Betty's and Archie's sake. Ringing endorsements there. So, yeah, people weren't exactly home either. He hoped someday he could find that someone who could be his home.
"Hey Jug." Archie clapped him on the shoulder. "Did you fall asleep there?"
"No." Jughead shook his head, being pulled from his thoughts and into the here and now.
"Well then, c'mon. We have to get to class." Archie jogged to catch up with Veronica and Betty and followed them to class. The red head looped an arm over each girl's shoulders, like it was his personal goal in life to collect the affections of every girl at school.
"Right. I'm coming." Jughead gathered his messenger bag and slung it across his body. His ruminations on the meaning of home and family would simply have to wait for the 3:00 bell.
In the meantime, he had a story to write.
—
After school, Jughead slid into his favorite booth at Pop's. Without waiting an order, Pop sat a burger and a chocolate shake down on the table. The order would go on his tab like every other burger and shake. Yet, somehow, when Jug gathered enough cash to make a dent into his tab, it was always less than he expected. Either someone was paying his tab for him, or Pop was only charging him a portion of what he owed. Once, he tried to ask Pop about the discrepancy, but Pop had only said not to worry about it and to pay it forward someday.
Pushing aside all distractions, Jughead took a bite of his hamburger as he waited for his laptop to boot up. The device was old and slow, but it still worked. It was more faithful to him than most people in his life, though he expected even it to give up the ghost sooner rather than later. While he waited, he placed the flyer on the table and smoothed out the creases with his thumbnail.
Write a short story from 2,500-5,000 words. Not bad. That was only five to ten pages. He could do that in his sleep. The deadline for entry was in a month. Definitely doable. There had to be a catch. Nothing was this easy. Scanning the rest of the rules, Jughead cursed. All his plans for the cash prize began to unravel. He knew it was too good to be true.
The theme of the contest was the one thing he didn't know if he could write about—Home.
No. He needed this. That prize money would give him a little more time to figure things out. He would not let his screwed up life ruin this for him too. With the writing program finally open, he placed his fingers over the home row on the keyboard and stared down the blank page. The common writing advice might be 'write what you know,' but that didn't mean he had to write only what he'd experienced. He just needed to add enough of what he knew to lend a verisimilitude to his writing.
Time moved slowly as the world outside the picture windows grew dark. In the place of a period at the end of another dead-end sentence, the cursor blinked in a steady, pitiless rhythm. It was the impartial marker, counting down every wasted second for the remainder of the cursed man's life as he waited for his turn at the gallows. It taunted him.
Repeatedly jabbing at the delete key, Jughead deleted his umpteenth attempt at an opening paragraph. It was flat. It was boring. It was beneath him. Nothing he'd tried was even worth keeping for a second draft. For a moment, he wished he was writing on paper, the process of crumpling the useless prose into a ball and throwing it across the room would be immensely more satisfying that watching the stagnant words disappear one staccato letter at a time.
The harder he tried to force an idea, the more frustrated he grew. His imagination fizzled, dying like the last embers of a waning fire. Words were his lifeblood, yet they stuck and stalled in his veins and refused to flow. Everything was wrong. His life was wrong. His writing was wrong. Why did he even think he could be a writer if he couldn't write a frickin' five page story? Maybe he should just give up...
He banged his head against the keyboard and held in a scream of frustration. The resulting string of random letters filling the screen with lines of gibberish made for a better story than his attempts so far. Why couldn't he write?
"Hi Jug. Can we join you?"
"Hey." Jughead looked up to find Betty standing at the end of the booth with Veronica and Kevin in tow. Shutting down his laptop without saving his lack of progress, Jughead tucked it into his bag. With a smile for Betty, he scooted closer to the window to make room for her and her friends. "Sure, have a seat."
"Were you working on your story? We aren't interrupting, are we?" Betty sat next to him. Though no one else appeared to notice, a miasma of troubled concern clung to her like a second skin. It followed in her wake like an oncoming storm. He had a strong suspicion about what was bothering her. But, he couldn't talk to her about it—at least not with the others present.
"Definitely not interrupting." Maybe he needed to take a break and clear his head. "Just dabbling with some new ideas. They're not coming together as I like. So, please, interrupt away."
"Ouch. Sounds like writer's block. I hate it when that happens." Betty gave him a small smile which broke through her worry and lit up her face. It was nice to have someone to commiserate with who understood the ups and downs of writing.
Before he could reply and prolong the conversation with her, the waitress—Veronica's mom, he would learn—appeared at the booth, ready to take their orders. His moment with Betty was lost. When it was once again just the four of them, the conversation turned towards the drive-in. A subject on which he had plenty to say. His anger and frustration poured out as he argued his case for another losing battle.
—
His last night at the Twilight Drive-In had come and gone. In someways the event had been a rousing success—the majority of the town showed up for one last hurrah. A quintessential small town celebration of a rapidly disappearing yesteryear. But, on a personal level, it felt like an epic failure. He hadn't saved the drive-in. He hadn't discovered the 'anonymous buyer.' He was aimless and adrift.
With nothing else to moor him, Jughead fell back on what he knew. Writing. Investigating. Pursuing a mystery. Why did it feel like solving the mysteries which plagued Riverdale were a more plausible task than solving the problems in his life? Though, there was one hurdle he planned to tackle today. Come hell or high water, he would make progress on his entry for that contest.
Back in his favorite booth at Pop's, he opened his laptop. Though only a couple of days had passed since he had pilfered the flyer, he felt the pressure of the ticking clock and looming deadline. Jughead propped the old snapshot of him and Jellybean mugging for the camera against the edge of his screen. He smiled back at the image of his sister. He missed her. This story might not come easily to him, but it felt like a story he needed to see through to completion.
From his post in the projection booth while playing the last film ever to be seen at the drive-in, an epiphany struck him. Maybe there was no such thing as the perfect family. Maybe he wasn't the only one with a broken family in search of a home. Archie's mom had left, much in the same way his mom had. As absent and negligent as his father was, Betty's mom was the opposite—overbearing and too involved, trying to micromanage every aspect of her daughter's life. Veronica might live on the 'right side of the tracks,' but her family was just as involved with the white collar side of the criminal world as his was on the blue collar side. They were all broken people from broken homes. But, maybe they didn't need to be. Maybe home and family meant more than the blood which ran through his veins.
With Jelly, and Betty, and the Twilight in mind, he tapped out stuttering sentences which transformed into hesitant paragraphs, which eventually formed a fragmented story. It was far from an inspired masterpiece, but it existed. Which was more than he could say about it an hour ago. Wrapped up in the words which finally began to flow, he missed the approaching footsteps.
"Hey Juggie, mind if I join you?" Betty was once again standing beside the booth with her laptop in hand. The shadow which had clung to her like an inky mass had begun to lift a little. Her smile was a sunbeam breaking through the clouds. "I promise I won't bug you. I need to finish some editing for the Blue and Gold and thought maybe we could work together."
Grinning up at her, his face softened as he took in her radiance. He tugged his laptop closer to the edge of the table so she could set hers up opposite him. "I'd like that."
Betty settled into the booth across from him. "I saw that you chose Rebel Without a Cause for the last showing. Was it a success?"
"Oh, yeah. It was the best attended wake in town." He didn't intend for his cynicism to bleed through quite so sharp and potent. Not with her.
She winced and worried at her lower lip. "Sorry I missed the showing. I got wrapped up in some stuff. And then my mom...well, you know."
"Yeah, I know." He forced a smile. Best friend or not, he didn't want to talk about Archie at the moment.
As she twisted the curls of her ponytail around her fingers, he wondered if it was as silken to the touch as it looked. His fingers twitched with the desire to caress her, to comb his fingers thorough her hair. But, that wasn't appropriate. They were just friends. That would have to be enough. Picking up his coffee cup, he stared intently into the depths like he was trying to divine the future from the movement of ripples along the surface. He avoided meeting her eyes just in case his eyes truly were the windows to his soul and gave away what he felt for her. Even if she didn't have feelings for someone else, he wasn't a good option for her. She could do so much better. So, he nodded and stared at the blinking cursor as he sought safer conversation. "The movie—Rebel Without a Cause—it was a good suggestion. Thanks."
A shy smile replaced her worried expression and he couldn't help but returned it with a genuine grin of his own. He rarely found reasons to smile these days.
"Well, I was thinking, I know it's too late to catch it at the drive-in, but maybe we could watch it together sometime." She flipped up the top of her laptop. Her fingers clicked across the keys.
"Sure. Sure, I'd like that." As their eyes met over the top of their laptop screens and they exchanged secret smiles, something changed between them. He couldn't quite put his finger on it—not yet—but he had a feeling that the invitation to watch the movie together was the start of something more.
Sitting across from Betty Cooper, working together on their own projects and with the promise of spending time together in the near future, Jughead felt the compulsion to write rise within him. He wanted—no, needed—to capture this moment. Not in a photograph, rather with words. His fingers itched to be moving across the keyboard. His brain was reeling. Every part of his being was infused with plot and character and settings, words needing to escape. At the pace with which the ideas were forming, his hands could scarcely keep up. He needed to get this down now. To capture the words, the thoughts, the ideas before he lost them.
"Go ahead, I understand." Betty turned her attention to her own work, not minding as the words pulled him in deeper. "I'll be right here when here when you need me."
