There must have been something terribly wrong with Alice because she left without Betty. We waited in my room until we fell asleep and we didn't wake up until my alarm went off the following morning. On our way to Southside we peered into the trailer to see Alice rampaging to make it livable. I doubted she would stay there for long, but Alice seemed like that type to make even a motel room more like home. Honestly we just wanted to make sure she was still there and hadn't just abandoned her daughter.

Southside was not a very nice looking school. They had a pay phone instead of a free phone in the office, and there was a security guard. No wonder they assumed I burned down my own place of employment. I may not have gone to this school yet but I came from the same side of town as these kids and it screamed "school-to-prison pipeline". The kids themselves were decent, though.

Some I recognized from that time at the police station. Another person I recognized was Joaquin who took a step back when he saw me.

"Joaquin, wait!" He looked like a trapped animal but complied. Everyone always listened to me here. It was weird.

"Betty, this is Kevin's boyfriend Joaquin. Joaquin, this is one of Kevin's best friends, Betty Cooper." The tension left his shoulders, like he was expecting a different conversation. "Relax pal, Jones men aren't rats." We talked him into being out unofficial tour guide and it was the friendliest I've ever seen anyone be to a new person. I guess to them I was, as Kevin would put it, a Kennedy. Maybe that was tasteless to say since it was just over half a decade since JFK was assassinated.

Some people came up to Betty specifically and more than one guy asked to kiss the back of her hand. Being a legacy child through Alice gave Betty credentials, even without any cred from her grandmother in The Scorpions. She was the princess to my prince, as far as they were concerned. Things were great here, and we could lay low under the drama at the main school died down. The only real down side was that there wasn't enough funding for a school paper here and we missed our three friends we would have had to leave behind. If Joaquin could do it, though, then so could we.

We sat in on a math class when everyone started to leave. Soon enough curiousity got the best of us and we followed the crowd. Half pulled out of a dumpster was a body that was mostly just burned bone. People were speculating who it was and police soon showed up. I heard something about acquisition letters for dental records, but I already knew who it was.

He wasn't missing, he was dead. The red hair was a dead giveaway. He was Jason Blossom and it was clear that they torched him up at the drive in, almost taking two more casualties with him that night. There were no other real fires in the past while, so that had to be it. Suddenly this new safe haven didn't feel so safe, especially with my one man war with the jocks and then already pinning the fire on me. Bail money wasn't going to save me from a court date.

It must have been pretty obvious that I was freaking out because Betty stopped and wrapped her arms around me, tight. I hadn't said anything but I think she knew. Should we run? I'd probably get strung up if I stayed. Evidence hardly mattered with a trial by jury. In a town like this, it would be biased. I had seen 12 Angry Men, I knew how this worked. I just doubted I would get that one person willing to change the tides for me. Southsiders tended to be ignored for jury duty because of some conflict of interest belief or some crap. If I ran, though, I'd just look guilty as sin and there'd be not even a hair of a chance of escaping that.

But I wasn't alone anymore. My decisions had impact. It was not my choice to make alone. If I decided to leave and Betty decided to stay, she would have been vulnerable to attack on all sides. I pressed my hand on her back and lead her away to the edge of the school for more privacy.

"Betty, what should we do? Should we just cut our losses and hightail it out of here or should we stay and fight this? I can't make this decision alone." I rubbed circles onto her palm and she bit her lip. That may have been a bit much pressure to put her under.

"More than anything, I would love to run away with you and away from this god forsaken town," she reached up, tangling her free hand in my hair, "but I'm not sure I'm ready to make off like Bonnie and Clyde. That didn't end well. It would also burn bridges. We would never be welcomed back."

I rested my forehead against hers. "Okay, we'll stay then. I'm not a coward anyways."

"You wouldn't need to be. We'll fight this together. And we probably still have time. Let's just go back to sitting in classes and then maybe go for a milkshake at Pop's. Who knows, maybe we can even visit my grandma. I think she likes you."

We walked arm in arm back to class, a day decidedly less eventful after the big event of this morning, though everyone was talking about it. We tried to pretend that everything was fine even though it really wasn't. 'Fake till you make it' philosophy and all that. I wouldn't have made it if Betty wasn't there to hold my hand. It was a bit selfish of me to be glad that Betty got pulled into this mess but I needed her like I needed air to breath and in this city I was suffocating.

Archie and Ronnie were also at Pop's after school and they stood up when they saw us come in.

"I saw you two leave with Alice yesterday and you didn't show up for school today. What happened? Is everything okay?" Archie's mouth was practically running a mile a minute.

"Hal and Alice got into a fight and she's as independent as nuclear housewives go so she left to her brief home on the Southside. I had no idea the place she owns was anybody's, let alone hers. Today Betty and I decided to tour Southside High. With all that's going on, we thought it might be safer there. That was a bit naive, though. Nowhere is safe anymore."

"I get that Chuck's a bully, but aren't you being a bit dramatic, Jug?" Veronica elbowed her boyfriend in the ribs for being so insensitive.

I let out a dark chuckle. "You missed the biggest part. This is even bigger than the impending North versus South inevitable civil war. Today at Southside High a body was found. It was all burned up and the only real identifying feature was the bright red hair." I waited a minute for this to sink in. "The only big fire in town recently was at the drivein, a fire the police station has already tried to pin on me, and there's only one person with red hair that hasn't been seen in a few days."

"Jason Blossom," Veronica said dryly. I nodded. The same Jason Blossom that knocked up Polly Cooper who was currently away at a nunnery awaiting the arrival of her child.

"Maybe we can solve the murder before the police get to me. It's probably the best chance we have without flaking off town."

Betty pulled her binder out of her book bag and ripped out a page. She then grabbed a pen and started scribbling names, everyone she could think of. Her parents, Polly, FP, The Blossoms, everyone. "We just have to suspect everyone and cross them off as we go by means of deduction. So I'll cross off all 4 of our names and Polly. She isn't even in town so it couldn't have been her. I'd like to cross out FP's name but I really feel like we should talk to him first."

My skin pricked at the thought, but I knew Betty was right and she seemed to like my dad so it wouldn't be a witch hunt. Maybe a poor choice of words, in consideration for recent events.

So looking at what we knew. We knew there were two murders in the Blossom family in the past few generations. Betty was secretly related to the Blossoms and her sister was pregnant with... her third cousin's baby? That put the Coopers pretty high on the list, especially since they did not like the Blossoms to begin with. This raised the question of why. Did they have something to do with the murder of one of their own? That sounded horrifying, and yet that still put them higher on the list as well. We crossed off Fred because he had no quarrel and would have been too busy anyways. We crossed off a lot of names. Then there was Chuck with a big bold question mark. He was co captain with Jason and had now become full captain. That was a big deal and would look a lot better in football scholarship applications. Plus, the murder was clearly done at my work hence the gasoline so he could have easily done that to frame me. He seemed to know a lot about it the following day when his team confronted me, and he didn't seem worried about a missing member.

"We don't have to follow that lead today. It's Friday so we have all day tomorrow. Let's just go visit my grandma and see what she knows about Cooper. Maybe understanding one Blossom murder will help us gain insight into another one." We excused ourselves and left our two friends to attempt enjoying their date, something I'm not sure they could now that this town seemed just a little darker.

When we arrived, Kathlyn was packing up her things. She stopped to visit and make us tea with a new-to-her set she had gotten since we had seen her Wednesday. I felt comfortable enough to throw on my gang jacket.

"If you took off that hat, you'd look just like your father. Your grandfather, too, when I got him to try on one of my dad's jackets. Have you ever seen him without his hat on? Men in that family are debonair as they come." I slowly peeled off my hat, feeling more and more like an exposed nerve. Betty gasped and her grandmother just chuckled. "What did I tell you, Elizabeth?"

I blushed a bright red and then slid my cap back on. "You look good as a greaser in a gang." She whispered into my ear causing all the hairs in the back of my neck to stand up. I swallowed awkwardly.

"To get back to why we are here. Last time you said the Cooper Blossom case was never solved, right?"

"It was actually very strange, really. They had just started up a business together. Making maple syrup, like the kind you can still buy at the store. It's where they got all their money. They could have had the best men on the job and kept the case open for decades but they didn't. I kept a deadbolt on my door for nothing. Nobody ever came by to question me. Now it's not my place to say but shortly after the murder, Cooper's wife and son decided to change their last name to his first. Doesn't that seem odd to you? To distance themselves from the rest of the family? Forsythe always thought the murderer was my dad, and maybe it was, but I am extremely sure the Blossoms had something to do with it. My dad was actually friends with the Blossoms at the time, which was weird considering there has always been a fine line in the sand between the north and south end of town. There's actually rumours going around about gentrifying that part of the Southside where that old drivein used to be, too. Things are bubbling up and I think it's time I left this town before things get worse. I have an older brother in Chicago who said I could move in with him and his family. I'm sorry to be doing this to you, Betty, but I love you." She finished packing her bags and we walked her to the train station, waving goodbye as she went.

It was a good thing we went when we did, I guess. Sometimes you just had to get out. Maybe some day Betty and I could go visit her in Chicago. Archie's grandparents on his mother's side actually moved there to retire some years back.

This had been a tiring day so I decided to walk Betty back to her trailer. We were stopped when we passed mine, however. Alice and FP were frowning as Sheriff Keller came up to me once again. I had less time than I thought.