If Archie had any idea of what the next twenty four hours would look like, he might tell himself: Hey! You're having a Pivotal Moment in a Sentimental Place. Sitting on the hood of the truck with Veronica - on a scale of 1 to Serious, he should have rated that moment at least a 9. But he didn't. His Serious Scale didn't even register. Not a single cell in his brain cared to define the evening in the grand scheme of things. Or in any scheme of things, really.
Now, though, Archie doesn't say a word as he speeds away from Pop's and toward the hospital, quiet as nighttime. It feels like a chasm has opened in Veronica's chest. The CD in the stereo is still spinning, some old Louis Armstrong, and she reaches forward to click it off. "It's bad, right?" She whispers. "My father said Betty and Jughead might both already need emergency surgery, and he wouldn't-" She breaks off, the words swallowed up by guilt and confusion and this huge, endless fear. She digs her fingernails into the passenger seat, willing the truck to go faster. "It must be bad."
They park in the cavernous garage at the hospital and get lost on the way to the ER, the two of them wandering the corridors, panicky and on edge. "This way," Archie says finally, and Veronica follows him down a freezing, fluorescent hallway, then through a set of doors and into chaos.
There's a crowd in the waiting room, small but restless. Jughead's dad and Betty's, Alice crying noisily with her hair secured in a haphazard knot. And there are Archie and Veronica's parents, watchful and waiting, somehow already gutted like carcasses or husks. Hermione looks heartbroken. Fred and Hiram look old.
They get to their feet as Archie and Veronica run across the wide expanse of linoleum, throwing off fear and heat. Veronica doesn't have time to get to her mom and dad though, because Mrs. Cooper spots her and rushes forward, grabbing her so tightly it's painful. She feels her ribs scrape together inside her chest. "The motorcycle got ran off the road. Betty is in surgery," Alice wails. It's a sound Veronica has never heard before, and, if it pleases God, a sound she would like never to hear again.
She thinks, very clearly: This isn't happening.
She thinks, very clearly: Who ran them off the road?
She stands there with Betty's mom for a while, lets her sob into the limp fabric of her shirt. She doesn't cry. She doesn't do much of anything, to be honest; she feels frozen, bizarrely quiet, like something has been hermetically sealed inside her. She hears the whine of an ambulance in the distance, the whoosh of a door whispering shut. Finally Mr. Cooper pries Alice gently from her arms.
"They can't die," Veronica tells him.
"Ronnie." That was her mom, coming closer, but Veronica steps away, out of her reach.
"I'm serious," she says, and her voice is louder this time. She's having difficulty understanding what's happening. "They can't- we were-"
She trails off as her mother wraps her arms around her, stands there loose-limbed and bewildered while Hermione whispers Spanish prayers in her ear. "I'm not kidding," Veronica tells her, voice cracking. She feels her lungs start to collapse. She looks up one more time before she stops remembering anything, just in time to see the sharp, jagged pleat of Archie's backbone as she watches him fall into his father's arms and break down.
...
Later, Veronica glances around. The wall is sponged shades of taupe and beige, the floor speckled gray like a low-budget Pollock painting. The soda machine rumbles and glows. A young man with a towel wrapped around his hand sits next to a woman in a dress playing on her cell phone; they're the only other ones here. Slow day for emergencies, maybe. She crosses her legs, uncrosses them. It's uncomfortably cold in here, like the North Pole or a convenience store at 2 am, and she shivers, and almost immediately, Archie wraps his jacket around her. If he can't help Betty and Jughead, he can at least protect Veronica from freezing temperatures. She swallows.
Her cousin told her once that the night their grandpa died, her father sat in the pitch dark of their apartment on Park Avenue and played piano until the dawn came up orange and dripping behind him. Scales, he'd told her. Scales and Mozart and Billy Joel and anything else he could think of, things that no one, not even her father himself, could remember once morning finally broke.
Veronica has no way to account for the historical accuracy of this particular legend. Lord knows her cousin loves a good story, and he's never lacked the imagination to craft one, but since the night she first heard it - whispered through the rainforest heat of upstate New York years after it supposedly happened - she's believed on blind faith. There's a picture of it in her head: her father, features glass sharp and back hunched with grief, fingers flying over black and white piano keys. A picture so vivid that, for a long time, Veronica was convinced that maybe she remembered, too.
Now when she thinks about it for any length of time, she realizes it's probably just a composite, some sloppy amalgam from all the other nights when she did wake up to find him at the glossy Steinway that sat in state near the window at their place on Park Avenue. There were dozens upon dozens of those nights when she was a little girl, nights when she'd climb out of bed, woken by whatever heinous nightmare she'd been having to creep barefoot and half awake down the hall to listen to her father play his music. With the right song, you understand, her father could atone for whatever sins had been committed against his baby daughter by the world at large. With the right song, Veronica always thought with sleepy confidence as she leaned her dark head against the wall and closed her eyes, that her father could set her free.
She hasn't heard him play music in years. She plays it for herself now, or, more often, Archie does, melodies he pulls out of thin air when he knows she's feeling down, when she's feeling happy, when she's feeling agitated. With his fingers curled around the neck of a guitar, he can admonish Veronica's every misgiving and help her see the way forward, can make her smile or sing or feel like she's flying.
"Ronnie."
She looks up and realizes this isn't the first time Archie has called her name, and that he and her parents are all looking at her, waiting. Her ankle is bouncing wildly, and she stops it. "What?" She asks, defensive.
"Your dad asked you if you want coffee."
"Yeah," she says, not really caring one way or the other. Archie wraps his hand around hers, and they wait.
What they don't tell you about hospitals, what they don't show you on TV shows about well-scrubbed doctors and patients whose lives they save is how long everything takes. Hiram returns with two cardboard trays full of iced coffees. Veronica takes one and says thanks, Alice looks a little like she's died, FP paces, and Hermione mutters in Spanish: "Dios te salve, Maria…"
It's hours before anyone comes to talk to them, close to midnight by the time a scruffy, tired looking doctor in rimless glasses makes his way into the waiting room to let them know that, in fact, he has nothing to report. There have been some complications, he says vaguely; there's nothing he can tell them other than that. They'll be with Betty and Jughead until the morning, machines beeping and cold hands checking vital signs. They should all go home.
"I'll stay," Hiram says immediately, shaking his head. "You should take off," he tells Fred. "Mija, you should go, too."
Veronica prickles. "If you're staying, I'm staying."
Hermione looks at her, and as if someone has plugged in her power cord, she's back in action, taking charge. "Don't be stubborn, Ronnie," she tells her. "Go get some sleep."
"I'll take her home," Archie volunteers.
"Don't talk about me like I'm not here," Veronica snaps, short tempered now. "I'm right here."
He shrugs, all innocence. "I know you are."
"Go," says Hermione. "I love you. Sleep." Before she can react either way, her mother's got her arms around her, squeezing tight. "Ronnie," she continues softly, and it occurs to Veronica that one day was never meant to hold so much. "Say a prayer."
...
Back at the Pembrooke, Veronica slams the car door, the sound of it strangely startling. Archie walks her to her door, hesitates as she digs her keys out and gets it open.
"So," he says, standing with his arms crossed. Veronica is half in her house and half out of it. "How are you?"
She shrugs, encumbered by the sudden and complete fatigue swallowing her whole body. "Okay. Tired."
Archie's not satisfied. He doesn't move. "What else?"
"I don't know." Something she can't name. "Out of my mind, maybe. Scared." Everything is so heavy and she feels scared. That's it.
"I can stay with you," he says at the same time she asks,
"Can you stay with me?"
She does not want to go inside this apartment by herself, but also, she doesn't want to be away from Archie. "I'm probably okay," she says, but he interrupts.
"I'll stay in the living room until your parents get home."
Veronica nods, and they go inside. She drops her bag to the floor with an unceremonious thud, and the first thing she does is check to make sure that every single window is locked.
"Hey," Archie says, coming up behind her in the dining room. "Need help?"
She forces a small smile, half a second and gone. She walks across the room and turns on the AC, letting the filtered air in. "Couldn't breathe." Maybe that's the truth, actually, now that she thinks about it. Maybe she hasn't had a decent amount of air in her lungs since yesterday. Could be she's brain-damaged and oxygen-deprived. She sinks down into a chair, exhausted.
"Go put your pajamas on," Archie says, noticing how tired she is. She probably looks like garbage, though she can't exactly bring herself to care. "Are you hungry?"
She shakes her head. "I ate, like, three packs of MMs while we were waiting," she tells him, accepting the hand he offers to help her to her feet.
"I know," Archie says, leading her out of the dining room. "I watched you. It was impressive. You want real dinner, though?"
"Yes. Maybe. I don't know."
"Well, since you feel so strongly about it," he grins. "I'll run and see what's in the fridge. You go take your clothes off."
She rolls her eyes a little and pads down the hall to her room and changes, hastily brushing out her hair. By the time she makes it to the kitchen, Archie has warmed leftovers from tonight's dinner and there's music floating in the air.
"Wanna get tanked?" He pokes his head out from behind the fridge door, holding a bottle of white wine.
Veronica snorts. "I thought you didn't drink wine."
"I don't. But that doesn't mean you can't."
"No thanks," she says, hopping up onto the counter as he replaces it. He passes her her food and they sink into silence for a few minutes. Still, she's glad he's here. Her heartbeat has timed itself to the rhythm of the music, syrupy slow, and that realization is all it takes to send her into a fresh wave of panic. Someone ran Betty and Jughead off the road. What if it's the same person who's threatening her family? What if this is all her fault?
"Hey," Archie says, "cut it out."
She blinks. "Cut what out?"
"You didn't make them crash."
"What?" For one crazy moment she thinks he's actually read her mind, but Archie just shrugs.
"That's what you were doing, right?" he asks, coming to stand in front of where she sits on the counter. "Blaming yourself for what happened?"
She considers denial, decides it's worthless. "Among other things."
"Why?" He whispers. "What is it, Ronnie?"
Her breath stops coming easily. She looks at the wooden box that still sits on the kitchen table, thinks about the knife and the pearls and the pictures and the dolls. She almost tells him, but in the end she jumps off the counter, evading. This day has gone on for years, and she doesn't need anymore dangerous things.
"I think I'm going to try bed," she tells him, putting a safe amount of distance between them, the clean expanse of kitchen tile. "Want me to set you up on the couch?"
Archie raises one dark eyebrow. "I think I can manage."
"Okay, then." They load their plates into the dishwasher. Veronica wipes down the counters. The moon washes in through the window, silver-pale.
...
Veronica isn't sleeping when the phone rings in the middle of the night - just lying in bed and worrying about her friends, thoughts like a freight train hurtling stopless through her brain. She launches herself across the mattress to pick it up. "What?" she says immediately, voice panicky and shrill, demanding. "What? What? Tell me."
"Veronica," her mother says softly, and she thinks she's never been more afraid in all her days on God's green earth. "Veronica. It's all right."
It's all right.
Betty and Jughead are okay, she tells her calmly. They came through their surgeries critical but breathing, and now they're stable, and there's nothing to do but let them rest. "I love you," Hermione says before she hangs up, Veronica's hand pale-knuckled and cold around the phone, chin on her knee in the dark. "And whatever else happens, sweetheart - your dad loves you, too."
She hangs up. She worries about what that last sentence from her mother means. She sits silent in the center of the mattress, like it's an island in the middle of the sea.
Finally she gets out of bed.
She opens her door and gasps: There's Archie sitting on the floor in the hallway, head back against the molding and elbows on his knees. He's taken off the shirt he was wearing - it seems like days ago that they kissed in the parking lot of Pop's, all stupid and brave - and now he's in his undershirt. "Hey," he says, suddenly alert, "How are they?"
"Okay, I think. My mom says okay." She squats so they're at eye level, voice quiet. "Whatcha doing?"
Archie shrugs a little. "Keeping watch."
"For intruders?"
"For you," he makes a face. "Sorry if I'm freaking you out. I'm just worried."
"You're not freaking me out."
"I'm freaking me out a little."
Veronica shrugs. "Betty and Jug are okay. And so am I. For now, at least."
Archie smiles. "Was that your mom on the phone?"
She nods. She's not surprised to find him out here, is the truth of it - like somehow this is inevitable, the natural course of things. Maybe he's a homing pigeon. Maybe she's his home. "Do you ever think Riverdale is really not the right place for us?" he asks.
She breathes. "Every day," she whispers. If only he knew. "But where am I going to go?"
"Not you," he says, urgent, like there's something she's not understanding. "Us."
"Us?"
"What if we got out of here?" he asks. "After graduation, I mean. Instead of college… what if we just went?"
Veronica swallows her heart back down into her chest. "Where?"
Archie looks right at her and smiles, huge and simple as a map of the world. "Everywhere," he says.
Everywhere.
"Archie." Right away she thinks of all the places she's never been and all the things she hasn't done yet. She thinks of a road stretching all the way across the country and of all the nights she's spent alone, and when she sees he's still waiting for an answer, she takes a deep breath and braces herself. "I need to tell you something."
A vertical line appears right between his eyebrows. Veronica stands, pulling him up with her. Her heart pounds like it's trying to break free and leave her as she guides him into the kitchen. They stand together at the table and she puts a hand over the wooden box. She focuses on his presence. He smells faintly like soap and the air is warmer near him, like his body is giving off more heat than usual.
"What's inside?" Archie asks.
"A message." She keeps her hand over the box. There's a feeling in her chest like a moth against a windowpane, the desperate scrape of wings. "Well, sort of. More like a threat."
Archie raises his eyebrows. "What do you mean?"
Veronica sighs and waits. They're quiet as death as they listen to the AC sing its elegy as it hums high in the vents above their heads. She's a little bit afraid of how Archie might react - go off like an improvised explosive, maybe, glass and shrapnel everywhere you look. She swallows the sudden thickness in her throat and slides the top off the box.
Archie is quiet for a moment, but Veronica feels him shift from curious and concerned to downright tempestuous. "What the hell is this?" He asks, voice low. The undertone of fear and alarm makes Veronica's heartbeat kick even faster. "What does the letter say?"
Veronica slams the top back over the box. "I don't know, and it doesn't matter," she says. Also, really, she doesn't want to know what it says, doesn't want one more reason to feel this bone deep terror.
"Veronica-"
"My dad has more security in the lobby," she says. "And I can't leave the house alone anymore."
"Damn right," Archie breathes out. His muscles have all gone rigid, his jaw locked tight. "Ronnie, I swear to God, I'm not letting anything happen to you. I can't- if you-" he breaks off, rubbing a hand hard over his face.
"Hey," she says, moving closer, pressing the length of her body flush against his, burying her face into his chest. "Hey. I'm okay, alright? I'm sorry." He holds her tight.
"Sorry for what?"
Veronica pauses, then pulls back. "Archie," she whispers. "What if the crash was my fault?"
"What?" Archie looks at her, bewildered and indignant. "You think it was a warning from whoever sent the box?"
She shrugs a little, tries to slow her breathing and not sound completely insane. "Maybe."
Archie closes his eyes. "Maybe," he agrees. "And maybe not. Either way, Ronnie, it's not your fault."
"I hope not," she breathes out. She pushes the box away, tries to push her doubts away with it. "Can you come to bed with me?"
Archie nods, immediate.
"You okay?" he asks once she's locked them inside her bedroom, the two of them hidden from the sleeping world.
Veronica nods vaguely. "Mm-hm."
"You sure?"
"I said yes, Archie."
She's always a patchy, haunted sleeper, but tonight Veronica tosses more than usual, tangling the blankets, breathing hard. Archie runs his palm up and down her backbone, trying to quiet her, but it's like she's waiting for something to attack. Like she wants to get up and pace. She feels like a hydrogen bomb. She tries to be very still, but she knows he can feel her entire body tensing, a runner ready to begin a race. Three times, she drifts off only to wake violently a moment later.
Veronica lets Archie hold her, their pulses tapping out a syncopated rhythm, her breathing finally evening out. Her eyes have been closed for a few minutes when he says, "I love you," so quiet, like a prayer whispered into her neck.
She's nearly asleep, edges blurring. "I love you too," she murmurs because it's true. She loves his quick, blistered musician hands and the honest soul he keeps hidden safe beneath his skin, and she loves how she is still, every day, learning him. She loves his silly, secret goofy side and the way he has of making her feel like a sunset, just from the way he looks at her face. She loves Archie Andrews so much that sometimes she can't sit still for the fullness of it.
"Go to sleep now," he whispers, and she does.